SEPTEMBER 27, MONDAY 2021

Being Here and Being There

I fly to Athens from Charlotte a week from today. It is the beginning of an eight month odyssey in which I will rotate, be away for a month or two and back home for a month or two. And, as on every trip, I am beginning to sense the way my attention is beginning to let go of Asheville and is turning toward Athens and the island of Paros which is my destination. The same thing will happen in reverse in two months when it is time to come home. This change in focus will happen over and over this year.

Every time I travel it is hard to believe that I can one day be here in Swannanoa and the next day be in Munich or Athens or wherever. Suddenly I realize that Athens is always right here for the people who live there as is Swannanoa for the people who live here, but for me during this year all of these places will appear and then disappear, be real and be gone.

Yesterday, after an hour of trying to reach Lufthansa and being finally cut off and dismissed and told to try later, I went to the Uncommon Market in the River Arts District. The River Arts District of Asheville is taking over the old industrialized part of Asheville on a flat plane between the Norfolk and Southern railroad line and the wide French Broad River. Now the old industrial buildings are being converted into artists studios and the riverside has been made into a beautiful riverside walk and bicycle way dotted with restaurants. Yesterday there were a large number of people walking or riding along the river on a beautiful day.

The Uncommon Market is about 100 white tented vendors in the parking lot of an abandoned and now wildly spray painted industrial building with a few permanent antique and craft stores already moved into one of the side buildings and more coming. I was trying out my new iPhone camera which I am going to use daily on this trip which will allow me to photograph people without having to ask and without their even being aware. I am not stealing their souls or even their image, I am just quite lawfully catching in images people or objects that touch me intensely in some way. I am photographing my response to people and leaving the people unflustered and unbothered unless I ask permission as with the man with the dark glasses and red pole who wanted to perform.

It was a hot day so almost everyone was in tank tops or t- shirts except for this woman who was bundled up. Some medicine she took at some point made her allergic to the sun so to avoid the bright red rash of sunburn she wrapped herself up.

Almost no one could make a living from their crafts and almost everyone dreamed of some day doing so. All were cheerful

This woman was given her brilliant backlighted backdrop by her mother and was very pleased with herself.

And all of the time I was trying to imagine the Uncommon Market as a person dropped in from Athens might and wondered what kinds of market I would find myself in a week from now.

There is a little trepidation and more than a little amazement and delight on the part of friends that at octogenarian should choose to wander back and forth around the world for the next year or more. But it occurs to me that sitting in a plane for eight hours and stepping out in Athens is no different than sitting in a car for eight hours and stepping out in Washington, D.C.. In both cases I can get on the subway, then walk a few blocks to my hotel and take a nap. There is nothing exotic about that, nothing out of the ordinary, except in our heads. So whether people think I am doing something out of the ordinary or not depends upon what is in their heads, not in mine. But it will be fun, in a week, to be walking around in a colorful market in Athens.