on my way

I passed the grocery store on my way to the house, greeted Ghikas and Sofia and they were happy to see me, we are good friends and maybe I am their best customer - I buy all my stuff there and I never complain or make problems, but now I was tired after my long trip and I only bought some youghurt and fruit, told them I would be back later to fill up my refrigerator. "But now you will sleep for two days" Ghikas said and laughed. He knows me.

Early morning at Ghikas

 

I had a poem "Early morning at Ghikas" in the latest Graffiti Kolkata broadside from Subhankar Das in India. I gave a copy of the broadside to Ghikas who runs the local grocery store here on Hydra island. He was happy to see himself mentioned in a poem in India. He can't read English but this morning he had a Greek-American friend read and translate the poem for him and his wife Sofia. Early morning at Ghikas, eh?

Wine

My grocery store here on Hydra has a special display of the finest local wine.

 

Margarita

A good friend, she lives by the grocery store.

 

The Colossus of Maroussi

This morning I finished reading, I think for the third time, Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi. One of the really great books. I recently found this photo in a biography on Seferis, here you see Miller and Katsimbalis (who was The Colossus and for whom the book was written) visiting Hydra in 1939. On the steps of the painter Ghikas' huge house down in Kamini. Miller's description of Katsimbalis in the book is the writing of a pure compassionate genius.

Check out Miller's sun-glasses. Giorgios Seferis wrote: "...putting on his black spectacles as though to work on an oxy-acetylene flame...".

Intense guys, those two.