Category: Travel

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Ancient Corinth

Everywhere you go, it’s like corinthian columns, corinthian columns, corinthian columns… Stavros and I drove to Corinth this week to visit the ruins of the ancient city and acropolis. Two six-foot long green snakes slithered past us on the acropolis, reminding me of so many tales from antiquity involving oracles, enchantresses, heroic deeds and tragedy. Our trip wasn’t defined by such grand dimensions, thank Zeus, just me, back in Greece, and Stavros, back at my side.

The previous week we visited the 11th century Dafní monastery in Chaidari. Extensive damage from an earthquake in 1999 is currently being restored, and because of the restoration we were able to ascend the scaffolding up into the dome to see the mosaics up close. Fabulous.

We also visited the Sanctuary of Demeter in Eleusis, on the site where Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and fertility, found her daughter Persephone after she had been kidnapped by Hades. Important initiation ceremonies were held there every year for their cult. Because Persephone had eaten a few pomegranate seeds while in the underworld, she had to return every year, one month for each seed. Her mother’s sadness during the time that Persephone was in the underworld resulted in a neglect of the earth, but when Persephone returned to the surface in the spring, Demeter would get all happy and turn her attention back to agricultural and fertilizing activities. Hence the seasons. The king at the time helped Demeter, and in gratitude, Persephone gave his son the first grains of wheat and showed him how to harvest crops. Wheat grows wild all around the sanctuary today.

Stavros is my own Persephone, rising from the abyss of Greek austerity to spend another blissful month at my side.

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Pre-Sandy New York

A few years ago, when Big Chris and I were here in the winter, a blizzard was predicted to hit a few days before our departure back to San Francisco. “Let’s stick it out and see how it goes.” Well, our flight was cancelled and the earliest the airline could book us out was on a flight leaving about 10 days later. People were skiing down 8th Avenue. This time we decided not to wait around and experience canoes on 8th Avenue, so we booked a flight back today, a hop, skip and a jump ahead of Hurricane Sandy, heading up the east coast to New York City. I’m back in San Francisco now, in my shorts, reading about transportation closures and flight cancellations and breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Thursday morning in New York, Chrissy and I visited Tatzu Nishi’s installation, Discovering Columbus, hovering above Columbus Circle. Around the sculpture of Columbus, in the center of the circle, about 6 flights up, Nishi has constructed a living room, with the sculpture of Columbus seemingly plunked down on a coffee table in the room’s center. The room has windows looking out on the cityscape below, approximating the perspective of the statue. There is no reference to Christopher Columbus, his voyages, Indigenous Peoples Day… just a statue in a modestly decorated living room, floating above Columbus Circle, and like what much of public art has become, a thrillingly vapid theme park ride.

And speaking of public space, it’s dominated in Rome by Bernini’s grand marble sculptures of larger-than-life saints, heavenly creatures and river gods, all ecstatic and contrapposto, swathed in lush folds of gravity-defying marble fabric. At the Met, we saw a wonderful exhibition of small-scale terra cotta mockups for many of Bernini’s major commissions. The malleability of the terra cotta shows his hand in a gestural way that is lost in the transition to marble. Thrilling! Also at the Met, we saw concurrent exhibitions of photography, Before- and After Photoshop. A hand-tinted daguerreotype portrait felt magically realistic, like a reflection. There were a bit too many examples of hand-tinting, but there were many cool pictures showing clever montage, staging, darkroom tricks, all demonstrating the pliable nature of photography and the elusiveness of representation.

At MoMA, we saw a retrospective of the Brothers Quay. Their films fetishize a kind of pre-modern turn-of-the-century-ness, and are filled with breathtakingly beautiful images of dust, broken dolls, wire, and anything that’s decaying. In addition to their films, the retrospective included sets, installations, photography, book and poster designs, and childhood memorabilia.

One of the screams is also on display, in a crystal sarcophagus upstairs at MoMA. This is one of four versions that Edvard Munch made, this one executed in pastel, and recently the most expensive painting sold at auction, to a private individual said to be a trustee of the Modern. $120 million. It is a pretty wonderful image, despite its intimidating price tag and bulletproof setting. It’s in a room that contextualzies the image within Munch’s Frieze of Life series, a body of work taking us from birth to death and all the calamitous tragedy in between.

