I’ve been working on drafts of a novel set in Crete since I first arrived on the island nearly four years ago. Every time I think I’ve found the right thread, the right voice, a deeper layer opens. It has been a labyrinthine experience. Often maddeningly so. Perhaps I’ve become a kind of cliché. But there’s no other way than to circle, and circle again, like Rilke’s falcon.
I’ve said before that it feels like Crete has stripped, tested, gifted, and re-adorned me several times over in order to be able to write the book I want to write. I’ve written thousands and thousands of words from different perspectives, different storylines, different versions of myself. Some of them may never find their way into the final novel. But they are still reflections of my experiences at the time, and Crete’s voice in me during that period. And each of them has led me closer to the seed of the story I’m longing to tell.
So I thought I’d share with you the first section of my favorite earlier draft. If you enjoy it, maybe I’ll share a bit more next week. The version of the novel I’m currently writing is different than this— but this voice still has a place in my heart, and who knows, it may find its way back in on the next walk round the labyrinth!
Here, the book opens with Aphrodite, who is our narrator. The narrator of the story within the story, which is Psyche’s story. Aphrodite has a fiery, explosive voice, deep as groundwater and cave, searing as winter stars over Mt. Ida, soft as that light blue salt sea of hers, the Aegean. In this section we hear her introduce the novel itself, like the chorus in an ancient Greek drama.
Chorus
Sing to me o Muse I sing into the country of myself, for I am the song and the muse inside the song, and I would sing you a story older than the bard’s.
I would sing you a story that lives inside my name. Inside Aphrodite.
I would sing you the story of the one who was called my daughter. For it is a story to save your life, and I think your lives are very much in need of saving.
A love story.
I stand at the crossroads of eons. I am the red warp. I am the red weft. I am the star. I am the cedarwood loom, the golden shuttle, the spindle and the moon. I am muse, all nine, and also midwife to the muse. Listen. This song is my country. This country is my song.
At dusk over Crete’s eastern mountains, the homegoing falcons open the air like it is a veil. Their wings are sharp, and purple. Stars come through the openings. So do planets. Above the high rocks they are making astrological alignments no one has ever seen. They are pulling my name up from the slick blackness of caves. They are pulling my name up from Tethys’ waters, the ones that run in snakes through the heart of the world.
Aphrodite.
My name is rising up the roots of the rockrose, the olive, and the pine. My name is rising up the roots of the forty herbs the midwives once used to wash newborn babies.
It is rising through the houses, between the stones in the walls, up to the roofs, into the hanging laundry and the grapes and almonds drying on nets in the sun.
Women on the rooftops feel it coming though they do not know what it is. They take the laundry down in baskets. They stop to watch the rising wind come across the sea. They tidy fallen leaves from around potted flowers and sweep the wind-blown hibiscus petals off the threshold. They pull weeds from the aloes. They put crying children to bed while their men head back to the taverna on motorcycles. Some put themselves to bed alone after the children, while their men stay late around the drinking table, playing the songs that once led to God. Not many can find him truly now. It is easy to get lost in Hades’ grey place instead.