greece (and me) then..........and now

i recently found this foto, taken 30 odd years ago, when i lived in athens. it was the night before i was to return to the states after living in greece for what seemed like a lifetime. i remember how excited i was at life stretching out in front of me.......and scared too. (and yes, i am smoking - bad girl. it was a hard habit to break in a country where everybody smokes, but then that's no excuse...)

so why do i keep returning to this place? 

yes, because of my work (a long commute) but closer to the truth is that i guess i am intensity addicted. this landscape is so ancient and full of phantoms. as an archaeologist, it's a great place to dig things up - both in the soil and in the soul.

i didn't realize until i was going through fotos of my trip last november that my sister had taken a shot of me in almost the same exact spot. 

it made me think how many centuries these stones have been here. how many people have sat upon them, looking out over this very same view, down to the herodus atticus theatre and across to the hill of the pnyx, over the staccato-like cypress towards the aegean sea in the distance. 


and i wonder....what were they thinking about? did the sun warm them the same way — the birds shrieking and tracing the same patterns in the sky? did the ghosts of athena, pan and persephone escape from crevices in the ancient earth and whisper the same secrets?

i don't know. perhaps i'm not meant to....yet i keep returning. i like stones - both digging them up and just - sometimes - sitting on them. 

forever trying to download history, and marinate in the mystery.