Athens
Integrity is the Source
The trip from Crete to Athens takes an hour by air or half a day by sea. I chose the water, because it promised enforced stillness. For the next eight hours, I’d be confined to a small moving world, relieved of most obligations and distractions, with only one subject left to examine: my own thinking.1
Valaoritou St.
38.024929, 23.792671
Suburbs of Chalandri. The houses fan out from the heart of Athens. In every garden, the jasmine and lavender are in bloom.
I finally walked the Acropolis2 - and it haunted me for three days straight. Maybe it was the scale and the setting. Maybe it was the history embedded in it - all those wars and changing empires, plus Pericles, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
I felt inspired and ambitious, then tiny and incapable, then - reminding myself it was the work of thousands, financed by the immense treasury of the Delian League - inspired again. Whenever I see it now, the feelings loop, but their intensity has mellowed.
Socrates’ Prison
37.969427, 23.721013
Most of what I've read about the examined life either explains it or performs having arrived at it - defined from a distance, or narrated from some imagined finish line. Where is the voice from someone genuinely inside it - a testimony that’s incomplete but intentional, still unsure but paying close attention?
Lord Byron Room
37.980173, 23.747966
The Gennadius Library feels made for a version of me in a jacket and polished shoes. Instead, I’ve arrived looking like I’ve just come down from the mountain - because I have. There’s something satisfying about bringing a little dust and unruliness into a room built for order...
Ancient Greece was insistently - almost compulsively - visual. From very early on, the Greeks were carving sculpture, painting pottery, decorating walls, and hammering tiny scenes into coins and jewelry. They wanted their stories where they could see them.
The Greeks loved stories. They began as Homeric epics - wandering bards telling about Troy and the long trip home - then spilled out into theater, gossip, and festivals:
“Gods and goddesses behaving badly. Heroes trying to do the right thing. Kings getting arrogant. Monsters appearing at inconvenient times. And, always, the mortals in the middle of it all, trying to figure out courage, pride, temptation, grief - the usual human trouble of dilemma and desire.”
These stories had teachings in them, and the Greeks put them everywhere: on plates, wine jars, shields, and rings. Which meant that, if you lived in Athens 2,500 years ago, their wisdom would have surrounded you. You’d see it on the cup you drank from, the building across the street, the money in the markets... the whole town functioned as a kind of beautiful reminder system - a gallery of small lessons on how to live.
It makes for a generative dinner party question: “What lessons do you often forget or wish you took more seriously?” I have two in mind - though they seem to be circling the same idea.
Museum of Cycladic Art
37.9756698, 23.7423834
Jeff Koons: “If you follow your interests, they won’t fail you. They can’t, because there’s pure joy in them.”
All my life I’ve made it complicated, but it’s simple:
I care a lot about some things, and because I care so much, some people will find it embarrassing. They have “rules” about how much it’s OK to care, and I’m breaking them.
But did I agree to their rules? Then why would I feel any shame in breaking them? Instead, why don’t I try something as liberating as, “I’m so grateful for my capacity to care”?
And if I need a little edge, I’ll say to them what Zeus said to Momos3: “You’re not welcome on my mountain.”
Integrity is the source.
When I’m clear about what matters to me, I have access to my whole heart, my full attention. Anything I offer the world comes from that center. If I’m true to it, I draw strength from it. If I’m not, everything gets dimmer: my presence, my energy, even my capacity to love.
Selection of Thoughts:
what ~400 BC looked like
it’s not that long ago
Cy Twombly’s scribbles
my desire to annotate things
where to start?
local greetings: καλή δύναμη
“good strength”
how much I miss my family
yet grateful to be here
how much I miss my piano
I can pick up a lyra?
total fear of this legacy
(TLDR: “never trying”)
what to do about it
and so on...
I didn’t bother competing with Papageorge for pictures:
“Zeus made a bull, Prometheus made a man, and Athena made a house. They invited Momos to judge their handiwork. He was so jealous of it that he said Zeus made a mistake in not putting the bull’s eyes on his horns, so that he could see where he was butting. Likewise, Prometheus should have attached man’s mind outside his body, so that his wicked qualities were not hidden but could be there for all to see. As for Athena, he told her that she should have put wheels on her house, so that if an undesirable person moved in next door one could move away easily. Zeus was so enraged by Momos’ jealousy that he banished him from Olympus.” Aesop’s Fables