Everyone needs a katalimata in their life. Something to look up to, to camp by it, to swear by it, to be afraid of, to go do push ups for, something that you know nobody amongst the people you know can do but you could: just later, and if I think of it now before falling asleep I simply get nauseated.
Skipped the Minoan muh metallurgic workshop site[1] to swim in likely the most enthralling shore in the entire northern Crete, where I found goats in a cave sanctuary as part of the dolomitic frescoes, ignored a girl’s boyfriend staring at me, washed my socks into the sea and also myself off the sweat, stretched my arm beyond a fence to grab a few red grapes with the bells in the distance, on the way back I picked up an old cretan strategos hitchhiking from a village to the other, we drank coffee together and he said I look like la gioconda.
Went to the local library where I did not find the prince of the lilies but all men looked at me, probably I was underdressed. The women avoided me or only smiled in a phoney way. The students in the garden were drooling over pottery shreds with empty stares.
I came back to the car and told the strategos pame, I explained to his friend that he does not miss out on the biblioteka as I do not mind ta biblia, but people are insectoid[2]. I ate gemista in a lovely garden. The gas worker was young but not blue eyed. He thrusted gas in the car. I reached paleokastro feeling too tired to flirt with anyone and indecisive on where to sleep if on the sand or the minoan palace on the doorstep where that statuette was found[3]. I was like, anywhere with no rats would suffice. I oscillate between being barboni fratelli universali riciclo persino la carta igienica (there is a letter I ought to write, the stamp is ena evro), and a prehistoric courtesan. Except I am chaste but you do not want to give anyone the truth.
Those who know know beyond the words.
[1] Referring to EM Khrysokamino. Like my friend Steve would say, that is a metallurgic site, but where is the crucible now? “Muh” is just a bovine interjection.
[2] These old men who have lived on the island all their life have learnt to coexist with foreigners’ enterprises. You might wonder if they are interested in the history of their land. They are, but have not enough funds to set foot in the den of the intruders. Please make academic research available to old strategoi eternally sitting in the cafes.
[3] The Paleokastro Kouros, that’s all what it is about.
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