Homer, my Greek-American friend, travels from California to Athens once a year in order to stay in his house in Plaka and connect with his roots.
This year, at the end of my visit, which I try never to miss, he instructed me to choose a book, a present, from a crammed shelf. My task was a hard one, but I eventually chose Inventing Paradise, written by that great philhellene, American writer Edmund Keeley.
The book covers the period 1937 to 1947 and considers the relationship between Greece and other famous philhellenes such as writers Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, both of whom outstripped most other people in their passion for Greece.
Keeley suggests that Durrell and Miller, in their Greek travels, and in their interaction with legendary figures poet George Seferis and the Colossus of Maroussi, George Katsimbalis, were constructing a sort of Paradise for themselves.
Most visitors to, or foreign inhabitants of, Greece, try to do the same. I certainly did. Here I was in an enchanted land of stunning landscape, an area loaded with history, myth and legend, the poet Drosinis's blue beloved homeland.
I was coming to an understanding of the pain involved in emigration, yet this magical place was half of my children's heritage. I embraced customs and a way of life new to me with the enthusiasm of the mature innocent, and all the time Greece was making a serious takeover bid for my romantic spirit and idealistic soul.
But, inevitably, the serpents came wriggling. For example, I found Greek village fatalism hard to bear. Oti thelie o Theos, sighed the old women with monotonous regularity: Whatever God wants, while I ground my teeth in an effort not to shout God helps those who help themselves.
The mistreatment of animals and the wanton neglect of the environment appalled me, as did the education system to which my children had been sacrificed.
Then there was the implacable routine of village life, so strange to one descended from pioneer stock. The pioneer invents the day, while the peasant repeats an age-old pattern. My mother-in-law would get up, say, on 29 August, the Feast Day of the Beheading of St John, and know exactly what she had to do. And she did it.
The fasting, the rules, and the concomitant lack of self-doubt: all these things wore away at my spirit. As well, I was always on the edge of things, and learning bitterly the truth of the anthropological notion that the outsider is both dangerous and in danger.
And even though I am an economics illiterate, I also worried about the bubble of consumerism that Greeks had begun to inhabit on entry to the European Union.
The bubble burst spectacularly, as we know, and for at least two years Greeks have struggled with the knowledge that the party is over. For good.
This past week has been one of the stormiest, politically speaking, that I can recall. PASOK Prime Minister George Papandreou set Europe on its collective ear by declaring that in a January referendum the Greek people would be consulted about the debt crisis and rescue plan. This huge political gamble earned the ire of Sarkozy and Merkel, and the widespread disgust of the Greek population.
And then, having received the promise of cooperation from the opposition New Democracy party, the PM backed down, and immediately faced the prospect of a parliamentary vote of confidence.
Georgakis, (Little George) as he is often called, proved adept at pulling his own chestnuts out of what could have been a funeral pyre. I propped my eyelids open on Saturday night to listen to his address to Parliament; it was so efficacious that he subdued the rebels in PASOK, and won the vote by the skin of his teeth. But in order to form a 'government of unity', he had to promise to step down as PM.
There was still more tension on Sunday night as both Papandreou and opposition leader Samaras met with President Papoulias. Now the promise of a coalition government is there, with elections to take place in February. Lucas Papademos, expected to step in as interim prime minister, is a former deputy president of the European Central Bank. (Life is shot through with irony.)
Whatever happens, I devoutly hope there is some slight chance of Paradise being regained. But the situation is a desperately fragile one, and I am haunted by the rueful comment of a Greek journalist: Our worst enemy is ourself, and he is armed.
Gillian Bouras is an Australian writer who has been based in Greece for 30 years. She has had nine books published. Her latest, Seeing and Believing, is appearing in instalments on her website.