Hurry up and sightsee already.
I want to forget that I’m “traveling” on Skopelos.
Can we just get the sightseeing out of the way already and truly experience Greece’s Skopelos Island?
Where we can have an interesting, illuminating conversation with the neighbors.
Where I can write and my husband can find a new direction in clay.
Where I can put off doing the laundry and spend a lazy afternoon leafing through a magazine instead.
Where I can write some more.
Or make bread.
Or sweep the floor.
Where I can be bored, but pleasingly so.
It’s not that I don’t want to see the sights of Greece and Skopelos, the home of Skopelos Art Foundation, where my husband will serve a three-and-a-half week artist residency next summer.
Instead, it’s that I want to experience on Skopelos more than the “sliver” of living that Eric S Burdon says we often experience when we travel. He writes about that idea here.
Will three to four weeks be enough to experience more than the sliver? I think so.
It will be long enough to allow me to breathe in the mundane aspects of living on Skopelos.
To allow me to spend my summer off from teaching in a way that’s more professionally productive than at home in the states.
To have a “sequence of events” to accomplish, as Burdon writes.
Next summer, I hope to find the rhythm and routine on Greece’s Skopelos Island in the short time I’ll be there. I also hope to write down a ridiculous number of words as I venture into new literary territories. Maybe I’ll even forget that I’m “travelling.”
