The Acropolis and Me
I don’t know what the trouble was with defending it in ancient times, since I can’t imagine an army of the fittest warriors ever imagined in any warrior legend making it up that hill.
Since right about the fifth century BC, The Acropolis of Athens - an ancient citadel containing important buildings- (the most famous being the Parthenon) was built to honor the goddess, Athena, in thanksgiving for the Greek victory over Persian invaders. It’s by far not the only “acropolis” (the word means “high point of the city”) but it is the most famous and, of course, like 92 million other visitors on a recent summer day, I wanted to see it.
Among the most beautiful decorative goddess sculptures of ancient Greek art are part of these upstanding ruins, on a flat rocky outcropping of about seven acres, 600 feet above the city. They are universally considered one of the enduring symbols of ancient Greece, law, democracy, and Western civilization.
Organized by Greek politician and general Pericles, it was also a primary site of defense, housing the city’s treasury – as many of these kinds of structures once did.
Since all of the above (except ancient Greece) are under siege right now in my own country, it held a special meaning.
But I don’t know what the trouble was with defending it in ancient times, since I can’t imagine an army of the fittest warriors ever imagined in any warrior legend making it up that hill. I can’t imagine them doing it in gym shorts, much less weighed down with helmets, swords, and armor.
I’m not in very good shape in a general way but particularly since I have to have at least one knee replacement in the coming year. Walking into the kitchen isn’t easy. Walking uphill is agony. Walking up the hill made me wish that there was a tow rope like the bunny hill at a ski place. Even my 19-year-old daughter, who is in the best shape of anyone I know, who works out at the gym daily and has not an ounce of fat on her, who has the stamina of a mountain goat, was beaten into submission.
When I finally got to the top, the view of Athens I could see through my blurred vision was indeed magnificent. Then I spotted the glassed-in “elevator” that took the really, really shaky guests up the last hundred feet. Smoking away heartily, like so many people in Europe still seem to do, the operator offered to take me up, and I agreed.
The doors closed. The whole thing rattled and shuddered as if smacked by a hurricane, and then it began a shaking, halting, laborious progress inch by inch up the mountainside. “You know, I think I’ll come back when you guys get this fixed,” I said.
“There’s nothing wrong with it!” the woman explained. “It’s new!” Of course, when I got to the top of the top, there was still an incline to hike up to the very-topmost top. I didn’t think I’d make it back to the elevator, and, indeed, when I arrived, a sign read KLEISTO (closed) for the day.
Walking downhill is just as tricky as walking up. I stopped to rest four times.
Once, the man seated next to me on the rock was the very picture of a traditional Greek, with thick handlebar mustaches and a bright red cravat over a blue sailor’s shirt. “Tough going?” I said.
“Not for me,” he replied, merrily smoking some kind of potent filter-less cigarette. “I bring a group of students from Croatia. They are nuts and want to go all the way to the top. Fine, I say. God be with you.”
It was 4 p.m. by then and 94 degrees in the shade.
May the gods be with them, I thought, and my daughter, wherever she was.
We dined that night only on iced tea and ice cream. I dreamed of snow. - JM
P.S.: Here’s a few more snapshots from my trip:
HOT READING TIP
A summer read that is disturbing in every way, THE GUEST by Emma Cline. I just finished re-reading it, and it’s about a young woman who makes her living as a sort-of professional “date” (that is, a sort of modern iteration of a call girl but a little more upscale) who, during the course of two weeks with her much-older “boyfriend” in the Hamptons, makes every single possible bad choice she is capable of making. Cline’s portrait of a young woman’s meretricious naiveté is devastating.
(COOL) HOT RECIPE TIP
Hot Town! Salad in the City Summer Fruit Salad
I’ve featured this one before but it’s my very favorite. Many are opposed to coconut, but I toast a little and sprinkle it on top.
SAUCE INGREDIENTS:
⅔ cup fresh orange juice
⅓ cup fresh lemon juice
⅓ cup packed brown sugar
½ teaspoon grated orange zest
½ teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
SALAD INGREDIENTS:
2 cups cubed fresh pineapple
2 cups strawberries, hulled and sliced
3 kiwi fruit, peeled and sliced
3 bananas, sliced
2 oranges, peeled and sectioned
1 cup seedless grapes
2 cups blueberries
DIRECTIONS
Bring orange juice, lemon juice, brown sugar, orange zest, and lemon zest to a boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract. Set aside to cool.
Layer fruit in a large, clear glass bowl if you’re feeling fancy, pineapple, strawberries, kiwi fruit, bananas, oranges, grapes, and blueberries. Pour cooled sauce over fruit; cover and refrigerate for 3 to 4 hours before serving.
HOT WRITING TIP
Learn to write great and natural dialogue by eavesdropping in airports and restaurants. People have an unnerving way of believing that they are alone and unobserved. Grab a paper napkin and transcribe their words. You’ll be fascinated and so will your readers. Proof of my contention that you never really have to make anything up.
HOT LIFE TIP
Tell a crying child a story. Stories are the most powerfully soothing agent in the whole world. When my two toddler grandchildren are in full nutty mode, I say, did I ever tell you about the time I was sitting on my front porch and a tiny woman, no more than three feet tall, dressed wearing a silver headscarf and a beautiful red dress with mirrors sewn into the pleats, came walking to my porch with her male companion, a regular-sized person, and asked if I would sign a copy of my novel, which she was carrying? Did I tell you that she was leading a cow on a rope and that this was an ordinary small-city street in the Midwest?
Tears forgotten, they settled down into the land of 100 questions: Where did she go after that? How did she know it was your house? This is a true story. They love it better than any book except Elise Broach’s WHEN DINOSAURS CAME WITH EVERYTHING.
ONE WEEK LEFT TO JOIN ME AT THE MUSKRAT LODGE WRITERS RETREAT!
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