Paros Musings 2017

I’m lying in bed at 3am after getting a solid 3 hours of sleep following 36 hours of transit with a full 15 minutes of snooze time getting to Greece. This world traveler couldn’t sleep on a plane if his life depended on it, and so after the coma-like slumber I fell into at 9:30pm wore off, here I am back on Montreal time.

The balcony doors are open overlooking the sea and the island of Naxos on this full-moon night, and floating directly above the island, in my line of sight from my bed, are the bottom three stars of the Little Dipper. They’re twinkling at me, playing games with my eyes as I try to focus on them, only to have them dance around and have me question the stability of their placement in the universe (as well as my 43+ year vision.) Before I know what’s happening, my index finger has floated up and I’m tracing the line of this constellation, careful not to wake up my husband, who has just fallen asleep, long after I did at 9:30pm. *** TANGENT ALERT*** I find it odd calling him my husband. Male same-sex couples need a new term to refer to each counterpart, me thinks. Boyfriend is ridiculous, as if we’re in the initial stages of dating and are still trying to show each other how much of a keeper we each are. Life Partner doesn’t sit well with me either, as if we’re going yachting on weekends in our topsiders and referring to life as “grand.” I guess husband will have to do for the time being. He’s my husband, and I’m his. I’ll let it lie for now. By the way, this is what the cultural influences of the 70’s and 80’s have resulted in, so maybe I should stop praying for a linguistic revolution and just own my fucking happiness. #thingsnogaymantalksabout ***TANGENT ENDED***

Back to the Little Dipper (no euphemism insinuated.) I’m so happy to be back here in Paros, my soul-grounding, energy-recharging home, that I could cry. And observing the ability to shift that vibration in that way, through tears, has me thinking. There is a cultural belief that real men don’t cry. That no matter what happens, tears are not an option for men. To anyone who actually believes that, I invite you to look at who taught you that, and why.

I cry when grief overwhelms me, when happiness is so palpable that my body vibrates with it, when I’m so afraid that the tension has to shift somehow, when I’m so emotionally touched by someone or a situation that I can feel their emotional narrative, when I laugh so hard that I’m either going to cry or have a heart attack. I believe that boys who are taught not to cry are essentially being told to choose a heart attack over tears, to choose a lifetime of internalized anguish and tension, to opt for physical pain that ends up armouring the body into a hard shell of defence mechanisms, and that, ultimately, might result in a heart attack, or some other life-ending medical trauma.

I’ll choose the tears, thanks. And you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I know that real men cry. Because this one does, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’ll go back now to my first night back here in Greece, where the roosters didn’t get the memo that crowing is supposed to happen at sunrise, not every time a cricket rubs its legs together, and where the packs of barking dogs have me wondering if they ever sleep. These sounds are new again to me, as they are every time I return to this homeland of mine. In a few nights’ time, I won’t even clock them, but for now, I do. And I’m so grateful I could cry.