Back home

So, the last day was spent packing (not that there was that much to pack, but the process itself is a mental ordeal) and playing frisbee in the shallow waters. At first, I was terribly pissed for having kicked the sand into the paint while trying to rescue it from a rogue wave, but General started acting such a fool I couldn’t but laugh and then we literally exhausted ourselves laughing, tossing the stupid cheap thing which flew every which way but as aimed.

I was so hungry that I made an omelet of bacon and five eggs and instead of splitting it, I ate everything in one awful sweep, meanwhile, the poor idiot was waiting for me, sitting in the sun for well over an hour and is now approximately the color of an apricot. So we played some frisbee :D

After we packed and took most of the stuff to the car, we went swimming one more time, hugging and playing and hugging and kissing and some more frisbee and then just hugging and watching the sunset. Oddly enough, this has cooled my body down to an odd sense of being cold, so, waking up in the middle of the night in my hammock, having dreamed everything is frozen and there are polar bears, I had to zip up my sleeping bag to the gills, freezing. Mind, I normally sleep in shorts and a tank top, and the night was no cooler. Just weird.

We started early, driving down to the ferry dock, basking and solving crossword puzzles. I had two coffees on the drive over to the border and then finally began to nag I also need food. Truth is, the General, as all Aries, only sees one goal at a time and he only saw the end of our destination - home - so he did not eat, did not drink and for almost six hours he hardly stretched his legs. This inevitably makes him increasingly cranky, so I know by now to enforce breaks. We chose a good restaurant, too, and had a 2-person plate of meats and side dishes, pumpkins and kale salad, it was delicious. I also asked for a Greek-style trio of deserts, and it was amazing. Only minus side is that the Greek version of the balaclava is dipped with lemon juice and that just kills me. My mouth really hurt. Amazing how something can hurt so much without actually causing any real damage (just micro-cracks.). Once we arrived home, the storms finally followed, shaking and rocking the city, and my computer died as soon as I started it. The world is back to normal :D

Rab Cake - their official cake. This shit is actually REALLY good!

Alien invasion. 

Day almost last; Leaving tomorrow. General is really looking forward to it, he has ran out of books (He catches onto his yearly dose of literature within this fortnight), whereas I always want to stay a little bit more, just a little bit longer … Insatiable little cricket, I know. But I have just fallen into a routine and gotten to know the grounds and have spiralled out to explore. I need more time. I discovered an ancient city last night, I mean, I didn’t fall into a hole and found it, it’s the capital of the island, but once I actually hotwired the car and drove across the terrain in search of something resembling a coconut ice-cream, it turns out it’s not a tourist-y city at all, it’s actually an old Roman fort with a medieval trade state built upon in and then some. I have to look closer into it. There is a hilltop alley with seven or so churches lined one after the next and I spotted a plaque on one, saying this was built by the noblewomen of Rab … to think there were officials here, mighty clergy, princes and rich merchants … I thought it was just a pretty rock with recent forests of pines and figs spread over it. Really should stop assuming… Or wishing for the world to have begun only in books, while in reality it should have slept until my arrival.

The beach, half private, lonely mostly now, that the camp is less full, has for me every morning a secret message written in the sand. I cannot tell you it’s really for me or whom is it from or what exactly it says, but there are simple hieroglyphs drawn there every day, as if someone knows I will be the first to arrive and find them. It’s stuff like coffee cups, car, road, ice-cream, the shape of this isle with a cross marking some spot… Child-like, but not child-like enough to be random. In my brain that is a clear invitation to an ice coffee in town … but no time, no rendezvous place, no idea how to accept the invite. I pretend it may be from an Ezra Miller-look-alike teenager I keep running into and never really finding an opportune line to start talking to him. He seems like he wants to start a conversation, but is too shy and we’d have a language barrier to gap. Ah, well. Opportunities to take photos of beautiful people. I miss more than I grab. It’s just how I roll.

Accidentally kicked sand onto the watercolours today, while rescuing them from a wave. Useless fucking pillock.

I am not used to editing photos while holding the laptop in my … lap. Despite its moniker. The cursors are either too sensitive and not enough and my old trick of taking two photos of the same scape - one with the good lighting of the sky and other of the sea, and then patching the well-lit bits together, carefully and slowly, is shy to work. If only after 30 years of practice, I would know how to take an ideal photo from the go…. ..

Day 3 or 4 “You knowingly and willfully dragged me into this hell!” … “You mean SEASIDE VACATION?!”

