Unfortunately, my parents had to cancel their trip to Bosnia, so I’ve cancelled my own trip through the Balkans as well. I was really excited about escorting them and it just doesn’t seem right to go alone.  I really hope they’ll be able to go at another time, because they need one more trip to the homeland.

Anyway, Greece lies ahead.  Next stop, Athina.

© 2010, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved. Photos and text are copyright protected.

Please stop by Natalie Karneef’s blog and offer your moral support.  You can find the beginning of the story here. See if it gets your blood boiling as rapidly as it did mine.

Five years ago, Natalie was drugged and raped while vacationing in Greece.  To add massive insult to injury, she was then turned away from the first police station she walked into to report the crime, and, despite going to three different hospitals, was not medically examined until 24 hours after the rape.

Her experience with the Greek justice system is from Dante’s fifth circle, with the trial currently postponed until January of 2011.

The man who drugged and raped her — and three other women — walks freely around Athens, after serving only 18 months on his first rape conviction.

*Nemesis: goddess of righteous retribution; foe to all men of violence; daughter of Justice. From nemein, meaning ‘to give what is due’.

© 2010, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved. Photos and text are copyright protected.

My blog was hacked into by someone using the frightening moniker Sn!peR-BaghdaD.  I think they would be scarier if they knew how to spell.  This is what they left on the home page:

“…if you see this page, make sure that was here, and that the security 100%”

“…what a hell we doing her”

I am all kinds of annoyed that someone with such poor grammar would attempt to hijack my blog.  I could almost excuse the intrusion if it came from someone who was literate and well-read, but this is insulting.

I mean to do him a mischief.

© 2009, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved. Photos and text are copyright protected.

Have a great day with your families, everyone!

© 2009, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved. Photos and text are copyright protected.

I was walking down a street in Georgetown the other day and heard a woman make a comment about me to the friend at her side. The comment concerned something I’ve always considered to be quite normal about myself, but apparently the women had an altogether different idea of what constituted normal.

The comment didn’t bother me, but it got me to thinking about how homogeneous society has become and how little tolerance there is for  quirks and peccadillos of personality or style.

I’ve always been fascinated by people with outlandish eccentricities who dare to be themselves.  Somehow the true self always rises to the surface like oil in water, and the real challenge lies in not burying it to put on an acceptable persona for the world.

Although our society prides itself on so-called individuality, it is very suspect of people who practice individuality when it comes to looks, actions, dress, behavior or lifestyle.  There was much more leeway given to individuality in the past than there is today. Consider these people, who were allowed to forge their own paths:

Diogenes of Sinope:

One of the founders of Cynicism and a philosopher of ancient Greece who believed that most humans lived artificial, hypocritical lives.  He practiced a life of severe austerity and lived in a tub in the middle of Athens.  He walked the streets with a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for one honest man.  When a ship he was voyaging on was attacked by pirates, he was taken to Crete to be sold as a slave.  As he stood on the auction block waiting to be sold, he pointed to a man in the crowd and said, “Sell me to that man, he looks like he needs a master.”

Despite living the life of a penniless beggar, Diogenes earned the respect of many people.  When his tub was destroyed by young hooligans, the city of Athens bought him a new tub and had the delinquents flogged.  Alexander the Great paid him a special visit in Athens and said, “If I could not be Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.”  And when he died, the city of Corinth (where he had been sold as a slave), erected a monument in Diogenes’ honor.

Nikola Tesla:

One of the greatest genius minds of all time, and the father of electricity, had a whole host of quirks.  In his own words:  ”I had a violent aversion against the earrings of women, but other ornaments, such as bracelets, pleased me more or less according to design.  The sight of a pearl would almost give me a fit but I was fascinated with the glitter of crystals or objects with sharp edges and plane surfaces.  I would not touch the hair of other people except, perhaps, at the point of a revolver.  I would get a fever by looking at a peach…I counted the steps in my walks and calculated the cubical contents of my soup plates–otherwise my meal was unenjoyable.  All repeated acts or operations I performed had to be divisible by three and if I missed I felt impelled to do it all over again even if it took hours.”

Tesla felt that remaining celibate was crucial to his work.

St. Simeon Stylites:

A christian ascetic who spent 37 years living at the top of a pillar that stood 50 ft. high and had a 3 sq.ft platform at the top.  He entered a monastery at the age of 16 but his own personal brand of austerity was so severe, he was actually asked to leave the monastery.  A few years later, in order to get away from all the people who were coming to him for prayers and advice, he found a home for himself at the top of a pillar among some ruins in modern-day Syria.  He lived on the pillar through 37 hot summers and brutal winters, and never descended.  People down below would send him food and water via a basket and rope, but St. Simeon never formally requested anything.  The Byzantine Emperor Theodosius and his wife Eudocia greatly respected Simeon and came to him for counsel.

