Greek Unorthodox

 

A fifth excerpt of my hypothetical Crete novel, Reading the Stones, has been published online by Scrawl Place (great name)—"part visitor’s guide, part travelogue, part literary journal.  It’s meant for readers who prefer Bashō to Lonely Planet."

 

This is another segment of Anna's story, called "Greek Orthodox," and follows "Octopus" (Lowestoft Chronicle, Spring 2019), "Blue Monkeys" (Belle Ombre, March 2019), "Naxos" (Mediterranean Poetry, 2019), and a stand-alone segment featuring the novel's other main character, Mar—"Green Flash" (Silver Stork, September 2019).

 

Yet another portion of the novel was rewritten for different characters, with a different focus, as the story "Without Trace," and published by Halfway Down the Stairs (Frontiers issue) in March 2022.

 

"Greek Orthodox" takes place in Chaniá, on the northwestern shore of Crete, mostly in the agora (buying a red mullet and bit of feta; other days fish soup, various types of pite, the time-honored Greek pies), and various churches.  Eighty-year-old Anna loving what's there ("colorful as all get-out, she’d be the first to agree"), and always, achingly, the man who's still vividly with her in memory; but longing for her old, familiar home ("my own small fiefdom") back in Philadelphia, where she becomes resolved to return.

 

"A sunbeam fell through a high, crossed window—meant, charged.  Half the time she wondered whether religion wasn’t all about aesthetics.  Like theatre, it involved putting on a good show, lest your audience quickly lose interest.  Her eye followed the commanding beam of light that cut across the dawdling arches straight and sure, like a theatre spot.  A spotlight was meant to highlight faces, the action at dramatic center stage where the whisper was happening.  But moving into it, she was aware only of gold.  A field of gold.  A sown field and a battlefield.  (She would have to start incorporating gold into her paintings, it had such a dazzling effect.)  The dizzy gold of bees of saints of all the wisdom of antiquity passed down through scholars’ hands, hushed and guarded as religion, forbidden as passion."

 

 

 

image:  View of Agia Aikaterini church, Chania old town, Wikimedia Commons