Greens and mud: embodiment and trauma.

Picked up greens, 31 October 2017.

One of the legendary ethnographic descriptions I had read at my undergraduate time in Anthropology was – and will forever be – Nadia C. Seremetakis’ description of picking up greens from the field during her research period in Mani (Greece). I am recalling it from memory, being now in my own field and having my copy back home in Athens.

She went out to the field and started cutting greens herself. A villager passed by and asked whether her mother (or grandmother, cannot recall this properly) had shown her how to do it. Momentarily she waved and answer yes. Then, she halted and thought that, as a matter of fact, she had never picked up greens before. How did she know which ones to pick and which ones not, and how?

It is a fortunate coincidence not to have my copy of The Senses Still (1996) with me. Had I brought it to Samothraki, it would have probably been ‘adorned’ with muddy water when the deluge took place, just like my other books that travelled to the field. The brown trace of mud, that night’s memory, an irrational proof that all we remember happened, would still be there. It would be forever.

I cleaned each of my books meticulously. Over and over with wet and then dry cloths to get rid of as much brown as possible. Then positioned them across a dehumidifier. And then across electric heater. It took hours. Eventually I had to rip apart the cover of one of them, the Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (2017) by the same author; mould had moved too fast.

So, it bothers me to have this brownish ‘add-in’ on my books. It reminds me of that night. It stays with me, transgressing space. I have moved to a different house now. It stands as a cacophony to every topic in mind, to any discussion taking place in the room. Some other books, fewer, I brought later from Athens, stand next to them, seeming indecisive as to that their position is. It’s true what they say; you cannot get rid of mud. Not thoroughly.  

I stand indecisive, alike my shiny white books; what is my position? Facing me is my other self, the one who dealt with that night, who lived it through. That self is still muddy and messy. She interrupts the restoration of daily life with headaches. She makes me feel unwell, somehow damaged. That self is stronger than I am. I cut my hair to minimise the headaches, to let her go, but there she is, reminding me I cannot make it without her. But, well, at the moment, I cannot make it with her either.    

I find a kind of resolution in finally understanding what Seremetakis had written about and I had read so many years ago. A bridge connecting what was and what is, and rejecting neither. It is too soon, though, to consider what could have been and, worse, what is no longer.   

The other day, I washed by hand a white blanket that had absorbed a small portion of muddy water at the deluge. It had been machine washed immediately then and returned to its regular, all-white colour. I changed my sheets that day and thought of giving it another wash. Brownish water started coming and coming and coming, filling the bathtub, as if the – always white – blanket was actually some portal to a different dimension.    

Later that afternoon it was sunny and relatively warm for late October. Someone was kind enough to take me for a walk to the heel of Vrihós, which is rising above the village of Chóra where we live. I was told to bring a bag and a knife along, because wild greens would have probably grown on the hill. I, born and raised in the city, had never cut greens myself or seen someone else doing so.  

I was shown what to pick up and how; some you cut above the root and some you can just uproot by hand. I memorised their local names. Next time I will be able to do it by myself; embodied knowledge. We were collecting them while going higher and higher, coming across the wild goats, assessing the damages the rushing torrent had caused to the little path on the hill and how it had grazed the trunks of the trees. The soil was soft and made walking a pleasant experience. Distanced places of the island were emerging to sight, only to be later hidden by the foliage of the pine trees.

Returning after an hour or so, I felt refreshed. There were no headaches for the rest of the day. I boiled the gathered greens and baked a traditional pie. Suddenly I felt the mundane pleasure an everyday task can give; a routine, a normality – something I had been striving for ever since the deluge.

Picking up the greens, boiling, cooking and being in the landscape was a kind of re-approach between nature and myself. My doctoral project is about residents’ and visitors’ embodied connection to the nature of the island, but the deluge had – has – replaced this with an emotional and intellectual cyclone. If there is a way out, the sky has to clear first to be able to tell. We stand in the eye of the storm.

However, being able to make something out – with – nature, even more something to later consume, restored a basic instinct of trust. Rinsing with water the greens, cutting the edges, preparing the crust with my hands was a much unexpected, unscheduled way of dealing with the trauma that night has left behind. A trauma that seems to have sealed daily life in the community and to have deprived the mundane pleasures of daily routine: daydreaming and boredom.

At those times when I cannot write fieldnotes and reflect on my project, I can feel the need for my other self, the stronger one, the survivor. I feel disembodied, a fairy trying to escape, a changeling; and overwhelmingly embodied every time the rain starts pouring again, attached to that night. A split has come about; self from self, body from nature. But nonetheless the greens are sprouting.  

My muddy, courageous self is salvaged under the skin, resting. She absorbs all the remaining, unseen mud (books, blanket, other garments) and deals with it. I cannot. But it is the same hands under the skin of which lies the mud, the skin of which cooks the greens. Mud, like dust to return to Seremetakis, ‘offends the senses’ (p. 12). The embodied home has been lost ‘to otherness’ (ibid) and in that a new relationship has taken shape. A different body, muddy and dusty – ‘by the perceptual waste material formed by the historical-cultural repression of sensory experience and memory’ (ibid) – is trying to convince a new self to emerge, somewhat between the courageous and the denier.