WHITE HOUSES AND SHORT GREEN GRASS
I‘ll leave cats as a backup for tomorrow because I have another question about Greece and again I don‘t know who to ask. I think it is a question without an answer. The question is why Naousa is such a beautiful, almost fairy tale town, a picture perfect town, a question which leads me directly to wondering if my son Tom has cut my grass while I am gone and why it matters.
I went yesterday at 4 p.m. to the cafe with comfortable, stylish chairs and tables under awnings at the waters edge where the day before the small waves lapped against the beach. The water was crystal clean and a man was going swimming.
But yesterday was windy and the cafe was closed. A man was just binding up the closed umbrellas. He said there was too much wind and the cafe would be closed until Wednesday when the storm blew past.
I was disappointed. I walked instead up to the large church on the hill at the center of town, the only prominent building in town, a cathedral on a hill. This time I walked down the hill beyond the church and came to the sea again and discovered that there was a faint footpath that ran along the rocky shore above eaten away cliffs against which the waves beat and splashed white against the black rocks.
There were vacation houses above the rocky shore but the land next to the shore apparently belonged to no one and I could walk all the way around.
I took photographs of the crashing waves and then of the narrow streets as I turned back inland again and found myself in the middle of town.
In the narrow lanes every house was white and blue with bougainvillea climbing the white walls and cacti in pots.
Every street had the flat paving rocks outlined white, a beautiful effect.
It was only last night, actually the middle of the night, that I began to wonder why. Why did every single person have a white house with rounded shoulders and curves everwhere?
Why was every street painted with the white design of outlined paving stones? Why were the streets so often wet in the morning as people washed them down? Why did the man in the building below Efi‘s rooms nearer to the harbor so carefully wash his rooftop down when no one went up there? It must have taken him half an hour to patiently wash away and squeegee the dust off the flat roof.
And then I wondered why people in Winsen, Germany, at least in the past, every day raked the sandy area in front of their house. And why do I cut my grass every ten days during the summer when I like longer grass better and dislike spending the time to cut my grass? Why do I have a large lawn in the first place that takes an hour in the hot sun to cut, why can‘t I let it run wild with wild flowers or plant sweet corn as my next door neighbor, Gordon Mahy did, many years ago? Why do all Naousa houses look alike, all the houses on Melrose Avenue where my son lives look alike, why do all the houses and yards on College View Drive look alike?
A couple of men in my Friday men‘s group, which I joined briefly this last Friday at 5 p.m. here, 10 a.m there, who have been active in Neighborhood Associations find the experience to be a nightmare. You can‘t plant a bush here, put a rock there, put any touch that sets you apart without the Neihborhood Association turning it‘s wrath on you.
I am sensing a terrible irony. For me the peaceful floating along that I feel in Naousa comes because I have left every American cultural convention behind. I have left American academic conventions, business conventions, political conventions, domestic conventions behind and feel free, floating along without having to fit into anything. I don‘t have to cut my grass or listen to the news.
But what I delight in here is everyone agreeing to do the same thing, agreeing to have only white houses and agreeing to paint around the paving stones in front of the house. They didn‘t do this for tourists although they must be aware that tourists come partly for all this whiteness. They don’t even agree to do it, they can’t imagine not doing it. They have always done this on Paros, I‘m sure. They do it because everyone does it and they have always done it.
I feel my yard looks better when the grass is three or four inches high and dandelions and other flowers have room to blossom. Who came up with the standard that grass can‘t be lower than an inch and a half or higher than an inch and a half and therefore needs to be cut every ten days? I know I am pushing the limits when the grass hits three inches and am waiting for comments or, when no one says anything, know what they are thinking and feel shame. It is unbearable. I can‘t take the pressure, I can‘t be a wild rebel, I cave in and cut it. And that is probably what is going on in Naousa. No one says a thing and houses remain white, even if chartreuse is a person‘s favorite color, and the rocks are painted and repainted white.
Wolfgang likes the lived in feel of Lefkes but feels that the town of Kostas, close by, that so delighted Susie and me, is too cute, too touristy. The windows are no longer the traditional windows, he says, they are much larger and an affront somehow, although they may be nice to look out of. He wants things the way they were.
But do the young people when they leave Paros for the mainland or scatter over Europe in search of jobs feel the same way? Or do they feel a relief, similar to the relief I feel when leaving Swannanoa, of being free of the conventions that constrain them here, or constrain me back home?
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 