lumière des étoiles

Santorini
2003-09-11 4:43 p.m.

High up on a cliff in the village of Imerovigli, there isn't much distraction. There's a serenity, a placidity; it seems a perfectly sensible thing to do when you hold hands, passing away the time by watching a small earthquake form ripples in the still blue water down below. It seems perfectly sensible to stare at the crescent of land laid out before you, and wonder exactly what made it shatter. To wonder if Atlantis sank when the island did, to wonder if anyone will actually ever find it, rich in columns, carvings, stone goddesses.

You might throw open the painted wooden doors of your suite the next morning and greet the sun, already merciless and unforgiving as it reaches it's mid-day position, and reconsider the hike you were planning on, with not an inkling of guilt. You might stretch out in the chairs on your terrace, white and blue-washed stone helping you keep the peace that beautiful sleep brought you the night before. You might do nothing more than watch each other, wanting to take every pleasurable sight in, to savor it and remember it, to smile in disbelief that you've been wise to trust your instincts, brave to make good choices; that you have all

you ever wanted sitting across from you.

You might remember all of the images of the island you collected over the years, and how you thought about them on the rickety old plane, the one with the propellers so loud that sleep was impossible. Will it be, you remember, half of what you expected? You wonder if you'll be a wee (but only wee) bit disappointed, like you were by Spain, or Amsterdam?

It might strike you, as morning slips into afternoon and then late afternoon, and the sun becomes gentle, fun, urges you to come out into the orange, fiery light it's spreading across the rocks and sand, to take a walk along the carved pathway that leads down into the plaka and eventually over to Oia. You'll probably do it, since one cannot subsist on love alone, and the spanakopita and horiatiki salata you had for lunch just isn't cutting it anymore.

You'll stop, to watch the sun slip down, turning the sky pink, orange, red, and yellow - colors you've never seen this vividly before. You'll close your eyes and lean back against one another, realizing that this will be one of those moments you want to always remember - sight, smell, sound, feeling.

You'll love how the colors of the sky make everything look, and be fascinated as you pass by homes carved into the cliffs, old couples outside their homes, smoking and playing cards, cats darting in and out of alleyways, people smiling at you despite the fact that you are a complete stranger, smiling bigger when you're able to say yassas.

After dinner is touching, taking in music, new friends, young and old. It's excitement and inability to wait for privacy, it's lust and desire becoming overwhelming. It's the perfect place, after all.

Maybe you will take that hike tomorrow after all. You need to see what's on the other side, after all, need to go down those steps, to wonder who carved them, and why. To wonder who climbs them, and what they're thinking about while they do.

You will find a church on the other side of the rock, the kind you'd see in postcards or on PBS specials, the kind that grace the cover of the Lonely Planet guidebook. You'll think about how typical it is for the Greeks to hide things, to keep things sacred, protected from outsiders. You'll see the beauty in that, how careful that screening process is, how it seems to keep the people who practice it beautiful and happy. You'll think it's like them to want to see you prove yourself, and you'll be glad you did.

More to come soon - Thanks for reading, and for all the responses to my last post.

xoxox

WHO AM I, ANYWAY?