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Return to the World:
I step off the boat onto the Daphne dock and am instantly back in my familiar world.
The first thing that catches and fills my eyes are the girls on the dock in their bright summer clothes–how pretty they are–even the homely ones.
And for the first time, I completely realize how much of my attention and time are taken up and have always been taken up with the dramatic and entertaining play between the sexes.
For six weeks I have not been concerned a bit with how I looked or how I was dressed since I looked and dressed exactly like all the other men in my environment and, truly, I found the unique experience unexpectedly liberating.
Most of the other stressful things of “normal” life were absent for the simple monks at Saint Anne’s: no newspapers or magazines, no electronic media filling the brain with noise, advertising and other stupidity. No worry about earning a living or paying the bills, in fact no money transactions at all to be a bother. No concern about what to do next or where to go next. No instrumental music–only the music produced by the human voice. It was a snug. Life in a cocoon. Attractive, but not my life.
I returned to Thessalonica but stayed only a day or two with Good Priest. I returned his camera and the exposed film he gave me but did not linger to see the prints. I hope there were some good ones.
At a bank where I went to change the last of my European money to drachmas, I met some young guest workers from Israel who had just been sent home because of an urgent war scare. I assumed that any war in the area would include Greece and I did not want to be caught in that part of the world . I had just enough money to buy a bus ticket back to Germany where my pilgrimage had started.
I gave my old, very used bicycle to Kalogiros, thanked him for being such a good friend, and said goodbye.
Tomasito, 2009
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