In this new collection of memories and meditations, author David Roomy explores the union of some of life's great opposites. He considers human nature as possessing a duality: spirit and flesh, refinement and passion-"English" and "Greek" aspects of our own natures. Through prose narrative and poetry, he recalls his experiences in England and Greece and with their respective cultures through the lens of this duality. Part memoir, part collection of verse, Spirit and Flesh, Englishman and Greek reflects on life's nature with beauty and intensity. " Spirit and Flesh, Englishman and Greek is the product of fifty years of contemplation and meditation on the life of flesh and soul. David Roomy, with his Greek and American heritage, has traveled and lived in the world and in his psyche, with the struggle between his Dionysian and Apollonian sides. His beautiful prose and poetry capture the feeling of both the people and landscapes of Greece and rural England. The result is that the opposites are united under one cover in a profoundly moving way. His words reverberate and resonate within the reader's psyche long after the book has been gently placed down" -John Allan, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Counseling Psychology, University of British Columbia and Jungian Analyst, IAAP

Spirit and Flesh, Englishman and Greek

By David Roomy

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 David Roomy
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-2085-0

Chapter One

Greece

It takes many people to tell about Greece.

I will tell you about Greece in the words and experiences of four architects who went there with me.

The essence of these words and stories comes from conversations in Greek restaurants and tavernas under summer skies.

The four architects have different points of view; each went seeking something, and each found something different—not just from one another, but from what they were seeking.

That is Greece.

They were in the airport bus that ferries travellers from planes to terminals. In the evening sun, the Athens terminal shone almost like midday. Aristotle, one of the four American architects, boomed, "But I am Greek!"

Only a few minutes before, he had told his friends about a dream he had had just before coming to Greece. In the dream he said, "I am Greek," and an old man challenged him with "You don't speak Greek, you are not second-generation Greek-American, and your family are no longer Orthodox." In the dream, Aristotle had stood up and, staring the old man down, insisted, "I am Greek!" It was at this point in the retelling on the bus that Aristotle's voice rose.

* * *

But Aristotle had his doubts too. The river of noise outside his hotel window intensified his fears. What if he couldn't sleep? Reading Zorba the Greek in bed at 2:30 a.m. was no comfort. Would his earache get worse? Would he be able to find a doctor in the little town where he was going? It was strange, he thought, to come to Greece looking for his spiritual heritage. What was even stranger, he thought as his misgivings really took hold of him, was that he should conceive of such a search as one that could be synchronistic with the search of some of the monastic communities who were looking to early Greek Christianity as an alternative to a spiritually bereft West. The noise of the people below and the cacophony of unmufflered mopeds reminded him of sounds cascading off canyon walls, a deep and desperate noise that invited a desperate plunge. He couldn't let down his anima, his soul, by giving up on his vision.

When he finally slept, he dreamed of a single tear, the love between his wife and him. Light went into it, and it turned into a diamond, indestructible. His deep sleep, although short, seemed like hours, and during this sleep appeared a powerful spiritual figure from Greece itself, a man in gold robes, a monk, carved out of Greek rock, strong, able to hold his spirituality within his powerful torso. He gave something to Aristotle, as Aristotle later told us. It was a miracle: the figure took up residence in Aristotle's body, and the force of all of its power formed in Aristotle's legs and pelvis.

* * *

Homer was one of those solid Americans whose family had been on the North American continent long enough for him to carry himself without apology—a man whose suits were worn but of the finest quality. Homer knew Jean Paul Sartre and Graham Greene and had been to parties with T.S. Eliot. He was studying Greek, and he knew more about Greece than any of the others, although he had no particular connection with the country. In fact, his nose, with its hazardous bend, identified him as a member of an Ayrshire clan.

He told the others that C.G. Jung had told him that what was special about the Greeks among all Westerners was that they had never had a Reformation. The Greeks were still in touch with all their gods, all their instincts. For them, there was no radical break between the mind and the patterns that had governed and guided their lives through the centuries.

* * *

One evening Homer met a Zorba-like character. He described the experience to us by reading aloud a letter he was sending home:

Last night I had an unbelievable experience—one of those things that happen sometimes. Greece was playing Russia in the European soccer finals, and when Greece won, all the Greeks went crazy mad. You can't imagine the noise—everyone honking their horns, the streets filled, cars driving absolutely wild. I met a couple of black Canadians in my hotel and suggested we go to the Plaka. Our hotel was on a very busy city artery that came down from the stadium, and I got a cab just as the crowd broke loose and was piling out. Yes, the driver would take us to the Plaka, about four kilometres away. Horns were blowing, and he was wild, screaming, "Greece is number one!" Then he said, "You won't be able to get back from the Plaka tonight because all the taxis will go on vacation." Then he said, "I will get you back." It was one of those wild, generous things.

