“Trashing The Idyllic”

VazamBam

by Vassilis Zambaras

“Idyll”

Coming upon

That cane-wielding halting
White-haired farmer’s wife,

We cannot help
But hear

Insistent yelping and wonder where
Until we spot that bag

She’s clutching, bursting
With new-born pups.

Grandma’s out searching

For some out-of-the-way spot
Where she can put that cane

To better use, thrash the whole
Bothersome lot and just

Leave the trash there
To rot.

MELIGALAS, Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—5/24/10—Trash, you say? Coming right up. First, let me see what’s left over.

OK. Apart from the larger illegal dump sites (2,924 in 2004, down to about 300 in 2010) which will cost the Greek government 7.5 million Euros a day in EU fines if they are not closed or made legal by following strict guidelines before September, there are thousands of smaller ones literally scattered across the Greek countryside where people like Grandma can go to get rid of their bothersome trash. As a matter of fact, one cannot go anywhere in this country which is blessed with so much natural beauty without coming face-to-face with this stinking, ugly, odious, filthy reality: Too many Greeks are stupid, irresponsible assholes who just don’t give a shit about their environment—a statement which anyone who has been to Greece can sadly verify.

That’s right—these same Greeks, whose illustrious ancestors used to  eat, drink and merrily philosophize about the beautiful, haul whatever worthless crap they have amassed over the years, including but not limited to plastic/upholstered chairs, toilets with or sans seats, bathroom/kitchen sinks, faucets, pipes, old radiators, stoves, sofas, electrical appliances, books, desks, toys, bicycles, closets, clothes from persons recently deceased or still alive, shit-smeared diapers stuffed into plastic bags, sanitary(!) napkins, mattresses, sheets, blankets, pillows, hot water heaters, radiators, kitchen utensils, etc. ad nauseam to the nearest river bank and dump it.

If they just happen to be in their cars approaching a bridge, they slow down long enough to heave over the side the plastic sacks full of garbage that just happen to be along for the ride. Their logic in both cases is impeccable: When God decrees the rivers shall once again be swollen with winter rains, everything shall be swept out to sea again! And again the next year and the next and the next and so on ad infinitum—a novel conception of recycling based on the annual cycle of the seasons.

But what if there are no rivers or streams nearby? No problem. The nearest cliff works fine, as does any bridge over a yawning abyss. I remember driving last year from Dimitsana to Zatouna in the prefecture of Arcadia to see one of the places the infamous, detestable Greek junta of 1967-74 had exiled Mikis Theodorakis and where there is now a museum in his honor. We stopped for a rest just past a bridge to get a great view of Dimitsana and were surprised to find that someone had kindly provided us with a place where all four of us could sit down.

One’s imagination is boggled by this image: Can you picture a band (oh, well—at least three) of wily Greeks lugging this onto a pickup truck in the dead of night and giving it the old heave-ho? And then having this abomination land upright 15 meters below? Demented landscape art in its most perverse form.

~~~

Bucolic bicycling’s my game and, for a number of years, I’ve been waking up with “rosy-fingered dawn” (see my “Heavenly Ablutions Of The Third Kind”) and traveling the dirt roads along the banks of the rivers and streams coursing through Northern Messenias, primarily because these roads are the few places where maniacal Greeks don’t drive that lethal appendage of their personalities known as cars; the only traffic is the occasional tractor and pickup truck driven by farmers on their way to their fields or farms, flocks of sheep, low-flying blackbirds, high-flying falcons, and perhaps a fox or two looking for a stray chicken for breakfast.

It’s 6.30 a.m., and here I am going north on the narrow river road leading from the bridge over the Mavrozoumena River and passing rows and rows of low-hanging bamboo interspersed with Judas trees and towering eucalyptus, plane trees and willows, wild fig trees, flowering dogwood, an occasional wild pomegranate tree with its flaming red flowers, wild white rose brambles, honeysuckle, fennel, sage, gorse, chamomile, wild artichokes and thistles, white and yellow daisies, red poppies, mulberry trees, quince with its pear-shaped fruit, fields of corn, olive groves, vineyards. Dazed by all this beauty, I nevertheless come to my senses when I see something that wasn’t there the day before—

O Great Father Zeus, get your ass down here, transmogrify Grandma into an avenging gargantuan Cyclops, stuff her bag full of Lilliputian Greek curs and tell her to start thrashing the lot!

NB:  Lest my readers think I’m being unfair to the Greek people, three days after this picture was taken, I came across another similar dumpsite about 300m north of this one. If whoever it is keeps trashing at this rate, the whole riverbank road will soon be a garbage dump requiring a deluge of biblical proportions to wipe it clean.

Noah Take Two, anyone?