Islands

It’s difficult to breathe sometimes. Good people are fading. Good memories are fading. Like analog shots these images of me and of you, our former selves, may seem a bit washed out. But we can inject a little colour, revivify them in the recounting.

With the port closed to new experiences, it’s difficult not to retreat into memory these days. Mine are mostly summery recollections. Heat shimmering off the buildings, we pile onto the ferry. The stink of the city and all its urging demands retreat. Will dolphins see us on our way? The hope of islands. Islands that are, or were once Greek. Their seas. The Aegean. The Marmara.

What is it about these Islands? They now seem as mythic and elusive as Avalon and Lyonesse.

Perhaps they too are as fragmented as we are. With boundaries so defined is it comforting, even liberating to know their extent? We explore their limits like a lover’s body — in the act of discovery and re-exploration we find unity.

All vessels must eventually find a shore with which to exchange some kind of cargo.

So will this embargo ever end? The stifling vagueness of this continent we all inhabit now. We no longer have a port on which to call. But the gulls still recall us just as their squawks seem to mock something.

Islands are defined by their waters. Ten seconds in their seas and I am at least temporarily rinsed from this clinging film of anxiety, this existential dread.

Some scientists believe that water is in itself a kind of reservoir of memory. Perhaps when we soak in these primordial pools, the record of this planet, a document in the library of the cosmos, its touch, recounts a history so vast and deep it drowns our shallow cares.

So what island comes next for us? And will you turn off your phone, and still receive me on the shore, smiling that innocent smile of ice cream cones and sunset strolls and the infinite openness into which we once swam?

I like to think so.