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Ghosts in the Eternal City…

By on September 24, 2012 in autumn, craft, silver darkroom, skill and craft, working

Rome.  As one friend called it, a palimpsest.  Echoes upon shades of history, currently covered with a veneer, like a carapace, of the modern age.  Here I am and I am not sure what I am doing.  I laid in bed last night, tossing and turning, the rusty wheels in my head grinding their chipped cogs, trying to make sense of it all.  I am surprised no one else heard the clanking din.  I finally slept around 04:30.

I exist in a grey area.  I have been here at the Aegean Center for over two years and this is my fifth session.  I have been designated a ‘working intern’.  I am not sure what this means but I know how it feels.  I fall somewhere in-between the students, who are much younger than I, and the faculty, of which I am not.  I wander this middle path feeling at times like a ghost, a shade in the midst of the group.  A good friend reminded me that perhaps I am inside an egg, dark and muffled.  If so, let’s get this hatching over with, please.

“To thine own self be true”  can be applied to my current state.  I can keep my own counsel, play my cards close to my chest but when push comes to shove I have to be able to find the right people to speak to about my thinking.  This I will do.  Last spring I was honest about my feelings and for that I have lost a dear friend forever.  If I could change the past I would (who wouldn’t, really?) but the fact remains that I opened up my heart and welcomed vulnerability.  I am paying the price for this.  I wish I could just blow it off, be less sensitive, think of these things in a more superficial way.  I guess it is to my credit that I have depth and feelings but I envy those who can just shrug off life’s little tragedies like so many random raindrops.

There are few who I could go to and receive the direction I need.  Thankfully I have some friends here in Rome who can help me out in ways that most people around me will never understand.  I will see them tonight. We will laugh at our pains as we discard our phantasmagoric vestments for a time.  Ghosts no more, our temporal selves will reveal the human frailties and shortcomings normal for our kind.  As we disperse, we will blend back in to the mix, walking the middle grey again, another layer, more echoes, a faint outline resembling…

JDCM

white, middle grey (18%), and black

 

Emerson on the beach…

By on August 19, 2012 in 4×5 photography, beauty, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, working

I sat on the beach the other day and listened to the waves lapping against the sloping sand.  While the currents slowly rolled the soft-colored stones rounder, my mind drifted from the page I was reading to the motorboat out in the bay and then back to the page only to be distracted again by the clarity of the sky and shadowy islands lying not-so-distant from my colorful towel.  I wonder if Emerson ever thought that one of his essays would become the subject of this writer’s musing or his book find its way to this sandy place?   Probably.  I am sure that his young admirer Walt Whitman would have felt at home here too.  He’ll be next.  “Leaves of Grass” during a wet Aegean February might be a good read for me.  In any case, in his essay ‘Circles’ published in 1841, Ralph demonstrates prescience.  In the modern world the concept of circles and cycles is common.  Society knows the words ‘reincarnation’ and ‘oneness’ as well as other ’round’ concepts.  Buddhism is not the mysterious idea it was so many decades ago and the phrase “what comes around, goes around” has been in the modern lexicon since, I suppose, the early 1960s.  “Ye reap what ye sow” has been around longer and means much the same thing.  What Emerson speaks of, I feel, is something larger than that.  Ideas come and go and  those who live in the past naturally point in fear and condemnation towards any revolution of thought or action that may threaten their temporary power.  That’s a good word too—revolution.  It implies a turning.  Seasons turn, wheels turn and the wheel inside the wheel turns as an analogy of an invisible world we may only glimpse in dreams or moments of sublime inspiration, connections with something larger outside ourselves.   Then again, there I was sitting on a beach in an archipelago called the Cyclades, or “The Circle”.  Hmm…Here is an excerpt from Emerson’s essay titled “Circles”, published in 1841:

“There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it all this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea; they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice: here and there a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts, made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam, by electricity.”

“There are no fixtures in nature…”  Indeed.  The waves roll and dissolve stones to sand, the wind shifts and islands disappear.  My eye wanders from the page to the sky and back again.  I blame the Meltemi for these ramblings.  The wind rushes, sometimes feeling as if it is blowing through my head.  In one ear and out the other.