Flawless day, finally. For all my planning and plotting last night, to grab another kayak and load it with water and pancakes and go around the island, it was wonderful. I got up super early to make pancakes, distributing some to bribe people into sort of approving of me (and for supper tonight everyone is making pancakes; mine tend to inspire), putting jam in half and Nutella in half and adding a can of mixed fruit with, stuffing it all in a Tupperware. Although there is a tiny puncture in the floor of my boat, it didn’t make a difference, I blew it up and packed it with snorkling gear and sunblock, and rope, in case the General gets too annoyed with having to paddle, I’d just drag him behind. His was a hard boat and had excellent drift. Mine is more comfry, though. One of the blow-up seats enables you to kind of recline and almost paddle laying down. This lets you closer to water and you kind of have a longer pull.

Our first stop was the island-peninsula (depending on the tide) at the northmost end. Ancient earthquake wrinkled the soft sediment bed into this adorable curly formation and in the midst of the tiny bay a sandstone throne, licked into a statuesque shape IDEAL for sex, oral or otherwise. Almost like a kinky altar, that. Even the most reserved of geologists would have to agree.

I explored the terrain a wee bit, scaring the lizards and snakes, spotting a few bunnies and a few incoming tourists who were waiting for the sea level to drop enough for the land bridge between the big and little isles to become a thing.

We had to paddle way around and the sea was as flat as glass. Were it not for the haze, all of the other islands would appear easily accessible. I have my eye on the Barren Isle, but there can’t be any wind or any wave or any currents or I wouldn’t be able to make it. There, yes. Back … not really.

The next stop was three capes down and then we had the picnic, eating the compote fruit and dripping chocolate pancakes with our hands. I snorkeled a little, lightly, and the General sat on the rocks, baking, watching over me. The clouds cleared at that point, though, and nearing noon, it got too hot, so we set back. Got in around one, straight to bed.

To show my appreciation of his effort, I went to town at around four .. (Not the best idea, but okay.) G had a fierce craving for meat, so I offed to find something that sell either BBQ or any kind of stuff I could mix into hi eggs for breakfast. Though it was way too fucking hot for hiking and I am still purple in the face now, after a half-hour cold shower and two hours later, the town wasn’t all that far away. There were plenty local options, for which I was too hot to experiment with, so I went into the super chill supermarket and got G some ready-made sausages, a risotto and beer. I got myself some postcards, ice coffee and strudel. There was a concert in the camp last night, not too terrible, so I am in a mood to listen to my music a little, for a change from sea and crickets and screaming toddlers. Too tired to move, really. I think I’ll call in an early night and go read something trivial.

Day 2

No arguing today! Amazing! And we had some really good sex, too, once we found out there IS a possibility of doing it in water, with masks on. Kind of like ducks, the female seems to be under constant threat of being drowned. And yet to be under, ocean before me, that golden glimmer of light on the sandy, dune raked floor, fish, shells, water licking me all over, and being sort of pushed forth insistently, slowly, surreal-y, pleasure pumped into me through one particular orifice… It was really transcendent. Building on the fantasy from last night, I imagine that’s totally how a merman would do it.

Slowly and surely my desire to paint is waking back up. I painted three landscapes of the same scene, the same view from our tiny bay, so, mostly just sky, ocean and the rim of a shoal. Tried some other stuff, didn’t quite manage. But there is marvel in how the paints (and some sand and salt, whether I want it or not) dance around the paper before they settle. When we’re not swimming or playing in the water, we’re sitting on just the edge of tide, mild waves licking our toes,G is reading his book on Foreign Legion, and I am painting. I can hardly hear the fucking screaming kids (I know I sound harsh, but man, have you ever tried to enjoy Eden and listen to the waves while a freaking toddler is screaming in horror for an hour at a time when mommy is two feet into the sea, trying to convince them it’s safe and fun… all fucking day … every day … and while two five year olds on a paddling board are screaming without pause about their actions, feelings, intentions and circumstance, so that their basking parent would be involved in their adventure… There’s a hysterical two year old somewhere, who is CONSTANTLY crying about something, really constantly. There’s some kid who screams and shouts for his mother every time she is out of eyesight, and I mean if she is two minutes late for having gone to wash her hands, he is screaming through the entirety of the camp looking for her, that she will miss dinner.

Anyhoo. People are noisy, nature is awesome. ‘Nuff said.

P.S. I know the General is consta dubious about the endless shit I purchase, regarding hiking, but somewhere along the way I bought a freaking AWESOME blankie! It got cool during the night at some point and I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I stumbled and tumbled through the camp in the dark, to get to the cottage where G sleeps, and got the hiking duvet… And it is awesome! Cushy, fluffy, great material, airy and warm, but not in a sticky, sweating kind of a way. It was great. The hammock is good, too, no freezing butt syndrome and you don’t wake up like you’ve just been through a tumble dry. I think I slept a lot better than G on that ugly old edgy makeshift cottage sofa.

Day 1 of vacation. Nearly killing one another.

