Day 11

I woke up @ 8 am today, stretched, boiled water for tea and opened my patio doors to the clatter of roosters and barking dogs. Everything else, besides the occasional moped, was still asleep.

I needed to take half a roll of film for photography, so I crept outside with my camera.



It was impeccable timing.



Twenty steps out the front door, standing on cracked pavement and dried weeds, I caught the sun starting to climb over the Eastern hills.


The days are growing plump.

On Sunday we hiked six hours along the coast of Paros. From the ruins of Dileion, a 500 B.C. Mycenaean temple where hikers can view the entire city of Parokia; to rocky goat trails lined with thorns above the ocean where a strong breeze sent everything flapping; to the Naoussa acropolis, where we sat on the ruins of a 3,000 year old two-story palace.

(learning how to fly)

Our guide was a Greek man named Lambros. He lives a four and a half hour walk from Paroika and has been known to walk into town just to say hello and then walk back home again. This summer he camped by the ocean for a week alone, where he could “listen to the wind.” His knowledge of local history and Greek mythology is intense. I’ll be taking a history class with him each Tuesday and Greek language every Friday.

Saturday was slightly less educational.

Our group trooped off to a beach bar called Magaya at lunchtime (it was a 45 minute walk) and spent the day swimming, reading, and sketching. The bar is owned by hippies who spend their winters in India. It closes at the end of September, along with most of Parokia, when tourist season slows. It will pick back up again next April.

Classes are evolving too.

Philosophy yesterday started by exploring what we believe and why we believe, who taught us to believe and what we want to believe.

No textbooks.

Our instructor wants us to form our own beliefs and opinions. Class was held on the front porch of the school (which is an 18th century Venetian house) under grape vines and a view of the Aegean sea.

On Monday nights we have a poetry seminar run by a woman named Betsy who works at the 92nd Street Y in New York (where ironically, I submitted a manuscript last December). We started class reading poems by the modernist poet H.D. and we’ll work our ways towards Bob Dylan.

For advanced creative writing, myself and a group of three or four other students will meet separately from the rest of the class each week over a glass of wine with our instructor.

(a view of Paroika from the temple of Deilon)

Everything is relaxed, but intentional. It’s a huge departure from how I’ve been trained to learn, but it’s the way I’ve always wanted to learn.

Independently, but passionately.

I don’t have to worry about tests, but I make sure each day is balanced with reading (I’m working on Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and a book of poems Bill Mayer titled The Uncertainty Principle), a larger amount of writing (poems, journals, letters, blogs), time with the group cooking, shopping, walking to class, eating Baklav, and time to appreciate how privileged I am to be here.

Thanks for all of the notes, e-mails and Facebook messages I’ve received (and thanks Madeline for your letter, you should have seen me run out of the post office yesterday. I made the man in the post office laugh. I was so excited I treated myself to something from the bakery).

I’ll keep writing.

Thank you so much for reading. Sending my love across the ocean.

Be kind to yourself. Be well.