I’ll tell you a secret. Something they don’t teach you in your temple. Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
– Achilles (via staarlife) (via bookedout) Via BookedOutLife …
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
-Henry Miller
…I am touched by the frail wisdoms
lost in every man’s death—
his habit of books, of a key, of one body among others…
… it has left me with the sense that home is always a little bit beyond reach, a place both real and imagined, longed for, yet marked perpetually as elsewhere, brightly lit, vanishing.
– Meena Alexander, ‘Poetry: The Question of Home’ (via shevauncooley) Via it gives it thew and fires it and bloods it in
Mountains of Greece
Even if the wind blows it doesn’t cool us
and the shade is meagre under the cypress trees,
and all around slopes ascending to the mountains …
George Seferis, Mythistorema 19
Photo - Askeli, Poros, by George Seferis
Reference / link for this picture: http://www.ellopos.org/photoblog/?p=303
The Essence …
I wander out to the balcony inhaling the brisk, salty air, fragrant with traces of jasmine vines from the street below. Inviting the clamour of village and harbour, I leave the shutters open. A breeze riffles the curtains while I prepare coffee, setting my little briki - saucepan - to boilon the single gas burner. For thirty seconds or so the prolonged blast of an approaching ship’s fog horn drowns out all other sound, reverberating from mountain to sea and back again. It performs an encore.
Meanwhile, from a white paper bag I extract the decandent purchase of my most recent detour to a nearby bakery. As though my paper plate is Waterford crystal I arrange a bougatsa - a custard cream-filled pastry dusted with icing sugar - in readiness for demolition.
Settling myself at the balcony table with notepad and pencil, frothing coffee and bougatsa I survey the sprawling scene below. There is much to observe. At the harbour a massive Aegean liner has now berthed marked by the dulled cacophony of disembarking passengers. I sense their excitement. For some it will be their first island, for others a return visit perhaps seeking the essence of place. For others a homecoming.
I ponder on the term - essence of place? Writers, travellers, historians often write about the essence of place. In Greece, is it the nightlife, the waterfronts, the ruins, the history, the people, the food? Is it a combination of all the elements of the Greek experience?
Or is it simply the peeling back of layers, a little like archaeology, until one discovers the reality beneath the façade? Perhaps the fisherman who yesterday grinned with broken teeth and proudly dangled a slithering octopus in my face was a fragment of the essence, as were the little cats huddling for warmth and food outside taverna kitchens; and the little kiria, skeletal and wrinkled beyond belief that she seemed almost unreal, standing in her doorway blowing kisses to me as I passed by. Perhaps these glimpses were the essence of Greece - the essence of my Greek experience.
Madi Dale ©
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your own way of thinking.
- Marcus Aurelius
– (via whatisbeautywhatislove, hardly-ever) (via famous-blue-raincoat) Via Flights of FancyThere is probably a secret longing in you for the freedom to re-make your world.
– Carmel Bird, Dear Writer (via shevauncooley) Via it gives it thew and fires it and bloods it inThe use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
– … Samuel JohnsonAbout me
For 11 years, I've been roaming off and on around Greece, mostly the islands, exploring ancient sites, secret villages and Greek mythology. At some point it occurred to me that I was often at the edge of that ancient mariner Odysseus' wanderings - drawn into the convoluted slipstream of his travels - perhaps also seeking my own Ithaca.These are random jottings from my many anchorings in Greece - as well as some contributions from re-blogs.
...."do not hurry the journey at all, better if it lasts many years ... be quite old when you anchor at the island, rich with all you have gained along the way ... " - Ithaca -Constantine Cavafy
"One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."
– Henry Miller