The most touching show in town was another retrospective, at NYU’s Grey Gallery, this one of Frank Moore, who died of AIDS a decade or so ago. He created grandly eloquent allegorical paintings about the degradation of our planet and our bodies from AIDS and the miracle of modern chemistry. They’re almost fairy tales, painted by a gentle soul who found beauty and depth in decay.

Meanwhile, on Broadway, we saw Henry Winkler (the Fonz!) play an aging porn star, sharing the stage with Alicia Silverstone, in The Performers, a hilarious farce that takes place on the night of the Adult Film Awards. We saw the guy who plays Matthew on Downton Abbey in The Heiress. The set was beautiful, but it felt like everybody was Acting, with a capital “A.” I had recently seen the Monty Clift/Olivia de Havilland film version, so I didn’t really feel much, other than slightly bereft. How could any actor live up to those two performances? Which brings me to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which we saw last night. It’s really one of the great plays of the 20th century, the writing itself gives me goosebumps. But again, how do you follow up Mike Nichol’s cast from the 1966 version, one of the most perfectly cast films ever?

Yesterday the North American Mammal dioramas in the Museum of Natural History were opened to the public, after a lengthy restoration. They are just spectacular. Wolves, bison, spraying skunks… this is definitely a guy museum. I saw hardly any women, except in the gem section, which was all female. The other girls I saw were being pulled around by their boyfriends, or monotonously pushing perambulators behind overly-enthusiastic husbands. Boys, and mammals, everywhere.

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On Broadway: Grace

At the end of the play, Chrissy said, “Isn’t he just the cutest thing?” and I replied, “Yes, he really is looking more and more like Santa,” wiping a small tear from the corner of my eye. Perplexed, Chrissy replied, “I was talking about Paul Rudd.”

I of course, couldn’t imagine that he wasn’t talking about Ed Asner. Chrissy and I saw him onstage tonight at the Cort Theater in a production of Grace. He’s at the age when he’s an “and Ed Asner” on the Playbill, but he’ll always be at the top of my billing. I was only 30 feet or so away from him, close enough to see the still barely visible forearm hairs that fueled so much of my teen and midlife crises, finally none of those pesky screen lines between us.

The play took place in two identical apartments, across the street from each other, but, cleverly, only one stage set was used, as if one apartment were superimposed on the other. So you see all the characters in one space, even though they’re in different apartments. The play opens with the characters dead on the floor of the apartment, and then the action proceeds backwards, the actors delivering the lines in reverse that they would repeat again in proper sequence at the end of the play. So the play was not about who killed all the characters in the play, but why.

Read Ben Brantley’s review if interested in the theological and philosophical thesis behind the play, it’s midnight and I’m turning into a pumpkin.

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Weekend in Duncans Mills and Silly Love Songs

My friends Richard and Jim live in a glass house that overlooks the Russian River, framing a view of rolling grassy hills, the rear of the house nestled against a redwood forrest. Jim cooked one of Julia Child’s stews last weekend, accompanied by a deliciously crisp potato gratin and countless bottles of various Sonoma County wines. I made a pear upside-down cake. We drank until the wee hours of the night, which oddly turned out to be only 9:30pm, at which time we all passed out. I slept for 12 hours, returning to the city after a wonderfully relaxing weekend with my friends.

I hope they didn’t get bored with the constant subject of Stavros. I seemed to turn every discussion somehow back to him. Driving up there, through the vineyards and orchards and the colorful leaves and long shadows of autumn, I listened to a playlist of music that we listened to together over the summer. I howled mournfully and sincerely, tears flowing aerodynamically down my cheeks: There ain’t nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing impossible / Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing’s impossible / Oh no, nothing, nothing, for your love, your love, your love, your lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ove. Somehow, for me, connecting the most deeply with someone suddenly entails actually believing all those corny lyrics, to every corny song that was ever written. All those songs about love, they’re really acute observations of all this intense hormonal and chemical activity that has overtaken and overwhelmed most of my faculties and desires. I found a dream that I could speak to / A dream that I can call my own / I found a thrill to press my cheek to / A thrill that I’ve never known. I hear these songs and a little lightbulb goes off over my head. “Oh my god, he’s right! The moon does hit your eye like a big pizza pie!”

