Postcard from a Greek Island.

A STORY BY PETE DAMIANAKIS

There was no better inspiration for a writer than the air of Greece. The first step to write my very first novel was to relax and unwind. With lots and lots of deep breaths.

Breathe. Release.

Breathe. Release.

Breathe. Release.

‘Release your mind from anything stressful’, I told myself. This was what I needed so I could concentrate on my story. And there was no better place to relax my mind than Greece.

Feel the summer breeze, gaze at the gorgeous sea view from a cliff-hanging balcony, walk along the beaches or take a nap under shady trees by the sea and listen to my heart while the surf kept time.

The sirens from Homer’s Odyssey were calling. They tempted me with their polyphonic melancholy melodies and I thought, just for a moment, ‘Hello girls, I will be there soon.’ And I was.

25 hours later, after an uneventful plane ride from Sydney on a big yellow Scoot Boeing 777-200 aircraft, I was treading in the footsteps of Homer. A Backpack gripped my shoulders like a monkey, a wallet full of euros bulging my left buttock cheek as it sat in the back pocket of my jeans. Oh, how I craved for the days of the drachma - traveling would have been much cheaper back then, before the euro. Still, I was delirious with the excitement of being able to say hello to the ‘cradle of civilisation’. Also, I was a cashed up bogan from Birchgrove. I made my way to the port of Piraeus and boarded the very first ferry I could find on its way to Crete. It was a vessel from the Aegean Ferries line called the Golden Vergina, where they served Vergina beer, brewed in Macedonian Thrace.

Stin ygeiá sas (translation: cheers). The 330ml bottle poured a clear golden white head that did not leave any lace. The scent had malty notes. The taste was nicely balanced and easy to drink with a grain and biscuit presence. The taste was lighter in the body with good carbonation. Overall it was a good to great beer. So far, so good.

The Golden Vergina berthed. Gently, nestling into a dock at the Port of Rethymnon, Crete. Senses caressed serenely and sensually. There was a different type of warmth to the air compared to back home. Water lapped the shoreline of a white Cretan beach with vivacious visceral viscosity. Precious moments rhythmically accompanied by the beat, the beat, the beat of a previously distressed pulmonary organ.

What a difference a day makes.

There was a problem however that I still need to resolve. On the Greek Island, I found too many places to sit and write my story. Every time I turned a corner, another exquisite relic of western civilisation seduced me with new tales of old. I stood there stock still, rooted to the spot, so suddenly amazed as to be unable to speak. All of those well-worn cliché’s were just an echo of what I had witnessed and felt. My lips were wet in anticipation of ingesting the sensory feast. Unashamedly, I gorged myself with delight, and the only words to express the neural overload were 'pure gluttony'.

And I loved it.

I extracted myself from the views that had a hold on me like the relentless gaze of Medusa. I managed to make my way to my apartment’s balcony. Déjà Vu is a common expression but there it was again, again, again.

Déjà Vu.

Déjà Vu.

Déjà Vu.

Goddamn, this place. How was I going to write when the obscene perfection of colour and light kept distracting me?

Gazing out to the horizon brightness permeated through the atmosphere like a Moka coffee pot turned upside down. The light lubricated the sky with violent visual viscosity. What was it with Greece and viscosity? A glossy lustre percolated towards a wine-dark sea, the Aegean. As the Moka coffee stain reached towards the dark expanse of water the red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet left the clouds and sky, leaving a patina of monochromatic tones against the sinewy, billowing atmospherics above. I was about to discover that just over the horizon, beyond the lounge chair on the beach, the cafeteria by the sea, and the large pergola at the hotel garden was the best spot in the world to host my ideas. Except it was sans colour. The Greeks actually talk! Colourfully. They talk to each other and share their stories. It was a problem because I had too much material for my book, and, it wasn’t just one story out there. It was hundreds, maybe thousands.

My story was just out there, beyond the horizon. I just had to go out, further into the Mediterranean. Just a little bit further. No, further still. The old yia yia’s story, recited whilst she nestled in her sixty-year-old wicker chair, the seat of the chair adopting the same shape as their host’s generous posterior from years of use and the occasional abuse. She told her story as she sifting through a pot of green string beans that had grown wildly in her yard, except now the vegetables were a collection of varying shades of grey. Her story also lacking any distinguishable colour now. Drabness muffled what was usually an exquisite Greek salad of vivid expressions leaping from the old woman’s thin-lipped, wrinkled mouth.

