10/22/00:One Day in Greece
One day in Greece we took a boat to the island of Hydra. "Hydra" is pronounced "ee-dra" because the letter that looks like H is really one of the many eees in the Greek alphabet.
Hydra, like every Greek island I am conscious of, is mind-bendingly beautiful. The water is deep blue, greenish towards the edges where it borders the land. The buildings are all white, curved and domed in blue. Once your eyes adjust to the brightness you can see the purple bourganvilia flowers growing in vines up the side of some of the more inner buildings. The pathways are made of orange tile, and because the land is all hilly, the only transportation, aside from one's own legs, is donkeys. Thus when we got off the boat we saw someone tying a mattress onto a donkey's back.
Reneau and Luke and Shane and I went wandering about. We came up over the top of a hill and saw there a sign that pointed up the hill. The sign said, "Heaven." Shane said, "And here I was doubting it existed."
I walked with Cecilia, the RA, down towards the beach. Cecilia is half Greek and half French, but learned English in France so her English is accented with French. As we walked, Cecilia slipped her bra out from under her dress, then slipped her bikini top on under it. Then she stepped out of her underwear and replaced it with her bikini bottom. She did this without breaking her stride or revealing anything that should not have been shown.
We lay on the beach and then we swam around and got salt in our hair and sand in our suits. I met a four-year-old boy named Mihali. He wanted someone to count down for him to jump into the water from the rocks. So I said, Ena, dio, tria! And applauded when he came back up. I told him I was from New York. He didn't seem to believe that New York was a real place. That might have been a function of my limited Greek.
When we got tired of swimming we walked to a restaurant built up the hills away and sat on the terrace by the mosaic of the well-built mermaid. We ordered two Greek salads, some tzatziki, some wine, some pasta, some marinated octopus, some spinach pie, and some sticky desserts, all of which we shared. We ate until we were stuffed and chatted about nothing in particular. We felt very tired and sticky but happy.
On the boat ride back to Athens, I leaned over the boat rail and watched the sun set over the Mediterranean. The wind whipped through my hair and I was sort of cold but it was okay.
One wonders about days like that, and what they have to do with days like today, when my skin is the color of this computer screen and when I get a papercut on my pinky so it hurts to type.
more musings about my love life/lack thereof
more musings about being sick of my job