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Published: September 9th 2006
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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 Over Yonder Rural Crete held something in mind; rocky crags, mountains dried by the aridity of an emblazoned sun, the squares of olive groves, and the men with long twirling mustaches and the women in black with a thick smile in the shade of some whitewashed step. So far, squandered by the fastidious eruption of your atypical resort town dashed in smears of white foreigners burnt to lobster-red from their pursuits of an instant bronze, it had been Crete. Likewise, the white on my back glorified the tan of the sandy beaches, but time was on my
side. I had the luxury to be nowhere fast with nothing in need of and nothing to supply. Feet trekked like a shepherd’s pack mule, tedious with a conscious effort as to where my next footstep might lie.
The north loudened with tavernas, cafes, bars, alighted strands of jewelry shops and boutiques stuffed in a not-so-quaint alleyway with the capacity of a Venetian street dating back some eight decades prior to today’s Westernized market. But it’s Greece, Crete of all islets, free from war, conquest, and empirical dominance. And now it’s their chance to advance toward modern wealth and the physical luxuries of the rising world. The youth have ran head-on into Club Monaco collars and the trend of Quicksilver T’s with women aligning their sensuous curves for the pleasure of themselves, for the pleasures of others—eyes following and the notion of tonight dreamt.
Yes, the things and more things abound like an overturned lorry tumbled and spilt down the steeps of the Samaria Gorge. Life seemed impenetrably busy in the northern townships, even under the late noon’s hours when the heat is at its height, drawing in the elders of a time ever passed.
I slipped
Sludge Swim
The harbor of Rethymno away. I sought the journey inland away from the congested narrows of Chania and Rethymno and a tourist package of plated and signposted meals to seek the south. It would be the furthest reaches of a European land—the South! This attraction was in the foremost the cool, crisp allure of the carrot. I wanted to see and be the southernmost edges before that vast hinterland of something completely and utterly unknown falls deeper in its cardinal direction to a long and distant and colder sea: Africa. Africa was across that Libyan Sea. Would I catch a glimpse to stir the potion of brewing desire? And would my search be met with success of a Cretan land reserved in a slowly evolving past?
Feeling Spatial Plakias through the White Mountains where I felt the arid landscape through the windows. Osmosis of heat permeated my skin as I quenched for the sea—only brown dried brush and the looks of sharp porous crags immersed my vision as the bus climbed upwards. Winding round the curvatures of the mountainsides, a sloping cultivated land expanded down the valleys. The land was lined with patterned rows of olive groves. Dark green heads of the
Night Music
Narrow store-alleys of Rethymno where music sifts through the breezes and street sounds canopies stuck out from the soils and deep shades helped the surreal image before me appear more three-dimensional. As we passed their fenced corridors, the trees trunks were entangled in a mesh of black netting. I assumed this was to be stretched out beneath the overhanging ripe pits, leaving it up to gravity to harvest when the season called.
Betwixt a steep walls of the Kourtaliotis Gorge, the road continued alongside a riverbed. It was a dried wash with mud cakes like a sponge left to soak up a barrel’s spoiled wine. From the lone cypress trees managing to succor any elements of nutrients from their timid outcroppings, a fierce wind blew resembling the forces required for survival.
Crossing the mountains, the region of the south was arguably notable in its pastoral grace and languid atmosphere. Despite the harsh environment, peoples reaped the necessary comforts permitted by modernism for an agrarian lifestyle. Housing was spread far and wide between the spaces of groves and pastures. Village centers collaborated on hillsides with the kindly complacency of old friends. Whitewashed walls contrasted the brown and light grays of the summer soils, and there, starch to the eye with that cool crisp
refreshment, the Libyan Sea glowed an azure hue. From the distance divided, erratic hyphens denoted the force of the wind creating a milky screen of sea-spray on the furthest horizon.
Africa was unseen, albeit it was there and I was in the south of central Crete. And out the window the calm soothing environments of languishing time and the necessities of minimalist relaxation proliferated in an array of men with the spit-curls of facial hair and women in the shades wearing black against the walls of white. The wind blew free. It swept and combed the valley. It was unobstructed. It smelt of the wilds.
Coming Next:
Nude Camping and the Stories of a New-Found Nudist
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anonymous
non-member comment
Thank you for taking us along....I love traveling with you. And I can't wait for the upcoming blog!! You found a new way to enjoy yourself- being nude!!! Yea! Much love - Mom