JDCM

A wealth of art on Paros…

By on August 14, 2012 in beauty, Greece, Paros, skill and craft, spring in the Aegean, working

This past week has seen a upswing in the opportunities one may have to view art,  or generally just wander around in a daze of artistic influence.  Like many people I have my favorites styles of artistic expression and I will try my best to not be a judge of either the art or the experiences of others.  True, much of what I saw did not appeal to me so I will focus on what I found to be charming, influential, skillful and expressionistic in a charged and inspiring fashion.  That being said I will be sure to give my opinions.

There are as many schools, i.e. ‘types’, of art as there are colors of socks in my sock drawer.  I can end a night of gallery openings feeling somewhat dizzy so it is best to wait a few days, let the dust settle and then post a short review.  On Friday night there were two openings that I enjoyed.  The first was that of my friend and mentor Jun-Pierre Shiozawa and his new collection of India ink paintings titled ‘Sacred/Wild’.  I have already written extensively about his work and his Kickstarter  efforts to get the show off the ground and flying.  I found the hung show to be inspiring, humorous yet also mysterious in the way that dreams are the mysteries of sleep.  The show was well attended and is up for a few more days.  As a member of the arts community here on Paros Jun-Pierre has been a positive force in an off-island art world that can often times be overly-opinionated and even callous.  His work speaks for itself and if you ask him about the current exhibition he is more likely to relate technical details or perhaps unwind his tale initial inspiration for these large monochromatic ink paintings of wild animals, at home in humanity’s domus sancti.

The second show I enjoyed was a very small exhibition of oil paintings by the artist Iokim Mineretzopoulos who has been working in conjunction with Euphrosyne Doxiadis, another Greek artist and art historian here on Paros.  The subject is ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and it will be combined in the near future with a small book of poems by the poet Rory Brennan and published by the Aegean Center Press.  Understanding that these few oil pieces were studies for a larger, more comprehensive work, I was charmed by their simplicity, delicacy and humility.   A few pieces  reminded me of the the dream-like backgrounds found in Renaissance portraiture.  Iokim’s work exudes ‘semnos’, or modesty, a trait that is often difficult to find, or perhaps absent, in the current market-driven art world.

The three other shows that opened this past weekend were, although not to my taste, a plus for the community.   I found their abstract expressionistic efforts mostly derivative, often mundane and, in one case, poorly contrived, but that is only this writers opinion.  The important aspect is that in two days there was a wealth of art on public display, as it always should.  It reminded me of my youth in Provincetown and Wellfleet, going from one gallery opening to the next: truly exciting.   For me, the experience was worth it.  It allowed me to use my eyes, absorb some color and socialize in a supportive setting.  In retrospect, it was a successful weekend for all involved.  People had fun seeing, being seen and seeing others.  The women were dressed up and everyone had the kind of color one associates with the summer crowd.  Even I, bumming about in my cargo shorts and Dr. Who t-shirt, felt at home in these dog-day galleries.

JDCM

Some guests at the opening of ‘Sacred/Wild’ by Jun-Pierre Shiozawa

 

Emerson, beauty and hiking…

By on August 8, 2012 in beauty, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, Uncategorized, working

I have been hiking some more through the dry heat of the island and enjoying the sweat and the feeling of the hot air going into my lungs as I breathe.  Most of the walks have been around 12 km and primarily on well-traveled paths or roads.  That is a drawback since walking on pavement is terrible for my legs and back.  Tomorrow I head back out to Kolimbithres, but this time I will skirt the rocky edge of the island, bushwhacking through the dry, thorny underbrush.  The goal will be the same: the beach and swimming.  I’ll try to get some pictures.  I must say that I am enjoying the solo hiking.  It allows me to clear my head and think thoughts both shallow and deep.  I guess I just let them come and go as I walk, similar to a walking meditation in Buddhism.  Awareness of the steps I take and the objects to use and avoid while hiking is part of the meditation.  John Pack, the director of the Aegean Center believes that hiking is one of the ways we exercise the brain.  I can see his point.  As I walk though the uneven surfaces of rock, dirt and thorn my brain is calculating and sending millions of mathematical signals to my muscles and tendons, making sure I do not fall or slip.  Mindful awareness and the physical world.  Emerson would like that.

