Instalment 4: In Mr. Bean's Footsteps – Part Two (Mount Athos) London to Thessaloniki (or Vice Versa)

Instalment 4 of 7 .
'The monks are 'worth it',the Brooklyn Skateboarder and  interview nerves'

From last week:

The vegetation became less thick and in the distance I could get occasional, fleeting glimpses of the scintillating Mediterranean below, sparkling, and inviting under the scorching  sun which was already quite high up in the sky.

At the edge of the forest, the slopes of hillside cascade downwards,  in terraced fields of wheat, halting at the walls of Iviron, my destination. 

Now Read on....
 

I have not dallied too long in the forest, for far below, shading my eyes and squinting, I can see two other back-packed pilgrims approaching the monastery. I figure that more or less I must be on time, and that these pilgrims must have bedded down at a Monastery further down the coast. I tumble down the fields of wheat in a competitive race to try and pre-empt them and secure my place for the night before they get there. The odds are against me. Although it seems that we are equidistant from the monastery entrance, their trajectory is a horizontal one, whilst the terrain dictates that mine is diagonal and involves a great deal of stumbling over rock and scrub.

Someone who looks like Gandalf, with a white flowing beard and hair scooped up in a bun beneath a tall black pillbox hat, is standing across from a bridge, straddling a gurgling stream. Gaining on their advantage, the two other travellers beat me to it. They talk to him after partaking of some refreshments and he points first in my direction and then towards the monastery.  By the time I collect myself, catch my breath and wipe the perspiration off my brow, they have disappeared into the Monastery walls.

I feel sheepish, a little stupid as I walk up to the monk on the far end of the bridge. I must have looked a trifle desperate tearing down the cultivated fields, and then suddenly dragging my steps. Probably disrespectful too, though I had been careful not to trample any crops and had kept to the perimeter of the fields, but still. The monk approaches me, he holds a plate of Loukoumi out towards me, (Loukoumi = Turkish delight, but here it is not Turkish). On a little wooden stool there is also a tray with a glass of ouzo for me, a very welcome sight having transversed a forest to get here. The setting is pastoral and idyllic. It feels almost staged. Does this monk stand by the bridge all morning every day? the Loukoumi, dusted with icing sugar tastes delicious and the ouzo goes to my head immediately. The Monk, Iviron’s Arhondaris (as he informs me) speaks perfect English. He welcomes me, enquires when I arrived on the peninsula, and if I intend to stay the night. I reply in the affirmative, if it is possible of course and if he does not commit a positive reply, he does not refuse me, but tells me to follow the others and wait in the central courtyard inside.

Once inside, I greet the other pilgrims who are chatting quietly on one side of an enormous cistern in the centre of the courtyard. Just across, my jaw slackens, as my eyes widen spontaneously and blink in disbelief at the incongruous scene unfolding before me. A row of black top hats sit haphazardly on the rim of the well besides a motley group of monks who are alternatively standing and leaning against the cistern and each other. The majority of them have a full head of hair scraped back from their temples into a tightly wound coil at the back of their heads and held in place by a variety of slides, clips, sticks, twigs, pencils and pins. However one elderly monk is in the process of removing the very last restraining pin, and the tight coil, suddenly springs back, unfurling a curtain of white snow. The monk shakes his head as if in an Oreal hair conditioner advert because ‘he is worth it’ and for a few split seconds, the scenario unfolds in Head and Shoulders  slow motion, as this waterfall of hair bounces to the right and then to the left, finally settling on his stooped shoulders and cascading down his back. I stand gawping there, whilst, as if on cue, these monks, who had only a minute ago resembled, a group of Spigolatrici, lay nuns with their dour habits and tight (hair) buns, begin collectively removing their hair pins, uncoiling their hair, waving it and shaking it loose.  One monk startles me by flipping his head forward, running his hands though his hair over the back of his scalp, disentangling any knots and then snorting, tossing his mane backwards. This swishing screen of grey streaked, salt and pepper and snow white hair, reminds me less of a group of monks and more of a group of head banging Hells Angels bikers or possibly; a posse of ageing hippies. It must have something to do with the Samson myth: preserving virility, virginity, strength and dedicating your life to God. Their hair is waist long and totally cool and to my mind utterly rebellious. The sun is bearing down and I imagine it must be hot under those gabardine pillar box hats. However the Roman Catholic Parish Priests back home have short sides and back, and my mind has a hard time reconciling the flowing locks with the word ecclesiastic.  However this is not the only double take, I am about to make this day. The Gods have prescribed a set of short, sharp shocks in store for me today.

