I had a fantasy

It's turning out better than I had in mind

Summer of 1980, I was 20.

To those of you who have liked my writing in the past, thank you for your patience. I hope you like this.

I was restless during my sophomore year as an under grad at the University of California at Berkeley. I wanted to take a semester off. My dad said, “Your brother did that and never went back to school. Your maternal grandfather Max (Robert Eisman) left a small fund for you. Why don’t you go to Europe instead?”

1 of 2 pictures I have with Grandpa Max

Grandpa Max was 27 when he had my mom. My baby brother was born on the 27th. Grandpa Max died at 52 years of age, 21 days after my baby brother was born. I was still a toddler.

In my backpack I had one skirt, one bathing suit, and a pair of jeans. One pair of shorts. A number of t-shirts, something to sleep in, and my Cal sweatshirt. Yes, of course I had underwear, my toothbrush, and a journal. I remembered thinking, I don’t need more than the one skirt and a few t-shirts I can choose between. Whoever I’ll hang out with will understand my choice.

I started the journey with two males, one from camp days currently at Harvard, and the other a boyfriend of my roommate - long time friends with the Harvard guy I met at camp. We flew over, traveled on trains and a boat from London to Israel. That’s where I split off from them and decided to go it alone. So much easier to meet other people when no longer in a threesome with two twenty-year-old men acting like little boys.

It took me a bit to find myself in the above collaged experience.

I was going to only stay for 7 days, but I didn’t leave until the 11th day. I was having that good of a time! I hung out with these locals. This great British blonde, Sandy, took the picture of me on the rock in the red bathing suit. I ended up staying with her in England a few weeks later before I flew home.

Georgos is cooking, Sandy is the blonde on the right.

Speaks for itself… but I could describe what Ouzo tastes like or how I mourn for the brilliant Octopus he prepared and fed us.

Every morning we met on Platys Gialos Beach.

This is a current picture. It wasn’t this built-up back then.

It was sitting on those beaches and going on rides with these men who transported passengers to and from Paradise, Super Paradise, and Elia. It was during these long days I learned for the first time what the word relax really meant. I never relaxed like that before. I could breathe. I could play like a kid and a woman. Relaxation was no longer a concept. Inspiration was no longer foreign.

That’s Dimitrios on his boat with the ladder down at Super Paradise. Notice the nude on the lower left?

I remember writing in my diary.

I also wrote if ever it seemed the world was going to end and there was nothing I could do to fix it or make it better, I would go to a place like Platy Gialos, and relax on the sand. I would relax. Worrying about the inevitable wouldn’t help me. That’s right, I figured I’d go where I learned how sweet it is to be a human being and delight in the possibilities when really authentically relaxed. All these decades I’ve kept this option in my back pocket.

Being on the boat with Georgos. It developed slow between us but was completely real. He said in his gruff voice, “I don’t forget you. Maybe I go to United States.” He never did but he called me for years asking when I could come back.

Same day when Sandy took that picture of me. Georgos was catching Uni (Sea Urchins). The guy behind me swam to the boat, climbed on right there, with no swim trunks, only a pink feather tied around his you know what.)

Every year I wanted to go back. Every year I dreamed of being there again.

I did go back. In 2000. He was still there. I surprised him. I spent a week with a girlfriend of mine. He set her up with someone and took the four of us to the best neighborhood restaurant on the top of a hill that no tourists knew about. The table must have had every possible choice delivered and shared between us. The four of us split a third bottle. Another diner, in that restaurant above it all, sent over a fourth bottle. It was one of those nights.

He’s no longer there, or alive, but I’ve always fantasized about going to a Greek island to focus on my writing and remember again what it takes to relax, and perhaps do that again. It didn’t have to be his island. It could have been any one of them.

When I was in Greece in 1980 and 2000 I didn’t spend lots for my lodgings. Many of the stresses I had have disappeared. Most of my hours now I can plan ahead and protect. I’ve learned the difference between going on a vacation and living life as a vacation in my own bed, with my own fridge, my own neighbors and no screaming kids on long flights that cost lots of money and are even more difficult to get through now that airlines are decreasing the size of seats to get more bodies on the same plane.

These YouTube videos are blessed bliss. If I decided to spend for a flight, a room on an island, restaurant meals, I couldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing so many vistas that are clean and clear of trash left behind by unconscious tourists. So what if it’s AI. Thank you AI.

Now, 26 years later, I stay in the comfort of my home, at my desk, with all my journals organized by date on the shelf in the closet. I don’t have to live out of a suitcase. I have everything I need exactly where I left it. I don’t have to lug my stuff thousands of miles away. I can bliss out having even better and cleaner vistas on the tube than I could afford over there. These videos keep me company over to my right while my bliss on the page is over to my left.