Circles

"Hey, sorry – can't talk right now, I'm walking into yoga. Can I can you back after?" I said to my colleague, Laura.

Friday's the one day of the week Athina holds classes in the evening – at 7pm.

"It's not a yoga class really, it's a movement class," Athina said after I got off the phone, having overheard me.

"Right, with yogic elements…?" 

"Yes, exactly," she said.

My experience last week was that the Friday movement class was the closest thing to the yoga classes I'm used to at home. Movement seemed to be code for Vinyasa – where the yoga flows from pose to pose, often bookended by vinyasas – a four-part flow of movements usually centered around a chaturanga, which is sort of a yoga push-up. In short, it's the kind of yoga where you get your sweat on.

Most of Athina's official Yoga classes are more of a Hatha style focusing on breath and longer holds of postures that don't necessarily form a sequence or choreography. There's nothing wrong with it and if anything, I probably could stand to do a little more of it back home because you do really work on and learn your postures better. 

All of that to say, I was excited for a Vinyasa-ish class with some Athina tweaks to it. It was my favorite of the week last week.

It's hard to say why the things that happened next took place. Maybe Athina wanted to underscore that Movement Class is about movement and not bound by yoga? Maybe it was because she self-admittedly had doubts about whether anyone would show up for the Friday night class (which apparently other than last week, no one had), so she didn't plan anything? Maybe she got started with something she had intended to be just part of a class and because she was feeling it, she just kept going? 

There were two students – a thirty-something Greek woman and me. Athina began with having us warm up with creating circular motions with our bodies. She encouraged us to be creative and create any circles we could – necks, joints, torsos, standing up, laying down, fingers, spinning in a circle – whatever. Just create circular motions throughout our bodies in different ways. Ok, I could go with that for a little bit. It lasted 10 to 15 minutes. A little long, but okay – it's Friday and she had no plan going in.

The next 45 or so minutes consisted of moving around or essentially dancing to the music she played – which was a mix of calm latin and world music. Music with beats, but fairly muted. Occasionally she gave a suggestion to move in a circle around the room or walk with our eyes closed. At one point she said do any movement you want – there's no right or wrong, so I basically began doing my own vinyasa sequence because I had certain areas I was looking forward to stretching and because it felt less awkward than dancing parallel to two more-or-less strangers in a large room to music that didn't really give me much to work with anyway. If Athina could move her body in bold awkward ways without making eye contact with anyone, I could go through a triangle series on my own.

During some of the time when I felt I should be kinda' dancing on my own, without making eye contact in a large room with strangers, I realized that similar to the "partner yoga" experience of two weeks ago, I come to yoga because it's an individual practice. It's my chance to use my body to disconnect from my mind – or at least distract my mind into staying focused on things like balance, form and strength rather than the myriad problems and goals it otherwise has pulsing about. Yoga is guided – we're all doing the same thing. There's not a lot of self expression other than maybe a moment where someone just really connects with the posture or flow the class is undertaking. 

"Dancing" around the room freestyle for 45 minutes without any community interaction or togetherness – but with the awareness of each other's presence made it so it was neither an individual or group activity and felt  - at least to me – a little vulnerable and awkward without the benefit of community belonging. At one point I decided that yoga involves breathing through challenges and finding the space to stretch further, release, stop panicking, take on something that initially feels impossible. So I breathed and went a little further. Then I went to intermittently doing yoga and "dancing".

Somehow I made it the 45 minutes and I was unsure how I felt about it. I also wondered several times if this wasn't the stupidest money I'd ever spent – although it's easy to answer "no". I'm sure I've spent more for less somewhere in my life.

In the end, I got some form of a workout, some physical yoga and a lot of internal yoga as I really stretched myself mentally and emotionally. Another awkward yoga experienced under my belt. I felt better leaving than when I came in – which is the ultimate goal anyway.

Islands are interesting places because each is unique. Moreover, islands may have similarities to mainland parts of the same country, but they are always distinctly different too. Yoga on a small island is inevitably different than a studio in the Los Angeles suburbs just as mail delivery is different on Patmos than it even is in Athens or Rhodes which both have street names and addresses. Even Bali had a more structured system of addresses that could yield home mail delivery. Except for certain parcels, Patmians have to collect their mail from the post office.

