Saturday, June 30, 2012

A Note on What Makes a Good Day a Great Day

Today has been a great, great day. Here is why:


Being called a “mole” for eating through so much dirt so fast. Trust me, it’s a compliment. And on a dig where no comments means you are doing well, a true statement like that can stay with you for days.

When during first break your head supervisor asks if you all want to go to the beach after work (which already is a short day because it’s Saturday) because it’s going to be so hot and she notices that everyone is exhausted. Yay!

Not just the expensive good cookies for break snack, but awesome chocolate wafers and muesli bars.

Being asked to ink in the drawing of a figurine head you spent 3 hours on so that the professor can put it in her book when she publishes next year.

Actually being at the beach and the water is very wavy and the warmest temperature all season. So much fun.

Buying a white chocolate ice cream bar.

Spotting a sea turtle.

Then coming back in time for grill night for dinner: (pita, pork souvlaki, tzatziki, French fries…mmm)

Indulging in an Amstel beer. Or two.

Going to bed knowing that tomorrow is Sunday and you have the entire day off to spend at the beach.


p.s. Sorry for the lack of posting this week. We have been working ourselves to the bone without a break… bedtime every night at 9:45 for all of us. But hopefully I’ll be able to write more in the next couple of days.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Joan of Arc

Yesterday while digging, I spent quite a few hours meditating on a short film I saw last summer. It was at our old theatre, and the film was part of a reel of the old silent black and white film Joan of Arc. This movie is fascinating not only for the cinematography, but also for the story behind the film itself. Apparently the actress who played Joan was a French prostitute, pulled off the street for her tragic, beautiful, emotional face. This was the only film she ever acted in. Also, all reels of the film were thought to be destroyed or lost by the end of WWII by the Germans because of it's controversial subject matter, but a couple of years ago two reels were found in a closet in a mental institute in Austria, and were gently restored. So the reels came to Edmonton, and I was in audience for viewing the part of the film left- the trial and execution of Joan.
My friend and talented musician joined a group of other young talented musicians, and together they came up with a soundtrack that they played LIVE during the screening, in the old style, at the front of the theatre sitting in the corners of the stage.
It was so incredibly beautiful and touching and moving and even frightening. Joan's face was haunting, passive in her misery and commitment to her life's call, and the Church and political officials who were judging her were terrifying.
It's only looking back now, a year later, that I can realize how influential that 45 minutes has been on my life. It has left an indelible print of sadness and greatness and beauty all tied together. I can't stop thinking about it. And it's even more maddening because I know there is no way I can ever see it, with that original score, ever again. No one will. It makes me want to cry.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Mondays

There is nothing more disheartening than being told first thing Monday morning that your two-week old spoil heap (all the dirt, branches, and roof-tile we have excavated, a.k.a. a small man-made mountain) is too close to the Western wall, and has to be moved in a week for the visit of the Director of the Canadian Institute.
It's like re-re-excavating.
Sigh.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

The Election

This morning I awoke at 6:30 a.m. and went outside and started doing laundry. Hand-washing your clothes takes time, forearm muscles, and never seems to get all the dirt out. Then we drove around to visit sites: a tholos tomb, ancient fortifications, and a recovery archaeology site in the middle of Farsala.
Then to the beach- and it was so windy, and hot, and the water was so warm. Swimming by myself with waves breaking over my head, and being tossed up and down, unable to see the shore sometimes, and currents pulling me in all different directions, I soon gave up and lay in the dappled shade under a tree and tried to read my book. 
We ate a good lunch of fresh seafood. 
And listened to night club music with the windows down in the car on the way back to the village. 
I also called my father in England for Father's Day. 
And overlying everything was this tension, this weird forced normalacy as people prepared to vote, and turned on their TV's, and logged on to their computers, and watched them out of the corner of their eyes. 
You can sense the excitement. The normally placid village is gathering in the tavernas and the ouzeries, huddling together for whatever reason- to be on the forefront of any news. It's an ancient feeling. The crowd growing in the square. The town crier swaying from foot to foot. The children running rampant, and parents snapping at them to calm down. Gossip and theories being whispered, ear to ear, neighbour to neighbour. 
And us, outsiders, being sucked in but still regarded with slight suspicion. We will see. We will see. We will see. 

