Go here for Season 1 of Isle of Stories
Kairos, aka the personification of Opportunity, is also one of two words the ancient Greek used for Time. While Chronos relates to sequential time, Kairos embodies time in a qualitative way: a fleeting moment that is either captured or lost forever.
The island was located a five-hour ferry ride from the mainland, they said. The ferry set off just before dawn with only a few people on board. Perhaps it was the weather, he thought, or perhaps that creepy sense of foreboding came included with the ticket.
Last year wasn’t my most inspiring one to date. In hindsight, starting it with pedestrian goals like buying a trash bin, curtains and lamps probably got 2010 and me off on the wrong foot right off the bat.
I vowed to make a change this year – and where better to look for inspiration than in new experiences? It was time to face the new year looking fresh…
Never saw it as the start
It was more a change of heart.
Songs rival smells for recalling something untouchable yet oh so specific gone by. The Ocean Colour Scene’s song will always bring my early days in Utrecht vividly back to life. The days when I was young, when my brother and his friends were still so very much three years older and I hadn’t caught up yet.
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Going by the paltry state of the fish stand she presides over – lots of ice, few fruits de mer – I know there’s only a slim chance of getting what I came for. But the day I stop trying is the day I stop trying, which isn’t this one.
“Excuse me, I just have a question. Do you already have mussels by any chance?”
She pauses before she answers, and the look on her face tells me I would’ve been better off asking her what her hairdresser does for a living.
I’ve never had much affinity with animals. We had some pets at home now and then, guinea pigs and hamsters, a string of goldfish without much of a personality. I was even a WWF Ranger as a kid, albeit briefly, and all I remember of that was a monthly magazine and a couple of trips to the zoo.
And thus today I was a little bummed when I found a tantalising restaurant I had to forsake for the time being because a friend of mine had issues with the foie gras on the menu. Fair enough, if you ask me to choose between a place and people, I will always prioritise the people – after all, that restaurant will still be there tomorrow and delayed gratification brings its own benefits.
When you’re a kid summers seem to last forever. For a glorious span of six or seven weeks life is turned upside down: school’s out, so are you, and the world outside invites you to adventure. As you get older the summers get shorter and that sense of adventure without end dissipates into a nice holiday and a handful of nice dinners on a lovely terrace at best.
Eight months since I moved into a new apartment and it’s still bereft of curtains, lamps and a trash bin. Mind you, I survived six years in my previous abode without any such outlandish luxuries and abided much like the dude would. Going without them has never been so much a conscious choice on my part as perhaps a subconscious way of leaving me with some new year’s resolutions that neatly reside in the realm of the realistic.
Being an avid pedestrian, however, there is a clear and present limit to what I can lug around town by my wandering self – one that was soon to be challenged by our titular trash bin and the throngs of shoppers slouching across the Zeil on the first Saturday of the new year.
Unfinished Bits 