Back in the United States of Jetlag. 23 hours and counting, and I feel about ready to leave again...

As befits the birthplace of a civilization, Greece was beautiful and friendly. A place so old it is young again, the way an old human becomes an infant. No drastic catharsis as expected, but rather a place of subtleties--as in the way the innumerable mountains give way to horizons in gradated hues of blue or green depending on the weather. A city-dweller dropped in an always distant skyline--even at the pinnacle of the metropolis--gives way to a new perception of phenonmena and noumena--one's buglike blip on the long curve of the land and the vast expanse of everything after. A funeral stele persists in a museum--etched lists of names pawed at by scholars. Posterity is never what you think it will be. Even after gods die, it is their temples that remain, so it is with humans. A tiny candle burning in the roadside shrine in the hearty winds--somebody had to light it--someone keeps it burning. The boughs of xenia shade even the Ugly American while not so far away we enact televised murder. The man on the beach says Sophocles knew how things were always worse for the victor. "You don't look like an American" = "You don't seem so bad." Sour-faced guards at the Homeland Security checkpoint upon return remind me again that we're the Bad Guys now. Emblems & drastically enacted policies--rules, rules, rules. Immaculate smooth-stoned squares indicate it's not rules but people that pick up the trash. Further proof we are clots of rules and desires and not people. Nobody's trash blowing in tiny cyclones along the avenue.

If you happen to be interested, the inordinate amount of photos I took can be found here.

Happy New Year everyone.