by Ben Bussewitz
He had in his traveling bag a notebook, a few pens, a copy of Calvin’s Instruction in Faith, a water bottle, a change of clothes, a sleeping bag, and a tent. A ukulele was dangling off it. He came to Greece in order to pay tribute to Apollo and Hermes, and stayed to document the Greek peoples’ economic turmoil and the citizens’ response to it.
The plane landed down in Athens, and he took a moped he borrowed from an educated, rough-knit young man from Exarcheia, north to Delphi and then Mount Olympus. In Delphi, the oracle told him that the North Star would point toward the south and it was best interpreted as a good sign for the global south and their ambitions of overcoming poverty. He climbed Mount Olympus went to the golden temple at the top, and then Zeus said if he has listened to enough bird sounds, he’d fly him to the island of Chios, where, if he’d fancy returning home to the U.S., he could climb to the top of the mountain-island and dance the kalamatianos in a tower of the castle, and then Helios would drive his royal chariot north to south, rather than east to west, to take him to Rethymno, Crete, where he could take a ferry back to Athens and a plane ride to the states. He wanted to go to Chios; he heard the wild dogs there were splendid; he had listened to enough birdsongs; and so Zeus made him fly.
The golden clouds were mesmerizing as he flew through the early evening on his way to Chios. Ten thousand birds above him and behind him flapped their wings to propel him and provide a serene breeze.
He landed near the top of the mountain and followed one of the dogs down to the beach, where the dog played fetch with him, and the two sprinted two and fro. Pulling out his tent, he gazed deep into the northern Aegean Sea and thought about the news article he read the other day, that Syntagma Square and other squares all around the country were occupied by Greek citizens in order to protest the measures being put forth by the IMF, the European Union, and European Central Bank to issue bailout loans for the national debt owed by the country in exchange for draconian domestic measures being taken by the Greek government, such as cutting pensions, public education, and health care. The ocean was a fog of green, blue, and grey and he knew he could get taken away in it. Him and the dog swam out to the breakers and then waded a few feet out from where the waves met the sand.
The Greek peoples’ demands weren't met.
He returned from Crete into Athens to about 150,000 in the streets protesting the legislation being debated in Parliament about whether they should accept the bailout.
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