Prologue

"WHAT'S that you're humming?" The faintly familiar tune floats my way on a balmy, Aegean breeze that wafts across Hydra island while lively waves are whipped into whitecaps below.

"Just a little song," Spiros tells me.

He has finished his meal at the seaside taverna while I continue to eat: fresh, tangy feta; chewy, grilled octupus and some meaty Kalamatas. We sip anise-flavored, iced ouzo--quintessential Greek concoction--that sharpens the appetite, sweetens the mind.

"Which one?"

"I don't know yet; it just started to come to me."

Spiros raises his glass, clinks it gently against mine, feeds me an olive, picks up my hand and kisses my fingertips.

"I'll call the song 'Kathleen'," he says. "It will be about the amazing woman who found me." He kisses me again, this time on my chapped lips.

Now, more than nine years later, whenever I hear the song--on a CD, when Spiros performs it live or over the radio--it always brings back that memorable spring in the Saronic: Us together--love-besotted, sun-bedazzled--on that rocky, little island during the first, fresh rapturous hours of our erotic odyssey. Lovemaking and feasting our only two activities in those early, lust-drunk, insatiable days.

The large, lovely secluded house near the top of the island, close to Mt. Eros--Hydra's highest point--that was surrounded by a glorious profusion of wildflowers. And the big upstairs bedroom, with windows on three sides and fabulous views of the sea, where we spent hours and hours making love; exploring each other's naked contours and private mysteries.

So, it's not surprising this story begins in a place where the ancients were firm adherents of Aphrodite's authority and well understood the importance of love and the role played by her son--some say her lover--Eros, whose skill with his amorous arrows add to the  complicating factors of enduring passion and her girlfriends, the Graces: Gaiety, Revelry and Radiance whom Sappho described as "pink-ankled" and "rosy-armed perfection."

Ardent followers of the love goddess formed numerous and vast cults devoted to a religion that decreed love its organizing principle, fornication a sacred act and deemed divine prostitutes--literally, holy whores--the high priestessess of its sacred hierarchy. Aphrodite's gospel was spread through various forms of lovemaking from ecclesiastic prostitution to sexual rites.

And how fitting that our erotic odyssey begins in the land where the classic play, "Lysistrata," by Aristophanes, is all about the power of sexual love and how it can truly transform: to stop war, promote peace, and bring people together and compel them to completely--willingly--change their lives for one another. Only love does that.

For me it's utterly amazing Spiros and I even found each other since neither of us was looking for love. And even if we'd been on the lookout, it's not like love is so easy to recognize; often it's overlooked altogether or never located at all.

As a writer-at-large living in New York City - capital of cynicism - when it came to love I considered myself more healthy skeptic rather than embittered discontent. But, still, I'd lived in my beloved Manhattan far too long for its hard edges not to have rubbed off; in the process making me one of the difficult-to-impress along with the multitude of others in this smirking city full of naysayers, doubters and those who don't believe that love even exists.

Being relatively new to the singular state, after nearly eighteen years in a living-together relationship, I was happy to be on my own. Being child-free meant I could completely indulge in my nocturnal writerly habits, wanderlust ways and slutty interludes to my heart's content.

And I liked to travel solo; to go where I wanted, when I wanted, for as long as I wanted. All of which made it easier for me to get out of New York when I needed to get away from its always alluring but also exasperating clutches.

That spring I'd hoped for solace and solitude in Hellas. I took little notice of this comment, in my Lonely Planet Greece, about the myth-shrouded, island-nation:

"...yet another phenomenon which even people cynical about anything hinting of the esoteric comment upon. It takes the form of inexplicable happenings, coincidences or fortuitous occurrences. Perhaps these serendipitous occurrences can be explained as the work of the gods of ancient Greece who, some claim, had not entirely relinquished their power and to prove it occasionally come down to earth to intervene in the lives of mortals."

The song brings back for me that April in 1997--the same time the Hale-Bopp comet was making its historic appearance; a long-awaited, highly-anticipated, cosmically significant event, visible to the naked eye, that people all around the world, including me, wanted to witness.

Like Spiros's song, this book grew out of all that's happened as we've gone along; an accretion of layers, each one filled with multitudes of impressions and collective knowledge that's been growing steadily over the years, to form the basis of my story--my song that's been evolving and expanding throughout the years, growing richer over time, same as our love.

Hellas becomes my adopted country with its halo of heavenly light; devotion to life-affirmation; celebration of sun and sea. A place I become attached to and learn so much about from Spiros who plies me with his native language, customs and cuisine and makes a new woman out of me.

So, how appropriate our life-altering story starts in Greece--a place steeped in the myths of transformation--the birthplace of Proteus, a water god, reputed son of Poseidon, who had the power to change his shape at will; and Morpheus the God of Dreams, skilled in assuming the form of any and every human being.

