The Sequel: Tempelhof and Delphi

The Tempelhof vote results were released late last evening, and "Nay" triumphed; ca. 60.2 % of those who voted chose "Yea," but the necessary quota of "Yea" votes, which would have had to represent 25% of the 2.4 million eligible voters, was not reached. How fairly the referendum was set up is debatable (well, not much point in debate; it was unfair), but on the whole I admit that I am fast settling into my usual political apathy again. I didn't really understand anyway, why we voters would have a chance to determine the future of however many square kilometers the airport covers, whereas truly serious issues like sending our fellow citizens to be killed and to perform dubious activities in Afghanistan, in our name, are out of our hands entirely. There no one in the government cares for our opinion, except the opposition parties who, as in everything else, are partly honestly opposed and partly want to make political capital out of it. (Or so I believe.)

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As for the Delphi story, which I have temporarily rechristened Omphalos so that the title is more specific, it is not getting along very well. For one thing, I can't understand a heroine who would abscond with a car even though the woman to whom it was intended to be delivered probably needs it herself, or might at least be extremely puzzled if she doesn't get it. But I have already described the route from Athens to Delphi as best I could, relying only on Google Maps; fortunately the hilly areas there are evidently very high, so I see the changes in altitude wonderfully well (unlike in Northumberland, but more about that later). The description is not too brilliant -- probably very clichéd -- but here's a sample:

Barely ten minutes had passed when I was leaving the bright sea of white apartment buildings, and the roar, and the congestion behind me, and was free to follow my own trains of thought as I sped away on the westward stretch of the Leoforos Athinon. The Mediterranean, which I had seen from many Grecian shores at many times of the day, now spread sparklingly blue before me, and the breezes fled past the windshield with an accelerating rush that made me feel nearly as if I were soaring. I turned onto the Ethniki Odos Athinon-Korinthou confidently, not even needing to consult the map, and rounded the bay. The island of Salaminos spread out to the west, the sharp curve of the white sands beside the road was dotted with people, the piers that jutted out from the northern shore below Eleusina were bristling with white boats, and stately yachts of the jet-setting crowd and magnates lay in the water in a bright constellation. Here, again, was the bustle that I knew from the city, translated into the marine idiom.

But the research is going swimmingly. I've pored over photos of the ruins of ancient Delphi for hours and tried to recapture the scenes in word-pictures for my notes. Besides, Goldfinger has come on television twice; it turns out that I was actually thinking of that film, in particular the scenes where James Bond is curving around the Swiss mountainside near Geneva in his dashing Aston Martin. The film was released in 1964, too, and I found myself looking very closely at the clothing, cars, interior design (in the Miami hotel and the airplane), the Swiss gas station, etc. (I also realized what a good film it is; I especially liked the scene in Fort Knox where, amid the shoot-out between the soldiers of Goldfinger and of the US Army, Bond is hovering perspiringly over the bomb whose timer is ticking down to the crucial seconds, trying to stop the dials and wheels, finally resolving to pull out a neat bundle of cables -- then a grey-suited government man comes over, reaches in calmly, and turns the device off with the airy flick of a switch.)

This morning I was lucky again. In preparation for university, based on the hope that I'll be accepted this year, I've been reviewing my Ancient Greek. But I had discontinued my daily sessions for a day or three when, today, I decided to finish Lesson VII in An Introduction to Greek (Henry Lamar Crosby and John Nevin Schaeffer, Allyn and Bacon, 1966). Immediately I realized that there were black-and-white photos of Delphi in it, excellently detailed and taken at roughly the time when Mary Stewart wrote her book. So far I've noticed that the grassy bank above the stadium, which is wooded with firs now, was quite bare then -- a small detail but perhaps useful -- and that there's a "plunging pool" near the gymnasium.

Anyway, even if I never write another word of the story, my toils have been most rewarding. For example, the aesthetics of the site at Delphi have really grown on me: the chalky stone of the higher crags with the splashes of pastel pink and the gnarled growth of olive-tinted scrub, the dark spires of cypress(?) reminiscent of an Italian Renaissance painting, the dusky firs, the aisles running down the seats of the greyish theatre, the warm beige pillars on the Temple of Apollo, the thin paths threading along the slopes below, the flat-bottomed valley winding through the dark green mountain spurs, and the cool pale blue where the sea creeps in at Itea. I haven't seen any purple mountains on the photos yet, though. (c:

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Yesterday I also took another whack at neglected writing projects. For one thing, I added some paragraphs to "Castle Besieged" (a medieval tale, possibly ca. Wars of the Roses, that I am writing for my own amusement) and "Newsbreak" (set in a newspaper office in present-day New York). Besides, I had another Google Maps session. First up was the stretch between London and Gloucestershire, for my tale set in the time of Oliver Cromwell's reign and entitled "The Fountain in the Labyrinth." But probably the land has changed its character greatly since the 17th century; now it is only little fields fringed with forest, whereas I am sure it was once nearly all forest. At least I have ground-level knowledge of how portions of Oxfordshire might have looked (i.e. fresh and green and lovely) thanks to two train rides between London-Paddington and Oxford.

Anyway, passing on to Northumberland, I zoomed right in on Hadrian's Wall, then scrolled back and forth looking for a house on a hill that is near the wall, but had no luck. There were barnyards, grey and square and apparently modern, and a castle; only one knot of buildings could have been a village (Porsbury, in my tale) at the bottom of a hill with a mansion on its top, and that mansion improved on its imaginary counterpart by being nestled in a clump of forest. It appeared to be too far away from Hadrian's Wall, however, though it strikes me now that tinkering with distances is quite permissible under artistic license. As I mentioned earlier, I couldn't see the hills properly because the map lacked relief, but one large, knobbly patch of bare brown was almost certainly a mountain. In any case, it was fun scrolling to and fro to see the dark squiggle where a stream once ran, terraces that may be left over from Neolithic times, crop circles, the odd spirals and ridges and curves of the furrowed fields, and the white specks that were presumably sheep.

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As I was thinking of a title for this blog post, a line of Keats's popped into my head, which I promptly googled, to find his poem "Fancy." It is long, but the first lines seem the perfect note on which to end:

EVER let the fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let wingèd Fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind's cage-door,
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.