Speaking of the poet, I was reading him this morning and in his essay ‘Domestic Life’ he discusses the concept of beauty.  For him, beauty is all but indefinable and certainly transient.  Beauty, as he would agree, is in the eye of the beholder.  He wrote, “Beauty is, even in the beautiful, occasional,-or as one has said, culminating and perfect only a single moment before which is unripe, and after which it is on the wane.  But beauty is never quite absent from our eyes.  Every face, every figure suggests its own right and sound estate.”

Beauty is fleeting, random, changeable like the weather.  Thus have been my affections, although their emotional imprint remains fossilized and frozen in time.  I look back on the record with wistful, sometimes misty, eyes and wonder what would have been had the timing been different, the light at a different angle, something…Beauty, though, to me at least, remains fixed.  I still think of past loves as beautiful, for there was beauty in the thinking and acting.  None of them, I must admit, retain any angelic nature of memory.  Certainly nothing devious either, and I have never fooled myself into thinking that there was anything other than a normal, human connection at work.  To think otherwise would be to elevate these affections atop a pedestal and denigrate my own existence beneath them.  Neither of these are real.  So I will remember Emerson’s observation that beauty, like the cherry blossoms below, is real and on the vine yet subject to the shifting climate.

JDCM

Cherry blossoms, Manassas, Virginia, 2008

Walking across Paros and flying through space…

By on August 6, 2012 in craft, Cyclades stone walls, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, working

Since I have returned to Paros I have taken two excellent, long and hot walks.  On Saturday I walked from my apartment in Paroikia along the back roads to the northern tip of the island.  This area is called Kolimbithres and is host to three lovely beaches, an Eco-Park, a famous monastery and a fascinating boatyard, if that is your sort of thing.  The whole walk was about 12 km ( about 7.5 miles) and I covered the stretch in about 2 hours.  I had a quick swim and began hoofing it back to the bus stop.  It really has been very hot here and even though I stayed well hydrated I felt it was alright to take the bus back to town.  I tried some hitchhiking but there was no luck until a nice English couple pulled over and gave me a lift in their converted postal van.  An excellent day of excersise.   It was wonderful to experience the aroma of all the cedars and pines baking in the blazing Greek sun-a combination of resin and marble dust.  Lovely.

Today I went for another long walk, this time from the small hill town of Lefkes, over the hills and down to the beaches on the eastern side of the island, namely Kalogheros, or as many folks call it, the Clay Beach.  This is due to the massive clay deposits that make up the walls facing the sea and the nearby island of Naxos.  You can smash small bits and mix it with seawater to form a paste and then spread it over any exposed skin.  After letting it dry you dive into the water and wash it off.  Your skin feels silky and smooth after having this spa treatment.  To think that some people spend thousand for this elsewhere!  It was wander through the parched, golden hills, dotted with old windmills, tiny churches, monasteries and miles of ancient olive groves.  It is fascinating to think that these groves have withstood hundreds of years of raging wind, rain, snow and heat and are just now coming into their prime as fruit-bearing trees.  I stopped by a small mountain spring I know of off the track and behind an old church and found the cold water flowing from the spigot at a healthy trickle in this hot, dry August.  It was lovely to see the stone walls running through the vista.  Some of them are also centuries old but are identical in many ways to those constructed more recently.  I took some pictures and, once again, stayed hydrated. Once I made it to the beach I jumped in the water and swam about a bit then headed back to the bus stop in Prodromos for a leisurely ride back to Paroikia.

All of today’s journey began this morning in the upstairs ‘Big Room’ at the school.  John Pack (and Gabriel Pack), our director (and son), had set up the projector so we could observe the landing of the most recent Mars rover ‘Curiosity’.  There was coffee, homemade doughnuts and palpable excitement.  It was a tense thirty-five minutes and, for me here on Earth, a reminder of how important these excursions can be, if not for humanity then at least for the idea that there is something out there that can still hold our human fascination.  After that I began my own small journey, from one place to the other.  Maybe not as pioneering a trip to Mars, but essential in re-establishing my own sense of place on a swiftly turning planet.

