ANTONIOU JAMES - Marathon, Greece
Old mister Mendios The years pass through us like the clear wind. Our body is drying of its juices and begins to dry up like the
autumn leafs when the soil begins to freeze. When we were children we believed that the road we had to walk was long and our journey in life huge. Well, the truth is a little different. Life seems like a small drop in the bottomless pit of time. The words were dripping from the lips of the old fisherman as he looked at us; his new sons as he used to call us and tears were wetting his tired and dull from the cataract eyes. We were, all together, a handful of kids in our thirteen. The first stirrings of manhood were beginning to be felt within ourselves and our need to drain knowledge from the wisdom of older and more experienced men had led us once again to mister Mendios’ hut by the sea. He was “divorced” from his “wife”, the sea, for many years, as he used to often say and yet, although he lived next to her, on the beach that ran very closely to the port of Myrtle, he was seeking for her every day. When we were asking him with all the innocence of our age, how on earth was it possible to marry the water, he was laughing. His dug from the salt skin was of glowing. It looked like the varnished wood from which his old navy chest was made from. His chest that according to him, was holding inside the story of his whole life. His laughter was accompanied by a curious sound coming from his lungs that made us laugh and peek at each other. The "engine is running!” we would say later quietly, taking care that he wouldn’t hear us and feel bad. The sea is a beautiful woman he was answering our question. Her skin is sometimes soft and smooth and sometimes rough and ugly. Her lips, are sometimes half open ready to offer all the pleasure that can be hidden in a man’s dreams and sometimes tightly closed and glaring ready to give you the greatest harm. Her eyes mellowed as if from the finest amber are always staring with love. You can fell her love, the good days, when you are far away on convey waters gathering all the fishes she has to offer you safe and happy, but when you are in the wrong turmoil with the wind blowing your hurt away and the waves mercilessly hit your boat and your hull looks ready to collapse in pieces, you then understand that you did something wrong and your wife is unhappy.