A Wonderful Game

June

I am sitting in the old stone-built house of my grandparents, listening to the birds singing and feeling the spring warmth coming in through the open window. I spent the morning out in the fields, catching up with a place that used to fill my everyday life, but not anymore.

My absence doesn’t seem to have any effect on nature whatsoever. The trees and the herbs are blooming, the bees are buzzing, life goes on as it is supposed to. Small differences are there only to remind me that this is indeed a different year.

Someone filled a few potholes on the dirt road to the olive grove.

An old mulberry tree died. One that I used to get lost in its branches and come out covered in red berry juice and a big smile on my face.

The mountains are greener. A few rains were enough for them to lose the Sahara look they had carried through the last few years.

I miss being so close to nature. Watching a young tree grow leaf by leaf. Noticing the blooming of the fruit trees and trying to predict the harvest. Admiring the plants I planted myself and watching them thrive. Even looking at the ones that didn’t do well and trying to figure out what went wrong.

But there are also many parts of daily life here that I don’t miss at all. I spent enough years here to know the pros and cons well, and I have been away long enough to look at things with a certain distance.

I may confuse you with my writing. In one newsletter I am in Nafplio, in the next in Crete, sometimes in the present, sometimes in the past. But that’s my life. An eternal pendulum, swinging back and forth through time and between places.

Bear with me. I can’t tell it all in a linear way. You can just look at the pictures if you can’t follow my messy thinking, or join me and see where all this is going to lead.

My photos probably don’t quite match the text, as they romanticize a lifestyle I’ve already seen through. But believe it or not that’s the way I actually see things. I block out any ugliness and focus on the details that I find beautiful.

It is a wonderful game to train your eye like that. And it makes reality much more agreeable.

If only I could train my thoughts in the same way.

Have a nice June and a lovely summer ahead.