Apollonas

the best olive oil I’ve ever had

~i wrote~

Yesterday I arrived on Naxos and was driven from the main port to nearly the northernmost part of the island, a homestead-I-guess-you’d-call-it in the hills where I’m scraping paint in exchange for my keep. The maybe-craziest-for-me thing is what a commodity electricity is — I went ahead and bought a Greek SIM card with a generous data allowance during my ~28 hours in Athens, anticipating that I’d have no internet in the hills but never imagining that the real challenge would be keeping my phone charged in the first place. Live by the sword, die by the sword, as my father a.k.a. your brother likes to say. So I am rationing, BIG time — I spent the morning working to an audiobook with the machine in airplane mode and the screen dimmed, and then I hiked the ~4km down the mountain to the village of Apollonas for a swim in the Aegean — the beaches are all rocky but the rocks are big and smooth, like huge pebbles, so it’s manageable — and now I am treating myself to a supper out, which is partly because I’m hungry and partly because I need to ask the proprietor to charge my phone for me. Just as soon as I send this. Later I think I’ll go hang around Nikos’ Jewelry & Souvenirs because Rupert, my host, tells me that Nikos is the smartest guy in town and the most likely to talk with me in any critically evaluative way about conflict and resolution on this island, and then I’ll begin the ~7km walk-via-paved road back to the homestead, hoping to hitch a ride from someone who speaks enough English to understand when I say to stop so that I don’t end up, an hour later, back at the port. Once there, I don’t know what I’ll do. Probably cut my toenails by candlelight and look at the stars. 

p.s. While I was writing this, my food and beer arrived. This is may be the best olive oil I’ve ever had. 

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on the business of monogamy

On the business of monogamy, et cetera, I am out in the world and see the way—in country after country—national divides be damned—men look at me in spite of being manifestly, obviously with another woman in that moment, and I see the women pretending not to notice…or actually not noticing…or noticing and being mad, or hurt…or noticing and being too tired to care…and I don’t like any of those options. 

I want to only be in things that are sparkling and new and all-consuming.

Unreasonable, I guess. 

Or is it? 

Maybe only if I want to build something over decades instead of just inhabiting a string of moments. 

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come hang out

I said,

I just stepped out off the path down the mountain onto the beach

The plan is to go see the iconic abandoned Dionysus statue because I leave here tomorrow and have yet to pay my respects to pagan idolatry as ancient as anything else human I have access to

But what I really want is to walk into the water with my clothes on

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nothing is a commodity

I said,

We have almost no water left

I’ve been wondering how long it wold be before my worldview started to actually shift instead of it just being like I am roughing it for cute fun

One thing that’s just unbelievable about US America is how absolutely nothing is a commodity

How you can have as much of anything as you want, and then extra, just because wasting some is how you know you got enough

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