Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

Anonymous

Life is Vapor

I was back in Athens. It was like returning home in a dream -- we drove by most of the places to which we had wandered over the past month, and I fondly remembered everything that had transpired in the few square miles of downtown that was my home for two weeks. But it wasn't real. I was just traveling through my memory banks. There's no way I was back in Athens. 

Here's what I remember of the dream: I was standing outside of the Acropolis museum, vacantly staring down into the open archaeological site in the atrium. I was waiting for someone. 

The streets had been busy -- busier than they were the last time we had been in the city. New, wide-eyed faces ambled slowly around the shops and cafes. There were all sorts of languages floating around the Plaka, but none so dominant as English. English was present in all of its various modern iterations.

A middle-aged couple approached the archaeological site from across the square. They leaned up against the glass and started to vocally marvel at the scene. "It looks like some kind of a bath, or well!" They started taking pictures. Gradually, the square filled with similarly bewildered-looking people, gawking and taking pictures. I was reassured to learn that I'm not the only one who uses his iPhone as his primary "photography machine," but more than anything, I felt fatigue. I had already taken those pictures, I had already asked those questions. I knew the details of the scene intimately, and despite myself, I looked at the other tourists with a bemused disdain. They're coming into my neighborhood and discussing it as if it was a show that had been put on solely for their satisfaction. 

"Well, it's fine." I thought. 

Who knows, maybe in some sense, I really am Kyle the Greek. 

But at some point in the near future, I'll have to wake up. Basking in a jacuzzi on a rooftop with a clear view of the illuminated Acropolis and a beautiful woman in your arms is not real life. It's a movie script ending. 

However, I have a sneaking suspicion that this is only the end of Act II. Act III may in fact turn out to take place in waking life.

A leap of faith