Greece * Summer 2006 * 35mm

I was 21.

Freshly graduated from university.

Terrified and anxious to catapult into adulthood.

Preferred to dwell in existential angst.

Fascinated by everywhere I hadn’t been.

Felt entitled, actually, to these undiscovered places.

So I delayed my launch a bit longer.

And went to the most beautiful place I could think of.

It would be nice to be surrounded by beauty, I thought.

I can still taste the octopus. The yogurt with honey and walnuts.

I documented my Grecian odyssey with my mother’s Olympus camera.

Due to laziness or financial prudence or both, I never developed the film.

8 years and 6 NYC apartments later, I discovered the rolls of film from my Mediterranean meditation.

Armed with Homer’s Iliad and a lonely planet guide, I journeyed.

To the monasteries of Meteora.

Pink sand beaches. Strawberry-Yahoo-drink-hued beaches.

Overnight ferries. Catamarans in hurricanes.

Inns once mansions of sea captains, who smoked tobacco out of pipes and had white beards, I imagined.

I befriended a sage named Carmella, who crafted jewelry and ceramics. Adorned feathers from her ears.

And owned the chicest shop in Crete.

I promised to return one day so she could teach me all that she knew.

I hunted every single beach--on foot, on quads, on boats--on each island I visited.

Swam to the farthest cove I could manage. To giggle in solitude.

I can still taste the octopus.