My hotel host Petro would explain the many types of love there were in the world in his rolling, pitching, rich and thick accent but now his story also seemed two-dimensional, insipid, and somewhat limp. Everyone In Greece had a special story to narrate and share. But I needed to hear someone else’s story. One that would turn my heart into a palette of sixteen million shades of red.

The story needed to be a tale that would invite vibrant blushes of red, rushing and throbbing through my capillaries. Racing towards my face. Engorging my cheeks with unashamed vivaciousness. My cheeks were a sallow shade of grey. The greyness, filling the hollows of my jowls with dullness and then I noticed in the reflection of a cracking antique mirror that had been loosely fastened to a white stucco wall that the pigmentation of my skin had strangely disappeared.

The colours of Greece that drenched the cliffs and the Mediterranean Sea with a cacophony of earthy tones juxtaposed against a canvas of lime-washed white tavernas and villas; and a vibrant cyan dotting the rooftops, doors, and window frames with picture perfectly placed woven chairs were a shade, less desired.

It had all gone. Everything was colour, less.

The sirens were just beyond the horizon and they had a story to share with me. So I stayed there. There and also just over there. For much, much longer than I had planned to. Ah, my book? My book’s progress struggled. How could I write colourfully in a black and white world? I needed to find the sirens. The little Greek cosmos that I had become immersed in, my story, was now absent of its polychromatic hues.

She walked onto the light grey wet sand and, as the dark grey, mottled water touched her feet. I could see the green return to her once grey, opaque eyes. She held out her hand and I kicked off my brand new, once blue Havaianas. I joined her once, twice, thrice, asking ‘so, what do you want?’

She looked up as the cold, once dark grey, now aqua coloured water swirled around both of us. The tide closed in fast as if summoned. Her eyes were a piercing bright green now, deep summer rock pools filled with sapphire. She leaned close and her breath kissed me here, here, and also here. I was lost in her, drowning in her, she slipped a delicate chain around my wrist. Attached to the chain was what felt like, a heart-shaped locket, and then she smiled. Her lips parted slightly. It was her last smile for me, but it wasn’t a sunset. It was an eclipse, the last eclipse, it was gloaming and noon was dying away to darkness where there would be no dawn.

Just like that, she released her hold of me, and in the shadowless twilight, she swam away. Smoothly, effortlessly diving into the aqua – marina of the marvelously delicate sea that spread even further, beyond the horizon. Soft hues of blue now replaced mezzotinted tones of grey that rippled through the cavern-shaped coils of briny deep white-capped flowing streams of heaving liquid ridges.

The moonlight sparkled on a small bluish cresting wave, managing to catch a glimpse of a dolphin’s tail as it breached the wave while the siren swam away...

…Or was it a tale?

In the distance a hypnotic, polyphonic chant sang, sang, sung across the rolling waves, and when the waves broke, not the siren nor the waves could explain the whole of the sea anymore. The song, the siren, and the waves were now part of the, once again, wine-coloured dark sea that had her. Now my constant, beckoning.

For some time, I waited for the siren to return. Days became months. Months became years. She took my breath away, stole my heart, and also my brand new Havainas. They were spoils of a battle between love and war. Light and shade. Colour and colourless. I guess I managed to live to fight another day. Looking for other sirens to fill the hole in my heart that was the same shape as the heart-shaped mermaid locket fastened to the gold chain around my wrist.

I’ve returned to Greece many times since. She takes my breath away every time. She always steals my heart. And, fortunately, Havaianas are easily found in most Greek seaside villages that hug the Mediterranean blue shoreline. Blending seamlessly with a vignette of blues that reach towards the troposphere.

Beyond the troposphere, a spacecraft called Juno streaks across the abyss of space traveling at 265,000 kilometres per hour. Like Homer’s ancient Mariners in the Odyssey, the vessel made course corrections using the stars. Sending it on a grand sojourn around Jupiter. The vessel pointing towards a distant constellation called Odele: The Mermaid Constellation.

The craft had been instructed to use onboard cameras to look back and take the very first photograph from 665 million kilometres away of a pale blue dot called Earth.

Pixel by pixel stitched together over a number of long hours. The image captured the enormity of the Solar System. Just to the left of a giant orb of a jumbling soup of salmon and orange colours that was Jupiter, below an ancient mottled rusty red Mars was a small distant planet. Just over there, towards the giant bright yellow light bulb in the sky, Helios.

It was a photograph of a pale grey dot called Earth.

Absence only makes me crave for her more. Absence does make the heart grow fonder, and fonder, and fonder until there is no more breath to take away. Before my final breath is stolen by her, I will return and replete with sentimentality our colourful tale.

Or was it a tail?