In a world that often values reason and logic over the more spiritual aspects of life, it must be admitted that there is something magical about the Agean Sea. Its color reminds me of hazel eyes, sometimes a deep blue and sometimes a light turquoise in the shallow depths. In the afternoon, the glow of the sun dipping into horizon casts a glittering blanket of gold across it. Of course, no matter how aesthetically pleasing it is, you can’t just look at it. Three hours after my arrival in Iraklion, Crete, I was already stripping clothes and racing towards the beach. The water’s temperature is the kind of cold that is only cold if you fight it. You can’t really walk into the Agean, you have to dive into it. You must be engulfed by it.
I was later to learn that the Cretan people resemble their sea in this way. In Crete, you must leap into everything you say and do, give gifts and receive gifts, give hugs and scuffs and slaps on the back, and receive hugs and scuffs and slaps on the back, make bold statements about the nature of the universe, and stand by those statements for the sake of obstinacy, even when someone else makes a better point than yours, especially when someone else makes a better point than yours. It is life; swarthy, cloying, crowding, brazen, wonderful life.
That’s only a reflection on the surface of the Cretan people, though. Once you get a glimpse through the shine and glitter of their revelry, you’ll see something else. They are moved, not by a capricious love of life, but rather by deep undercurrents of philosophical and existential concerns, pushing and pulling and manipulating the world above, driving people towards and away from each other like the waves rising and falling on the beachside.
One of the most prevalent anxieties I have seen in my time here is concerned with a sense of missing identity. Crete is an island that has, in the last millennia, seen more years of occupation than freedom. After centuries of Ottoman and Venetian rule, many ancient customs have been lost, and some of the people of Crete feel alienated from their venerable ancestors. It is my suspicion that, in lieu of their cultural identity, these people cling even more tightly to each other. They clash wine glasses with such ferocity that it is a wonder that the glasses don’t break and they wrap their arms around you like a vice, because they are looking for any way to fill the gap that their missing culture has left behind. Family, friends, drinking buddies, philosophical opponents; these are the pinnacles of Cretan society. They are as necessary as food and water.
Crete is the island of lost people, nestled together in the heart of the Agean. Though I have only been among them for a matter of months,they open their arms to me with calls of “yassou,” to my health, and beckon me to dive into their way of life. In the U.S. I am an American, who happens to be one quarter Greek. When I travel to other places I am called, “the American”. Here, I am simply called Kritikos.
–Paul Cuclis
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