On a largely undeveloped island like Tinos, one could walk almost anywhere because the vegetation was so sparse. But inhabitants in a remote past had decided that some routes were better than others and had stacked low rock walls to designate official paths. While walking everyday between these rock walls, I began to consider metaphors of how one stakes a civilized claim in the wilderness. Stacking one rock upon another is a first significant gesture. My daily sketches of these landscapes, as a slightly more abstract example, always began with the wilderness of a blank, white page. I organized that unstructured mental space by committing graphite marks to the paper and creating a representation of my experience. I’m doing the same thing by writing this sentence now, watching the letters trail out like a path on the background.

Somebody Built These Paths

Somebody built these paths
Who didn’t want to do everything
For the first time anymore
Sweet smell of urine
Guarantees this town within
A wilderness of salt

Against the final sea

Waves thump the shoreline
They set it ringing
Like the bells above the church
Church bells and schoolyard noise
Guarantee this town within
A wilderness of salt

Against the final sea

Every day I write this line for the first time
And I have to choose to start somewhere
Making marks and signs on the paper
A simple path through the wilderness for me

Birds hunger on the wind
Over lizards sunning themselves
On the steps of a derelict church
Old hands on rosaries
Guarantee this town within
A wilderness of salt

Against the final sea

One day late in my trip, I climbed to a now familiar spot at the very top of Tinos where a weathered stone crucifix stood on a flat rock. At this altitude, the wind was strong and constant. I spun with my arms extended, leaned into the wind, and scanned the horizon in all directions. I saw other islands that I’d also climbed recently, vibrating in the haze of distance, and I recognized suddenly that my confidence had returned. I had survived the death of my marriage and the loss of my youthful expectations. It struck me as remarkable that the people we loved could transition from an inextricable part of our daily lives to an uncomfortable, depressing circumstance and then to a merely bittersweet and manageable past. In retrospect, this arbitrary desert exile, motivated originally by a misconception while watching “Contempt” fifteen years earlier, provided a necessary path through the wilderness for me.