Other than the date being homicidally disinclined to civility, the arguments G and I have are always about one thing: I want to be a pirate and explorer and of course want to prove to him that it is possible, easy, whereas he wants both his feet on the ground (He actually does that even when he’s sleeping on a hammock, oddly enough, he anchors one leg down to touch the ground and it’s not because swaying would bother him.) and refuses to let me stray. He would divorce or even kill me sooner than allow me to wander into the unknown, that’s how much the idea of just starting to walk and not stopping, whatever road may throw at you, horrifies him. The unknown road.

The one thing on the whole wide world I would cheat on him with. The unknown road.

Our arguments are always crazy dramatic. Trying to explain to him I am border on the spectrum and being surrounded by strange people, with screaming kids and even louder screaming babies and being snappy to me will put me on a defence, nothing to do with him. I WANT to be here, I CHOSE this spot because it is the most beautiful I’ve seen thus far along the coast, but the cottages are positively nightmarish and for him to say he would rather stay inside and read his book - the one instance where a naked man reading a book is not good enough even for me - than explore an unknown island is enough to send me packing and walking into the unknown. Or fucking paddling, if I could get the boat, please? And the pump? And an oar?

People ask how I prevent myself from doing something stupid when I’m angry, like “leaving”. Well. Since you ask. The camera, watercolors and sleeping gear combined weight 60 pounds. Of that the sleeping gear is 9 pounds. And no adventurer on the planet is brave and perky when the night falls and 7 billion mosquitoes the size of sparrows hone in on you.

Funny, this time of my life. I am not afraid of a single thing in nature (okay, maybe gravity, but fear of falling down crumbly rock is not a fear, it is common sense), not darkness, not the ocean (Which is only pleasant when it’s pleasant, in every other instance it’s lethal), not wildlife, snakes, spiders, fish, weather, nothing - but people bother me. Not in the same sense they bother the General, like he can see a small sign saying ‘no nude swimming’ and yet everyone on this side of the island, because it is just 98% wilderness and retreat from civilisation, is mostly naked - he doesn’t like that. If he catches me swimming naked he makes me put trunks on. Not because some fish could swim up my hoo-ha or someone might take a photo or something, no, he just finds that sort of idea uncomfortable and would never take all of his clothes off himself, regardless of his physical superiority. I don’t even care most naked people are hot, I don’t stand looking at them. Their trash, their sounds, their attitudes unsettle me. I am a paying fucking customer, man, I came to your resort as a guest. And these things are not cheap! Why the fuck do you keep acting like it’s bothering you I am here… there is a dozen screaming newborns and infants here, man, how does THAT not drive you crazy? The camp is NEVER quiet. Crickets barely get to have a say.

Had the ferry which brought us here capsized or something, or just broke down so nobody would be hurt, and everyone swam back to the mainland but we were in a boat that got drifted to a remote island, I would be happiest. With everything I packed, all the water, food, books, drawing gear, dingy, swim gear, hiking stuff, camera, coffee, I would be fine for a month. Longer, if we found a water source (karst terrain, no springs, and no dew to speak of, either, for tarp licking last resort) and one of us had the temperament to fish. Or even hunt, if need be, there’s plenty bunnies around, even some wild goats, maybe even some bird eggs. Plenty food if you have no empathy. As if I would ever harm another living thing.

But that would be my paradise. The General, in his obsessive urge to control everything, even the environment, would see it as being stuck on a barren island with a woman who menstruates three times a month, refuses to accept the fact there are other people who wish to have a good time in a pretty patch of the world and spent an hour stomping maniacally on a box of crackers because she couldn’t get the stove to unscrew so she could change the gas charge.

My heaven is his Sartre’s nightmare and his heaven is mine.

If that’s not a group dynamic, I don’t know what is.

Oo, did I ever tell you about a fantasy I have, of a man or a merman coming out of the sea, in the dark, while I am alone sitting on a shore? I’m just saying, THAT, last night, would have been an awesome fuck, because good grief even in silhouette he looks like a conquering titan, were it not for the fucking mosquitoes. 

I wanna show you by example, but give me a week or so ....

The difference between shooting a lovely scene and painting a lovely scene... is day and night. In photography, it's all about the urgency and the math. You spot a good scene and instantly you grab the camera, move into the right angle, wait for the alignment of the elements to get the composition and pray for the ideal light. 

     Painting that exact same scene ... is the exact opposite. It's slow, it's in control of you entirely. You still need to know your gear, know how to control it, but the process is thoroughly separate. First, you find the scene and take it in with all your senses. Then you find a spot to sit, make yourself comfortable, this will take a while. Then you draw what you want, how you want it - the reality is just there to inspire you, maybe even impress you. Take as long as you like. Play as long as you like. 

    In this case, Photoshop IS cheating. 

General's line of the week:

G: They say the best survival tactic when lost in the wilderness with your wife is, send the hag to find help - this should but you at least two days of favorable chances.