When my cousins and I were young, we spent the biggest part of the long summer school holidays on the North coast of the Peloponnese, with our Grandmother. The small town we stayed at had an endless long stretch of beach looking into the Corinthian gulf, a beach with both sands and pebbles, which used to vary in quantity and order, depending on the tides and winds. The beach was the centre of the holidays for us, not just for the swimming and fishing, but because we spent the largest amount of time on it, exploring every little part of it and shifting through the sands and pebbles as the summer went on, through our games, our walks and with our hungry eyes. Every element of the beach with its ever-changing layers of sand and pebbles was an area of great importance to us, an area to search for shells, to build forts, to create cities, to discover strange and rare pebbles, to dig for water, to hide and bury treasures.
Just behind the part of the beach which belonged to the small town, lay a thin line of an old pine forest, no more than forty meters wide, which run parallel to the beach, creating a small almost imaginary world between the beach and the main road. The rare type of pines growing there were at least 130 years old, with very tall and thin trunks -which typically divided into two near the ground- and with a narrow canopy with a bright green colour to match. The pine trees which grew nearer to the beach, resembled old Japanese Bonsai trees and had trunks that were twisted and tormented by the winds, trunks running close and parallel to the ground, turning and winding as they went, as if they were caught dancing and froze to the spot. Below them they created hidden spaces, where you could spend a whole day reading, drawing and talking, without anyone ever knowing you were there. Other plants that grew along the beach were unruly bamboo and wild reeds. In the old forest also grew exotic eucalyptus trees which shed beautiful and fragrant silver-pinkish shavings off their bark and also some very large wild Greek , bitter smelling, laurel bushes.
The sense of time disappeared in that little stretch of forest, which miraculously was cool and shady, with strategically placed spraying hoses watering its rare trees. Countless times during the summer we completely forgot ourselves and stopped in the forest on the way back home from the beach, looking for pine nuts and hiding our treasures below the twisting pine trees, getting in a great amount of trouble when we eventually got home. Very very rarely did anything interrupt these summer days of ours and everything I remember of them is still as vivid as it was then, the intense scorching sun on the skin, the taste of salt that became permanent after the first months on us, the smell of the pine trees and the feel and familiarity of the sea and the beach, both of which had become our second home by the end of the holidays. But towards the end of August, almost every year without a miss, strong winds hit the gulf for a few days and then everything changed.
After a non-stop run of two months of swimming, playing and fishing, we had to stop and wait for a few days till the summer storms passed. That abrupt change was such a shock to our summer lives, that we practically did not know what to do with ourselves. The skies turned dark grey and deep purple, with heavy clouds racing through. The hours before the rain broke out were so intense, with the smell of the rain so real and the sky so unbearably heavy with low clouds, that it was almost impossible to sit and wait for it. We took our bikes and rode up and down the harbour (you were not allowed to ride bikes in the forest at the time) and stole glimpses of the beach opposite to see at what condition it was in. When the rain broke down it went on for ages and the waves rose high, more than five metres at times, swallowing up the beach and changing all the order of the sands and pebbles. The beach almost disappeared for a few days, we had to wear long sleeve blouses and I could almost smell the freshly sharpened pencils of school and September coming. Sometimes we thought that this would have been the best time to leave, we would be leaving in a couple of weeks anyway, while the beach was unrecognisable and off limits. Maybe this way we would not miss it as much in the winter.
But the storm always passed quickly and in a few days we were able again to resume our summer routines. But the first day back at the beach was always filled with great anticipation, for most kids, but also held a small amount of secret fear for some. I remember a small kid, younger than us, of a slender and short build and huge blue eyes, who was particularly dreading the first day back at the beach after the storm. He was the youngest son of a fisherman and hung around with us a lot as he was left to his own devices for most of the day. The waves, winds and rain had not only changed the sands and pebbles in the beach in such a dramatic way that we did not know any more one patch of the beach from the next, but they also had brought some very strange things with them.
