found was heaven on earth: the bluest sky; water in bands of
turquoise, lavender, aqua, and silver; rocks so old they had
whole histories writ en on the underside of their rough edges;
opium poppies a foot high and blood red; a primitive harbor;
caves in which people lived; peasants who came down from
the mountains to the city for political speeches - there would
be a whole family in a wooden cart pulled by a mule with an
old man walking the mule; there was light the color of bright
yellow and bright white melted together, and it never went
away; even at night, somehow through the dark, the light
would manifest, an unmistakable presence, and in the darkest
part of night you could see the tiniest pebble resting by
your foot. This was an island on which old women in black
cooked on Bunsen burners, olive trees were wealth, and
there was a universal politics of noli me tangere with a
lineage from 400 years of Turkish occupation through Nazi
occupation; the people were fierce and proud and sometimes
terribly sad.
69
Heartbreak
The place changed for me one day. It was Easter. I was with
an English friend and a Greek lover. The streets began fil ing
up with gangs of men carrying lit torches. They seemed a
little KKK-ish. Their intentions did not seem friendly. My
Greek lover explained that the gangs were looking for Jews,
the kil ers of Christ. That would be me. My companions and
I hid behind a pil ar of a church. I don’t think there were other
Jews on the island, because this search for Christ’s kil ers had
gone on year after year, even before the Turkish occupation. I
wondered if the gang of men would kil me. I thought they
would. I was afraid, but the worst of it was that I was afraid
my Greek lover would give me up - here she is, the Jew. I was
the faithless one, because this question was in my heart and
mind. I wondered what would happen if the torches found us,
saw us and took us. I wondered if he’d stand up for me then.
I wondered how the people I’d been living with could turn
into a malignant crowd, a hate crowd. If there were no other
Jews on the island, it was because they had been killed or had
fled. (Tourist season had not yet begun. )
The next day teenaged boys dove into the Aegean Sea to
look for a jeweled cross blessed by the Orthodox priest and
thrown by him into the water; one boy found it and emerged
like an elegant whale from the water, cross raised above his
head as high as he could hold it. The sun and the cross merged
into an astonishing brightness, the natural and the man-made
making the boy into some kind of religious prince. It was
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Easter
beautiful and savage, and I could see myself bleeding out the
day before, a corpse on cold stone.
71
Knossos
I didn’t know anything about anthropology or the reconstruction of the ancient Cretan palace of Knossos by the English archeologist Sir Arthur Evans. I didn’t know it was the labyrinth of Daedalus or the palace of King Minos, the Minotaur symbolizing generations of sacralized bulls. I had no idea of
the claims that would be made for it later by feminists: the
bull was the sacred animal of Goddess religions and cults, the
symbol of the Great Goddess. One of the great icons of
modern feminism originates in Crete - the labyris, the double
ax. Both the bull and the labyris signified the Goddess religion,
and Knossos was a holy site. From 3, 700 years before Christ
to 2, 000 years before Christ, Crete was the zenith of civilization, a Goddess-worshiping civilization.
Originally I saw it from the opposite side of the road. A
friend and I went to have a picnic in the country north of
Heraklion; we had wine and a Greek soft cheese that I particularly favored; we were in love and trouble and so talked in our own pidgin tongue made up of Greek, English, and French.
I found myself going out there alone and finding refuge in the
intriguing building across the road, Knossos. I found the
72
throne room especially lovely and intimate. I would take a
book, sit on the throne, and read, every now and then thinking about what it must have been like to live in this small and intimate room. The rest of the palace that had been restored
was closed, and as soon as I heard the first busload of tourists
sometime in late April I never went back. But for a while it
was mine. I felt at home there, something I rarely feel anywhere. Once I was inside, it was as familiar as my own skin. I loved the stone from which everything, including the throne,
was made. I loved the shape of the room and the throne itself.
I loved the colors, as I remember them now mostly red and
blue but very pure, the true colors painted on stone. I don’t
think it is possible to go back to a place that has such a grip
on one’s heart; or I can’t. When I die, though, I’m going back,
as ash, dust unto dust - not to the stone walls or throne of
Knossos but to a high hill overlooking Heraklion. I belong to
the place even if the place does not belong to me.
