sea salt

grace

The whole Mediterranean – the sculptures, the palms, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gordons, the bronze men, the philosophers – all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungeant taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.
-- Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra, 1945

The other thing about the Mediterranean is the water itself. Sometimes I wonder if I had ever drunk (much less tasted) water, at all, before I came to Greece. I have no memory of it. The olives, I’m sure, were Spanish, pitted and pimentoed, tasteless. To be eaten and immediately forgotten. That first summer in the village, freckled and burnt, black, and blonde, like never before or since, I fell in love with olives, real olives, tiny and black, native and not for export, salty like the sea, like all that water… that marooned me on this island, left me high (and dry)… long enough to forget what I had left behind.