vertigo

Many have tried to write about the Mediterranean, but few have succeeded.

There's a melancholy about this old coast and these islands, like a base note of musk in a perfume that would otherwise be too sweet to bear. Is it the bitter ghosts of all those dead empires? Or was there always a sting in the honey? A thorn in the lion's paw? (For there were lions here, once). Perhaps it's the daemon of this land itself that inspired the Greeks to tragedy and sent first the Alexandrians, and then the Romans, out to conquer the known world.

The impossibly clear water is alive with tiny fishes. Intoxicated, you dive down deeper and deeper, until the current of your passing billows the sand, half-revealing ancient mosaic. The fish flash silver, and your blue-and-white mood shifts to slanting vertigo at the depths of time concealed here.

The veil slips. The beautiful olive-skinned dancing boy becomes an old man wasted by years. But within the grotto of his eyes glows the same fire that blooms in the blood-red geraniums and the crow-black cypresses down by the port, where men have been fishing for millenia.
The jasmine-scented afternoon smells like heaven, the evening air is delicious, and in the soft night everyone's eyes are olive-black and filled with the slow smile of love. The magic is irresistible, like a flower to a fly, and in you slip, reveling in bright yellow.