Thoughts from Greece... after the fact, now, I guess

I love sunsets over the ocean.

For several reasons.

Here's one.

Have you ever noticed that when you watch the sunset the golden rays that run along the water's top always come directly to you? It's like that sunset is just for you.

It's pointing to you as if to say, "I wanted you, and just you, to see me right now, in all my orange and red and yellow beauty, and so I'm extending my arm along the edge of the rippling waves to you sitting there on the shore. Please take my hand."

And I say "yes, why of course, I would love to" and sit there in happiness for the hour or so of our dear friendship.

And what's more, if I were to get up and go for a walk, that sunset would go with me. Like it really was holding my hand.


Here's another. Along the same lines. Kind of.

You know that part in The Little Mermaid where Ariel is walking out of the water towards Eric on the shore? Well, in that moment her father sends golden shimmery dust along the top of the water towards her, so that it becomes a part of her dress.

Watching the sunset, and how it looks like its sparkling right towards me, I close my eyes and think that it's changing my clothes from jeans and a sweatshirt to a shimmery dress too. It's lovely.

Montenegro... Probably the Most Beautiful

We got in Wednesday afternoon. Supposed to leave on Friday. Then Saturday. Then Monday.

We left Tuesday.

This is why.
Oh, and this.
I like it here. It was really hard to leave.I'll be back.

20 Days Out

I'm constantly amazed at how you can find normal life anywhere. Or, to put it another way, you gravitate to that which makes you feel normal, even when life is different.

For example.

Dubrovnik.

Maybe it's being by the ocean again. Being able to walk down to the sea when I need space, or time, or time and space. Standing there against the rocks that spill down into the crashing waves. Getting sprayed with every 7th wave, or something like that. Feeling the need to back my way off the cliff because I was told to never turn your back on the ocean as a kid. And I listened. The sound.


Maybe it's the streets of Old Town. They're old, go figure. They feel it. Especially at night when there isn't anyone around to make you feel like the place doesn't really belong all to you. Because, at moments like this...

...it does.

Maybe it's the fact that there really isn't a whole lot to do. I can sit and read my book for hours. Or I can walk up and down every small, neatly stacked, stair-street, and feel like I've done a lot without having actually done much. Or I can sit out in "the yard" with coffee and good, albeit sometimes ridiculous, conversation. Or I can just enjoy the company of the wonderful people around me.


Maybe it's being in a place where familiarity has continued to come out of the thick cracks. Through random connections, try ten or so, informing me or my family or friends, that, "Dubrovnik? I've been there. It is so great." Through, after my first half hour walk around the city, I inform Carry that "here is a place I feel like myself... kind of like trains," though of course with not as much intensity (nothing but bridges rivals trains in that), but the feeling is still there. Through finding my favorite place to be, and staying there for two hours with music in my ears I haven't heard since a very different time in my life, and at a very different place - oh, Matt Wertz - and feeling okay about it all.


Even though leaving tomorrow seems a million miles away at this point (besides the fact that my packed bag is sitting right next to me), it'll come sooner than I think, and will make the two long weeks I've been here (two weeks feel like a month when it's usually two days to a place) seem like nothing.

But no. Not nothing.