All along the sea shore lay many alien things, amongst the wet seaweed, on top of the pebbles and spat far out in the dried sands near the pine forest and amongst the reeds. My cousins and I used to divide the newly brought things into categories for fun, and count which category had more members. There were man-made things, plant matter, dead things and unidentifiable objects. Most times there were strange twisted and manipulated by the sea roots, branches and sea plants, which did not exactly look menacing by themselves, but somehow looked odd and out of place on our beach. Often there were huge dead fish, half eaten and rotting, placed on the pebbles. If no one threw them away, they stayed there drying out by the sun, day after day, till they became mummified and shrank. I can see now, how in the eyes of the small boy these things could be a bit menacing and I think what was menacing about the whole thing was the anticipation, walking on the beach on tip toes, looking around and checking, lest you stepped or tripped on one of those things. The alien feel of something like that under bare feet was indeed a very unwelcome experience.
The little boy called these things "Sea Monsters". For me personally, the ones that were most scary, were the man-made objects. Bits of engines, shoes, clothes, ropes and cogs, boat bits, even bits of beds were spat out on the beach. They always gave me goosebumps, they carried a story with them in my mind, not an innocent one, and were so out of place there that I preferred to let other kids handle them and dispose of them, while I took care of the dead fish. Once there was a very odd thing on the beach, which made all kids, even the oldest ones hesitate. Near the water line a long shape lay there, like a crouching human body, moving slightly with the touch of the small waves. There were no identifiable legs, but the torso-like shape was so human that we all struggled to see what else it could be. Eventually someone must have gone to turn the thing around, while everyone else looked the other way, to reveal a long beach umbrella, broken and twisted, its frame creating this body-like shape, the faded fabric the body's clothes.
When other kids realised the little boy was really scared by these "Sea Monsters" and was keeping his distance avoiding to come near or touch them, they did their best to make things worse for him and teased and tormented him about it a lot. My efforts to make light of things for him and shake his fears away were in vein, so I thought as a last attempt to advise him to ask his dad, hoping that being a fisherman, he would put the little one's fear at ease and laugh the "Sea Monsters" away. The next summer, the little boy seemed quite grown up and less affected by the "Sea Monsters", so I assumed his chat with his father had helped ease his fears. But when I asked him he said he was very happy he had spoken to his dad, because his dad had told him that he did very well to be scared of these things, that he had to respect the sea and fear it and that what happened to these "Sea Monsters" is what happens to everyone who does not realise the strength of the sea. So the boy was now much calmer in the knowledge that his fear was justified and prepared to walk around and touch the "Monsters" with everyone else. I was not sure at all of what to make about this turn of events; better for a boy to be scared of relatively unreasonable things or better for him to be happy that his fears -even of unreasonable things- were founded and that belief making him calmer?
I did not really like the reasoning of the fisherman very much, especially as at the time our Grandmother was using on us all sorts of sayings and rhymes; like 'Just as you make your bed, that's the way you'll sleep in it', 'I was where you now are and you will soon come where I am', 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away' and so on and so forth. Amongst these sayings was one that I particularly disliked and I somehow combined with the fisherman's logic in my mind. Things the adults said in those days had a great weight for me and I tented to believe almost everything I was told. She used to say 'As you get older you become what you are most afraid of'. So, while the little boy was calmer by his father's advice on "Sea Monsters", I started to realise that what was making me uneasy about them, were my own stories that I made up surrounding each one of them. And then I thought that it would be that, my undoing, the power of my mind to imagine all sorts of stories. But the more I tried to control my mind not to think of any stories, being afraid of what I might come up with, the more absurd the stories became, so that eventually the stories themselves, and in their root my own mind, became my "Sea Monsters".
These days, unless a small shark is spat out by the waves, no one seems to be searching for "Sea Monsters" after the August storms on that beach. I could find only smaller pieces of things here and there and only one dead fish, albeit in pristine condition, with no visible clues as to why it had died. The "Sea Monsters" I have picked up now are much more miniature, delicate and refined than the ones of my childhood and they definitely do not create any fear in me. But then again I am thinking that maybe I have lost the power to see the "Monsters" as I did back then and the ability to weave stories around them. That, I think, is the reason that makes me bring them back to the house and eventually all the way to another country. The things look so out of place back in the house that I almost feel I should take them back to the beach. But they are the day's finds and how they stand next to the "real" things of the day is a very interesting thing.
