The daughter of Zeus and Metis

The daughter of Zeus and Métis, Athena is heralded as the Goddess of Wisdom and is the particular patron god of Athens. Athenians at one time were held captive by the Minoans of Crete in which fourteen virgin teens were sent to their death at the hands of the Minotaur in the inescapable darkness of the Labyrinth. That is, until Theseus killed the Minotaur. Returning triumphant however, Theseus forgot to have his sail changed from black to white and so his father, King Aegius, threw himself from the topmost cliff into the frothing white ocean giving forever his name to that sea. The Acropolis and its many monuments were constructed over four centuries before Christ taught logos in Galilee. Socrates, Aristotle, Anaxagoras, Stoics and Platonists discoursed about the role of virtue and civic duty in a functioning representative democracy two millennia before Jefferson and company created American democracy. (Later to be recreated into an oligarchy of powerful business conglomerates faintly presented with the façade of a free and democratic country). When the Parthenon was destroyed in the 17th century, our nation’s oldest landmarks were just being built or settled. Riding a tramway built by a Ferrari engineer zooming through the streets of industrial and modern Athens, enjoying the flooding cool breeze of the God Freon, watching as mobile phones ring with music tones of hip hop or American rock and the Athenians pulling out MP3 headphones to answer curtly “Ne?” I have been stopped by a nearby hairstylist, Andreas, who wants to dye and style my hair as part of a professional Vidal Sassoon campaign. I have been able to sit in the shadows of the acropolis and connect to high-speed internet. Athens is a modern city and one where the amenities and lifestyles of New York City could be found, albeit with a much richer, Mediterranean flavor. Before browsing through the weekend open air farmers market I walk through the McDonald’s waiting area causing me pause to contemplate whether the juicy, red tomatoes I got in the market and have been eating like candy since, are the same that this globalized mega-giant uses (more likely their tomatoes are packaged and frozen tomatoes from the genetic bred and chemical choked fields of The American Heartland). The modern Metro shoots commuters or tourists or lost adventuring college students quickly through stone veins to the many heads and limbs of Athens. Adorning the walls of the Metro are the ancient remains uncovered during the tunnels’ construction. In vogue, trendy nightclubs the floors are glass portals, allowing dancing youths to peer at ancient ruins many meters below; and so, into their cities rich history hundreds of generations past. Contrast has the beauty of achieving many things; the contrast of old and new brings clarity about what Athens is to Athenians, the real Athens. Athens cannot be new and modern; it cannot be the city of Greek Antiquity either. For good or worse Athens is not an amalgamation of old and new, it is both. A dictum which is familiar to my ears but whose lesson is different every day: things are never one or the other, never black or white. It isn’t grey either; life shows that we live in a precarious state of dualism, suspended between what we know and recognize about the world and ourselves, and all of the things we might want to deny or forget. We are neither one nor the other, as humans we embody extremes. A lesson in human dualism engrained in my mind by the sleek steel buildings built over the glistening white marble of ancient Athens. Through the mists of time via millennia of philosophers the words of an ancient Athenian (Aristotle explains virtue as living a life with an appropriate balance between those extremes) explains how I might take to heart that lesson. What then, is the balance between Greek gyro souvlaki and Greek wine? I'm not sure yet, but plenty of hands on experimentation will likely lead to a solution.