I said, "We don't have much money," but it turned out he charged about the regular price. It was true that no one else was working. On the avenue as we were returning from the Plaka, I noticed that everyone was walking—no taxis.

I have experienced Greece when it was wild, ecstatic!

* * *

The Athenians like to spend time at Syntagma Square, also called Constitution Square. Foreigners gather there, sitting at the small tables with small glasses of water and smaller glasses of ouzo. You can even go there at ten in the morning, and it was about that time when Homer suggested that Phil do just that. The four architects and I had just had a late breakfast, and Phil was nervously twitching his cigarette and asking Homer whether he should take a flight to Crete for the weekend or hire a car, take in Sounion, and return to Athens for another long night in the Plaka. Homer said, "Just go and sit and have a coffee in Syntagma Square."

Phil told us later that no sooner had he sat down than he saw an old friend of his from Detroit who was going to Delphi with his young wife. They asked Phil to come along, and they had a warm time together. Phil received a letter from his friends later, while we were still in Greece. They sent this:

       Conceived at Delphi

    They stole away to Delphi. The couple stayed
    where rocks reach out to touch the air
    and gods would play if gods did anywhere.
    Their bed on the lip of infinity was laid,
    and drunk with sky, they clove to mortal frame.
    In such a fold a civilization could fare
    forth; in such a fold our earthly pair
    conceived a child above the olive plain.
    Lie peaceful, little baby, in mother's fold.
    Much later, when down lies dark upon your face
    and stones are dreamt like those, may you be told—
    should you be led this reliquary to trace—
    they stole away to Delphi. What vapours rolled,
    what tale of destiny in this moment of embrace?

* * *

It was late one evening in the Plaka. The four had found a tavern—a restaurant—toward the end of the Plaka in the direction of the Agora and the modern flea market. In the restaurant were only one Greek family and a few old men. The family, which was poor, to judge by outward appearances, was celebrating a betrothal. Young and old danced, and plates were smashed on the floor. (Perhaps at home they would have such a set for a lifetime.) The three bouzouki players might have looked tired by some standards—at least, they had not achieved their dream to be famous—but there was a glow about their eyes when they saw the four. It was like the thousand-fingered dance that they had mastered in order to accompany an evening during which warm breezes and the sparkle around old men's dancing feet met to still the moment in which bliss might otherwise have gone unheeded.

That special evening in the taverna under the stars, Aristotle lost his reluctance. He had never believed in rebirth, he said. He said he had thought there were many good things about Eastern religions, but he could never appreciate reincarnation. Then one night he had had a dream.

In the dream, a finger went to a map of Greece, and the voice of the dream said, "You were here." It was east of Thessalonika, between Thessalonika and Istanbul, just above the sea on the map. Then he began to see: There was a small house with white interior walls. A soldier of the Roman army was passing on, a Christian. It seemed to be about the fourth century, Aristotle said, and a great light filled the house with a sense of resurrection.

"Oh, everybody thinks he or she was important in some previous life," chimed in Phil, who was starting to reel after several Scotches.

"That may be," Aristotle admitted, "but hear the rest of the dream." The finger went to the other side of the map of Greece, north again, but this time just south of Albania. Again, the voice said, "You were here," pointing to a taverna like the plain ones near the square in Nafplion.

Aristotle saw a man with an ordinary calling in life having a good time. "This must have been about the nineteenth century," he said.

Esther, the one woman with us, wrote of Aristotle's experience:

    Into this man's dying hour he peered.
    A soldier he'd lived, a leader of the legionnaires of Rome,
    turned Christian. Then in whitened chambers spread
    a bright and resurrecting light about his home.

Esther, full of wisdom like the Goddess Sophia, was an attractive woman in her eighties. She embodied the feminine spirit. She came from Shropshire, England, originally. Her English heritage, alive in North America, was more recent than mine. Although she had no Greek heritage as I did, she, too, loved Greece.

However, Aristotle had been the one who got them all to come to Greece. Referring to Aristotle's dream, Phil said, "and you mean it was to chase that rainbow?"

Aristotle said he felt he was risking a lot to pull all that material out in front of his friends. Homer didn't try to defend him but leaned over and placed his broad hand on Aristotle's shoulder.

"You remember Jung's dream?" Esther said. "He dreamed he was on a journey, hiking in a hilly landscape; the sun shone and he saw in all directions. He saw a man, a yogi, meditating in a small chapel."

Phil burst out on his take on all these things. He said, "You mean that life seems to throw up the beautiful dark-eyed woman generation after generation and over the dark course of history and through persecution like that of the Turks here for four centuries? And the woman I saw in the market today is like the one on the vase of the museum at the Agora!" Then he began to chant, "Long live the dark-eyed feminine," as the four hopped and slid down the marble steps leading from the Plaka into the modern town and their hotel.

