[box] “Learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness” – Ayn Rand [/box] Imagine. You’ve hugged mom goodbye, gave her all the emergency contact information, and triple checked your backpack for every possible thing you could need. You walk through the sliding doors into the airport and see your flight on the…
In the city there was a man with no arms or legs. He obviously had no means of making money, so every day his neighbor would carry his stump of a body (there really is no other way to put it) to the main street where he would wait for passersby to give him a coin or two. I hid in an alleyway across from him and watched for 20 minutes. Nearly every Moroccan who passed tossed in money, some stopped to fan him because of the heat, some tilted his head back and poured their water into his parched mouth, some simply put their hand over their heart and smiled warmly at him.
Everyone has a specialty and generally the quality is far superior from any market you can find. (okay, I still love Trader Joe’s). Of course, at the time I didn’t love it because my bananas got smashed in the door on my way out and I tripped on the curb due to my depth perception problem courtesy of my one contact.
I will miss the sound of the checkers clacking on the worn wooden backgammon board, the laughter of the children playing tag in the streets, the sun sifting itself through the leaves of the elm at Tops cafe, and the sight of Katerina bumming cigarettes from tourists. This is my Olympia, and I will always return here and find exactly what I left- because it is intangible.
I’ve long believed I was the center of the world (or universe) and last week, I was actually correct! That is, of course, if you abide by the Greek mentality that long held Delphi to be the center of the world. This is the place where mankind was supposed to be the closest to God, to…
25 years sounds like a long time as I sit here today and wonder where it all went. The first third of my life seems a constant struggle to get somewhere. To get to be old enough to go to school, to get to be old enough to drive, to get through college, to get a job, to get a better job, to keep moving onward & upward. Sure enough I got all these things, I could go places, anywhere I wanted. The hard part was realizing none of these things were what I actually wanted.
He says “oh good, this is holy water and my mother was afraid you would throw it away because you don’t understand what it is. We must bring this to her, it is very important!” Then I look at him rather sheepishly and tell him I drank the water, but refilled it with tap water- and would she know the difference?
It’s not glamorous or comfortable, but it happens. You are sore in the morning, you look like a train wreck, you wonder why there are bootprints on your face and pray the pile of drool on your shirt is yours (seriously, how did the bootprint get on my face?).
I enjoyed watching the lightning display for 3 hours, until the thunder and lightning gave way to the first colors of the morning. Soaking wet, with the thunder above my head and the lightning bleaching the sky to a fluorescent white- I heard the beating of my heart growing stronger, the adrenaline pumping through my body from head to toe, I breathed in deeply, and even the air felt electric.
I was praying to everything I believed in, and things I didnt believe in, please stop the wind, just stop the wind. I looked back across the valley to other side of the moutain- Christos was now stamping on fires and using a branch to put out another fire at the same time. Oh, I’m going to kill him if he lives through this.