I have been staring too long and indiscreetly, so reluctantly, I prise my gaze away from these rockabilly monks to better absorb my equally fascinating surroundings.

The monastery design is organic. Ramparts and staircases, jutting balconies and wooden walkways, interweave and pile up upon each other. The courtyard is one of many, each one leading into the next, surrounded by windows, perched high up above bare walls, by galleries and steeple towers.

Whirling around, happily ensconced within these austere but honey hued fortress-like bastions, I feel safe in this citadel of contemplation. I have arrived and these last two week’s struggles have been unreservedly worth it. I’m in a Monastery on Mount Athos and even if by some thwarted fate I am not destined to sleep here tonight, I have crossed the hallowed threshold. It feels as though I entered a Tardis in Thessaloniki in 1993 and have been transported way back in time to somewhere universal, to the magic castle in everyone’s enchanted fairy tale. And then my gaze alights on something dissonant, incongruous. The whirling stops and I do a double take. More like ‘Back to the Future’. A bright shock of yellowed platinum, tufting from darkened roots atop a Nirvana t-shirt. It can’t be, yes it must be, it’s gotta be the skateboarder from Brooklyn. I had forgotten him entirely, preoccupied predominantly, as I had been since boarding that barge at Ouranoupoli, with the pressing issue of accommodation.

The skateboarder has just appeared at the head of a flight of stairs descending to the courtyard where we are standing. His curious gaze, no doubt checking out the new comers, pans on me a few seconds after I have I have noticed him. We stare at each other for a bit and then still all agog with delayed surprise, I raise my hand in a wave and then use it to point down at my luggage, remembering just in time to give him a thumbs up. I am very grateful to be here and this is all so incredibly, spontaneously synchronistic, that I’m beyond disbelief. I even want to hug the skateboarder and enthusiastically shake his hand a million times, enough to give him Parkinson’s. Just think, a day earlier he had been slotted into my nemesis, ‘public enemy number one’, pigeonhole and now he was such a happy familiar sight. He waved back at me nonchalantly and began walking down the steps, whilst chatting to two other pilgrims who had made an entrance behind him. After nodding a few hellos to us newbies he casually greeted me with a “so you made it after all” astringency. Overeager and gauche in comparison, I bombarded him with a hundred questions: how had he got here?, had he caught the bus in time?, why hadn’t  he waited for me? Had he thought I would catch up with him? Where had he spent the night?, had it been at Iviron? I also wondered if the monks had said anything about his appearance but this I didn’t ask. In fact he seemed to brush away most of what I asked and instead cut in over what one of his companions were beginning to say, and announced in a loud, brash twang that the guest monk had instructed him to show us to our dormitory and yes we could follow him. Despite feeling a slight pang of jealousy at how quickly he had become top guest dog and irritated by his lack of interest in my recent ‘ordeal’, my heart gladdened at the news of a bed for the night. The other pilgrims however looked dubiously at him, the other monk at the bridge - wasn’t he the guest monk after all? Had he not told us to wait in the courtyard. Mr.  Brooklyn, though, was already up some of the stairs beckoning to me, talking ten to the dozen; how awesome and how amazing the monastery was and how he could show us the run of the place. By the time I had got to the top of stairs, I realised I was the only one following him and beginning to wonder if associating with him would actually garner me no favours in the ‘bag a bed’ department. Luckily Gandalf had just entered the courtyard with another pilgrim in tow, facilitating ‘trespassing’ damage limitation on my behalf. Our heads are counted, thankfully reaching an imagined acceptable tally in Gandalf’s mind view, and with the faintest of bows, he courteously asks us to follow him. Leaving his tray of empty glasses on the rim of the cistern, he joins us on the staircase.