73
Kazantzakis
In the early morning I would walk from my balcony near the
water to the market. I’d buy olives. There had to be dozens
of different kinds. Of al the food for sale, olives were the
cheapest, and I’d buy the cheapest of those - about an eighth
of an ounce - and then I’d find a cafe and order a cof ee. I’d
keep fil ing the cup with milk, each time changing the ratio of
cof ee to milk. I’d have the waiter bring more and more milk.
As long as there was stil some cof ee in the cup I couldn’t be
refused. This was a rule I made up in my mind, but it seemed
to hold true. Early on I stole a salt shaker so that I could clean
my teeth. Salt is abrasive, but it works.
I had read about the square where I took my coffee in
Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Freedom or Death, a book I carried
with me almost everywhere once I discovered it (and I stil
have that paperback copy, brown and brittle). A novelist who
captures the soul of a country or a people writes fiction and
history and mythology, and Freedom or Death is such a work.
It is the story of the 1889 revolt of the Cretans against the
Turks. It is epic and at the same time it is the story of
Heraklion, Crete’s largest city and where I was living. Inside
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Kazantzakis
the epic there are love stories, stories of fraternal affection and
conflict, sickening details of war and occupation. In the square
- the square where I was sitting - the Turks would hang rebels,
the solitary body often more terrifying than any baker’s
dozen. Only a writer can show that precise thing, bring the
disfigured humanity of the dead individual into one’s own
viscera. One forgets the eloquence of the single person who
wanted freedom and got death. I could always see the body
hanging.
In those days political women did a kind of inner translating so that al the heroes, almost always men e
xcept for the occasional valiant female prostitute, were persons, ungendered, and one could aspire to be such a person. The point for the writer and other readers might well be masculinity itself,
but the political female read in a different pitch - the body
shaking the trees with its weight, obstructing both wind and
light, would be more lyrical, with the timbre in Bil ie Holiday’s
voice. Freedom or Death set the terms for fighting oppression;
later, feminism brought those terms to a new maturity with
the idea that one had to be willing to die for freedom, yes, but
also willing to live for it. Each day over my prolonged cup of
coffee I would watch the body hanging in the square and
think about it, why the body was displayed in torment as if
the torture, the killing continued after death. I would feel the
fear it created in those who saw it. I would feel the necessity
of another incursion against the oppressor - to show that he
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Heartbreak
had not won, nor had he created a paralyzing fear, nor had he
stopped one from risking one’s life for freedom.
I haven’t read Kazantzakis since I lived on Crete in 1965. I
have never read Zorba the Greek, his most famous novel
because of the movie made from the book, a movie I saw
maybe a decade or two later on television. Freedom or death
was how I felt about segregation back home, the Vietnam
War, stopping the bomb, writing, making love, going where
I wanted when I wanted. Freedom or death was how I felt
about the Nazis, the fascists, the tyrants, the sadists, the cold
kil ers. Freedom or death was how I felt about the world
created by the compromisers, the mediocrities, the apathetic.
Freedom or death encapsulated my philosophy. So I wrote a
series of poems cal ed (Vietnam) Variations; poems and prose
poems I collected in a book printed on Crete called Child; a
novel in a style resembling magical realism called Notes on
Burning Boyfriend; and poems and dialogues I later handprinted
using movable type in a book cal ed Morning Hair. The burning boyfriend was Norman Morrison, the pacifist who had set himself on fire to protest the Vietnam War.
76
Discipline
I learned how to write on Crete. I learned to write every day
I learned to work on a typewriter that I had rented in
Heraklion. I had thin, light blue paper. I’d carve out hours for
myself, the same every day, and no mat er what was going on
in the rest of my writer’s life I used those hours for writing.
I learned to throw away what was no good. One asks, How
does a writer write? And one asks, How does a writer live?
