Eléni & M Move to Athens - Part 16

This new series has its history in the form of several short stories, several poems, and a 13-part series that is linked at the bottom via Part 15 of this series. Anthi Psomiadou has graciously agreed—you already know that she did—to continue to appear as a fictional character also called, Anthi, as she did in the first series. However, this fictional Anthi Kanéna appears to be real somehow, perhaps taking after the real Anthi just by sheer coincidence, intensity, energy, and or some kind of faith.

There are two kinds of people. Greeks, and everyone else who wish they were Greek. From My Big Fat Greek Wedding

The yacht’s heart contained all the people that I love in this world, and the only deity worth loving, at least for me as well as Patrick and Eléni. I did not know how Anthi felt about it but suspected that she also considered Athena to be the only divinity deserving of her love. But I did not know it for sure. I figured that I would ask her one day after kissing every part of her she would let me taste. We were eating a small feast, yet my mind remained famished, only hungry for anything and everything Anthi. The taste of her tears was better than any tsipouro, and any drunkenness resulting from ingesting them rendered me even more in love with her. O Anthi! I called out in her mind. Why am I so disarmed when I see you? Why do I feel so in love with every one of your movements? If I ever forget thee, let it be my last day on Earth, I pined, unable to stop.

“O M, my new love. Please, forgive me for being so far in the outside, when inside I feel you like a fire consuming my heart. I love you and give you everything you wish for inside, where you are the one whom I love from now on until I end my path where there is only love,” Anthi proclaimed in my mind.

I swallowed her words in every possible language I could think of, a symphony of sounds and visions of blue-and-white flowers dancing to a rhythm I had never heard before, yet felt that I knew at least since I was born. Was it part of the primordial love she was referring to? Was it simply my unconscious breaking the rule and entering my consciousness? Was it my mind singing a love that it could never forego for anything else under the Sun, the Moon, and the stars? I will love you always, my Anthi, I kept mumbling like a prayer.

“O my M!” I suddenly heard Athena in my mind. “Do not despair! I promise you that I will do everything in my power to bring you together like you brought Patrick and me together when you began to write about me and call upon me to come back. I have returned to your world and I will help you be with her. Be patient, my M! I cannot promise anything but I will do my best without hurting anyone.”

What a goddess! I suddenly cried out, falling to my knees and kissing her feet, almost out of my mind. No one seemed to have found it strange that I was on the floor with my lips against her toes. They actually waited in line, even Mr. Chloros, the captain, who blurted that he had never seen a more beautiful woman in all his life. Was the Athena Alliance augmenting, slowly growing like a tree? Yet, and you already know what I am about to say, Anthi’s toes are the ones I would have preferred to kiss and adore before moving up towards all her other treasures, which I could only imagine to be laced with her love for me.

I suddenly stood up and told everyone that Athena will never return to her slumber if there is always someone in love with her, and that it was up to us to reawaken the belief in the gods and goddesses of Ancient Greece, that it was never a mythology but the only true religion if ever there was one. Who would not wish such a deity in their life? One that only emanates integrity, love and wisdom and whose feet smell of the best olive oil, made in Greece, of course. Where else? I looked at Anthi when I said my words to make sure that she knew that I was also speaking of her. I saw it in her wet eyes. It is amazing how many tears we can make with our feelings. Whoever cried a river, did not aim high. I was ready to cry the entire Mediterranean for my Anthi.

Captain Chloros woke up from his stupor, announcing that he will steer the yacht into deeper waters as we sail around the island of Crete. We all rejoiced, walking together towards the deck where we set our minds to everything blue: sea, sky, and Athena’s eyes, and the hearts of Anthi and M, I mean me, in two minds, maybe three if I add that of the goddess. I held Eléni with my right arm while my left grasped Anthi, allowing her to listen to her music in my heart. I even lifted them lightly, looking at Athena who was smiling and sending me some of her love.

The air was fresh, a little sweet, reminding me of Anthi’s tears. Sing! I told the wind. Sing my praise both for my goddess and for my love! Recount the serenity of Athena and the loveliness of Anthi, the epitome of all flowers, the gnosis of my existence! Whisper across the sea our secret love! Caress all trees with our lost molecules of both grief and happiness intertwined like lovers in the wind! I wanted to fly. We consider ourselves the most powerful creatures, yet we cannot fly on our own, requiring fake wings and machines to take us to the sky. Birds may be the luckiest creatures. As brief as their lives may be, they can soar and traverse great distances across land and sea, between sky and a line traced by time. I did not envy birds, I saluted them for their luck, hoping they could appreciate their freedom.

Crete’s coast was winding at first, becoming straighter as the yacht was being steered further into sea while following an almost imaginary tangent. We looked at the softness of the scene before our eyes, each one thinking of love. What other feeling could arise above it? Athena was in love with Patrick and vice versa, and I was in love with Eléni and Anthi and vice versa, though my love for Anthi had become stronger than my wooden heart. I needed AI to reinforce it. I needed Anthi Indeed, the new significance of this overused acronym. AI, I repeated in my mind. AI, I told Anthi’s mind. AI. Another I and Anthi’s I attached at the heart, both hers and mine, two hearts beating, je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime,… (I love you...), ad infinitum.

Athena looked regal, standing taller than any statue of her ever erected on this Earth. We could not avert our eyes from her splendour when they met. We all adored her but not in the sense of worship. We simply loved her so much that it filled our minds. It was as if our brains could not process her without failing somewhere in a kind of data overflow, except that it never hurt, only overwhelmed us, unlike the love and adoration between mortals that tend to hurt even when together, perhaps unconsciously knowing that such love may end at any time. Yet, many of us reject this reality, preferring to believe in an immortal love that can even survive a supernova or a black hole. Science has been probing black holes since their discovery, wondering if they are not also doorways to other universes. When I think of Anthi, I perceive her as my personal black hole.

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