Trip was great. We all know the feeling of those first days back. For some godforsaken reason, I elected to document it.

Day 1

 I'm like a starburst.
I can read through all of the lines.
I'm skimming your biography.
I'm driving wood screws into the mid-July blacktop.

I smile at the shape-shifted sandstorm as the dust clouds blow past, stinging the eyes of the wonder boys, coating their ice cream, clogging their ears.

 People stroll by now, tiny universes of memory and mood. By what distraction do they momentarily forget their destination? An old-timer sits with a pohar of beer, a whiskey with one cube.

I forget that it's Thursday. The spirit is something else. I'm slipping into a fugue state, but I don't want it. If I sit back, it's as if some liquid shifts in my tilted vessel and the float steadies at "fugue".

A guy sits nearby smoking. Smoking, smoking way too much. He's the sort who luxuriates over each drag like the cigarette is an erogenous zone. He drinks coffee and beer and taps the ash from his cigarettes under his table and the sidewalk beneath is littered with all of these little chunks of evil.

Overcoat, tank top, pink driver's cap.
Sandals, sneakers, gold heels, silver slides.
Dog.

Everyone's holding down a job. They make the most of this time when no one is working. The guy who works at the burger joint looks a bit like Post Malone. No tattoos, cool socks.

Smokers take it all the way down to the filter and reveal their addiction right there. Nothing tastes worse than the drag that's down at the end of the cigarette.

Day 2

I'm on the balcony and the birds aren't as chatty as they were last month.
9:30 AM and breezy. Leaves shiver in the warm breeze. What other word is there?

Get your head back in the game. Lay into it, see what happens. Coordinate, plan, schedule.

What's it all matter?

I could slow down in a harbor town on the Myrtoan Sea. I could give it all up and make a living toting groceries to the island ferries. What's it matter? Everyone has their place. Everyone falls into place, and when you let it happen, when you honor the fall, everything works well enough.

No poison of limitless potential.

When did we buy into the lie of riches? Have you ever tossed food into a koi pond? Wait. Too beautiful. Have you ever dropped food into a cloudy fish tank? The school moves in unison to the descending flakes. And when you run out of flakes, you start finding fins and tail parts floating in the murk each morning.

(If you've ever wondered if there was enough to go around, maybe we should take a survey. Are they holding onto all of it? Is there a they? Has there always been? They say a conspiracy theorist wrote a book.)

But it's just a spell, and it's easily broken. Just slow down in a harbor town and watch the Greeks. Watch the older ones, middle-aged at heart. There's a calm joy about them, and if you're in it for more than the calm joy, I have an algorithm to sell you.

Rather, give in to the placid artistry of sweeping a sidewalk. Hang your bedsheets on the line and watch the breeze shiver the silver-green minnows of the olive orchards. Look at the sea in late afternoon. Account for the colors of the ripples like an Impressionist.

Yes, the sea can be maroon.
Yes, the hills of Dokos can glow.
Yes, the clouds are a cheerful caravan.
Yes, slow down in the heat of a Peloponnesian afternoon and gaze at the way life flows around you, and you'll see a different side of it all.

Day 3

On the balcony and where have the birds gone? Off in the distance perhaps. A coo here and a trill there. I have the urge to build some scenes. Look at me, sitting under a cloud-mottled sky, making nothing. It's tough doing this thing with no tribe. Maybe I will build the scene.

Ah hell, I could do it all. Move forward. Move.

Remember yesterday. What does it matter?

This day, this age.
The internet made writers of us all.
Devices made photographers of us all.

What does any of it matter?

People, people. It's not right or wrong, it just is. Why marvel at talent and expression if the world hasn't stopped to notice yours?

"What's wrong with mine?" you ask. "It's not so bad. I certainly don't see why that is so much better."

To wit, I spent time on the platforms, the writerly ones, to see what was going on in the public square. I tried. I really tried. I read and read, and I found no one who seemed to be writing to keep the wound in their heart from growing too big.

Have you noticed how some wounds are like big, terrible flowers? Anyway...

It's the mystery of mastery,
and the ratification of instant gratification.
Public discourse, social discourse.
What's become of the cultural discourse?
Too silent to be noticed.

It's true that the barrier to entry in the public square used to be much higher, and it's true that those with access were a fairly homogeneous bunch. But god's bones, we could have widened one aperture while holding fast to craft. But no, that stricture has also become flaccid, gaping, like the entrance of the stripy Big Top, splayed open and flapping in the breeze.

You see that? That was an unrefined metaphor, and I should labor over it, fine tune the imagery, adjust the meaning until it fits into the jigsaw puzzle of composition.

But what does it matter?
Have we lost the will to be mesmerized?

If this all seems like lament, then let it be so. It's also a silent call to the celebrators of craft, and it's a dedication of sorts. An incantation.

If the intention is attention, then the contract is already broken. Not so was it back when you had to bleed to have a forum. And never mind what sort of skin the blade flayed, because the serum is all the same.

This was all accidental, mind you, a slow creep, three decades or more. But once the monuments and institutions are all in place, with the hordes rushing hither and thither, the inscriptions on the triumphal arch matter less, far less than the busy minds of the busy-busy creatures racing through the archway.

I better get to it. Can't sit here all day.

Love you all like blueberries and seashells,

Chip