Today is sunny and bright. I have opened my windows to air out the sick bay. I am feeling much better and have only two more days of antibiotics. Here are some images from the past week…
JDCM
Archive | February, 2013
News from the sick bay…
The rains have come in to stay, or so it seems. It is winter in the Aegean and it is damp and cold, the kind of damp that seeps into one’s bones and begs for all to just stay in bed. There have been a couple of days of sunshine, but other than that it has rained, drizzled, poured down and showered.
Last Sunday evening I was sitting in my apartment reading when suddenly it felt as if all the energy had drained from my body and mind. I was ill, I knew it. I managed to stay awake for another hour or so but then I was in bed and out like a light. The next morning I woke up as sick as one could be. My lungs were full of crud, as were my sinuses, swollen glands, etc…I took the advice of friends and went to the doctor who gave me a prescription for antibiotics, expectorant, throat gargle and high strength ibuprofen. As the days have progressed I have improved but I feel I am not out of the woods yet. Three more days of pills and I should be, well…right as rain. Over the days friends have brought me food. Chicken soup from one, a fish stew from another. Today I was given some onions and carrots so I could make lentil soup. These are some of the finest people I have ever known.
On another note, my quarantine has given me the chance to photograph my immediate surroundings from the viewpoint of the small balconies on either side of my flat and out my kitchen window. They have an abstract quality that perhaps I would like to paint also; geometric shapes of varying hues of tan to white, blue expanses broken my myriad antennae. I’ll post some images next week.
So it is movies, books, soups, plenty of fluids and lots of bed rest for me. I have been reading Joseph Campbell and Edward Weston; James Bond and Harry Potter–comfort foods for the mind, body and soul. The weather is supposed to improve by Monday and then John and I can get back to work building benches and so forth.
JDCM
Guidance, delineation and communication…
It began with lamp posts in 2005. There was a quayside in Ermioni, a boat on dry dock and an ornate iron lamp post looking out over the still water at sunset. Then there were more lamp posts in Bosnia, arcing around the gentle curve of a mountain road, leading to where…?
Now there are stone walls climbing and moving across the landscape of the Kyklades. They have been accompanied by electrical poles, maybe telephone lines, I am not sure…
I have been photographing them for the past few years, mixed in with all the rest. Driving back from an area here on Paros the other day I was struck by how these all are indications of the hand of man in an otherwise wild landscape. I have a choice. I can bemoan the state of affairs regarding these structures or embrace them as something more, strong vertical and horizontal lines, shadows of human needs. I have thought of lamp posts as bringers of light in the darkness, guidance along dim roads. The stone walls define our boundaries, of both self and property, for they are often too insignificant to keep any creature at bay. The poles signify communication over distances. Guidance, delineation and communication. I would post some examples, but I feel that everyone has an idea of what I am speaking of without the illustrations.
It is raining here. Last night the deluge dropped a hail of roaring ice in Paroikia. It woke me at 4AM. It also deposited all the red, sandy dust that has been blowing from the south, out of the deserts of North Africa. This is the scirocco. The air was clear this morning and as I drove south to visit some friends for coffee I marveled at the archipelago surrounding me: Sifnos, Serifos, Sikonos, Ios, Kimolos, Syros, Tinos, Andiparos…rugged walls ran through green hills, telephone lines stretched thinly into the blue distance and, even though the sun was bright, my heart was gladdened to see the occasional unlit streetlight along my path. If I came this way on a dark and stormy night I would not become lost in the tempest.
JDCM