At first one imitates. I imitated in those years Lorca, Genet,
Baldwin, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller. I read both Miller
and Lawrence Durrel on being a writer in Greece. It seemed
from them as if words could stream down with the light. I did
not find that to be the case, and so I thought that perhaps I
was not a writer. Then one wants to know about the one great
book: can someone young write only one book and have it be
great - or was there only one Rimbaud for al eternity and the
gift is al used up? Then one needs to know if what one wrote
yesterday and the day before has the aura of greatness so that
the whole thing, eventually, would be the one great book even
though that might have to be fol owed by a second great
book. Then one wants to know if the greatness shows in one’s
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Heartbreak
face or manner or being so that people would draw back a little on confronting the bearer of the greatness. Then one wants to know if being a writer is like being Sisyphus or perhaps
Prometheus. One wants to know if writers are a little band of
gods created in each generation, cursed or blessed with the
task of finding themselves - finding that they are writers. One
wants to know if one wil write something important enough
to die for; or if fascists wil kil one for what one writes; or if
one can write prose or poetry so strong that nothing can break
its back. One wonders if one will be able to stand up to or
against dictators or police power. One wonders if one has the
illusion of a vocation or if one has the vocation. One wonders
about how to be what one wants to be - that genius of a
writer who takes literature to a new level or that genius of a
writer who brings humanity forward or that genius of a writer
who tel s a simple, gorgeous story or that genius of a writer
who holds hands with Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy or that genius
of a writer who lets the mute speak, especially the last, letting
the mute speak. Can one make a sound that the deaf can hear?
Can one write a narrative visually accessible to the blind? Can
one write for the dispossessed, the marginalized, the tortured?
Is there a kind of genius that can make a story as real as a tree
or an idea as inevitable as taking the next breath? Is there a
genius who can create morning out of words and can one be
that genius? The questions are hubristic, but they go to the
core of the writing project: how to be a god who can create a
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Discipline
world in which people actually live - some of the people being
characters, some of the people being readers.
79
The Freighter
I learned how to listen from my father and from being on the
freighter. My father could listen to anyone: sit quietly, follow
what they had to say even if he abhorred it - for instance, the
racism in some of my family members - and later use it for
teaching, for pedagogy. Through watching him - his calm, his
stillness, the sometimes deep disapproval buried under the
weight of his cheeks, his mouth in a slight but barely perceptible frown - I saw the posture of one strong enough to hear without being overcome with anger or desperation or fear.
I saw a vital man with a conscience pick his fights, and they
were always policy fights, in his school as a teacher, as a guidance counselor, in the post of ice where he worked unloading trucks. For instance, in the post of ice where he was relatively
powerless, he’d work on Christian holidays so that his fellow
laborers could have those days with their families. I saw
someone with principles who had no need to cal at ention to
himself.
The ocean isn’t real y very different, though it can be more
flamboyant. It simply is; it doesn’t require one’s at ention;
there is no arrogance however fierce it can become. I took a
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The Freighter
freighter from Heraklion to Savannah to New York City. In
the two and a half weeks on the ocean, I mainly listened: to
the narrative of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I read some of
every day; to the earth buried miles under the ocean; to the
astonishing stil ness of the water, potentially so wild and deadly,
on most nights blanketed by an impenetrable darkness; to the
things living under and around me; to the crew and captain of
the ship; to the one family also making the trek, the sullenness
of the teen, the creativity of a youn
ger child, the brightness of
the adults’ optimism.
It seems a false analogy - my father and the ocean - because
my father was a humble man and the ocean is overwhelming
until one sees that it simply is what it is. From my father and
from the ocean, I learned to listen with concentration and poise
to the women who would talk to me years later: the women
who had been raped and prostituted; the women who had
been bat ered; the women who had been incested as children.
I think that sometimes they spoke to me because they had an
intuition that the difficulty in saying the words would not be
in vain; and in this sense my father and the ocean gave me the
one great tool of my life - an ability to listen so closely that
I could find meaning in the sounds of suf ering and pain,
anger and hate, sorrow and grief. I could listen to a barely
executed whisper and I could listen to the shrill rant. I knew
never to shut down inside; I learned to defer my own reactions
and to consider listening an honor and a holy act. I learned
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Heartbreak
patience, too, from my father and from that ocean that never
ends but goes round again circling the earth with no meaning,
nothing outside itself. One need not go to the moon to see the
cascading roundness of our globe because the ocean shows
it and says it; there are a million little sounds, tiny noises,
the same as in a human heart. Had I never been on the
freighter I think I would never have learned anything except
the tangled ways of humans fighting - ego or war. The words
on Kazantzakis’s grave say, “I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free. ” On the freighter and from my father I learned the final lesson of Crete, and it would stand me in good stead
years later in fighting for the rights of women, especially
sexual y abused women: I hope for nothing; I fear nothing; I
am free.
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Strategy
After I lived on Crete, I went back to Bennington for two