On the landing he pauses in front of me. He looks at the skateboarder and then at me, smiles enigmatically, almost imperceptivity, and we part asunder for him to pass through. As if by unspoken admonishment we bring up the tail end of this eclectic group of sombre pilgrims. I am less angry with the skateboarder for potentially jeopardising my chances, than happy with having made it into the daily quota. After all he had been thoughtful enough to leave my bag at Ourianapoli. There would have been no way of knowing which monastery he had decided to visit and I would have ended up on a wild goose chase. Our meeting at the same monastery happened to be pure chance, and only because, as he informed me, he had decided to stay on another night. Otherwise he would have already have been on his way. Slightly lowering his voice, reflecting, his recent downgrade from tour leader, but nonetheless still conspicuously loud and jangling in the long empty corridors and quiet solitude of the monastery, Mr. Skateboarder prattles on about the monastery’s bio rhythms and then listing a whole litany of complaints; how early he had to get up (Ungodly..ironic given the location), how weird and rude the monks were (spaced out, uncommunicative), how hungry he always is (no canteen, no candy) and how cold the ‘showers’ are (bloody freezing, Christ, man).

I can’t wait to make my getaway and distance myself from him, even if he is a source of familiarity and I am more on his wavelength than the scholarly distant and grey, first impression of the other pilgrims in the courtyard. I remind myself that theoretically I am an impostor, and no better than my acquaintance from Brooklyn, being neither an Art Historian, a Theologian or a Religious. In a way we are complicit and co-plotters, and have become ‘blood brothers’ in our determination to get here.

The Guest Monk shows us to our shared dorm, a row of solemn metal beds with pristine white, but musty smelling sheets, a simple bedside table and not much else. Two of our company have been upgraded to single cells, presumably because of their clerical status but also because they are here on an extended sojourn. I choose one of the few remaining empty beds and exchange greetings with an olive skinned and curly dark haired man, sitting reading on the bed adjacent to mine. He tells me that he is here to obtain the monk’s blessing for his upcoming nuptials, a tradition followed by many Greek Orthodox on the mainland. Gandalf points to a list of rules and regulations pinned to the wall which complement and add on to a similar list issued together with our permit. He instructs us to adhere to these rules, to wear long clothing covering all our limbs at all times and not to take photographs of the monks or of the interior of the monastery and of its many chapels. When we have settled in, we are to  register and present our Diamonitiria(permit)in his ‘office’ . One of the other pilgrims, if asked will show us where. The Guest Monk takes his leave, swishing out of the room to show the upgraded pilgrims their abode, and I move towards one of the small, narrow, windows recessed into the wall opposite me. The view is breathtaking once again. Over the terracotta tiles and in between the many belfries, the streaming sunlight glints upon the sea.  Just a few fathoms out of the little harbour, one monk on a small fishing boat casts a net into the sea. Another monk with sleeves rolled up and a smock on top of his habit is leaning out of a balcony, a level below me to sandpaper a wooden shutter. In the fields, just up from the monastery,  three bearded men, who are not monks,  are busy harvesting the tall ears of wheat planted in the spring. In an out yard just outside the monastery, a monk is walking in and out of a shed carrying and laying out freshly painted icons to dry. I imagine there is some kind of division of labour in force, and every monk has a role, no doubt assigned according to talent and natural inclination. In fact I learn later that, agriculture including bee keeping and olive picking, fishing, woodcarving, spirit distillation, iconography, tailoring, and book binding are the traditional pursuits, (although apparently in 2013, 20 years on,  taxi driving and IT maintenance have also made the monastic occupation list, but I don’t want to spoil things just yet, just wait for Installation 7 for links ).

This reminds me of the Medieval great chain of being, an hierarchical ordered view of the universe, mirroring the heavenly ascension from angels to seraphims to God (him)self.  Due to the dwindling numbers of monks, most of the monasteries on Mount Athos, which had previously been Idiorhythmatic, (where monks ate in their own quarters and worshipped and studied when and where they wanted) had converted to a more rigid Cenobitic status (with a clearly defined timetable of common worship and repast). Iviron seemed to be making the slow transition, where work duties remained Idiorythmatic, but one religious service and one meal in the day was Cenobitic. None of the monks appeared to be working together, but then the monastery was vast and rambling and therefore its inhabitants had to be spread as thinly as possible across the multiple chores required by the upkeep and daily running of the establishment.

