If a Tree Falls in the Forest: A Conversation

“Why aren’t you writing?”

“Because hardly anybody reads any more.”

“I think you’ve got your reward system backward.”

“What do you mean?” (I ask him this very frequently.)

“I mean that instead of doing the crosswords as a reward for doing something you don’t want to do, like the dishes, you should reward yourself for doing something you actually want to do, like writing.”

“It just seems pointless to write when we’re living in a time where so few people have the skill or motivation to read.”

“Well, I practice the cello every day. I practice things nobody will ever hear but me.”

“Oh, that’s not true. Everybody wants to hear you play. You play all the time.”

“But I practice because it is what I do. I think you should write because that’s what you do.”

“O.K.”

Squandering

An entire olive harvest was strewn across the parking lot at the church where Master Sinfonia performed yesterday. Birds will not eat the bitter olives, and most cars were parked well away from the half-crushed mess.

When I saw the ripe olives beginning to fall from the trees last month, I was tempted to gather them up and take them home. Then I thought that they really belonged to the church, so I resisted the temptation to harvest them.

This time, it was obvious that the olives were being wasted, so I found a bag and picked up maybe a pound of the best of the windfalls.

A gallon of olive oil costs about thirty dollars these days. Black olives are not cheap. And yet here were all these olives, being wasted. All that was necessary to use them was to wash them well and put them in salt water for three weeks.

In ancient Greece, the Athenians voted whether their patron should be Poseidon, who gave them the horse, or Athena, who gave them the olive tree. The olive branch has come to symbolize peace throughout most of the world.

Here amidst our prosperity, we complain that we are poor, but truly I think our poverty is for the most part one of education, culture and spirit.

Rediscovering Wonder

Sometimes it seems to me that there are currents in space and time which sweep all of us into places and situations where we review, correct, amend, or remember some scene. Or rediscover wonder.

The population of San Francisco is greater than 809,000. The population of Ouranoupolis, Greece, abut 9,000 miles away, is about 900. More than 50 years ago, I spent some time visiting in Ouranoupolis and my son Nonda had his first taste of solid food, fish, at the hands of a woman called Fani Mitropoulos.

What are the chances of my meeting Fani’s nephew (“I am like a son to her”) at an Easter church picnic yesterday, and what are the chances of our discovering the connection? We had reserved a table at the picnic in San Francisco, a celebration with roast lamb, music, all the good Greek things which follow 40 days of fasting and several late-night church services.

We had empty seats at our table, so the man, Neboisa, and his companion joined us. The conversation began in English: “What part of Greece are you from?” “Actually I am from Serbia,” the man said. “We used to look across the border at Serbia,” I said.

“From where?” he asked. “Near Thessaloniki,” I said. And from Thessaloniki, it was just a hop and a skip to Ouranoupolis, the tiny village in northern Greece where the boats leave for Mount Athos.

Fani Mitropoulos was part of the household of Joice Nankivell Loch, an Australian writer and self-trained medic who wound up with her husband, Sydney, in Ouranoupolis in 1922 as staff of a Quaker refugee camp for people displaced from Asia Minor. The couple rented their house and its tower from the monks of Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos , a religious city-state more than a thousand years old .

They worked with the Quakers in Rumania during World War II, but then returned to Greece to assist victims of the Greek civil war. Even after Sydney died in 1955, Mrs. Loch stayed on in Ouranoupolis. She was the only medical person for miles around. People with serious problems who could stand the trip were sent to the nearest doctor, 70 miles away; Mrs. Loch dealt with everything else.

“It’s do-gooders like me who have contributed to the village poverty,” she once told me. “If a couple had four children and two died, which was usual, then the property only had to be split two ways. Now it is four.”

That autumn of 1958, we slept on rope beds, clever contraptions which could be firmed up or softened with a few tugs. We visited the 14-th century tower but did not see the monk’s ghost so many visitors reported. Fani came up with a wooden laundry tub which made a fine bassinet for baby Nonda. We marveled at Mrs. Loch’s six-toed cats, played with her baby goats, looked out upon the blue Aegean sea and watched the sun sparkle on the waves. Currents in space and time: Only a few years ago, Nicodemos made a retreat to Vatopedi Monastery, and Nonda and his family visited Ouranoupolis and took the boat which goes around the coast of Mount Athos. A friend in San Francisco had an ikon of Saint Marina. When I admired it, she said that it had been painted by Fani Mitropoulos.