Just behind the part of the beach which belonged to the small town, lay a thin line of an old pine forest, no more than forty meters wide, which run parallel to the beach, creating a small almost imaginary world between the beach and the main road. The rare type of pines growing there were at least 130 years old, with very tall and thin trunks -which typically divided into two near the ground- and with a narrow canopy with a bright green colour to match. The pine trees which grew nearer to the beach, resembled old Japanese Bonsai trees and had trunks that were twisted and tormented by the winds, trunks running close and parallel to the ground, turning and winding as they went, as if they were caught dancing and froze to the spot. Below them they created hidden spaces, where you could spend a whole day reading, drawing and talking, without anyone ever knowing you were there. Other plants that grew along the beach were unruly bamboo and wild reeds. In the old forest also grew exotic eucalyptus trees which shed beautiful and fragrant silver-pinkish shavings off their bark and also some very large wild Greek , bitter smelling, laurel bushes.
The sense of time disappeared in that little stretch of forest, which miraculously was cool and shady, with strategically placed spraying hoses watering its rare trees. Countless times during the summer we completely forgot ourselves and stopped in the forest on the way back home from the beach, looking for pine nuts and hiding our treasures below the twisting pine trees, getting in a great amount of trouble when we eventually got home. Very very rarely did anything interrupt these summer days of ours and everything I remember of them is still as vivid as it was then, the intense scorching sun on the skin, the taste of salt that became permanent after the first months on us, the smell of the pine trees and the feel and familiarity of the sea and the beach, both of which had become our second home by the end of the holidays. But towards the end of August, almost every year without a miss, strong winds hit the gulf for a few days and then everything changed.
After a non-stop run of two months of swimming, playing and fishing, we had to stop and wait for a few days till the summer storms passed. That abrupt change was such a shock to our summer lives, that we practically did not know what to do with ourselves. The skies turned dark grey and deep purple, with heavy clouds racing through. The hours before the rain broke out were so intense, with the smell of the rain so real and the sky so unbearably heavy with low clouds, that it was almost impossible to sit and wait for it. We took our bikes and rode up and down the harbour (you were not allowed to ride bikes in the forest at the time) and stole glimpses of the beach opposite to see at what condition it was in. When the rain broke down it went on for ages and the waves rose high, more than five metres at times, swallowing up the beach and changing all the order of the sands and pebbles. The beach almost disappeared for a few days, we had to wear long sleeve blouses and I could almost smell the freshly sharpened pencils of school and September coming. Sometimes we thought that this would have been the best time to leave, we would be leaving in a couple of weeks anyway, while the beach was unrecognisable and off limits. Maybe this way we would not miss it as much in the winter.
But the storm always passed quickly and in a few days we were able again to resume our summer routines. But the first day back at the beach was always filled with great anticipation, for most kids, but also held a small amount of secret fear for some. I remember a small kid, younger than us, of a slender and short build and huge blue eyes, who was particularly dreading the first day back at the beach after the storm. He was the youngest son of a fisherman and hung around with us a lot as he was left to his own devices for most of the day. The waves, winds and rain had not only changed the sands and pebbles in the beach in such a dramatic way that we did not know any more one patch of the beach from the next, but they also had brought some very strange things with them.