Still the scene is tranquil and serene as if this was how things had always been and ‘progress’ had not been allowed to trespass on these shores. Pirates, and barbarian invasions, might have been a bother in the past, hence the bastions and fortifications, but a reigning feeling of peace did seem to lay low on the land and to suggest that this holy land had always been spared.  High up at the window, I rub my arms in glee, just so, so happy to be here and to be witnessing this pastoral scene.

I turn to my skateboarder friend, who has been talking to himself these last ten minutes and is eager for a captive audience, and ask him if he can show me the way to the guest monk’s ‘office’. On the way there he shows me the bathrooms, which have a bucket and pail for cold water ‘showers’ and hole in the floor toilets in the Turkish style , whilst others have wooden boxed seats. He laughs at these, but I think they are probably practical for a monk with several layers of underclothing and skirts, who might need to attend quickly to an urgent call of nature. Nonetheless, that would entail a clever balancing act as I would find out much later for myself, (the hard way as usual) with an enormous backpack, hippypants, and a bad case of Delhi belly, in an open sewer passing for a public convenience in a train station in India. Talk about human origami.

Mr. Brooklyn (I have forgotten both his and the Arhondaris's name unfortunately, a casualty of the passage of time, but then I’ve never been good with names to tell you the truth, so let’s call Mr. Brooklyn David from now on), led me down an interminable passage of right angled corridors, up and down narrow wooden staircases, long halls, and dark empty tightly shuttered galleries, past rows of cells with rusty door knobs and dusty loggias. Iviron was famous for its immensely rich library and treasury but only the lucky few got a peek. David told me he was hoping to hang around long enough to get in. I began to wonder if I should have been leaving a trail of pebbles behind me. How on earth was I going to find my way back to the dorm? I really did not want to rely upon David. On the way, with no prompting from myself this time, David filled me in with his version on how he had got to Mount Athos. The missing details are filled in. In the rush to get to the station, he had not noticed I was not running behind him. He had reached  the station just in time to get on the bus which was on the verge of departing. He had asked the bus driver to wait for me, but when, after five minutes, I had still not turned up, the impatient mutterings of passengers on the bus, urging the driver to get a move on, had decided the driver to do just that. It was only fifteen minutes later, having settled on the bus, that my friend realised he was still clutching my bag.

This explanation satisfied me. At least he had asked the driver to wait for me. OK he had not jumped off the bus, but then he had had the good sense to leave my luggage at Ourianapolis and I thanked him for this, although come to think of it, anyone could have taken it, lying as it was in the middle of that café cum ticket office. But then he had to dump it somewhere and that was probably a good a place as any, I suppose.

Finally we get to the Arhondaris’s office. There is one pilgrim before me and another in the office with the guest monk so I settle to wait my turn. David insists on waiting with me. I protest, saying there is no need but here is no shaking him. He tells me he will take me on a tour of the grounds when I’m done. I groan inwardly, “shit I’m stuck with this guy”, I feel trapped and I am a little irritated by what I am now perceiving as clinginess or insensitivity. Yet despite being vexed, I acknowledge that it will be the price I have to pay for not feeling lonely or ill at ease amongst the scholars. Besides, it would save much time from being lost in that maze of corridors. Whilst David proceeds to persecute our neighbour with his incessant monologue, the demon, dormant butterflies begin to flutter under my diaphragm. What is it about humans that having ‘tamed’ the jungle we invent a galaxy of conventions to intimidate our own kind?, to make them feel inferior, to put them in their place, somehow like a baboon might cuff a young insubordinate male, anything to stimulate the release of adrenalin and take us back fight or flight into the jungle albeit a cement and concrete one.

