journal entry .. june 3, 2006 ..

I'm a bit hesitant to place this journal entry on the Internet because it is personal and sentimental, but it explains some of my affection for Greece and so might serve a useful purpose for those contemplating a trip to Greece. .
- Mike Maxwell

Thoughts aboard a ferry departing Piraeus, Greece

Directly ahead in my line of vision is a welcome sight, the blue-and-white flag of Greece. Beyond the whipping flag are the lights of the port of Piraeus gradually growing dimmer as they recede into the distance. This ship - the big ferry Santorini filled with cars, trucks, and people - is heading into the pure black of the Aegean night.

The evening was warm and calm ashore just a few minutes ago. Now that we are underway, the night is windy and cool. Huge diesels are spewing foul-smelling black smoke above the vessel as they churn the sea below the ship's fantail where I sit. Twenty gulls are in close pursuit, wheeling and diving over the ferry's frothy wake, looking for what? Tasty ship's garbage perhaps, or maybe a fish dinner dredged up by the propellers.

It's been five years since I last steamed Homer's "wine dark sea," and the thought of being back moistens my eyes. What has triggered this unexpected reaction? As though carefully tasting a soup, I try to identify the individual flavors that make up the mix of emotions I am feeling this windy night on the Aegean Sea.

The first ingredient I can detect is Homer himself and all that he evokes. In the far distant mists of time, preliterate people develop stories to give their lives form and meaning - stories to explain themselves to themselves. These stories are told and retold and distilled to an essence that resonates deeply in the Greek psyche. That we still tell these ancient stories proves they continue to resonate in the modern mind as well.

In the distance the mainland is now a long, thin necklace of yellow pinpoints suspended horizontally across the blackness. I could be looking at the campfires of Agamemnon's warriors arrayed along the beach before the high ramparts of Troy. Homer's epic speaks of heroes, honor, greed, hate, and fate, but it also speaks of an old man's compassion, the devotion between husband and wife, and their love for their child. Family, I realize, is another ingredient in my Greek stew of feelings tonight.

I first encountered Greece's scattered lands with my wife and children. Greece was the first country we visited together beyond the ocean, and it remains a treasured memory. I miss my family and wish they were here with me now. We loved standing next to the Parthenon high on the Acropolis looking down on the city of Athens, but it was present-day Greece and Greeks that made us love the country even more.

There was Katy's twelfth birthday dinner in the Plaka where we were visited by cats and a young girl selling flowers. There were the cliffs and windmills of Santorini, the beaches and mosquitoes of Paros, little boys playing soccer in an old square on Samos, the men who couldn't resist tousling Gus's curly hair, and the food, always the food, and the people, always the people living their lives with emphasis. "Of course!" is how they would answer, not content with a mere "Yes."

Time went by and eventually the Greeks had an alphabet, a most useful invention that made it possible to write Homer's poem down. His epic would become nothing less than the inspiration for the great literary outpouring of the Greek classical age and the wellspring of the Western literary tradition.

Homer is a big part of why I am sitting here aboard a blue-and-white ship en route to a blue-and-white island trying to connect my fleeting existence to what Homer recognized as enduring features of the human experience: integrity, love, remembrance. And I discern another flavor: just above the level of consciousness, a subtle yet compelling feeling that I am related to the heroic Greeks; it is a comforting feeling that I am back in my ancestral home.

The mainland is completely invisible now. The only lights in the blackness are a half-moon overhead and the warning flashes from a lighthouse somewhere across the water. In the morning I will arrive at Santorini to begin my search for the earliest stirrings of Western Civilization and the roots of my cultural ancestry.

Most of the island of Santorini fell into the sea literally ages ago, leaving a crescent of land overlooking the water-filled crater, the caldera, of a still-treacherous volcano. I plan to meet face-to-face with the long-dead inhabitants of Santorini who continue to live their graceful lives in gorgeous wall paintings left behind in their ruined city of Akrotiri. Sixteen centuries before Christ, Akrotiri's walls were buried in ash by a stupendous volcanic eruption that scholars believe may be the source for the legend of Atlantis - now our legend and part of our collective memory.