Once again the temptation or out right untamed lust to travel is calling me. Is it a siren song leading me to physical or financial disaster; or is it the gong of a bell calling me to wake up to my true nature, or as Joseph Campbell says "to follow my bliss"? In either case it is irresistible and once again the longing to be on the road has me checking flights, all the while protesting to myself that I've not recovered from the three month long journey of last fall. Without the befit, hindrance or restrictions of a tour guide my pilgrimage from Prague to Istanbul and Athens became both a self trial and a tale that I composed.
Some are ridiculous tales such as obsessively lugging a roll of toilet paper from the Czech Republic to Turkey, falling flat on my ass as I emerged from a bus saddled with far too much luggage, at least one bag stuffed with toilet paper. And some are unpleasant ones, such as being awaken at 3 in the morning in Istanbul to the sound of dripping water to discover the water was not rain but a leak in the ceiling, right over my bed. Which the management assured me was not their fault, but would nevertheless be cleaned up in about an hour. Since they had no other place for me to sleep, I passed the time standing in the hall with my luggage in a pile about me, cursing myself for being so cheap.
Pleasant tales also abounded, usually in the form of chance encounters with people and places. Such as finding myself bicycling through the Transylvanian country side with a Dutchman from Amsterdam to a Gypsy village, which the local Romanians warned us was completely unsafe. Discovering the unearthly beautiful Cappadocia, a place where I could fulfilling my childhood fantasy of living like a hobbit in a terraced town craved into pinnacles of rock with caves for dwellings and where a room at the inn was in fact a cave room. A fortunate encounter with a very proper English man, an Oxford man to be sure, who was living and teaching in Cyprus and who invited me to join him on his journey to a village in Turkey where Aristotle had lived from 348 to 345 BCE. The truly extraordinarily good luck to meet and travel with an Orthodox Christian Nun from Moscow whose companionship granted me entrance into the mystical world of Byzantium and Orthodox Greek monasteries, where we spent nights in remote monasteries nestled into the side of cliffs accessible by trails still plied by donkeys, a daily form of transportation for the monks and nuns. She then became my guide to the wild west of Greece, the Mani, a dry rocky barren finger of the Peloponnese, where isolated by the rugged mountains dwell a fiercely independent people who crave a living out of the bare rocks, a people who claim direct descent from the ancient Spartans.
Traveling alone as a free spirit or loose cannon, as the case may be, has been my addiction since the beginning of this millennium. But the song I hear this time is a variation on this familiar theme; it seems to call me to take someone with me. So I would like to invite anyone who logs onto my blog, to come along. This will be a Journey to ancient lands and unexpected excursions with people I have not yet met. Primarily a visit to the 2nd millennium BCE of Turkey and Greece during the time of Troy, Mycenae, the Minoans and the Hittites. This is a period of time that Homer wrote about even though he lived some 500 years later and that I would like to write about even though I live some 3500 years later. Stories of this time and these peoples are also recorded in the Bible, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions, as well as Hittite cuneiform and hieroglyphics. While I'm not an historian I have been reading extensively about these civilizations in particular their art, languages, and religion and now I'm going in search of their remains. But before I leave I will post the usual pre-journey angst and remembrances of past journeys in order to warm up. I hope you will join me in September for real time multimedia blog travel.