Interviews of any kind, even those where I feel that I have the upper hand, stress me out. Like those God awful round robins, having to introduce yourself. The waiting is the worse. This was no different. OK, so I more or less had a bed for the night, I had a permit, I seemed to have been included in the day’s tally but ultimately I was here by subterfuge. Stupidly I had failed to ask David how he had schemed his way through the interview and felt embarrassed to ask him now, in front of the other pilgrim. What should I say? The truth? That I had always been interested in the monastic tradition, no matter what the denomination/religion, that I was curious? But wouldn’t that put me in the tourist category? Should I lie and say that I was here to determine if I had a religious calling and was interested in possibly converting to the Orthodox faith. Was that a lie really? Hadn’t I always felt drawn to a life of seclusion, hadn’t I imagined myself tending some herb garden, concocting remedies in communicative silence under the tutelage of some wizened, inspiring keeper of the keys to all things esoteric? I was indeed on a sabbatical myself from Uni(versity), had taken time off.  
 
My parents had separated a year before, somehow jump starting a year of alienation and increasing dissatisfaction, with the academic course I was following, my chosen path in life, a dark night of the soul that saw me rebelling and questioning everything. I experienced an ongoing mind block whenever I had to sit down and write anything, I couldn’t study, my mind was a blank…I began skiving lessons, procrastinating reality, running away by regressing sucking my thumb and re-reading Enid Blyton ‘Famous Five’ go on an adventure jaunts. One day I decided that I didn’t actually have to go to a marketing exam I was due to sit for in an hour. Why couldn’t I take destiny into my own hands? Why couldn’t I say no and just do the opposite, take the road less travelled? Why shouldn’t I just for once run contrary to what was expected out of me? I recalled the last time this thought had entered my head, when It first dawned on me that the possibility existed out there, of colliding with the status quo, of saying NO!. I was 10 years old, even younger, I forget, on a visit to the dentist. The wait in the faded grey and orange, old fashioned waiting room was agonising. I knew I was probably going to have a tooth extracted. All the other children accompanied by their frazzled mums were younger than me, and theoretically I was supposed to set an example of courageous stoic resignation to my fate. Not so, I recall feeling terribly ashamed on my descent at having turned up the apprehension factor an octave after my shenanigans which involved jumping out of the dentist’s chair, shouting that they were not going to touch me, running down the stairs being caught and clinging to the banisters whilst yelling at the dentist who was holding onto one of my legs which were swinging horizontally in the air, the dental assistant holding onto my other leg and my mother contributing to the general wailing with her embarrassed remonstrations. Needless to say I didn’t get my way and years later I found myself thinking well maybe this time I’ll just do what I feel like for a change. So here I was deliberating whether I should go to that test in half an hour. The fact also remained that I hadn’t really studied much and had attended classes even less. This was a mandatory credit, core to the syllabus and I should by now have changed and be in the car on my way to that exam room.  

 Instead I thought to myself that I might as well just continue sitting  on the bog reading Herman Hesse’s compelling ‘ Narziss and Goldmund’, rather than the boring text book tome I should have been stuck into the last couple of days. That was the longest toilet sitting ever. My legs went numb and I had a red ring on my ass for the entire day.  I made sure, with guilty nervous pleasure, that I stayed perched on that rim until the gong to start scribbling (would have) sounded in that exam hall a few miles away. Then I slickly sprang off the W.C. and found a more comfortable seat for my perusal of that book, which incidentally juxtaposes the lives of a monastic with a free spirited artist. Guilty by birth, by virtue of have being indoctrinated into the Catholic faith, I began my first flirtations with rebellion, a decade too late. I dropped out of University. I started pushing myself out of my comfort zone, going out late alone. I hooked up with this group of African Maritime Lawyers and after a night of partying and listening to live music in this jazz bar we would see dawn in over a cup of scalding and taste bud annihilating Mauritanian chili soup on the patio of one of their student digs.

A softly spoken but authoritative ‘next’ interrupts my reverie. One pilgrim exists leaving the door ajar. The pilgrim who is sitting next to David looks immensely relieved and jumps up. However he merely accompanies the other guy, so that means it is my turn to go in, and I have not had any chance to speak to David about his strategy of stay.

To be continued next week...