JDCM

Paros and Emerson…

By on August 2, 2012 in 4×5 photography, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, silver darkroom, skill and craft, Uncategorized, working, Wright Morris

My trip back to Greece was uneventful although the security in the large airport from which I departed the USA was tighter than usual.  As a wise man reminded me, “These are the signs of the times we live in.”  So true.  And yesterday we all said goodbye to another wise man, Gore Vidal–writer, critic and general thorn in the side of anyone he felt needed a sharp poke as a reminder of their mortality and insignificance.  I have a feeling that he and Marcus Aurelius would have been good friends, cynics both–grumblers concerning the state of the world–and brighter stars in what can often be a dull firmament.

It was a pleasure and a relief to arrive back in Greece even though I have had to leave dear friends and family behind.  Such is my current path.  PAGE Literary and Art Journal is going to print and the files have been sent to the printers.  The only remaining task is to choose the paper stock for the cover and interior pages.  This is a hands-on job so I will not be taking care of that responsibility.  It is a very pretty publication, with relevant articles, both new and republished, and interesting work from the artists in that microcosm of the Northeast.  With that behind me I have returned to Paros and I am happy to be back.  My visit to the USA was so short it feels surreal to walk down the narrow streets of this port town, now more crowded with tourists, feel the heat of the Greek sun and hear the ancient familiar music of the Greek language.  It is as if I had never left, yet I have the jetlag to prove it.  I have work to do here before I leave for Italy in a few weeks so I will be busy and I am looking forward to that.  For me idle hands are the devil’s playground.  In short, I need to have work to do and some structure to my life, a schedule of some kind.  People to see, places to go, things to do.  Then I can rest.

Today’s (2 August) reading from ‘ A Year with Emerson’  is appropriate since I am back here and in contact with my teachers, mentors and those who would guide me.  When he was thirty years old Ralph wrote a letter to his Aunt Mary and gave a description of his ideal teacher. He wrote, “God’s greatest gift is a teacher & when will he send me one, full of truth & boundless benevolence & heroic sentiments.  I can describe the man, & have done so already in prose and verse.  I know the idea well, but where is its real blood warm counterpart…I may as well set down what our stern experience replies with the tongue of all its days. Son of man, it saith, all giving & receiving is reciprocal; you entertain angels unawares, but they cannot impart more or higher things than you are in a state to receive.  But every step of your progress affects the intercourse you hold with all others; elevates its tone, deepens its meaning, sanctifies its spirit, and when time & suffering & selfdenial [sic] shall have transformed and glorified this spotted self, you shall find your fellows also transformed & their faces shall shine upon you with the light of wisdom & the beauty of holiness.”

“You entertain angels unawares…”  How lovely.  We are only ready to receive that which we are ready to understand.  In a way he is reminding me to remain open to the ideas around me, to not shut myself off from the “sunlight of the spirit” and to look keenly into the eyes of those who know.  I must admit that I cannot say much else after that.  That’s alright.   I think Emerson, Vidal and Old Aurelius would agree.  As a parting shot I would like to introduce a circular idea I have been mulling for the past few months: learn, practice, teach.

JDCM

Emerson, PAGE Journal and grilling…

By on July 18, 2012 in Greece, Paros, skill and craft, Uncategorized, working, Wright Morris

As I write this missive a storm rumbles its way just south of us throwing off heat as it drops the barometric pressure on someone else’s small town leaving us, well, humid to beat to band and hot.  Too hot to hang about outside and too hot to pick blueberries, which I was hoping to do today.  No dice.  Instead I went to the air-conditioned gymnasium (a Greek word, btw…),  walked my  4.5 miles, burned off almost 800 calories and came home.  I showered off the sweat and began to sweat again.  So be it.

I have been noodling around with Ralph Waldo Emerson lately.  I purchased  a book at Oblong Books in Millerton by Richard Grossman titled ‘A Year With Emerson’ and I have been enjoying the quotes he has chosen.  In some cases he adds a small editorial note to give the quote a sense of context and I find this book to be a fine addition to my other daily readings.  Today was about Emerson’s love of ‘strolling’ and getting lost in nature.  He wrote,

“I deliberately shut up my books in a cloudy July noon, put on my old clothes and old hat and slink away to the whortleberry bushes and slip with the greatest satisfaction into a little cowpath where I am sure I can defy observation.  This point gained, I solace myself for hours picking blueberries and other trash of the woods, far from fame, behind the birch-trees.  I remember them in winter, I expect them in spring.  I do not know a creature that I think has the same humor, or would think it respectable.”

