Katharos

We had reached the high point. At a summit with the reddish ruins of an ancient church (which had been a fortress before that) surrounding us, the “wine colored” sea fanned out below, like a freshly made bed with blue linens in a windy room, we stood next to a black iron fence at the edge that had dozens of love locks attached to it. I turned around in the sunlight; my brother had his hands in his pockets. We sat down on some stone steps to continue our conversation.

What is most important to you?

This. …

That’s similar to what’s important to me. …

How to be fearless? How to lead others into fearlessness? What is the sustainable basis of true friendship?

We read the inscriptions on the locks –mostly marriages, we presumed– and laughed at some of them. I found a handwritten note on a folded piece of paper in a transparent pouch tied to the bars. I opened it, read it aloud, and took it with me.

Gradually we walked back down the big zig zag stairway to Amoudi pier. I had thirst. Before we reached the rental car we saw a group of people around a long table with some food stacked in containers. A weathered man waved us over and offered my brother, Brandon, and me to share some white wine in plastic cups. We gladly joined.

There, sitting at the table, Brandon eating a bowl of local mac & cheese we met the newlyweds, Eddie and Hitome (from Athens and Japan, respectively). Mostly, though, we just continued our intense family conversation, now running back to recollections of high school in Texas. Another older man, with spectacles, at the end of table closest to the water, said he’d been to Houston (where we were talking about), for his wife’s health, or cancer as the case may have been. We did not ask how she was doing right then. I had a feeling she might have died, and I wished I could offer consolation, but I couldn’t, and I couldn’t be sure either. We had been in Houston’s hospitals, too. We had known death.

Last year at this time I spent hours by myself in my room. I read, I wrote. I tried to meditate. I lit candles and drew tarot cards. I tried to create. I looked at all the postcards I had made years ago. I read my mother’s journals. I listened for signs. I sat on the balcony and listened to birds and looked for lizards.

On my birthday last year, 29, I went outside to lead suryanamaskar, salutations to the sun, in the backyard facing the manmade lake of the golf course. My brothers and grandmother joined with me to practice. After, while we were all lying down on the lawn following savasana, I read aloud to them from my book of quotes collected since Mom died. It was a very peaceful time, calm and quiet, achingly familiar even though I’d never done anything like that for any birthday before.

In fact, the year before that, 28, where was I? Taking lines in the afternoon with my housemate, Dennis, going to a surprise secret underground electronic music concert in a squat at night in Europe… Dancing, drinking champagne at midnight, having fun, fucking around in the morning with friends who would become lovers soon and exfriends later.

This year. In a day or two after our aperitif at the pier, my brother would have to leave the island he had brought me to, but I would surely stay, perhaps forever, I genuinely mused, at least for my 30th birthday the next week. I wound up alone. I wound up spending– my 28th birthday with frineds, my 29th with family, and– my 30th birthday all alone. It seemed appropriate. I walked to the beach, which remained completely deserted for heavenly hours. I sat on a cliff and listened to birds. I lay down in savasana on a boulder in the sea and listened to waves. I walked along the volcanic rocks and came to a tide pool magically pink, if you believe me, where I bathed and baptized myself (into adulthood?) 3 times. I listened to my mother.

Every year around the time between my birthday and the new year I try to do some deliberate reflection upon what happened: what I learned, how I grew, what I’m grateful for, how what I want has changed. I like to engage these subjects ceremonially, if possible. In my room in Texas I always light the nine candles of virtuous gifts I was given– helped to choose with Mom– at my coming of age rite of passage, when I was 13. They give me a peaceful feeling and my private space a warm glow.

Imagine my surprise to arrive at the home of Hitome and Eddie this New Years Eve. I had been told by friends that we were going– I was invited, too– to have dinner at the brother and sister-in-law of another friend. I had no idea who they would turn out to be nor that I would have already met them– with my own brother, no less! But my wondrous delight was not to end there. Just before midnight in the midst of one of the island’s raring windy winter storms, the power went out in the newlyweds’ modest house. Not to worry, not to worry. Please, Eddie asked us, his guests, to light and distribute from there– and he pointed to a corner I only just then noticed in the living room, stacked, overflowing with various forms and moulds and sizes and shapes and colors and scents of candles– all the candles throughout the space of their home. So we did.

And made magic: by the time 2015 struck, I found myself in what I could only perceive as a universe parallel to my childhood bedroom filled with candlelight and solitude — a home of strangers and new friends and plenty of shared radiance.