A Lesson From The Desert

Ariana Nisan 29, 2022

I’m composing this among the sand, cacti, and scents of Sedona, Arizona on my way back east from California’s Palm Springs, Joshua Tree National Park (photo above by Scott Mansfield), and the Mohave. I know with that itinerary some of you wags out there are thinking, “Siger’s getting his just deserts.”

Sedona

Palm Springs

I’ll forgive you for the thought if you’ll forgive me for the pun.

I find something magical about deserts. I don’t know why that is. I live on an island yet deserts arouse me in much the same way as the sea. For instance, a few days ago in Joshua Tree I stood among massive granite boulder formations I’d never seen before and yet I sensed that I had. But how could that be and where?

Then it hit me: underwater. I free dive in the Aegean off the shores of Mykonos and Delos, and the granite shapes I’m so used to rising up at me from the sea floor now surrounded me in a California desert. Even the flora reminded me of shapes that grow beneath the sea.

Amazing. Just add water to the desert and voila I’m back in Greece!

Scuba, not free-diving

I realize that referring to deserts, underwater, and Greece in the same thought may seem a strained attempt to segue into the elephant in the room anytime Greece is mentioned these days, but I promise you I had no such intention.

It’s all too predictable anyway. The news I mean. It’s as if I’m watching an endless loop of a Punch and Judy show played out against the same tired sets and staging.

Here we are again, back atop Athens’ Hotel Grande Bretagne overlooking Syntagma Square in front of Greece’s Parliament Building, “cue the black hooded hooligans,” “launch the marble chunks and molotovs,” “send in the police,” “pan to the politicians pontificating,” and don’t forget to “burn a few cars,” and “torch some shops.”

Attikon Cinema then

Okay, I admit that what happened in Athens last weekend was tragic beyond any demonstrations of recent memory (though Greece remains the safest country in the European Union, as difficult as that may be to believe with the patently violent (televised) demonstrations) as rioters destroyed the Attikon cinema—one of the few remaining neoclassical buildings from Athens’ glory days of 100 years ago—to punctuate misguidedly the general feeling among the Greek citizenry that its Parliament is corrupt, incapable, and out for itself as it allows Greece's destiny to slip more and more out of its own hands with every passing day.

...and now

And, yes, the country is gearing up for a very interesting summer of repercussions.

But, still, it’s the same old storyline with the same characters, same speeches, same inaction. Hmm, dare one say, “therein lies the rub”?

I recently saw a staunch supporter of her homeland describe it as “The Greece of Hopelessness.” That’s a pretty fair opinion on the state of things if you confine yourself to what’s in the news, but perhaps because I’m by nature more optimistic…or have seen first hand the granite that is Greece beneath its surface…I see things somewhat differently.

No doubt the country faces very difficult times, but there’s hope out there that this is Greece’s chance to find and hit its “restart button,” one that will return the country to its lost core values...such as one carved above Delphi by Athenians 2500 years ago: “Nothing in Excess.”