Roots: Ithaca Is The Cheese

I fear that before EasyCruiseOne docked in Ithaca, another ship under a black flag swifted into port and made off with all the young people. I say this because there were absolutely no youths to be had throughout the entire island. I came to this land, supposing it to be flowing over with milk and honeys, and am yet to alighted on a single honey. I will simply have to bide my time.

Ithaca is the cheese to my everything - my omletes, my pasta, my nachoes, et cetera. It is the bee's knees, the fly's eyes, the cat's meow, the dog's bark, my grandmother's exclamations. In short, I think Ithaca is one of the top five places on Earth, right in front of Blair Library in Fayetteville. It is an island of about 8000 people, with two major towns; when I say major, I mean that the populations of those two are both calculated without the census skewing inclusion of animals. Vathi, the port, has around 3000, and Stavros, above 1000.

I stand by my assertion that the young people of Greece are kept in the backrooms of tourism. Everyone had faces carved out of wood, or maybe the rocks that the island is made out of. Yes, like Tellson's Bank in A Tale Of Two Cities, young men are kept behind locked doors until the age like cheese and are acceptable to be brought out into the light.

To tour the entire island, Virginia, Emily, and I rented a small, pastel yellow Fiat from a foreigner named Charles. When Charles made us guess at his own port of origin, we only offended him, in increasing doses as our guesses became wilder, with the likes of Australia, England, Ireland, and climaxing in Poland, of all places. Charles was from South Africa. We took turns in the Fiat: Virginia drove north to Stavros, where we stopped once to survey the Odysseian olive trees, terraced into balconies overlooking the sea, and again to let a heard of billy goats gruff cross the street (jaywalking, in case you were curious). Emily drove south back to Vathi, where we stopped at the School of Homer, the supposed site of the Palace of Odysseus. It was nothing more than what could have been the remnants of the foundation, or what could have been children who created a small fort out of rocks.

This entire time, we spent our minutes driving trying to come up with a name for our pastel yellow Fiat. My suggestions (The Hands and Fiat, The Fiat of the Giant, A Fiat of Strength, A Fiat of Homeric Proportions, The Final DeFiat) were all rejected on the grounds of being band names. So, Joe Kane, take your pick.

I drove east of Vathi to a beach named Sarakiniko. As it is March and still winter here in Greece, Sarakiniko was deserted. It was a beach made of rocks and surrounded by trees - we had to cross a path along a cliff to reach if from where Emaline (the final name) was parked. After a few minutes looking into the water, a straight shot line of sight to the bottom, and wishing that I had worn swim trunks, had brought a towel, that it was hotter, later in the season, earlier in the day, that I had a million dollars or the complete works of Sufjan Stevens, Emily decided to jump in. Not to be out done, so did I.

I read once that a person can contract hypothermia from water up to 70 degrees fahrenheit. This may very well be true - the water next to the beach of Sarakiniko was definitely not 70 degrees fahrenheit, and immediately after jumping in I could feel the skin on my chest shrink like wool in the washer. My breathing sounded like I was running the 400 meter dash, over and over again. After an acclamation period, I stopped thinking about myself and looked about me.

Did you know that the Aegaen Sea is crystal clear? I mean the kind of crystals used in lasers and science experiments of the future. Once I stopped treading water, and looked down that straight shot line of site to the bottom, my personal problems were overtaken by the plain jane magnificence of the sea. In my head, I was thinking, I can obviously touch the bottom, but, as it turned out, the clarity of the water acted as a sort of magnifying glass, and the water that was beyond a shadow of a doubt shoulder high, in application showed itself to be over ten feet deep.

Sadly, I have to say, I have no idea how far the water went down. In fact, I only marvel to this extent in retrospect. In the water, yes, I was amazed, but that amazement could not manage to overshadow the feeling that I have carried with me since birth: that there is a sea monster with my name on it, following me where ever I go, and biding it's own time until the opportunity to eat me presents itself. While swimming in Sarakiniko, I did not see the monster, but I think it touched my leg.