... where I can so well contemplate, create, read, exist... and also savor the delicious morsels not only of every moment, but of all possible creations, which are usually born from just a few ingredients, in a small kitchen space behind my back... I wear only the minimum of the clothes and I enjoy the pleasant breeze, which flows here like a fresh stream, bringing with it the smell of all kinds of flowers from the surroundings, entering from the big wooden door opposite, around me and then upwards, out through the open chimney... where I imagine it, as it travels like a light canopy over the vineyard up into the blue sky, over which puffy clouds float today...
I love waking up to a cloudy day in the summer and I even prefer it when it rains... for balance... As well as during the day, I love the siesta period here on the island when - just like after midnight - everything, including the animals and insects, calms down and takes a rest, drawing strength for the second half of the day...
Perhaps because I wasn't born into the local culture, I don't have the siesta habit etched under my skin. On the contrary, I enjoy the privilege of being fully awake and able to observe, to perceive almost ethereal atmosphere, a thousand times rarer now in the summer, when the island in many places turns into a colorful seething anthill... But now and here I feel that maybe we live here alone. Except for a strange bird that communicates with us with wonderful regular screeches from morning to night, but has never shown itself to us. I think it's a parrot. A stranger on this island like me. Just in a different guise. Maybe he also arrived here with a one-way ticket years ago... and felt so comfortable that he settled here indefinitely...
During the time that I have lived on this island, I have had the opportunity to experience all the seasons here, every month, and I can say that I like all of them. Maybe it's because the island is small, everything is more intense. Tastes, colors, smells, feelings... And each month seems to have its own personality with specific smells, new flowers, plants, animals that come out of their hiding places, possibilities... I like the quieter months a little more. But even this period, which is a bit of a challenge for us, who are looking for lonely poetic places for contemplation, is necessary. For my favorite balance.
I love here year-round the intensity of every ordinary act, activity, experience, whether it is a cup of coffee, buying food, an evening picnic on the beach, sitting at this table... I feel that everything is happening now and here, I don't have to think about it, trying to come back to the present moment, to focus on what is happening. I'm simply here. I really am. Body, mind and soul.
"I feel that when I'm there, I'm really living," an acquaintance of mine, a compatriot, once told me after he returned back to our homeland, and who also spent several months a year here on the island. I know what he meant. Same with me.
"I feel here that no matter what I do, where I am or where I go, that I am already in place," I said last week to my sister, who spent two weeks here, and she felt it the same. The fullness of life made up of ordinary daily rituals.
And exactly that, the lifestyle I get to live here... feeling rich from fairly ordinary daily experiences and activities is one of the reasons why - perhaps like the mysterious parrot - I'm still here after several years, although my original plan was to spend only one week here.