Emerson’s love for the peripatetic, or the thoughtful walk, reminds me that when I am on the treadmill, defying the heat and humidity on this sultry July day, I must look a bit crazy to the gods.  So be it.  I ponder empty thoughts, count the miles ticking away and check my pulse once in a while.  I am thinking of Greece today, having had a nice email from a friend in Scotland who will be there in August for a holiday.  I am returning there in less than two weeks and  I am looking forward to the heat of that place, albeit without much of the humidity.  But today, unlike Ralph, I picked no blueberries.

I have updated the website of ‘PAGE Literary and Arts Journal’ and it looks pretty good.  It is simpler and easier to navigate and some of the new changes clarify our submission policies and history.  I have been given marks of approval from the other editors so that makes me happy as well.  I hope we go to print soon!

Cooking outdoors has been a common dinner event here in Ancramdale as of late.  If we are going to use heat for cooking we might as well leave it outside.  The pictures tell the story. Damn, it is hot. My fingers are sticking to the keyboard…

JDCM

Some more thoughts from Robert Henri…

By on July 7, 2012 in craft, Greece, Paros, skill and craft, Uncategorized, working

Before I start quoting Robert Henri I must say that it feels good to be back in the Hudson Valley.  This time I am just visiting, and that is an interesting feeling in itself.  I do not feel the need to become too involved in the daily goings-on of my mother’s house other than to fill out some paperwork should it need doing and eat the food that’s put in front of me–no hard task that!  Her health is solid and typical for a woman her age with the physical issues she has developed.  Nothing dramatic, just a steady plateau of daily living for an octogenarian.  There are naps, movies to watch, the New York Times, phone calls from friends and family and more naps.

I have been reconnecting with my friends here as well and have found the same old crowd more or less exactly the way I left them, which I am relieved about.  In a world that is constantly changing, sometimes too fast for anyone’s good, it is a pleasant and healthy surprise to find that one has anchors of friendship and support in the old haunts as well as the new.

Right now there is a group of turkeys crossing the lawn, bobbing through the hollow on their way to the pond for a morning drink.  I saw some deer last night, some possums too.  The hydrangeas are blooming in enormous white balls of tiny flowers; the air is damp and the weatherman predicts hazy, hot and humid today.  I meet with the editorial board (of which I am one) of PAGE magazine today for the final layout session before we go to press.  This has been a 2-year labor of love, a long time coming and, frankly, I think we are all ready to put it to bed.  With that, Robert Henri has something to say on the matter of work…

“All outward success, when it has value, is but the inevitable result of inward living, full play and enjoyment of one’s faculties.”

“Don’t belong to one school [i.e., of thought, ed.]. Don’t tie up to any technique.”

“It is necessary to work very continuously and valiantly, and never apologetically.  In fact, to be ever on the job so that we may find ourselves there, brush in hand, when the great moment does arrive.”

“Events and upheavals, which seem more profound than they really are, are happening on the surface.”

“On the surface there is the battle of institutions, the illustration of events, the strife between peoples.  On the surface there is propaganda and there is the effort to force opinions.  The deeper current carries no propaganda.  The shock of the surface upheaval does not deflect it from its course.”

“On the surface, disaster is battled with disaster. Things change. But all improvement is due to what of fundamental law rises to the suface, through the search made by this of the undercurrent.”

“There are painters who paint pictures with spiritual titles but whose motives are purely materialistic.”

“The great masters in all the arts have been whole men, not half men.  They have had marvelous fullness in all human directions, have been intensely humane in themselves and in their interests. And if they seem to select, it is because they have so much to select from.”

“A public which likes to hear something worthwhile when you talk would like to understand something worthwhile when it sees pictures.”

“The true character of the student is one of great mental and spiritual activity.  He arrives at conclusions and he searches to express his findings. He goes to the market place, to the exhibition place, wherever he can reach the people, to lay before them his new angle on life.  He creates a disturbance, wins attention from those who have in them his kind of blood–the student blood. These are stirred into activity. Camps are established. Discussion runs high. There is life in the air. The non-student element says it is heresy.  let us have ‘peace!’  Put the disturber in jail.   In this we have two ideas of life, motion and non-motion.  If the art students who enter the schools today believe in the greatness of their profession, if they believe in self-development and courage of vision and expression, and conduct their study accordingly, they will not find the audience wanting when they go to the market place with expressions of their ideas.    They will find a crowd there ready to tear them to pieces; to praise them and ridicule them.”

