OCTOBER 20, WEDNESDAY

A MEDITATION ON HOT WATER HEATERS

Another NHT day but it turns out that what is happening is not what I do but what I think. Feeling my way through Naousa is not a matter of sightseeing or shopping or even having a good time, it is being aware of the experience and wondering about it. Wondering about it is what I am doing right here at my glass topped table in my little room at Efi’s Rooms or when I sit out on the balcony under the bougainvillea when the sun comes up or when going down to Ragouisses cafe and having a cup of coffee for as long as I can sit there.

On the next trip I am going to bring my bright red battery charged cup that stays hot for an hour so that my coffee stays hot. I don’t recommend this as a travel accessory for anyone else, we all travel differently, but it is the right one for me and it worth the 8 ounces it weighs. But when I need to replace it I will replace it with a dark invisible mug instead of a flashy red one. Everything I wear is dark because this means it won’t show dirt and needs only to be rinsed out. When traveling I believe not in clean, but in clean enough, not to have an odor or show dirt. I don’t want to spend more than five minutes rinsing things out and hanging them up. Efi has a dedicated clothesline for guests that is in the morning sun and breeze and dries things out instantly. Dark helps me be invisible, as much as an overweight, white bearded octogenarian can be invisible or at least be dismissed as being uninteresting, which isn’t working too well.

Last night I cooked my first meal, spaghetti with ready made sauce from a bottle, a huge bowl which I really enjoyed at 6, the American dinner hour. And then at 9, Greek dinner time, Efi climbed the steps with two (quite bony) fish, but delicious, and a bowl of vegetable salad with boiled potatoes and cucumber and tomatos with anchovies and olives with a vinegar dressing.

I was stuffed a second time making me a half inch more visible. So what do I do tonight? Yesterday after my very satisfying cereal with milk at 8, Efi brought a large piece of moist cake up at 10. I am eating five meals a day and don’t know what to expect tomorrow. By the time I figure this out I’ll be gone.

But none of this is what I wanted to wonder about today. Last night Christo Zois answered a query I wrote him on Facebook Messenger. He was a student of mine long ago at Warren Wilson College and is now a Greek businessman. I wrote to him wondering how he was doing and wondered if we could meet in Athens. We can’t. He is busy. I forget that I am the only one who can wander the world this way. I can invite anyone who wants to to join me on my travels because I would like their company, but no one can. Everyone is too busy. I used to be too busy myself for years and years. Now I laze around looking for something to do or someone to entertain me and when no one does I take a nap.

So Christos suggested that since we couldn’t meet that we chat on Facebook. I have seen the chat icon on Facebook and the list of people I know well or vaguely who are on line and could chat. But I’ve never chatted. I connect on Facetime all the time. I did last night with Susie. But I’ve never chatted on Facebook. I’m a little intimidated. So as I was trying to get to sleep last night I tried to think of something to chat about, in case, like NHT, Christos and I couldn’t think of anything to chat about after not seeing each other for 30 or 40 years.

So this is what I want to chat about. Why is every Greek house white and every house have a flat roof and why on every roof is there a solar heated tank of water. And most of all, if all three of these are such a good idea in Greece, why is my own roof in Swannanoa peaked, my house grey and I don’t have a solar heated water tank on my roof?

I looked on Amazon to see if I could even buy a solar water heater for my roof, flat or not. I may not have looked long enough but the first entry was written in English, but the English of someone who was picking relevant words out of the dictionary and stringing them together. I couldn’t understand what he was talking about and no price was given. The second series of entries with tanks that looked just like the one on the roof next door were all written in Greek and, presumably, would have to be shipped from Greece. There was a price this time of about 500 Euros. I couldn’t tell whether these used solar panels that converted to electricity or a series of pipes that would get heated up directly by the sun. Long ago when growing up in India we had a huge house with twenty foot ceilings and a flat roof. My father put a maze of pipes on the roof which the sun heated providing us with hot water. India had no hot water heaters, geysers they are called now, at the time. So maybe the answer to why Greeks and Indians have flat roofs and sun heated hot water is the same, except that in India each bathroom has its own geyser and there are no solar heated water tanks.

But this is the question I am going to ask Christos, in fact, I am hoping he will read this entry and have an answer prepared, when he is not busy and we can chat. Why does every Greek house have a solar hot water heater on it and why are there none available in the United States?

But immediately this question gets complicated. Because when I have traveled with people in India very often they would ask me why, why do Indians women put a red dot on their forehead or red line in their hair, why do Indians squat to defecate and we perch on a toilet, why do Indians eat only with their right hand, why, why, why. But if you ask an Indian why you might get any answer under the sun, most likely the answer that they think you would most like to hear. And the most satisfying answer is that this is just the way it is in India, there is no why, people do what other people around them do in the traditional way. In fact the easiest way to get along in India is simply to float along clueless and to accept things as they are and to enjoy them as they are. Forget about understanding India, just let go and enjoy floating through the sensuous experience of India. There are 330 million gods and are worshiped by people in all sorts of ways, there are fifteen major languages and innumerable dialects, too much to understand, and many of the things that seem most strange to us, such as the caste system based on ritual purity, are as much matters of faith as our fundamentalist Christian beliefs. You’ll never understand India. Explain to a Hindu why we are all sinners, or how Christ rose from the dead, or why communion is the blood and the body of Jesus and he will either go glassy eyed or break out in muffled laughter. There is no why. This stuff is just what we believe. The same applies to why stone images of the gods embody the power of the gods and why if I touch food to my lips it becomes juta, impure, and it has nothing to do with germs or scientific explanations of why.

There are scholars who are said to understand India, experts on India, but if you poke them enough all they are expert on is one 14th century text and after that they are on shaky ground and have to improvise. I used to be an expert on India, I know.

So maybe asking Christos why everyone has a solar water heater on their roof is a question he can’t answer. They have solar hot water heaters because they do and everyone else has one and because it works.

It could have something to do with climate and how much sun you get, but Indians have plenty of sun and have geysers, squat hot water tanks that you only turn on to heat enough water for your bath and then turn off. Why don’t we have geysers, why don’t we have solar hot water tanks on our roofs? We don’t because we don’t. We have a large tank of a hot water heater that is always on and serves the whole house just because we do, because that is what everyone does.

And if we think other people odd for not doing it our way we are just revealing ourselves as ugly Americans, or at least as clueless Americans who expect the rest of the world to be just like us, or at least find it strange if they are not.

But, anyway, now that Christos has considered this subject, if he indeed reads this account, this is what I will ask him. Why do Greeks have solar heater tanks on their roof? And I can ask anyone else reading this, why don’t we?