All along the sea shore lay many alien things, amongst the wet seaweed, on top of the pebbles and spat far out in the dried sands near the pine forest and amongst the reeds. My cousins and I used to divide the newly brought things into categories for fun, and count which category had more members. There were man-made things, plant matter, dead things and unidentifiable objects. Most times there were strange twisted and manipulated by the sea roots, branches and sea plants, which did not exactly look menacing by themselves, but somehow looked odd and out of place on our beach. Often there were huge dead fish, half eaten and rotting, placed on the pebbles. If no one threw them away, they stayed there drying out by the sun, day after day, till they became mummified and shrank. I can see now, how in the eyes of the small boy these things could be a bit menacing and I think what was menacing about the whole thing was the anticipation, walking on the beach on tip toes, looking around and checking, lest you stepped or tripped on one of those things. The alien feel of something like that under bare feet was indeed a very unwelcome experience.
The little boy called these things "Sea Monsters". For me personally, the ones that were most scary, were the man-made objects. Bits of engines, shoes, clothes, ropes and cogs, boat bits, even bits of beds were spat out on the beach. They always gave me goosebumps, they carried a story with them in my mind, not an innocent one, and were so out of place there that I preferred to let other kids handle them and dispose of them, while I took care of the dead fish. Once there was a very odd thing on the beach, which made all kids, even the oldest ones hesitate. Near the water line a long shape lay there, like a crouching human body, moving slightly with the touch of the small waves. There were no identifiable legs, but the torso-like shape was so human that we all struggled to see what else it could be. Eventually someone must have gone to turn the thing around, while everyone else looked the other way, to reveal a long beach umbrella, broken and twisted, its frame creating this body-like shape, the faded fabric the body's clothes.
When other kids realised the little boy was really scared by these "Sea Monsters" and was keeping his distance avoiding to come near or touch them, they did their best to make things worse for him and teased and tormented him about it a lot. My efforts to make light of things for him and shake his fears away were in vein, so I thought as a last attempt to advise him to ask his dad, hoping that being a fisherman, he would put the little one's fear at ease and laugh the "Sea Monsters" away. The next summer, the little boy seemed quite grown up and less affected by the "Sea Monsters", so I assumed his chat with his father had helped ease his fears. But when I asked him he said he was very happy he had spoken to his dad, because his dad had told him that he did very well to be scared of these things, that he had to respect the sea and fear it and that what happened to these "Sea Monsters" is what happens to everyone who does not realise the strength of the sea. So the boy was now much calmer in the knowledge that his fear was justified and prepared to walk around and touch the "Monsters" with everyone else. I was not sure at all of what to make about this turn of events; better for a boy to be scared of relatively unreasonable things or better for him to be happy that his fears -even of unreasonable things- were founded and that belief making him calmer?
I did not really like the reasoning of the fisherman very much, especially as at the time our Grandmother was using on us all sorts of sayings and rhymes; like 'Just as you make your bed, that's the way you'll sleep in it', 'I was where you now are and you will soon come where I am', 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away' and so on and so forth. Amongst these sayings was one that I particularly disliked and I somehow combined with the fisherman's logic in my mind. Things the adults said in those days had a great weight for me and I tented to believe almost everything I was told. She used to say 'As you get older you become what you are most afraid of'. So, while the little boy was calmer by his father's advice on "Sea Monsters", I started to realise that what was making me uneasy about them, were my own stories that I made up surrounding each one of them. And then I thought that it would be that, my undoing, the power of my mind to imagine all sorts of stories. But the more I tried to control my mind not to think of any stories, being afraid of what I might come up with, the more absurd the stories became, so that eventually the stories themselves, and in their root my own mind, became my "Sea Monsters".
These days, unless a small shark is spat out by the waves, no one seems to be searching for "Sea Monsters" after the August storms on that beach. I could find only smaller pieces of things here and there and only one dead fish, albeit in pristine condition, with no visible clues as to why it had died. The "Sea Monsters" I have picked up now are much more miniature, delicate and refined than the ones of my childhood and they definitely do not create any fear in me. But then again I am thinking that maybe I have lost the power to see the "Monsters" as I did back then and the ability to weave stories around them. That, I think, is the reason that makes me bring them back to the house and eventually all the way to another country. The things look so out of place back in the house that I almost feel I should take them back to the beach. But they are the day's finds and how they stand next to the "real" things of the day is a very interesting thing.
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Good stuff its nice to read your article once again
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