See there?? He's still not paying attention... What can we do? Maybe a new verbal alert... something more concise and arresting like "Woman!!" Just what will catch your ear, Tom? Dem and I are at a loss .
Missing Hydra.
Beautiful photo, Sophia. I'm noticing the woman 'in white' ~ a composite? Did your lodging have such a stone wall?
Voice barely here,
Lizzy
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." ~ Oscar Wilde
Meeting you and your family was such a great pleasure. Super to see you here and I love your photo.
Thanks for Milosz's incredible passage on poetry and travel. The second one with mention of hummingbirds makes me think they may have been the very same ones flitting back and forth between each of their gardens. Their sentiments also feel quite similar.
Your 'professional perversion' is quite handy, in fact, for anyone wishing to pursue a reference further .
~ Lizzy
Last edited by lizzytysh on Sun Jun 17, 2007 1:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." ~ Oscar Wilde
And BTW, I'm sorry to have caused confusion; it's not my photo. It's one of Tori Amos. I always use them for avatars on the Net. Guys, if you like the photo, check out the Tori pages and, ABOVE ALL, her music.
It was such a pleasure to meet so many of you on Hydra, many for the first time - and for
others, to get to know you better.
Anna, you are right about Hydra being magical. I've dreamt about it every single night since I
returned home.
Here is a little piece of the magic for those who weren't there.
Sunset on the Aegean.jpg (69.02 KiB) Viewed 6771 times
Many of you may remember this gorgeous sunset from the restaurant where we ate overlooking the
sea. I'm afraid I don't remember the name of the restaurant though.
Tom, I found the book I mentioned and I will be writing to you very shortly about that.
I've been trying to organise my memories and to write some kind of report here, but it doesn't seem to work at all, What can I report about? I don't remember doing anything!
All I can say is that Greece changed me, at least for a while. We are people with strong emotions here-our sadness is bitter and hurting, our happiness is wild and a bit out of control. Even our sea is like that: I never saw the Black Sea without waves, breaking strongly on the shore. In Greece, I felt my feelings were like the sea there. Endless. Calm. Everywhere around. When I was happy and when I was sad, I was dissolving into that, but the feelings didn't cut into me. And, happiness or sadness, I never knew the borders between them exactly-just as I wasn't sure where the sea ends and the sun begins.
For that, I didn't cry when I left Hydra-as I cried when I left Berlin. For that, though, I know that I can't live without going back to Hydra. Somehow, someday (hopefully sooner...).
And for the first time after Hydra I had the courage to look into some hurtful things that have happened into my past. So... medical effect, too!
I was born and lived in a very crowded city. Even now I hear the hundreds of cars out of my open window. I did what I could, I looked for beauty here in the small moments where I could find it-in the smell of linded trees in the night, in listening to the grass and the insects somedays in the park. I looked for beauty all my life, and that's what Hydra is for me, beauty. I never knew before being there how it really is to be really alone with the night and the sea, without hearing someone else's breathing next to you all the time. I didn't know how it is to get to love even the touch of the shiny stones under my feet, because everything, flowers, mountains, stones, seems to be exactly in its right place. I am used with the cars, the city, the noises here, I hardly notice them anymore-but oh, how I miss now those days when I didn't have any cars and noises to ignore!
Sorry everyone, you already know I am a sentimental...
Laura
To re-use and adjust an old adage, Travel broadens the Heart
"Bipolar is a roller-coaster ride without a seat belt. One day you're flying with the fireworks; for the next month you're being scraped off the trolley" I said that.
Hey, I'm back - was off (as well as off my rocker a bit) for awhile because of the Tori show in Warsaw last night. Absolutely extreme experience. But I'm back, right here with you, cooled-down.
Dem, I meant it in every possible sense of the word (there are three, as far as I know).
Coming back to Hydra, I have to admit I'm specially grateful for the film night. In my mind, the songs from the Leonard concert will stay moored in that harbour forever. The image that'll stay is also that of Nikolas, and his face expression, when he joined us to see and hear Hallelujah. Geesusss, pure bliss on his face. Ascension to heavens. At the end, he just turned around and said, FANTASTIC. Smaaaiiilhing.
I would've captured that in a photo but for Dem's intervention ("You're not allowed to do that! It's a bootleg, you know!".... I guess Nikolas's smile, being part of Hydra, is the World Heritage and you're just not allowed to export him... Here we go - a local government agenda doing its job dilligently
: P ).
Just a note to say that I too am alive and well and living on Peaks Island after a stupendous two weeks--one on Hydra and one traveling around Israel with my forensic group and with my daughter, Cecilia. Since I had to depart too damn soon from H (on the last boat Friday night) and hence missed so much of the activities, I have to say that I took some mean satisfaction in seeing that the video did not work as well as expected.
I am already suffering from Hydra-deprivation and trying to figure out how to work in a 2008 visit there combined with a work trip to Italy in early June.
--Til then, if not before, Tom
Thanks, again, Anna, for your posting of Milosz's quotation regarding travel and the poem Gift.
I now have a framed copy of that section of your posting on my desk; plus one framed for home, and one framed for my supervisor, for when she returns from her own travels [left early this AM].
It's been very difficult to refocus my concentration toward other matters.
~ Lizzy
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." ~ Oscar Wilde
Since I missed Berlin, and can get a budget flight there from my local airport I was thinking I could have a few days there, fly onward easily from Berlin to Athens for a week in Hydra, fly onwards to Krakow for a few days, then homeward using the budget route. Hmmmm... Not sure how this will go down with my other half
What can we do? Maybe a new verbal alert... something more concise and arresting like "Woman!!" Just what will catch your ear, Tom? Dem and I are at a loss 
.
is quite handy, in fact, for anyone wishing to pursue a reference further 
. 
