This morning I cycled to the southwest of the city, to attend a colleague's father's memorial service at a Greek Orthodox church. Passing through the almost deserted streets, alternately asphalt and cobblestone and a shadowy green footpath, I finally reached a cobbled street sheltered by sunlit plane trees, that was alive with the murmur of voices and children's shrieks. A 19th century brick building with pointed façade and a round decoration looked the likeliest for the church, and a cluster of people speaking German and Greek were sitting there chatting happily. Then I spotted the colleague speaking with her friend at the sidewalk further down.
After their cigarette break was over, we entered not the old brick building but a modern, squared building. Congregants (of all ages: children, teenagers, middle-aged, elderly; in a wheelchair or on their own two feet; a few wearing summery dresses) were overspilling into the lobby, in two queues. We passed through them to enter the church room itself.
Three officiants in robes were standing on a Persian carpet in front of the entrance to an ornate rear room, in the centre of a whitewashed atrium that made me think of stone buildings on a genuine Greek seaside cliff, the sun pouring in and illumining the aisles at the left and right. Nicely carved dark blond chairs were placed singly in rows in the centre — no long pews with kneeling benches, which I felt was a great improvement on the Catholic and Protestant churches I've frequented — and a line of pew chairs that just seated one person was tucked along the wall on each side. Beneath the pillars at one side of the room, the colleague, her friend, and I joined the loose assembly of congregants who were standing.
The sermon was already pronounced — the colleague said it had been about the fate of Berlin to suffer shortages of fuel and food during the winter. The communion had quickly wrapped up. And now there were the services to commemorate the dead, followed by community announcements.
It turned out that we'd come in late. The bearded priest at the microphone (a gilt chandelier encircling the air in front of him, and a delicate inlaid wood table standing nearby) was just wrapping it up in Greek where I caught a few words. He mentioned the name of the colleague's father, as well as one or two others.
People generally crossed themselves, touching the knuckles of one hand to the air near their foreheads, then down, then gesturing either left to right or right to left (I don't remember). Although following the colleague's lead I didn't imitate the gesture, I felt quite at home and wouldn't have minded doing so. Then there was a song that the congregation knew, which I couldn't sing along with because I didn't know it; aside from medical reasons I now had another reason to feel wise for wearing an FPP2 mask (anonymity!). Besides people queued up in the centre of the church to receive bread that had been blessed from the hands of the priest.
As the service ended and the worshippers were saying goodbye to the priest at the top of the centre aisle, my colleague picked up her bowl of koliva: a mixture of plump wheat grains that have been soaked in water a long time, flour, raisins, cinnamon, halved walnuts, pomegranate seeds, and sugar. (Also parsley, but she'd forgotten it when she was preparing it the night before. And she'd set out a cross in almonds on the surface.) With its roots in ancient Greek tradition, it is served at any memorial church service. During the service itself, it was standing near the priest on a prominent table.
She led us out into the beautifully gloomily-lit lobby. There was a dark wood refreshments table where two ladies presided at the rear entrance to the courtyard; a gold-lit staircase that promisingly led up to another part of the building; then a wooden counter that also looked a bit like part of a beautiful Wild West hotel, where a man was selling long golden beeswax tapers in different thicknesses. Right at the doorway through which people could leave the church in front, the colleague served the koliva in paper cups to a line of people. Another worshipper who was marking the death of a relative offered me a plastic cup of koliva, made this time with granulated sugar instead of powdered sugar, and with raisins chopped instead of whole. And an American internet friend of the colleague joined us.
After the koliva was distributed and we left the church, the colleague invited us to eat with her at a café, where another of her friends joined to turn us into a group of four. We had an enjoyable conversation at little blond wood varnished tables over plates of crusty brown bread, leafy greens, bacon, eggs, avocado; cups of coffee; and glasses of water. Instead of savoury food I had a perfectly executed chocolate cake with a thin layer of white frosting, a raspberry coulis that was very raspberry-tasting and not too sweet, and a raspberry on top for garnish. The plane trees at the café — which I thought weren't above fifty years old, but already tall and mighty — dropped seeds on the table, and an insect made its way onto my arm. A little black poodle — my colleague adores little dogs — strolled by, stopping short when it saw another dog.
It feels a little intrusive to describe the topics we discussed; but long story short I felt that this whole outing was an excellent way to spend a Sunday.
In the evening, the last deep yellow sunlight resting on the tops of buildings and trees, I cycled off to allotment gardens to admire the pink sweet peas, hollyhocks, late midsummer roses, dusky Oregon grapes, and intense purple butterfly bush blossom spires; and note that the traditional grapes that drape along a few of the fences are still green and totally unripe, but now larger than green peas. But generally speaking the programme had already ended.
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As for the historical experiment, small things can have a great effect. On Saturday I'd decided to wear a boldly coloured tunic with leggings as my period costume; the leggings were compression leggings and they were so annoying and uncomfortable and I was so grumpy about them that it ruined my day. In retrospect, I should have picked a stereotypical beatnik outfit of dark trousers, dark turtleneck top, some kind of oversized necklace, loose hair, and intense black mascara around the eyes instead; I think I was too exhausted from the work week to practice common sense.
Next week - 1967 - the Summer of Love. Aside from my puritanism, I'd tend to agree with the assessment that the Sixties were partly very 'every man for himself.' There was genuine commitment and love in the Civil Rights Movement, and compassionate legislation like (as far as I can tell) Medicaid for the elderly. But the Vietnam War was as far as I can tell twice as deadly as the current War in Ukraine, the Six Days' War is also not fun to read about; the Human Be-In in San Francisco no longer appealing if it's 100,000 people overwhelming a neighbourhood and becoming a dangerous space for the underage teens who joined it; and the fact that Charles Manson was released from prison is not a harbinger of 'peace and love.'
I tried reading a chapter or two of John Steinbeck's Wayward Bus, written in the late 40s but reprinted in the early 60s. At first I found it wonderfully written. But when the narrator began arguing that there were few real men I began to highly question Steinbeck's point of view, when he began describing the flight of a fly I began to highly doubt the writer's literary judgment even if it's no doubt a metaphor, and when a woman character began reminiscing about her husband's domestic violence and finding being brutally hit exciting, I closed the book and returned it to the shelf.
There's also a teenage character who's routinely taunted for his acne etc. by other characters in the book. Steinbeck seems to criticize this behaviour in a notably holier-than-thou manner, but he has no moral high ground: his narration of that character is also snide and humiliating, in my opinion. So he also has poor ethical judgment outside of his toxic opinions of men's and women's roles and his poor literary judgment. Sometimes books are forgotten for good reason.
That book is at least better from a literary standpoint than the passages I endured from The Winter of Our Discontent, which is prefaced by lots of glowing reviews from reputable newspapers and magazines, but which I found unreadable. Next up: The Red Pony.
And at least I ended up having an interesting conversation with my youngest brother about critical interpretations of domestic violence in A Streetcar Named Desire, as a result of mentioning the Wayward Bus.
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As for work, it's all right-ish, but one night last week I was so anxious due to a personnel development that I wasn't able to go to sleep for a while.
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