“Mrs. Loch’s cook?” I asked. “Yes. Fani.”

No women are allowed on Mount Athos, so often the monks would have to hike down to Mrs. Loch for first aid or dinner. Fani cooked for Mrs. Loch, her Swiss companion Martha and their many visitors. She produced huge meals on an enormous wood-burning stove. The day we were there, she milked the sheep and made yogurt.

From 1922 until the 1970s, carpet-weaving, fishing and farming made a modest living for families who were forcibly removed from their homes and livelihoods by wars and political events over which they had no control. As Quakers and peacemakers, teaching trades was for the Lochs a vital part of re-settling the refugees.

The local women were fine carpet makers, but their chemical dyes were gaudy, Mrs. Loch said, and their patterns were unlovely. The monks brought Byzantine carpet patterns from pictures in the monastery libraries. Mrs. Loch, Martha, and Fani sketched out the patterns and gave them to the village women.. They perfected the art of dyeing wool with natural materials, yielding beautiful subtle colors.

Mrs. Loch knew exactly when to harvest leaves, bark, grass and flowers for just the right color. The resulting carpets, while expensive, were so in demand that there was always a waiting list for them. A Greek friend had one of the Ouranoupolis Tree of Life carpets. Fruits, flowers and animals cascaded over the fine wool in colors straight from the natural world. It was one of the most beautiful pieces I have ever seen. Today many of the carpets are in museums.

Mrs. Loch had started out as a writer, and she collected stories from Ouranoupolis for two children’s books about a fictional boy named Christophilos. Any re-telling of a folk story received her full attention. Her blue eyes would light up and she would nod encouragingly. “You mean the knife would never have been used to cut garlic?”

Some years after our visit, Mrs. Loch had a stroke. The villagers went to church and prayed that God would take a month from each of their lives and add it to that of Mrs. Loch. She recovered, regained the power to speak, and was well until she died in 1982 at the age of 94.

Among the many humanitarian awards received by Mrs. Loch (none of which her Greek friends knew about) were those awarded by the governments of Romania and Poland for saving a thousand Polish and Jewish children through a daring escape with the Rumanian underground. At her funeral, the Greek Orthodox bishop of Oxford called Mrs. Loch “one of the most significant women of the twentieth century.”

There are probably still Greeks named Sydney—Seed-nay-eee in the Greek transliteration--, both men and women, from the days the people of Ouranoupolis wanted to honor the stranger who stayed to help them.

(Photographs: The young writer Joice Nankivell; Mrs. Loch, MLB, Martha and Fani’s sheep at Ouranoupolis in 1958.)

Need, Disguised As Love

More words have been written about love than any other subject. It is as if love were a cosmic puzzle which we sing about, write and talk about, wonder about, and sometimes obsess upon. I myself am guilty of writing far too much poetry about love. In modern times, people even shop for love. There have always been matchmakers, but now matchmaking is an industry.

As a veteran of the love wars, I have frequently been given advice by my friends: “If you can’t choose between them, you probably don’t love either one all that much.” “There’s a major difference in commitment here.” “I don’t think he’s got what it takes to keep you down on the farm.” Mostly I ignored this advice, sometimes to my peril and embarrassment. Not to mention cost.

The Greeks have two words for love. Erotas is the love which demands union, romantic love. Agape is selfless love, as for God, one’s children, a friend or an old wife or husband. Music and literature are most often concerned with Erotas, which after all leads to the perpetuation of the species. Romeo and Juliet did not live to have to deal with family holidays, bad breath or farts. Cole Porter’s comment on Erotas was that it was too hot not to cool down. The popular American distinction is between being “in love” and “loving”, putting enormous weight on a tiny preposition.

The famous passage about love in First Corinthians uses the word "agape" in the original Greek. Historically, the Greeks have always assumed that Erotas would in fact cool down, and so long-term serious contracts like marriage were based on more stable things.

I am not one to deny the intoxication, power, or mind-bending beauty of Erotas. Look at all that music, art and literature it has produced. On the other hand: Henry the Eighth.

What is it that we need and are so likely to justify in the name of love? We need the basic creature things, food, shelter, safety. We need the psychological things, acceptance, esteem, continuity. We have humanistic requirements: Some indication that our life has meaning, that we have value, or even that we are lovable. We do not want to feel separated. In fact, Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving says that the experience of separateness is the source of all anxiety.