Even when part of a larger nation, islands in some ways are like countries within countries with their own cultures, products, needs and processes. I've noticed Patmians have an affinity for the people of Lipsi and less sense of connection to say, Corfu or even their regional capital of Rhodes. Tiny Lipsi next-door is like a smaller Patmos with the same architecture and similar cultural habits. There seems to be a sense that Lipsi is holding on to older Patmian ways – keeper of the true religion. Meanwhile as Nicolas once told Emily and me, "Rhodes is England! They make sex in the streets!" Sure, there's a lot to breakdown in those two short phrases not the least of which has to do with how promiscuous the British (also from an island) are or aren't. Let's just go with the fact that it illustrates Patmos has more conservative values than even other islands in the Dodecanese chain.

In his most recent novel, Nights of Plague – Turkish Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk writes the history of the fictional Mediterranean island of Mingharia. This sizable island located somewhere between Crete and Cyprus is considered the jewel of the Ottoman Empire's island possessions with a population that is roughly half greek and half muslim. The story takes place in 1900 in the declining days of the Ottoman Empire when an unexpected bout of Bubonic Plague breaks out. Published at the end of COVID, but conceived and largely written before it – Nights of Plague is eerily-timed with its extensive discussion of epidemiology, vaccines, medications. 

In many ways, Nights of Plague is the author revisiting themes and elements of his prior works, improving and perfecting them into something both familiar and new. Mingheria – which even has neighborhoods with names common to Greek islands including Patmos such as Hora, Skala and Flisvos – is ultimately cut-off from the world as the Ottoman Empire under duress from the British and French ban boats from entering or leaving the island. What happens on an island without supply-lines and whose telegraph communications become disabled with a population split between Greek Orthodox Christians and Turkish Muslims? Well, a lot – and it gets pretty crazy.

Sometimes I think of Nights of Plague when riding around Patmos. How much does being part of Greece keep Patmos stable and prosperous? How much does it weight it down? Is the peace kept in part because the islanders are not completely in charge of their own fate? Or would life be better if they were?

Unlike Mingheria, Patmos has a homogenous population which in itself probably creates a lot more stability. It's also much smaller which adds more likelihood to come to some kind of agreement or consensus. One thing we can be sure of is that a self-governed Patmos would not be the hedonistic realm of England or Rhodes. Nonetheless, the possibility of being cut-off because of some catastrophic event is always present.

Pamuk explored a similar theme in Snow when tiny Kars – the furthest East city in Turkey – is cut off from the world by a massive blizzard. Also with political divides and the legacy of wars between Russia and Turkey, Kars undergoes a short-lived and strange coup.

It underscores how interdependent globalization has made us. We saw in COVID how restrictions in one country means a supply chain disruption in far-flung places. Lockdowns in China and Canada meant no microchips to make new cars anywhere. Sick meatpacking plant workers in the midwest meant higher prices for beef throughout the United States. 

Patmos relies on boats to bring gasoline, water, natural gas, food and manufactured goods. In short, everything. Patmos' agriculture probably wouldn't support the core population of 3,000 for more than a week. Even the municipal water supply relies on injections by water boats and many homes and farms outside the more populated areas are not connected to the municipal water systems and rely on water trucks to fill tanks in their homes and properties. I'm sure there are plans and supplies for a short-term emergency – contingencies for severe storms that may cut off boat traffic for some period. All the same, Patmos and Mingheria may not be so different. Islands can be vulnerable and what currently unseen, insignificant tensions or problems would surface if Patmos was isolated?

Hopefully, we'll never know. 

I find after awhile – maybe four weeks – I find the idea of leaving the island daunting. While I never wanted to leave Bali, it wasn't the same. Patmos is much smaller and feels like a micro-world. The very idea of going to the port and getting on the ferry seems almost scary as if I'm safer here – as if the problems of the outside world can only have so much impact. I have everything I need here – what more is there to obtain elsewhere? People at home work all year to come to places like this for short breaks as a reward for all the hard work. Why not just be here if it's possible? If not for my kids, I probably would.

Maybe for that very reason, getting on the ferry is necessary. Patmos feels less like checking out of life than did Bali. Maybe the line is blurrier. I always knew Bali couldn't be forever – there would be important parts of life I would miss, connections foregone. It doesn't feel that way here. I could even imagine raising my kids here – as Sennen could at one point too. It's a possibility so easy to see, perhaps because its enough more like home that – as Thais say – its same, same but different.

Looking out from the window of the yoga studio, I saw it. The port is right there. When I move into Standing Bow, it's like leaning into the water itself. In two different yoga classes, a ferry has pulled up right across the street from the studio. The island is of course surrounded by edges – but the real edge of the island is right there. The place where we come and go – the big front door. Next week at this time, I'll already be in Athens and away from this world I love. This island as unique as all the others. And I'll remember Athina was right about one thing: we all practice moving around in circles in many creative ways.