Tomorrow I’m off to the Big Apple with Big Chrissy. Stay tuned for details of our exciting adventures…

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A Crop of Lips

I visited the Acropolis yesterday, completely wowed by the intensive reconstruction and restoration work that’s happened since my last visit in 2001. It’s like the ultimate jigsaw puzzle up there, chunks of Parthenon everywhere, slowly being fitted into place. I managed to arrive just as everybody else did, at the time that every guide book says to avoid, late morning before lunch. The place was packed for an hour, and then everyone scurried down the hill to his air-conditioned tour bus.

While Stavros has been at work out of town the past few days, I’ve turned on GROWLr, the iPhone hookup app that is my principal means of communication with my slutty friends around the world—seriously, to talk to my friends. If I were a different kind of bunny, that is, a hussy, I would be entertained daily by quite a number of almost desperately available Athenian men who text me throughout the day offering all sorts of varied opportunities for live bunny action. Two cab drivers, perhaps independently of each other, each asked to pick me up in his cab, one for a particular activity in the car itself, the other for a get-to-know-me rendezvous with his boyfriend. I thought it might be the new-kid-in-town syndrome, but actually, I think it’s just that they’ve all gone through everyone else in town. Oh. The new-kid-in-town syndrome, then. It’s certainly nice to be getting all this attention in my steadily-advancing state of decay, but I’d prefer a crop of marriage proposals tossed at me all day, instead of all these pictures of Greek underparts.

Chrissy always gets mad at me for chatting with these strangers. “You don’t have to respond,” he’s always telling me. I was raised in the south, where my friends all called their dads “sir,” I just find it hard to be rude. “Thanks for the nice picture of your substantial appendage, handsome, have a great day.” This response invariably is followed by “You’re welcome, stud.” And that’s that, end of conversation.

Today I had coffee with a new friend, Costas, a really sweet and gentle soul, who seems a bit frustrated by the ease of sexual possibilities around town and the difficulty of securing more substantial commitments. We talked about our various relationships, past and present, the current financial crisis, and racial unrest in Athens.

The neighborhood I’m staying in has a large percentage of African immigrants. Most people I’ve spoken to about it are negative about their presence, citing falling home prices and shuttered businesses in the neighborhood, crime, drugs, white flight. I can’t see the negative stuff, though, I see really beautiful people who probably suffered horrendous atrocities in their country and are now forced into degrading menial jobs, if they get jobs at all. I haven’t seen a single black person in any visible job—except selling trinkets near the Acropolis or on the beach. Now I’m speaking in almost complete ignorance of the day-to-day reality of the immigrants, and am confining my observations to a fairly limited area, so don’t go quoting me anywhere.

For the past three nights, outside of Stavros’ apartment building, the Golden Dawn neo-fascists have gathered, loudly, and taunted the neighborhood black guys, sometime chasing after them with pipes. Car windows have been smashed, fist fights have broken out. I and all of Stavros’ silver-haired neighbors gather on our balconies in our underwear to watch the activity on the street below. I have no idea what’s going on, as Stavros has been away since the nightly gatherings started and I don’t understand the Greek screams, like watching a foreign action film with no subtitles. Tonight they broke into an African cultural center below my balcony window and destroyed it, while the neighbors and police did nothing.

I leave Athens on Friday morning, heading back to San Francisco. I’ve become so enamored of Stavros, enjoying his wit and delightful presence, his grand beauty, his scrumptious Banoffee, his sort of trumpet-sounding melodious voice. This must be what it feels like the night before going to prison, the last taste of pleasure before isolation and deprivation.

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Welcome. Pause. To Andros Island (In Ricardo Montalban’s Voice)

Stavros and I spent last weekend on Andros Island, in the Greek Cyclades. Most of the island is terraced with beautiful stacked stone walls, zigzagging up and down and across the hillsides. The landscape is mostly mountainous, with cute villages clinging to steep slopes, the slopes gently rolling down to the sea and encircling coves with fine sand beaches. The center of the island is lush and green, with many trees and springs. Spring water spews from old fountains and drinking spouts, and winds through the villages down little gullies.

