There were also many hours to sleep. I slept an average of 10 solid hours per night in Greece, as opposed to the 5-6 I tend to get in Boston. This could be due to the heat and strong Mediterranean sun, or to walking all day with bags. I think also the removal of one's usual daily schedule can function as a sedative of sorts. Without the skeleton of working hours, social hours, work-out hours, etc, I sort of fall apart into a drowsy, gelatinous, jointless being. Schedules keep me coherent. I am American.
Not to mention the fact that sheer beauty is totally distracting for my REM. Every day I saw something stunning and unique; I have had 17 continuous days of stunning and unique in my life. I feel privilaged. In Athens I looked up in the middle of a small, empty road and there was the Parthenon, floating unassumingly above the city, donning a partial metal cast of scaffolding but glowing the breath of the ancients nonetheless. In Tinos we saw worn old men crawling up a tall hill on their knees to beg the Virgin Mary for forgiveness. I stood in an empty hallway, strung with white linens drying in the breeze, the sea beckoning from the window at the opposite end. We saw a quiet, blue and white artisanal village tucked away in the folds of the hills, and hitched a free ride to the vacant beach on the other side of the island. In Chios, I realized that I could see Turkey, and I couldn't stop staring at it. I jumped off a cliff into the ocean on the island where Leonard Cohen used to live. I drowned bread in olive oil. I frequently dragged Dio out to eat fresh spinach pies at breakfast.
A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook that while in Greece I had eaten seafood for the first time in 12 years. Within minutes, childhood friends began calling and e-mailing to inquire about why I had decided to eat a creature with a spinal cord. I honestly hadn't been expecting a reaction, but people seemed shocked. After all, I was the kid who ordered environmental t-shirts bearing sentimental logos from thin catalogues printed on recycled paper (think: "love animals; don't eat them" or "fur is most beautiful on the animal to whom it belongs"). In middle school, I spent considerable time in the basement, rummaging through plastic bins of my parents' clothes from university, looking for holey bellbottoms and flannel shirts. While everyone else in 8th grade was listening to TLC and Green Day, I was fervently memorizing the lyrics to "Aquarius." In high school and part of college, I was a frequent visitor to PETA's website, and at one point was trying to convince the girls in my sorority (the sorority-bit lasted only a year) that beer was healthier than BGH-infused skim milk (quite a popular argument, actually).
However, lately I've been realizing how little I function on an easy-going hippy mentality. Some people allow most aspects of their lives to rely on limitations: a "good job" with clearly defined expectations and someone to answer to (and from who to obtain approval or disapproval, or crystal clear definitions of success and failure); a religion that defines morality and hence a life planned around rules; a restrictive diet that makes eating a less controversial or self-indulgent affair. I'm not saying that any of these things are wrong, or even always limiting. Jobs can lead to promotions. Many people benefit from practicing a religion. Some of the people I have looked up to the most in my life also have a strong faith and adhere to dogma. Maybe I mean more of a predictable framework.
I've been realizing that I build my personality and plans a lot around limits. I don't much like that, as I'd like to be a person who accepts change and all of the unclear, fluctuating and vivid challenges and opportunities that life can bring. Especially since, according to one of my dear co-teachers, we will only become more cemented in our "ways" as we get older.
One thing that righteously bugged me is that my vegetarian status had developed into a source of pride. In high school and college, I was "unique" (not many vegetarians in Wisconsin or central Illinois). In Chicago, it was fashionable and "healthy", similarly to Boston. In Thailand, a reaction that my roommate Jen and I often derived was one of admiration (well, after the initial confusion--"Not even fish sauce?"). A vegetarian diet is a sign of discipline in some Buddhist sects. Most people eat vegetarian food, for example, on certain holidays or if they go to a temple for meditation. Abstaining from meat is widely considered a sacrifice of the corporeal pleasures.
But pride isn't what initially made me want to go veg when I was 10 years old. Initially, it was a child's impulse to "not-want-to-hurt." In the years that followed, I began to read more about the environmental impact of coorporate farming, inhumane treatment of livestock, and the usual spiel of eco-friendly, healthy, ethical-type thinking. These are still points that I strongly believe in, and so I won't be eating meat in the States.
However, what about in a country like Greece, where a local butcher swiftly slaughters the goat in the backyard? Or where the evening's fish was caught that morning by a local fisherman whose whole livelihood depends on people eating his product? In many countries, there is no negative environmental impact resulting from public consumption of fish and meat, no life of misery in an over-crowded pen. And I do believe in a natural food chain--wolves eat lambs. Whales eat plankton. I know a guy who spontaneously ate a grasshopper out of pure frustration. We don't accuse them of murder. Pain is part of every animal's life.
Also, my own lack of consistency makes my diet difficult to justify. I own leather shoes, and according to my friend Eric of Proctor and Gamble, nearly all of my toiletries have been tested on animals in one way or another. Also, as a human-lover (as well as animal-lover), wouldn't I be wrong to protest local businesses? Not to mention that I still eat dairy products, and who says that the dairy industry doesn't operate similarly to the meat industry?
So with these thoughts swimming over an empty stomach and under the stars, I asked for a small, glistening sliver of the daily catch on the island of Hydra. Tired, I thought, sand still clinging to my clothes, as my hosts chatted back and forth, drinking Mythos beer, switching from Greek to English to Spanish. I am so tired of clinging to unexamined ideals that still govern my life. How can we know a principal, a value, a love, a friend, if we don't step out for a moment and realize how free we can be, if we choose? That being a human doesn't mean we have to define everything about ourselves, that sometimes our moral absolutes become relative? I can pull up the anchor and cast it out again. I can always go back.
Oh--and apologies to my carniverous friends, but I'll never be a mammal or bird-eater. I didn't even like the fish as much as a solid square of tasty teriyaki tofu. But I'm keeping an open mind.