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.