We had dinner one night at the Balcony of the Aegean, a taverna in Ano Aprovato, high on a hill overlooking the sea, a truly spectacular view. The food was solid Greek taverna food, everything fresh, tasty and nicely prepared and presented, served with local cheeses and housemade wine.

We drove inland one afternoon for a late lunch at another beautifully situated taverna, this one surrounded by tall trees, across from a burbling fountain from which our table water was procured. We were the only guests, the town empty. The proprietress appeared, a kind witchy looking woman with a crooked nose and big moles on her face, and told us that there wasn’t much available—a rooster, skewered livers, Greek salad, cheese pie, eye of newt… We ordered it all. Half of the lunch was delicious, the cheese pie of tangy local cheese, the village salad fresh and tasty, but the rooster, which looked spectacular when brought to our table, smothered in grilled tomatoes and peppers, was raw, the inside chilly, red, and with a pulse. We sent it back, and it was thrown back on the grill, as served, and returned to us quite well done, the delicious sauce and vegetables now forming a solid black crust on the bird. The poor bird that gave its life for such an unsavory fate. And the liver thingies were like leather hockey pucks, probably left over from the previous night’s grill, inedible. Not wanting to offend our hostess, Stavros slipped them, one at a time, to the cat under our table.

Just outside Gavrio, the port of the island, is the tower of St. Peter, a 65-foot tall circular stone tower from the Hellenistic period. There are other towers around the island, dovecotes, leftover from the period when the island was under Venetian control. The architecture in general is a mix of traditional Cycladic stucco houses, 19th century mansions, built during the heyday of Greek shipping, Venetian era buildings with elegant porticos, and the remains of medieval castles. In Andros town, the capital of the island, there’s an elegant old Venetian mansion opening onto a large square at the edge of the town, overlooking the sea and the remains of a medieval castle, destroyed during World War II. In the center of the square is a Social-realist sculpture of an Unknown Worker, a fabulous Soviet-era presence. Bag slung over his shoulder, one arm waving, jauntily sauntering towards the sea, this guy’s happy he’s got a job.
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Montserrat at the Herodion

Hearing Montserrat Caballé sing at the Herodion in Athens was like listening to your grandmother sing in the shower. A pretty amazing shower, mind you, of marble, an open air amphitheater on the southern slope of the Acropolis, built in 161 A.D. by Herodius Atticus, and restored in the 1950’s. Montserrat is a legend, but really, your grandmother. She’s 79, and her voice, while still strong, was of a depth that allowed for few of the ornate embellishments that she’s known for, the former light playfulness of her voice now just heavy, sluggish. Bless her for still performing at her age, but when a voice fades, often it’s replaced by some kind of emotional or stylistic intensity that make up for the lost strength. I’m thinking of Billy Holiday’s spectacular Lady in Satin, released a year before her death, specifically “I’m a Fool to Want You”—I’m getting goosepimply thinking of it—her faded higher register replaced with such emotional devastation. There was no encore after Montserrat left the stage, nor a call for one, not one brava!, everybody just went home.

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The Stavros Chronicles: Schinias

Marathonas is the site of the famous Battle of Marathon, when the Persians were defeated by the considerably smaller Athenian army in 490 B.C. The 192 Athenians who were killed are buried in a massive burial mound, surrounded by olive trees, not far from the ancient battlefield. Actually, pretty much everything in Greece is surrounded by olive trees, but here, it’s particularly poignant to see a source of sustenance so close to those memorialized. Marathonas gets its name for the Greek word for “fennel,” and means “a place with fennel.” The long distance race, marathon, gets its name from the town. Legend has it that a single runner ran the entire distance from Marathonas to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated. Another legend says that he ran from Athens to Sparta to seek help. The legend about the announced triumph over the Persians is the one that seems to hold the most traction with the public imagination, but whoever did the running and to where, it was quite a hike.

Schinias Beach, near Marathonas, is a long stretch of sandy beach surrounded by whispy umbrella pine trees, about 45km northeast of Athens. The water is tranquil, the sound of the wind in the pines mesmerizing, and a few nudists are kind of tucked away in the shrubbery and sand dunes, adding to the sensory experience.