Thursday, June 14, 2012

The Butterfly Plague

All the caterpillars we saw our first week have disappeared and been turned into butterflies and moths. Brown, with soft, fat bodies. Yellow and black. Black and blue and white. Neon yellow, orange, and green. And once, a tiny, perfect miniature, periwinkle and purple one. They are everywhere. The entire mountain seems to shimmer, vibrate.
(Walking to Building 01 in the cool morning, they fly into my path and brush oh so softly against my arms and face, giving a literal meaning to the term "butterfly kiss".)
Listen, I said to Elina and Gino.
Quiet!
And we paused.
And you could hear the moth wings fluttering against the leaves, the ground, the air.
Into spider webs and traps.
Helplessly suicidal.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

A Note on Learning Important New Life Skills

These last few days have been hot, and the students are dropping like flies.
I don't feel well, they whine.
My head hurts.
I'm hooooot.
Well, guess what? Today I learnt how to use an axe. Not a dinky little hatchet. I mean a full-sized, heavy headed AXE. The pick-axe, the hand pick, and the hatchet couldn't cut through our pournari roots, which, incidentally, I found out today are actually part of the OAK family. Like, hardwood, baby.
And Elina and I (out of necessity), were given a quick demonstration by Gino, and were soon doing full body, over-the-head swings, smashing the roots the size of my thigh (one in Gino's trench the size of his torso) into oblivion. It felt so good, and all day chips of wood like shrapnel flew through the air. And nobody chopped their leg off by accident.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A Note on the Joys of Finding a Wall

Today we think we found a wall. Hallejuhah! Imagine pick-axeing through dirt and roots and smashing rooftiles every which way (smashy smashy), and then coming across a huge limestome boulder.
With right angled corners.
And it's flat, and seems to go on forever.
And after you find the end of it, there is another one right beside it.
And if you're really lucky, a third one.
There is an archaeology joke: you find one rock, and it's a nuisance. Two, and it's a wall.
Not very funny, is it? I guess we aren't the most hilarious bunch. Apparently historians think archaeologists are a brutish, lump-headed force, who spend all their time playing in the dirt and drinking in the evenings, confirming what is already known. Anyway, the joke means that we are so eager to find signs that we are uncovering human habitation that we will read as much as we can into very little.
But in the stoa, we have pretty good evidence that yes, this is a wall. Because it runs North to South, and two trenches away from me to the North is Elina, and today she found some big limestone tumble even with mine. Now all we need to do is wait and see what Gino uncovers in the same area when he catches up. It is so exciting also because we are mainly excavating for architectural features (as opposed to finds), so this is a major discovery for us.
On another note: it has been so hot here lately that Elina's plastic on her sunglasses melted and warped. Cheap H&M.

Monday, June 11, 2012

A Note on the Village Drunk

There is an old man who always sits on the porch of the taverna where we eat dinner every night, and he is always drunk. He is known as the village drunk. Tristan, who used to be my T.A. and is now my friend, told me his story.
When he was a young man he was proud and rich, and he married the most beautiful woman in the village. He became a barber, and his profession made him even more prideful. He beat his wife, and eventually she left him.
He started drinking, and soon lost everything.
And that is his sad story.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

A Note on the Similarities Between Scarab Beetles and Boys

They are both loud, annoying, slow, buzz around your head, and won't go away until you smack them with your dustpan.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

A Note On What Goes Through My Mind While Digging

It's early morning. There is a cool breeze and the three of us are bent over, hands to the ground, on the site where the pournari forest used to be, clipping short underbush and gathering it in our zambili's. It feels like gardening- silence, and the liquid trilling of the birds- and honestly, there are no thoughts going through my mind.
It is bliss. Mindless work. Just revelling in being high on the wall on the side of a mountain and no one talking.
When I used to work in Building 10, often I wouldn't think of anything at all either. The rest of the time I would "tune in" to what other people were saying, joining in with the jokes, or sharing my opinion on a whole range of topics. Though B10 is large, sound carries extremely well, and when you ask a question of your trenchmate, everyone can hear. Some of my favourite "shows" to tune in to were whenever Duncan or Lyle talked, or to listen to Laura share some tidbit about the history of the surrounding area.
But out in Building 1 (the stoa has a number now! Yay!) there is not much to say to one another except grunts and pants that make me giggle because they sound remarkably similar to those produced in childbirth.
Today, while we were taking a break in the scant shade provided by the edge of the forest we had created, we overheard someone singing. It was Margriet, the Canadian director of our site, and she was singing opera to herself while working somewhere up the path from us. It was beautiful, and though we did not know the song, it didn't matter because it fit so well with the wind and the birds.

To be honest, sometimes I think about my life. I think about how glad I am to be getting older and wiser, and I think about how glad I am to be young and strong and stretching my muscles. I think about my past, and I think about my future. But mostly I exist in the present moment, and maybe that's why I love digging so much.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

A Note On Archaeology as a Destructive Force

Archaeology is a destructive process. What you turn up while you are digging can never be replaced, and that is why context is so important and needs to be carefully recorded.
Today while clearing 8 metres of pournari, I was thinking to myself what an awful, useless plant it is. Then I came across a small birds nest, right at eye level, nestled in the spiky branches. I peered and saw three small, brown speckled eggs. And I almost started crying, because I had to cut the tree down, and when I carefully extracted the nest and turned the eggs out on to my palm, hoping to find them light, hollow, long dead-
they weren't.
They were warm and heavy and full of potential life.
I moved the nest to another tree on another part of the site, but every bird call seemed frantic and mournful-
where is my nest?
Where are my babies?