And I wonder: where do I begin to tell this story? For the ancient Greeks it always begins at the very beginning--when a person is born their entire existence is preordained by the Fates--Morae--three goddesses of destiny, sometimes referred to as the Weird Sisters, who, between themselves, determine the course of a person's life. There is Clotho, the spinner, spinning the living thread that starts with one's first breath. Lakisis, disposer of lots, who decides how long a life will last; and the ever-looming Atropos, who can never be turned away, with her deadly shears that cut the thread of life with a decisive snip at the end.

Maybe the ancients aren't so far off. In Why We Love, the anthropologist Helen Fisher writes that humans are essentially programmed, beginning early in their development, to fall in love with a certain kind of individual. Dr. Fisher describes this innate agenda she calls a "love map" as directing us toward the love objects we seemingly choose freely but that are, in biological fact, all mapped out for us. So much for personal volition.

When I tell an artist friend I'm travelling to Greece for the first time he says, "You're going to love it, it's so...life-affirming." He goes on to talk about the exquisite light, the landscape, sun and sea. Later, I come to learn that all those things do indeed help to make Greece so magical. The natural world exerts a powerful effect on the individual psyche--an intangible yet unmistakable attitude adjustment that takes place in those who come into contact with Hellas and its inhabitants, who are so exemplary at working to live with the emphasis being to enjoy the good things in life; simple pleasures made even more so when carried out in a radiant landscape.

A story that illustrates this philosophy  - and highlights the contrasting view of many Americans, especially my Manhattan, city of overachievers that's clogged with Type A's - is about a man who visits Greece for the first time.

While walking along the beach one fine day the man comes upon a boy half-dozing in the sun, lazily fishing with a stick and piece of long string. He stops to chat with the boy and admires the three fish he's already caught. He congratulates him, says what a fine fisherman he is and wishes him to catch many more fish. "Oh no, sir. Just one more - enough for my family," says the boy.

"But listen here," the man gently remonstrates. "you could catch lots of fish every day and then sell the rest to people and make money."

"Why would I do that?" the boy asks. "I catch the fish for my family to eat."

"But just think," says the man, "with all that money you could buy a boat so you could catch even more fish and make even more money. Why, after awhile, you would be able to buy a fleet of boats! And by then you would have people working for you and then you'd be making so much money you wouldn't know what to do with it."

The boy looks puzzled.

"The point is," says the man, "that in time you could be a very rich man with many employees who will do all the work. You'll be able to go away on vacations to beautiful places like this and just kick back, relax and maybe do a little fishing -"

"But sir," interrupts the boy, "can't you see? That's what I'm doing right now!"

Was I destined all along to make a trip to Greece and meet the man of my dreams? Was it just a coincidence? Or was it biological determinism? My "love map" guiding me? Somehow, who knows exactly how, because of a million different variables two people happened to find each other and fall in love at first sight. And whether it was the result of a heavenly comet, ancient goddesses, destiny or free will, our love odyssey began with giant leaps of faith, large amounts of courage and only our hearts for guidance.

For me, it all starts one bitterly cold night in February, when my friend Joan threw her annual party for her fellow Aquarians and the people in their lives. That year it was at a jazz place, the Zinc Bar, in lower Manhattan where things were especially festive since 1997 marked the actual Age of Aquarius--decades after the 5th Dimension's hit song appeared. I remember there was lots of talk by those of the astrological bent about the cosmic shifts that were taking place.

My friend, Christina, and I, both Aries, stood at the bar chatting and I told her about my planned trip to Greece.

"I used to live in Greece," Christina said.

This was something she'd never mentioned before. She told me the story of her one-year stint there and then urged me to call an old friend of hers when I got to Athens. But I told her the city was merely a pit stop on the way to my ultimate destination: a secluded house on a beautiful island. I'd only be spending one night in Athens--a few hours, really--and then I was out of there. There wouldn't be any time for sightseeing or socializing.

"Well, take her number, just in case," Christina said. "Maybe you two can have dinner together or something. Then you can have some company so you don't have to eat alone." This last was delivered in her TV-producer tone that's hard to argue with and so I didn't even try. Nor did I ever suspect that this small exchange would have such profound implications.

Since the beginning, we've been accompanied by Spiros's song that still conjures up, in vivid recall, that marvelous meal we were eating, all the scrumptious dishes we shared when I heard the first notes of his melody with my name.

The way Spiros's tune keeps playing, our union keeps growing - both are continuous works-in-progress. An ongoing song, a never-ending story; both are celebrations of Aphrodite's everlasting powers of love.

© Copyright 2006 by Kathleen Cromwell. All rights reserved.