South of the beach, there is a temple dedicated to Egyptian gods, currently closed due to archaeological excavation, and a museum with artifacts and sculpture from the area, which I hope to visit before heading back to San Francisco—if we make it back to the beach. With just a week left on the trip, I’m kind of content just to stare at Stavros, my favorite visual experience.

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The Stavros Chronicles: Shirley Valentine The Sequel

Well, here I am, back in Greece. I don’t know why the tourist season ends exactly when it’s the most pleasant time to be here, but I’m enjoying the empty beaches and not sweating. Stavros and I have been alternately at each other’s throats or adhered in liplocked bliss. Thankfully, mostly liplocked bliss.

A lot of our confrontation stems from his notion that a long-distance relationship, including this one that seems to be going so well, is impossible. I’ve told him that he doesn’t have to decide that it’s impossible and then so actively pursue not making it possible. If it’s impossible, it just won’t work out, he doesn’t have to do anything. But if something is possible, stop resisting and let it happen. I feel him holding back—words that aren’t spoken, thoughts not articulated—and I know it’s not because of some stupid macho cultural thing, or that he doesn’t care about me, it’s because of his fears and anxiety. He’s dealing with what all Greeks are dealing with, how to survive in the current economic climate, and let me tell you, the Greek people are being asked to sacrifice so much, you can almost see how some of them could be brainwashed by the right-wing extremist Golden Dawn fascists and their anti-austerity proposals, the closest they’ll get to “read my lips.” One United Nations official has already warned that the current austerity measures could represent a violation of human rights. Against this dire economic backdrop, he asks, how could romance be possible? Well, it is, and it’s blossoming, so sit back and let it flower. To paraphrase Auntie Mame, “Love! love! love!!”

We spent last weekend with two of his friends, Giorgos and Filios, guests in their home in Methana. They were delightful hosts, very well-read, each actively pursuing artistic endeavors, truly a pleasure to while away a weekend with. Methana is a sub-peninsula of the Peloponnesus, attached by a tiny sliver of land. It’s almost an island, entirely of volcanic origin, the smell of sulphur still in the air. The area is only sparsely populated, but with lush vegetation and dense forests, boulders everywhere, like the volcano just erupted. Giorgos and I hiked up to the peak of the highest volcano, enjoying beautiful views of the mainland and the islands of the Saronic Gulf.

Swimming in the sea, it felt like we were the only people in the entire Gulf. For a moment I thought of the housekeeper’s warning in the original The Haunting (not the stupid remake) “No one can hear you scream… in the dark… in the night…” but the water is so inviting, and so comforting. It doesn’t seem like you’re going to be sucked under by a giant sleeper wave or frozen to death like when swimming in the Pacific. Even when there’s a volcano above you and teetering boulders on the hillside ready to tumble down.
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A Chicago Quicky

After leaving the comfort of the Quad Cities, Chrissy and I drove to Chicago, to spend a few days with his dad. We wolfed down a stuffed pizza, which you can’t go to Chicago without doing, then saw the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute, such a pleasure to see those works in person and to experience how painterly they are. Market Days, a two-day street fair in Boyville, was happening around the corner from Chris’ dad’s place. We actually squirmed our way through the dense crowd of groping teenage girls and middle-aged gay men to hear Olivia Newton John’s performance. I’ve never really listened to her music, except when playing in the background at the houses of boyfriends even more sentimental and sappy than I, but I actually enjoyed her set. Do we suddenly shift into Easy-Listening people after 45? Hmmm… Anyway, she sang every one of her treacly bubble-gum hits. The gay men, and these annoying teenage girls, mostly born way after her time (what were they doing there?) seemed to know every word, even to “Xanadu,” and sang along tearfully. As she ended her set, she said to the crowd something about it being the time to say goodnight, when she’d usually disappear from the stage and then return to perform a surprise encore song. Instead, due to her age and the time of night, she asked if she could just pretend that she got off the stage and go directly into her encore. The crowd enthusiastically roared, and joined her in an a cappella version of “Let me be there,” hands clapping above our heads, smartphones recording, swaying from side to side, that annoying teenage girl pressed against my butt… Just let me be the-ere.