Third and final call

Sometimes life is like a theater stage. Before the play starts there are three bell calls.

The third call to the Camino rung very long time after the second bell. And it proved to be the final. 

Fate had its way to reconnect me with my long lost love, the big love of my life.  It was a period that gave us both happiness and pain.The happiness needs no further explanations. The pain came from the fact that a husband, a child that was in need of my attention and the whole Atlantic Ocean standing between us, became serious obstacles to our sublime love. A series of unfortunate events gave the final blow that broke our relationship and my heart. 

What was I to do? The pain, the despair, the devastation are beyond description. All I wanted to do was get out in the streets and start running away. 

Walking the Camino was definitely how I was going to deal with my grief. 
I was aware that it is not something that I should dive into without preparation. 

So I crossed the Atlantic, returned at my home and started asking around if anyone new any pilgrim. And there she was, a friend of a friend who had a friend who had walked the Camino. 
I picked up the phone and made a cold phone call. The pilgrim on the other side was willing to share her knowledge and wisdom about her experience. Finally We met, spent a couple of hours together and it all started looking promising and feasible. 

Like Ariadne who had helped Theseus to go in and out the Labyrinth, the good pilgrim gave me the beginning of the thread that would help me to find my way to Santiago de Compostela.

First and foremost she advised me to join a couple of groups on fb. American Pilgrims on the Camino and Camigas~a Body System for Women on the Camino.

(To be continued)

Dolce Vita

Photos by N. Exarhu

On migration and trash

In late August a few years ago, I fulfilled my life long desire to be a garbage man. 
When I was little I was interested in two professions that both were not considered proper: Street sweeper or shepard. Both were conducted outdoors, in motion, alone.
That summer thousands of middle eastern refugees were amassed at the train station of Eidomei, waiting for the borders to open and continue their way to the promised land of hope, the Northern Europe. But politics, government, rules and regulation had it so that thousands of desperate people, old and young, men and women, peaceful and trouble makers were all standing side to side waiting Uber’s the summer heat. 
So I hitched a ride and went  to Eidomeni to help out cleaning the uncontrollable mass of accumulated trash. I started working under the mid afternoon sun, with a big plastic bag in hand, bending over and picking up what the refugees had left behind. 
The earth near the train tracks was filled with green and blue bottle caps, plastic bottles, food wrappers, pill wrappers, stale bread left on the trees because it is a sin to leave it on the ground, socks, children's clothes, overcoats, papers written in Arabic, I found a torn pink ID card without a photo, issued by the greek government, a demolished smart phone, broken crates, a dead dog in a plastic bag, with flies buzzing around it, I managed to have it buried in a field, I found toy trucks , pieces of paper forms to fill out on both Greek and Arabic. I found clothes buried in the fields, plastic bags, lots of plastic around.
While I was hand picking all this trash, my mind went to other times when on the same spot at the train station of Eidomeni, two different groups of migrant people stopped.
In one of them were my grand parents with my mom as a toddler. They had come with the exchange of population between the Greeks and the Turks in 1923. They had come to a foreign land to start anew. Every time my grandmother was going to travel by train was in panic.
The other group were the Jews who were transported in freight trains to unknown destination, to their demise. My mom has always been talking about the water canteen that was left behind. It was given to her to fill it with water by a passenger on the death train. While she was filling the canteen the train started rolling on the tracks and the person she was trying to help was left without his metal bottle and without water. She tried to run and catch up unsuccessfully.
The trash those people were living behind was very different from what was was left by the Syrian refugees in Eidomeni. 
In the past they may have lost glass or metal bottles, handkerchives, head scarves, hair pins, keys. Today the trash that is left behind is wrapers and containers, 90% plastic. We consume a tremendous amount of petroleum to make products for a single use that end up in the landfills  destroying the Earth.
When I was collecting the clothes I found half buried in the ground, it felt like I was touching the souls of the people who left behind their empty shells.

Italian delights

 Delicious gelato

Yummy cupcakes

Murano glass

And unmistaken Italian canned Tuna and Anchovies.

Second call

The second time I heard El Camino calling me, was in Saintes-Maries-de-la-mere, in Camargue. My husband and I went to the South of France to visit a friend. On  a day trip we stopped at the little town of Saintes Maries de la mere, a small place where the french culture mingles with the Spanish, and the Gypsy. We went to visit the main church, Notre Dame de la Mer. A sanctuary that is one of most important departure points for Pelegrins who start from there their Camino to Santiago de Compostela. 
We visited the roof of Church, a real accomplishment for me, since I do not like climbing on roofs. My husband suggested I take my shoes off, so I could have better controll and balance. He was right. 
When we came down we saw at the church  courtyard a very beautiful piece of artwork, a big stain glass installation inspired by the Camino. On its surface it was written: l’amour est fort comme la mort. Love is as strong as Death! 
And somewhere near by there were photographs and information about the two thousand year old pilgrimage to Santiago. 
After I had conquered my fear of heights I felt drown to the challenge of walking from that very spot to Santiago de Compostela.
I asked my husband to accompany me. He was not that interested.
But I felt inside my heart the call to become a pilgrim. I knew that some day I was going to do what seemed almost impossible. Walk across Spain, walk towards a goal.

(to be continued)

Taking a walk to the end of the world.

Almost two years have past since my last elzevir entry.

Long months of skin change, a painful yet valuable phase.

Part of the new experience was a solo long walk of 30 days in Spain, following the path of El Camino Frances. 

As a young child I had read about El Camino, the over 2000 year old pilgrimage to Finisterra, that at the early years of the Christian era became a pilgrimage to the sacred remains of Apostle Jacob, in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. I was marveled and appalled by the long walkabout that seemed impossible to walk mile after mile, with the bare necessities carried on the pilgrim's back. I was in awe and fear of the strange figure of the bearded man with the tall walking stick, the long coat with the extra protection on the shoulders, and the wide brimmed hat with the big sea shell in the middle.

Little I knew, that was the first time the Camino called me.

(to be continued)

   

  

Iznik ceramic tiles

Tiles and vessels produced at Iznik during the 16th and 17th centuries are among the finest and most celebrated ceramics from the Middle East.

The careful undulating polychromatic forms, both vegetal and geometric, provide a stark contrast to the crisp white ground upon which they appear. 

These types of tiles were used to ornate the mosques and palaces of the Ottoman sultans and members of the court. The brilliant decoration of the individual tiles is impressive, but as part of a frieze or series of tiles along the wall of a mosque, their effect is sumptuous and magical.