Monday, June 4, 2012

A Note on Pournari

Today after the students came by for their tour (sweating profusely and dressed in all manners of ill-advised garb, it being their first time on site and not yet digging), Elina, Gino, and I were moved to a new site that is under the Greek Institution but in the same city as Building 10 (where I've always worked before), in order to start excavating the stoa, which in Ancient Greece referred to a line of shops, grain storages, etc., under a colonnaded and porticoed roof. It is exciting because we have a new supervisor (who we have yet to meet; she is coming to visit tomorrow) and are so far away from Building 10 and all the students that we have our own tools, own cooler of food, own first aid kit, and are expected to excavate the site by ourselves... basically it's a TON of responsibility. And I'm glad to be given it. My best friend here, Linds, was given a T.A. position last minute when Crysta had to fly back home to England because she has the next level of seniority, so both of us are happy with the new weights added to our shoulders.
But this new site- oh my! It is covered by 6 foot plus bushes of hideous pournari, which is this Greek plant sort of like a holly bush/ acorn that chokes the hillsides everywhere. It is so tough and prickly that even the goats refuse to eat it. It is so dense that no living creature can make a home in it's branches. It is so impenetrable to fire that only the outside prickles will burn off. And working with no breeze, covered by flies and horse flies and what I think are possibly sweat bees? and attacking this menace with giant clippers is slow, hot, sweaty, dirty, maddening work. You can't touch the leaves because they will poke through your thick canvas clothes and give you a rash. Dragging branches off site is hard because they catch on everything. I fear I will go crazy due to the buzzing of flies in my face and getting inside my clothes. I'm petrified of coming upon a wasp nest and not being able to run. I HATE pournari, and I guess the best way to deal with my anger is to chop the hell out of it.
I just hope we can can clear the site as quickly as possible, and get a breeze flowing through the area. And I hope for no nightmares tonight either. I honestly feel not the slightest bit of compassion for it. It does not flower. It produces no fruit. Nothing eats it. And the roots go down so deep and need to be pick-axed out (my favourite part!).
What I've been pretending to myself while I've been fighting with it is that I am an intrepid jungle explorer, hacking my way through the Amazon or the heart of Africa. It honestly helps so much.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Notes On Sundays

Today is Sunday, and our one day of rest. We normally try to sleep in as much as possible, but usually wake up around 7, 8 a.m. because we are conditioned to wake up at 5 a.m. the rest of the week. Also, the sun and the heat coming through the curtains makes it uncomfortably hot in your sleeping bag.
Even so, we enjoy Sunday's very, very much. Today for instance 6 of us got in a van and drove 45 minutes to "Garbage Beach" (our nearest, and yet unfortunately dirty, beach) and spent 4 hours on the pebbles trying to even out our horrific tan lines.
The water was so very lovely and warm, and I think I prefer pebbles to sand just because of the lack of mess. I read Sophie's Choice and we drank frappes and ate spanakopita.
The thing I realized today is that how happy I am now has thrown into great relief how unhappy I must have been this past semester. Here's to continuing to be happy!

Saturday, June 2, 2012

The First Week

Today at 5:30 p.m. I was lying on my back on the shrouded front porch of the school, with the sun warm on my legs and the marble cool under my skin. I alternated between staring at the wooden ceiling above, the blue, blue sky, and the low lying green mountains that almost touched both of the latter. I had a handful of pistachio nuts resting on my stomach, and as I cracked them fast n furiously, I thought to myself how happy I was.

The sounds: wind in the giant tree to my left (acorn, maybe?), the birds and dogs doin' their thang, and the goat bells clanging loudly. Every once in a while a whistle or shout or curious trilling noise from the goat herder.
No cars.
No airplanes.
No people slamming doors, or yelling at each other.

Tonight we are celebrating Amber's birthday. And, incidentally, the end of the first week of our 2012 excavation season. It was a hard week- we couldn't go up the mountain twice because of rain, and most of the work we did was remove bucket after bucket (or "zambili" as we call them, stretchy black rubber contraptions made out of old tires) of backfill from two years ago.

Archaeologists always cover up their excavations when they are done a season to protect the site. It makes sense, but then, it's never fun to dig out dirt that you already dug out once before.

But today we got to start excavating. I was with Duncan in the corner of our Hellenistic house, and finding some cool things on what we think is our floor level. Lots of pot shards, roof tile, a door nail, an iron ring... poor Duncan seemed to have gotten the short end of the stick working beside me, since he found nothing, but this line of work is fickle and on Monday he might find a gold coin horde! Sorry, archaeology joke. We never find anything as cool as coin hordes. But I like working beside Duncan; he is chill and laid back and funny.