yingangphoto:

St Nicolas Bay

Crete, GR

There’s something there. A moment, a story, a thought. I photograph it… nothing. I consider writing about it… maybe.

It crosses my mind that aside from inspirational fodder, what I have before me is something else. Perhaps it’s desire. Dare I say it, a longing to participate instead of observe.

I watch the children mostly. Scrambling over the sun-warmed rocks, high-pitched exclamations of excitement when a small, silvery fish swims close to the mouth of the green net they wave about in the shallows. The water is turquoise and friendly. They are completely absorbed in the hunt, engaged in mortality and their fledgeling power over it.

Strategies are discussed, failures analysed. The determination for dominion over nature will keep them there till dusk, salty skin burnt amber by the sun.

The grown-ups lie supine on deck chairs like offerings on an altar to Apollo… either unaware or interested in the outcome of the hunt. They lie in pairs, pale, distant figures, some blossoming in red. I wonder what stage of boredom they are at on a scale of 1 to 10. I wonder what irrepressible yearnings are knocking unheeded upon the portcullis of their marriages.

Their offspring, by contrast, walk with a nimbus of wonder about them, fed by the unmatched exhilaration of discovery. I wonder at what point that magic was lost upon their parents…