I have had the best sleep of my life the past two nights ― at a Phoenix hotel and here in Athens ― featuring beautiful, uncomplicated dreams, the kind of stuff fit for Artemidorus, a professional diviner who trekked Greece in the 300s A.D. jotting down what people told him about their unconscious lives. Many Greeks still keep dream books, called Oneirokrites.
This is my street, Ekateou, in a neighborhood called Neos Kosmos (New World). It is quiet and safe, a 20-minute walk from the city center.
The video I posted last night ended with a view of the Acropolis, which came into clearer focus after sunrise today.
My view very much reminds me of the two weeks I spent on a rooftop in Beirut. I will get to know the routines of 75 neighbors very well. And, of course, they will benignly be spying on me.
Reminded by experience for the zillionth time that Google navigation is garbage, my first order of business was to learn how to find Monastiraki Square by memory. I won't know if I succeeded until Friday, but here is how the lively area, and the Tsidarakis Mosque, looked today.
Pardon me, but I've been reading some Homer.
There are some 6,000 cops on the streets tonight, hoping to forestall violence on the anniversary of the 1973 student revolt. Three metro stations have been shut down. Predictably, the ever-cautious U.S. Embassy has advised me to ”keep a low profile,” as if I would be targeted for the crimes of Kissinger a half-century ago. The embassy's staff got to go home early, naturally.
So, as dusk settled I kept a low profile in Kynosargos Park near my apartment, where I met a spaniel named Rocky. His owner said she rescued him from hunters who saw no need for a pup afraid of gunfire. I watched her feed the park's birds and cats.
Rocky has no problem with the cats. He scans the trees for birds. He and the cats are on the same team.
"I'll see you tomorrow," I say, getting up to leave.
"I am here every afternoon," she replied.
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