It’s past midnight, but noises of an unremitting spark in Life resound as if it were day. Yellow lights flitter on the sidewalks’ canopies streaming through to the concrete and decorative garlands strung over the traffic reach into infinity like a cosmic journey. The lines of ornamental lights pull at the city’s futuristic lever of style, traveling light-years beyond time. As Greece’s second city and home to a voluminous crowd of university students, Thessaloniki sleeps solely at the rise of dawn; it lives like a thumping jackhammer the remaining hours. The citize [View Full Entry]

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Down the cliff, a night-lit city spread before us. Above in the star-studded sky, bats swept through the spotlights. Within, there were only three of us, travelers raiding a silent fortress. We crept about the shadows, discovering the silence of an overcome fortress, and when daylight rose, we left toward a theatre; one of the largest, most grandiose and well preserved of the antiquities. Upon the very top of its limestone steps, the singular pluck of a violin reached our ears soundly while various tongues bellowed in a one-minute fame of limelight. With the days to come, we furthered o [View Full Entry]

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Figs ripe and taken to gravity remained like impermanent fossils upon coarse stone steps. Their seeds lay scattered under foot, a purple skin flattened as an insect on the windshield of a desert crossing. Leafy boughs and thick trunks rose from the neighboring courtyards. Wrought-iron fences above waist-high walls bordered the properties’ perimeters. And in the early morning, few wanderers searched for the entrance around the base of the Acropolis. There were only the slanted sun, the cool air and the stirring noises in Europe’s oldest city. Tucked through small Turkish all [View Full Entry]

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A perturbed Athenian quenched his divulgence. He chose me and filled my carefree mind, causing the strange restlessness of a pilgrim whom sets his first steps upon a long, unending journey. Like Ulysses’ banishment from home by angered Poseidon, I was on another island, the island of Rhodes, and the restlessness came surging in a torrent of tides. Another languid day of exploration had passed when it struck full force, and I was then on the town beach taking my evening bath. The sun was setting, west below the island of Symi and the exotic land of Turkey. And like Ulysses, [View Full Entry]

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Night was falling. Surrounded by clothed peoples, new country and the craggy coastline I have come to familiarize with Greece, I hopped a rock-stacked wall and slipped out of sight. With the guidance of twilight casting a mellow shadow passed each stone, I tumbled down a hill and stepped onto a wind-drift patio; desolate, dirty, with piles of dried eucalyptus and bougainvillea tassels spinning round their mounds. This was it. Perfect. Soon, I watched the moon rise to shine its reflection down across the spreading Aegean Sea—the setting to an episode of Indiana Jones on the island of [View Full Entry]

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Now the Revolution! It’s enjoyable to say the least. Alive with the present moment and spontaneous upon these adventures, I indubitably decided to join the scores of old wrinkly nudists from around the globe. I shed my red REI boxer briefs and became a part of the skin, sun, sand, and yes—the freedom!—revolution. Hallelujah! Yes, enjoyable, but in the beginning, cautious. Talk about bare-butt white, one has to be sure not to lie out for too long. But what beats all prospects of attaining a sore-full crispness with a sensitive pink tone is to swim through the [View Full Entry]

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Why Oh Why? “Never?” “Uh-uh.” “Not once?” “Nope.” “Ah yes. Now how about today?” I smiled. Where I come from it’s taboo. It’s labeled as a counter-culture; a flower child, a hippie, a youth in the presence of a rebellious act. Those who do could easily be looked down upon, or they easily could not. But by any means, it is universally restricted with only a few designated, well fenced-off and signposted locales often deeply out of view over the edge of a cliff or down at the entrance of a wild gorge. [View Full Entry]

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Cramped in Crete The north felt old, beaten and subjected to the rigors of the tourist trade. It was everywhere; the mazes of alleys like a compartment store with a disorderly manager creating row after row of miasmal shelving. With this, I was excited. I was thrilled with the prospects of a search for a Crete bucolic in wilderness and lifestyle. Rich with minerals, Crete is a mainstay supplying the produce for the rest of Greece. And yet, where was this? I was excited to leave. I was excited to search into the lavishes of an arduous Cretan culture. An Image [View Full Entry]

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Through Fervent Seas Peering through the dark, ravished from a night on a bench with the soft vibrations of the ship’s engines, I saw Crete. My eyes shuttered. They wanted rest, to evaporate from the world surrounding and return to the forgotten lands where dreams relate to one another on a gossamer thread. But my mind; it singed my lashes and brows with the ferocity of ancient fable. Crete. I heard so much. I had a conscious tale of the Cretan in my mind. Who was he? Where did he come from? Half passed five o’clock in the morning, the land [View Full Entry]

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Slow roasted gyro spices and the waft of numerous cigarettes intermingle in a sea air aboard the F/B Lato. We leave a 2,800 year old port behind, our captain blowing his horn to a passing ferry less than half our size as we leave the harbor’s entrance. It’s a seaman’s greeting. The response is reciprocated. With the Great Harbor, commonly known as Piraeus, this horn echoes round the surrounding hills. In the dark, they’re illumined with stacks of geometric apartment housing whose lights twinkle as the skies above. Honestly, the harbor is much more beautifying in [View Full Entry]

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