XXX, XO and Still my Beating Heart

by Spencer Spratt (Japan)

A leap into the unknown Greece

The bouzouki and chorus of “Olos o kosmos thalassa…” sounded from the radio and I crossed myself in the Greek Orthodox manner as the bus passed the church. Perhaps that’s why the elderly gentleman next to me patted my arm and pointed to my lap, “Posoi seagull[oi] einai levkoi?” he said. I felt that strong feeling of coincidence as if something just touched me. You see, I had Alan Turing’s 1950 paper on Computing machinery. He was referring to swans, it was this idea about how Science is done, what Alan refers to, and appears to mock, as Scientific induction: it’s essentially the way man sees more and more similar things, e.g. an object or phenomenon (man always seems obsessed with having to see things) and so draws the conclusion; all of those things are like that, even though most often a very large part has not been investigated. And the short of it as we all know sometimes one of those things appears that is completely different, or a lot of them in the case of the seagulls. Crete’s old capital Xania, Kydonija in Minoan times, was out of view but I could still see the deep blue Aegean alive with lots of little white horses. These seas can get rough when the meltemi picks up and I wondered what conditions were like when the Antikythera mechanism found its way to the seabed. Now sitting in the museum in Athens – purportedly an astronomical computing device. Whatever it does it never ceases to fascinate me: Science and ancient Greece. You see, I was trying to be a Scientist and this idea that perhaps I wasn’t doing it properly was on my mind. Aristotle said something like, “to say that that which is is not OR that which is not is – is a falsehood, and to say that that which is is AND that which is not is not – is true”. Remember this was around 330 BC. So even if my Greek was better I knew people now only really had the chance to see this as I had. Because I felt this is Science, both on the level of how to reason something, ok without “appears to be” but the falsehood part can also allow for that, and if you assume a closed system and can examine it fully, regardless of whether we are told he wrote this in his Metaphysics, can this not describe reality? Rain patted the windows as we passed through clouds on the Lefka Ori or The White Mountains reach near 2500m, with caves more than a kilometre deep and in their midst like a great scar, the Samaria gorge. This terrain and people have sheltered nonconformists for centuries. Things moved quickly on the plateau; shepherds, goats, farmhouses, olive groves, and sun bursting through on to green pastures. Then nothing but blue. The Libyan Sea glimmered and as we descended I thought I could trace an island. At Sougia I felt cool as I sat there in the shade of the taverna. With the light reflecting from the mirror still sea, I thought of her. The waitress placed the coffee down “ellinikos kafes” and added with a smile “be careful, it’ll burn your soul”. I waited. Then I checked the damn phone again. Nothing. I grabbed it, ran for the water and threw the thing right out there. With the ripples spreading, that song played in my mind “Sink like a stone that’s been thrown in the ocean, my logic has drowned in a sea of emotion. Be. Still my beating heart”. The boat passed the headland. I was humbled as Agia Roumeli came into view lying below the tall and wide fissure of the gorge. I was hiking to the little white washed village at Phoenix, treading along stones and stopping for the occasional dip. The sun high, my thoughts wavered: Scientific induction and what Aristotle said. What about infinity. Another dimension? A closed system open for the briefest instant sometimes. I was beginning to stumble as I climbed the track, reaching out for the nearest branches. Then I saw her. Through the pines by the water’s edge, the church of Agios Pavlos and beyond.