la isla bonita

by air*


by land


by sea

It took me a long time to see the beauty here. I thought I should keep my eyes on the sea, the one beautiful thing, but I had a mountain view, or a city view, and I wasn’t used to Europe. I was Ariadne, stranded on this island, searching desperately for a thread to tie me to anything: a person, a name, myself. I looked for it in books. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. Freedom or Death. Red Dyed Hair.

Now I’ve learned the lay of her land; I am one with the terrain. It’s a stripped, dry, barren beauty. A negative beauty, a sublime terror of being abandoned on a precipice, or worse, on a treeless shore, on her changeable sea.

There’s a small white church on every promontory, a fortress, a cave, a gulch or a gully. Herds of goats and sheep wear paths through groves both cultivated and wild; their bells make eerie music beyond the line of sight. The trees assume the shape of the wind; vegetation lies low to avoid it, maintaining impossible purchase on sheer, vertiginous rock. Green is a relative term; every leaf shines silver in the sun. There are two seasons, multiple harvests, weather wild, if mild. Summer is a splendor.

In winter, I’ve watched a hailstorm prostrate a priest in the street. I’ve seen waves hit houses 50 meters inland, forcing their waters under watertight doors. I’ve spent cool hours in the moonlight on a quiet beach. And on the same beach, one hot afternoon, alone, a rogue wave came out of nowhere, crashed over me, destroyed me, before I could scramble away. I thought it had carried off the key to my bicycle, stranding me for real, but after a panicked search, I found it, magically, safe inside my shoe.

The beauty of Crete is simple: it’s earth and sea and sky. It’s tremendous, isolating, glorious. It’s almost home.

...
*air by steph
land and sea by sissoula