More to come…

JDCM

 

 

Some Robert Henri-isms…

By on July 3, 2012 in 4×5 photography, craft, Greece, nude studies, Paros, rangefinder camera, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spring in the Aegean, Uncategorized, working

Here are some quotes from Robert Henri, from his book ‘The Art Spirit’.  It has given me great joy and pleasure in the past 24 hours.  His words, I feel,  are meditations…

“An art student should read, or talk a great deal with those who have read.  His conversations with his intimate fellows should be more about his life and less of paint.”

“He should be careful of the influence of those with whom he consorts, and he runs a great risk in becoming a member of a large society, for large bodies tend toward the leveling of individuality to a common consent, the forming of adherence to a creed.”

“An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.”

“All things change according to the state we are in.  Nothing is fixed.”

“There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body. In fact it is not only among the artists but among all people that a greater appreciation and respect for the human body should develop. When we respect the nude we will no longer have any shame about it.”

“The art student of these days is a pioneer. He lives in a decidedly colorless, materialistic age…Sometimes in the past we shot ahead, in certain ways, ahead of where we are now…We have yet as a body to come up to the art of living.”

“If a man has the soul of an artist he needs mastery of all the means of expression so that he may command them, for with his soul in activity he has much to say.”

“It is a splendid thing to live in the environment of great students. To have them about you in person if you can. If not in person, in their works. To live with them. Great students agree and disagree. They stir the waters.”

“If you want to know how to do a thing you must first have a complete desire to do that thing. Then go to kindred spirits–others who have wanted to do that thing–and study their ways and means, learn from their successes and failures and add your quota. Thus you may acquire from the experience of the race. And with this technical knowledge you may go forward, expressing through the play of forms the music that is in you and which is very personal to you.”

“Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.”

 

Melancholia atop the Hotel Attalos…

By on July 1, 2012 in darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, spring in the Aegean, working

I am once again in Athens after a long boat ride from Paros.  Tomorrow I fly to Vienna, en route to America and a month in the green, lush Hudson valley and my mother’s home.  I was saddened leaving Paros today.  I sat at a cafe and said goodbye to a new friend from Paris and as I walked to the port I hugged a fellow student farewell as she opened up the small cafe where she worked.  The crowd to get on the Blue Star Paros was large and I waited in the sun for about 15 minutes until we boarded.  One of our teachers at the school was boarding another ferry on his way back to Amsterdam and he was being helped by a good friend (to many of us) who, in a few weeks, will be saying goodbye to Paros forever.  Her life path has shifted and will no longer include Greece or the Cyclades.  I was struck by a melancholic mood as these interactions occurred and as I boarded my ferry I received a text from a friend who had arrived too late to say goodbye in person.  We spoke on the phone and it was good to hear his voice.  A few minutes later another friend sent me a ‘bon voyage’ text.  So some of these ‘farewells’ were from a distance and not face-to-face.  It felt as if something was missing. There is no substitute for the real thing.

I have come to an odd point in my journey through Greece.  I have many questions and my future on Paros suddenly seems less certain than it did a year ago.  There was a time where I needed university credit-that is no longer necessary.  It is essential I establish my own existence outside of the Aegean Center if I am to survive happily on that little island.  I am a photographer and need to be so with or without the Aegean Center connection.  To rely on that resource for too much support (of any kind) would be unfair to them and detrimental to my own sense of self and stunt my intellectual and social growth.

I have made friends and lost friends at the Aegean Center over the past two years.  I have made terrible errors of judgement regarding friendships and even recently the possibilities of love.  This has had the effect of pushing me further into myself, thus finding an easier path to isolation and solitude.  I know this is not always a good place for me to be, but I feel as if I have no choice.  If I am to be emotionally secure then I have to be very wary, almost suspicious, of others.  As my father has warned me, I can be too naive regarding people.   Yes, there are some people I can trust, but more to avoid or at least be careful around.

So I leave Paros with a heavy heart.  Few real farewells and only one or two ‘kalotaxidhis’ have left me wondering what my future in Greece will entail.  I will work through the year since I have made that commitment to myself and others, but after that it may be time to move along.  We shall see…

JDCM