tuckova

I was fascinated from probably age 12. I pictured a world of women with strong features, full lips, thick hair that tumbled in coils down flawlessly smooth backs. In university, one professor told me not to visit until I’d let go of the idea that it was fixed in time and I knew he was right so I didn’t try. I went to islands, seaside resorts, towns that disappeared in the off season. Blue roofs and white stucco walls, winding stone streets hostile to cars and flimsy shoes, the soundtrack to Zorba in every cafe, garlic and feta on every table, olives on the plates, in the oil and in the soap, every place a potential postcard and wish you were here. Sunrises or sunsets to assure me that life had gone on longer than I could imagine and would continue to. 

Now I’m finally circling the actual mountains, the remaining structures (faded but amazing for being there at all). We’re down at the sea now; we’ll be in the center next. I have no expectations of meeting any gods though I do think a lot about beauty and how it assumes different forms. The only English we hear is when we speak it. Every word is made of different letters that blur on the phone before taking shape as something I sometimes recognize. The rooftops are bars or solar panels, the streets have sidewalks except when they don’t, and the music everywhere is a recorded version of a song I know but as if played by a band in a second-rate hotel. The sunrise still renders the clouds pink and purple as bruises, bursts through and blinds us.

We wash our clothes in the sink, walk single file past indifferent cats and walls crumbling or covered with graffiti or both, talk about aging and friendship and authenticity, eat garlic and feta and olives. I am not forgetting the rest of the world, which does not let you forget, but I am, in these moments, happy.