I could be an old poop and respond to “We love each other” with the Logic 101 request, “Define your terms.” But I’d much rather echo the conversation between Tevye and Golde in “Fiddler On the Roof”. “Do you love me?” “Do I what?”

(The painting is Edward Burne-Jones’ Cupid and Psyche, the cover of my latest poetry chapbook, Cupid’s Arrow Gone Awry”.

Believe It Or Not

Things nobody believes: That I found a piglet frozen in the snow at my grandmother's house when I was ten. That a wolf ran between Susan and me while we were outside talking. That I had déja-vus constantly the whole time I lived in Greece.

Things I don't believe: That Charles saw a UFO in New Mexico. That folk remedies are better than modern medicine, though I am willing to try them. That any religion, non-religion or belief system (including my own) has an exclusive corner on the truth.

The Cypresses

I have been wanting to write about the Monterey cypresses for some time. Last night's big storm, with its morning aftermath of fire trucks, power company vehicles, neighborly conferences in the road, chainsaws, gave me the nudge I needed.

Only one small branch and a rain of cypress pollen fell in the yard, though there are three enormous broken, hanging branches across the street and a pile of debris, cleared by the firemen, beside the driveway. Most of the trees are a hundred feet tall and getting toward the end of their lives, according to Bill, the tree man.

Whenever there is a storm, I tremble and fret, remembering the many times branches have fallen on the cars or gone through the studio roof. I am almost superstitious about the cypresses, using their cones, which are like golf balls, for decoration, making wreaths from the fallen greenery.

This morning Nicodemus and I dug up a six-foot cypress which was trying to grow in absolutely the wrong spot. We planted it in the southwest corner, where two big stumps show that there were large trees growing there some time in the past.

Each cypress tree has a distinct character and appearance. On the west side of the house there are seven remaining trees: Wendy, Wanda, Willa, Winnie, Wahine, and the twins Wose and Wooth. On the south side, in front of the house, is the biggest tree, Susa, beloved of squirrels. On the other side are the twined cypresses Sara and Sota, where the owls roost and the woodpeckers forage. Beyond these are two dead trees, Sank and Sunk, and one barely alive cypress with one live branch, Surviva.

On the East side of the house are the worst troublemakers, so bad that Bill once screeched to a halt as he was driving down the road, ran in and said "you have a branch up there which is life-threatening." That branch was from Elmer, which has provided many near-misses for us on windy days and nights. His companions, progressing toward the street, are Elsa, Emma, Eleanor, Elsie and Elsalita.

The new little cypress is named Cyprian.

Greek Key

Keys have power. Think about how some people display their keys. Think about what is involved when someone gives you (or will not give you) the key to their house. I remember how hard it was to turn over my keys when I retired from the college, even though there was no reason I would need to open the practice rooms or the piano lab again.

I think it was this feeling, the feeling of someone handing us the key to something important, that made Nicodemus and me so enjoy our first class in Fourth Century Greek. Most of the people I have mentioned this to have reacted as if we were studying Trilobites in Turkestan. Three friends actually understood our enthusiasm, and one of them was the daughter of a Classics teacher.

Every time a New Testament passage comes up, N and I grumble about the various translations, always preferring the King James. The original Greek, of course, is always the same, but it is considerably different from the modern Demotic which we try to practice at dinner time, when we read the Divry’s calendar, with its historic notes, its bad jokes, and its two dates—one Julian, one Gregorian.

The second session of this class happened to be held on a night when neither of us had a rehearsal to attend or a lesson to give, and on a lark, we drove up to San Francisco, found the place, and took our seats. There were about twenty interesting-looking people in the church library, one of them in priest’s black. The teacher was a comfortable-looking woman wearing a beret who proved, in the course of two hours, to have a mind like a fine-honed steel edge.

Nicodemus took notes. I sat with my mouth open most of the time after we did a jet-speed sweep from the Phoenicians to the possibility of a class party in Greece.

So now N is trying to learn his lower-case Greek letters and I am trying to absorb the fact that what looks like an apostrophe is really an “h”, as in hoi polloi, which is pronounced the way it looks in classical Greek, but which is “ee poh-lee” (the many) in Demotic.

Just think: the next time we go to the British Museum, we’ll be able to read the Rosetta Stone!