Eléni & M Move to Athens - Part 34

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 33 of this series. Anthi Psomiadou has agreed many weeks ago to play the role of a fictional character also called, Anthi, starting in the first series, but with the name, Anthi Kanéna, in this forever series, which she chose herself, perhaps thinking that it will be over soon enough. O Anthi! “Yes, M!” I never want it to end. “It will end when it will end, M.” I knew that you were going to say that, Anthi.

The sun comes up and the sun goes down in my skull. Out of one of my temples the sun rises, and into the other the sun sets. Nikos Kazantzakis

Did you know or did you hope, my beautiful Anthi, my forever-blooming flowers, that we were going to be in love and free, that the Sun would shine both inside and outside our hearts? I asked my Anthi directly, with my voice reverberating in the Cretan air. I know that I will always love Crete more than any other part of Greece. Perhaps Athens will be tied in my heart, since it is there where I saw your face for the first time and that my mind recorded it as the wonder of my life.

“Je t’aime (I love you), M, and I think that I both knew and hoped for all of this to happen. I knew that our Goddess was the most divine and I knew that our love was born in the stars. Thus, my Nous was tranquil, but my heart was beating with your soul inside, giving it some of my blood to survive. It was a spiritual symbiosis that gave me a taste of things to come. You may be mine and I may be yours, but together we are one; one body, one soul, one. One plus one is equal to one,” my Anthi replied.

I hugged her and could not let go. We were one, after all. She hugged me and whispered in the ear closest to her mouth that even the Sun and the Moon are now one, and that the night and the day were but two angles of the same circle, and that our love and freedom will show us that every glance and heartbeat that we gave each other was never in vain. I squeezed her body against mine, feeling her warmth penetrate me as well as my soul. I became whole again. Anthi had returned my soul. I felt overwhelmed (in writing it as well) to have my soul back inside its previous vessel. I had a soul but I still did not want it. Please, Anthi, take it back. I want you to have mine. I want my meaning of life to have it until I die. Will you take it back?

“Please, my M! Hold on to it for some time, and if in twelve days and twelve nights you still do not want it, I will keep it for you in my heart.”

Thank you, my Anthi! Thank you, my love for being who you are. I think that we have to join the others. I hear joy and merriment. What are we going to tell Grandpa and Grandma?

“I will tell them what has happened, but you can still kiss and hug them. They really love you. They told me that they preferred you to my husband. And they know best. They saw your love for me but wondered about Eléni. I told them that she was my best friend, that we were all connected through Athena whom they also revere without knowing why. They seemed to have understood. It was as if Athena had calmed any qualms that they had in their minds. Athena continues to help us. She is everything good and wise and you helped bring her back.”

It was noon and the beginning of the afternoon. I was going to spend my first afternoon with my Anthi, touching her whenever my being wanted to hold her hands, rub her back, bite her ears, kiss her ass before she sat down, put my hands on her knees, caress her elbows, lick the back of her neck, count her toes again — I like to count to ten — and everything else that love requires to calm down and rejuvenate. I followed her downstairs where we were met with smiles and love from everyone, even Grandpa and Grandma. I kissed and hugged them, of course, and even saluted Patrick. What a prick! I kissed Delphine’s forehead and hugged her. I looked at Eléni who smiled — please do not worry about her — and hugged her as if I was saying goodbye, but I was not. I was simply overwhelmed by my new life with Anthi, by this wonderful afternoon with everyone I loved, and with my Anthi by my side, my true goddess of the heart and Nous, both in French and Greek. I bowed to our Athena and told her that her wisdom and love were unparalleled in our universe, that her father, Zeus, had created the only possible perfection that even Science could never explain. Athena wanted to kiss me like she always does, but decided to only hug me given our three new family members who were not yet accustomed to her mouth-to-mouth kisses of love. What are we cooking? I finally asked.

“Everything!” Grandma replied, having understood my English via Anthi, my occasional translator.

Are you preparing the olives, Grandpa? I asked with eagerness.

“I am almost done. They are marinating with garlic and love,” Grandpa replied.

Did you buy the cauliflowers I had asked, my dear Patrick?

“I did and I know what you want to make with them. It is one hell of a dish.”

I think that you were the first to make it.

“No, it was you, but I learned how to do it too, and Athena loves it.”

I am sure that she does. She knows how wise and keto it is.

“I really love it, M. What a dish! I even learned to prepare it myself now that Patrick is writing again.”

I am pleased, our goddess, for you and for Patrick. I will prepare it, then. Do you want to help me, Delphine?

“Yes, M. I also want to learn how to make it.”

It is easy, my child, I mean Delphine. But it requires love and all the right ingredients. Not even one can be missing. It is a recipe that cannot be modified or bettered. I tried but always failed. Let us go, Delphine, and prepare another dish for our feast that should be fit for a Goddess and humans in love.

Roasted Cauliflower

Use the following ingredients for each head of cauliflower:

2 tbsp. of nutritional yeast, 1 tbsp. of turmeric, 1 tbsp. of Hungarian paprika, ¼ tsp. of cayenne pepper, ¼ tsp. of sea salt, ¼ tsp. of black pepper, 3 minced garlic cloves, 1 juiced lemon, and 5 tbsp. of virgin (Greek) olive oil.

Preheat oven to 220°C (425°F).

Wash and divide/chop cauliflower head into small florets, and dry them from any excess water.

Add all the dry ingredients and mix well.

Add the lemon juice and mix well.

Add the olive oil and mix well.

Roast in the oven for 35-40 minutes.

You may never forget this dish.

Anthi helped Grandma with all her heavenly dishes. Grandpa looked proud when his olives were ready. Patrick made a Romain lettuce salad that I still make almost every day. Our Athena roasted all the good meats with her divine skills. Eléni baked scrumptious almond bread. And Delphine and M, I mean me, prepared the roasted cauliflower using two heads. I love her head better. She is the sweetest girl I have ever met, and I am not surprised, since I see her mother when I look at her, and her mother is my life.

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Thank you, Anthi Psomiadou, for your beautiful, kind, and wise words! I do not think that the phoenix was a mythic bird, especially that Goddess Athena is real. I know that you are real. I know that Greece is real. I know that the sea and the sky are real. Nonetheless, my Nous is overwhelmed with flowers of every hue and colour, but the blue-and-white ones appear to soothe everything that I may be about, and that, my dear Anthi, indicates to me that you are beyond real and that Greece is the only place to be in this world.

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