| | **update: happy Ethiopian New Year. who knew?**
At what point in life did ten hours
seem like a reasonable-- and certainly not excessive-- amount of time
to spend on a single homework assignment?
And at what point did a 3-page paper become an assignment so simple and easy that it's practically a throw-away?
Ekh, what a life this is. The weekend was spent at a Greek
(Greeky-greek-greek-greek-greek) men's monastery in horse country south
of here, along with a visit to the nearby women's monastery for Sunday
Liturgy. They're all so different, but good eh. At the
monastery in South Carolina when I asked if they had grits the abbess
scolded me, "what self-respecting Southern monastery would be without
grits?" At the monastery in New Mexico, we breakfasted more often
than not on huevos rancheros. At the Ocala monasteries, imported
Greek food-- lovely, wonderful food-- but certainly not Florida Cracker
food.
Not that food is what it's about. It was a good and (as always)
necessary trip. We rose at 4am for prayers (orthros? matins?
first hour? midnight office? no idea-- it was all Greek to me),
breakfasted, and then returned to bed. The work day started about
10 am and lasted until prayers (vespers? compline? something else? no
idea) at five pm, followed by supper. The monks pray privately
from midnight til four. Inside the chapel the monks, with their
strange language, Byzantine melodies and nasal isons, seemed
otherworldly, alien almost. And in the trapeza, the lives of the
saints (I think) were read in Greek while we ate good yet strange
food-- squid sandwiches, curious pastries, taters fried in olive
oil. Once again-- beautiful, but utterly alien.
I thought about this on Sunday as we stopped in Gainesville for
lunch. "Enough Greek food!" I announced. "I'm dying
for a quesadilla." And for supper I fried black-eyed peas with
onions and back bacon. But I lived in Korea for a year without
getting sick of Korean food. Only after several months did I even
begin to pine for mashed potatoes or sweet tea. Why had half a
weekend of Greek food made me so hungry for something else?
Because, I answered myself, it was a weekend of Greek food in Cracker
country. Squid don't grow here. Neither do olive
trees. You can raise goats, so I guess the feta could be
construed as local. But in the Central Florida countryside you
expect to drink sweet tea & buttermilk and eat collard greens,
black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes, cornbread, zucchini squash,
cucumbers, catfish or largemouth bass or Steinhatchee scallops
batter-fried in corn oil or peanut oil.
Not that food is what it's about. But food makes a terrible good metaphor.
Working outdoors, though, the monks chatted in casual American slang,
and the strangeness of their chant and their foods was forgotten.
They're the sort of folk-- when they open their mouths, you listen and
your heart starts racing a little. And the listening makes you
glad. It was good hard work and good to be doing hard work.
The area is beautiful-- rolling horse country, with black Central
Florida clay, bluegrass, and oak trees draped in moss. Around a
small lake swarmed geese, ducks, and a black lamb named
Persephone. Deer ran around the grounds at night.
I could be a Greek monk, I reckon, in Greece. In Russia, I could
become a Russian monk, if that were my destiny. In New Mexico or
Arizona, a Southwestern monk. But go to Central Florida for to
become Greek? Some, perhaps, could hack it. Not this kid.
Nonetheless, I'm grateful. So good to escape university culture
albeit briefly, and enter the land of prayer. And such
prayer! Such good people, and such good work they do.
Reckon this kid'll visit again soon.
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| | Posted 9/11/2006 9:02 PM - 5 views - 4 comments
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