Today, Diogenes would be looked upon as a lazy beggar,  Nikola Tesla would be medicated for obsessive compulsive disorder, and Simeon…well he would probably be accused of pulling the pole sitting stunt in order to get his own reality show.  All because they asserted their individuality and dared to truly be themselves…the greatest thing they could be.

They make the little things seem alright.  Like avoiding cracks in the sidewalk as you walk down the street because you still think it might break your mother’s back, or pulling away from the world for a while because you’ve set your sights on other things.

I ran into a group of friends in Dupont Circle a while back and told them about an amazing man I’d encountered down the street.  The man was homeless and shouting one of the most profound diatribes I’d ever heard directed at the world.  ”I’d rather be hated for who I am”, he spat at the world, “than loved for who I am not!”

When I finished telling them that it was one of the most intelligent displays of public speaking I’d ever heard, their only reaction was “But he’s homeless.”

© 2009 – 2010, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved. Photos and text are copyright protected.

I thought I would rehash some of the past, before going on to the future.

I wanted to tell you about the morning in November of 2007, when I woke up without a soul.

At that moment, I realized that something necessary for my well-being was missing.  It wasn’t a nagging feeling of something forgotten, like the frustration of not being able to find a set of car keys — it was a big hollow, “Holy crap, something’s gone.”

If someone had tossed a coin into the fountain that was my interior, it would have clanked heavily to the bottom of my waterless font.

I’m using the word soul to refer to the deepest core within us–the values that define who we are as human beings; the motivations that propel us forward, and the joys that breathe life into our bodies.

National Archives

So I lay there on my bed, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now that I didn’t have a soul.  I tried to count my blessings.  I figured that my family and at least some of my friends would keep me around even without a soul.  I also had a lot of really cute shoes.  Perhaps I could distract people from my soul-less state with the sheer beauty of my footwear.

I tried to remember the last time I felt my soul hanging around.  It had been a long time, but in trying to recall the good old days with my soul, I was led to the source of the cork in my fountain:  my job.

National Gallery of Art: Vincent's corner.

I’d expended a lot of effort in trying to avoid this day of reckoning.  The mind games I’d played with myself, the rewards and punishments:  ”Work three more months and you’ll get a spa weekend”, and “Your ancestors worked the fields and were old at 40.  Be thankful for the job you have, woman.”  Other people were able to work my job and keep their souls–their souls were in agreement with their work.  Who did my soul think it was, to up and leave me like that, all high-and-mighty like?

For the past year, my body had been suffering from the convoluted explanations and the lame excuses my mind had been working overtime to justify.  I’d been sick every day for the past year, and now there I lay, without even a soul to hand me an aspirin or send me to the doctor.

Room no. 84, Monet

I knew what I had to do, but it took me seven more months to hand in my resignation.  I was either a glutton for punishment, a coward, or someone who gave an mile when only an inch was warranted.  And when I was asked my reason for resigning, I gifted my employer with a Trojan horse that spilled out a hundred little secondary reasons while avoiding the snorting dragon in the room.

The ancient Greek ideal of virtue starts with the individual–we are to be tougher, stronger, and more outspoken than it is our nature to be.  ”I prefer”, said Philoctetes, “to fail with honor than to win without it.”

Achilles, Hector, Prometheus, Ajax, Alcestis and Antigone almost enjoyed the collision course their lives took, and the debris of lesser men that their granite-like resolve sent scattering.  It was their  dare to be great moment, and they were prepared to face the grand finale–to die for principle.

Me, I wanted out of there as soon as possible.  The most I could do for principle was resign.

The little echo of a soul that I had left reminded me that the Greek words charakter and ethos were a pact with one’s self, and were not dependent on our surroundings or the actions of others; that character was fate, and that fate could only be improved by free will.

I remembered Lili’s advice:  ”Never be afraid to take a wrecking ball to your life.”  So I let the wrecking ball fly.  I had very little choice at that point and absolutely nothing to lose, apart from financial security, creature comforts, and a dread of mornings and going in to work.  I had everything to gain.

I guess that was the first step I took towards my proverbial Ithaka.

© 2009 – 2010, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved. Photos and text are copyright protected.

So right after I post about how much I love a brightly colored world, someone goes and steals all the best colors off my blog.

I upgraded my blog theme, and the results were really wonky.

Hopefully the theme designer will have a solution, if not, I’ll find a new home theme.  What a bummer though–that banner photograph was Ithaka.

Have a great weekend!

© 2009, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved. Photos and text are copyright protected.