Esther wrote:

       Greece

    I give my warmth to you—
    I have plenty for my own.
    Rest in my simple ease;
    eat my ripened tomatoes,
    dip bread in salad oil,
    climb the olden steps ,
    rise to the heights, and
    see my mountains beyond.
    Find yourself in all my beauty.

* * *

The next day Aristotle was on the trail of his own dream again. He found the small church dedicated to St. Demetrios, just in the shadow of the Acropolis on the hill known as the Areopagus. Aristotle shared the note from his journal:

At St. Demetrios' Shrine

I was meditating on what it might mean that, in a past life, there had been a great light throughout the house of this being as he passed on, and enlightenment. I was working, working, working on the idea. Then I became aware of the blood in my hands. I almost went to sleep. A woman came in in white raiment. Then I saw the light increase inside.... "The freshness of the body": this phrase occurred to me. It was tied to the Resurrection and my experience of the energy field of another person a yard or so away.

This all took place, Aristotle said later, just in front of one of those dark, ancient icons, black with age and covered with silver.

* * *

A week later in another town near Patras

Aristotle saw Vasillis, a Greek fisherman he had met several days before. Vasillis was sitting alone in a café on the waterfront, where people stroll at night. He was drinking a beer, and he looked dejected.

Aristotle listened to him and watched him. Aristotle said, "I have met many wonderful people in this town, but you have taught me the most."

For a moment, Vasillis looked as if he believed him. Then he lapsed back into his sorrow and asked, "How can people laugh at me when I cry?" He told Aristotle that, in his heart and in his head, he hurt. He cried, "I can't stand it anymore." He said he had lied when, a few days earlier, he had told Aristotle that he, Vasillis, had a strong heart.

Aristotle told Vasillis that he wanted to tell him a story and asked him for an idea. "What idea?" Vasillis asked.

"Any idea," Aristotle said.

Vasillis reached to touch Aristotle's shoulder, a simple gesture that gave Aristotle the idea he needed. He said, "There is a young boy. He always wants to please others with whom he has grown up, but whatever he does, it never seems quite enough. The boy tries harder and harder because now he has an inner critic who will never rest. Then, when he is over forty, he meets a teacher who lets him strive harder and harder, moving about a room doing "process work", before the teacher stops his striving. He and another process teacher pin him down so he cannot move—can't so much as stretch his toes. At last, when he is without hope, he feels a hand on his shoulder. It is enough. It is enough for him just to be himself."

Aristotle had put the story together from fragments of people's lives he had known. It seemed right. Vasillis' demeanour changed. Aristotle said, "I will pray that the spirit protectors look after you."

Vasillis replied, "You have cleansed my heart."

* * *

The next day at breakfast, Homer said he had heard a gunshot and women's screams in the night. Then he asked, "Could the gunshot have involved Vasillis?" Homer recalled the last meeting he had had with him.

He had found Vasillis in the restaurant by the quay where he and Vasillis had come after their first meeting. Vasillis was depressed, unstable, and was crying. He talked about how he had been teased by a few of the men in the town who just wouldn't let up on him. Homer asked him to recall all the photos Homer had taken when Vasillis had shown him the town. That afternoon, Homer had pushed the wrong switch on his camera, and all the film had come tumbling out. As the roll spiralled to the floor, Homer took it up in his hands and played with it as if it were a friendly snake. Vasillis laughed throatily at the debacle.

Esther said that she would help Homer search for Vasillis that afternoon. Someone should be able to tell them, in spite of their limited Greek, what had happened to him. They all agreed to meet that night for supper at the taverna by the sea, where all the local fishermen go.

* * *

If Vasillis had died, Aristotle thought, it would mean that the simple Christian ethic was unworkable. Vasillis had said in one of their early talks, quoting Jesus, if you have two coats, and you meet a man who has none, then give him one. Vasillis had spoken from the heart, and Aristotle had said that it was one of the truest and most touching things that anyone had ever said to him.

Aristotle went back to his hotel and fell asleep in the late morning. That night in the taverna, he told the others that he had dreamed that all the pieces of the visit to Greece had been torn apart and were strewn over the floor. He rose from the dream deeply disturbed, and he decided to work on the dream. He tore a large sheet of paper into eighteen ragged pieces. On these, he wrote what had affected him during his journey to Greece:

breeze bliss the Monk meanings water home contentment Greek music helping joy in meeting fortune hope clean body rest pathways, rocky stairs air Vasillis light

He took the tattered fragments of paper and tossed them about the room. Then he bent down, laboriously gathered each piece from the floor, and began the process of fitting the edges together. Only after a very long period of tedious matching was he able to re-create the whole. He sighed.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Spirit and Flesh, Englishman and Greekby David Roomy Copyright © 2011 by David Roomy. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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