Grasp a Sense of Mykonos

Jeff—Saturday

 

This month marks the third decade of Mykonos Confidential Magazine serving as the bible for high-end summertime life on Greece’s island of the winds.  They kindly asked me for my reflections on what this fabled Aegean island offers to the senses of so many.  What I wrote begins immediately after this illustration that I shamelessly lifted from the pages of the magazine—along with the rest of the visuals.

 

As we learned as schoolchildren, taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell are the classic five senses.  They provide our brains with the sensory information we need to analyze our environment and determine a plan of action.

 

I can think of no better place to bring your adult sensory apparatus on holiday than Mykonos, for the island offers a potpourri of sensual stimulation unmatched in variation and intensity anywhere in the Aegean. The operative word being sensual, not sexual, for one need not leave home to experience the latter.  

 

So, what are the special traits of Mykonos that make it such a joy to the senses?  Let’s examine each sense individually.

 

TASTE. Whether you prefer salty, sweet, bitter, or sour, Mykonos has a place for your indulgences. Today, internationally renowned venues occupy more of the culinary landscape than ever before (just look at the pages of this magazine), yet there are still bars, restaurants, and tavernas offering less expensive alternatives, often delivering more of a traditional “Greek island” experience than their pricier brethren.

 

TOUCH. Head to any of Mykonos’ dozens of treasured beaches, and strip down to lie beneath the warm Mediterranean sun while summertime Meltemi breezes dance along your body.  When you sense the moment has come to pause this gentle competition among the elements, simply stroll across the sand down to the sea, succumb to the embrace of the Aegean’s crystal-clear waters, and drift beneath a cloudless bright-blue sky in balance with all about you.

 

 

SIGHT. The square white Cycladic houses of Mykonos Town have long attracted architectural praise. As the island grew, that simple form remained the backbone of what’s captured the imaginations of generations of visitors.   Even commercial businesses of the sort necessary for supporting a growing prosperous community follow in some measure the island’s classic Cycladic style, for it is through this architectural consistency that Mykonos creates and maintains the mesmerizing visual magic it holds for so many.

 

SOUND. On Mykonos, sound comes at you in a plethora of languages.  Then there’s the music.  Often great music, played by world famous deejays. Most beach tavernas take great pride in their music, though a few opt for quiet.  There’s even live music to be found, though if you’re looking for a tsabouna experience (Greek bagpipes) its longtime maestro, Mitsaras, recently passed away, but you still might catch one of his disciples playing at a panigiri (celebration of a saint’s name day) or wedding.  If you’re looking for an isolated vista from which to gaze off in silent contemplation, you’ll likely find one on the north side of the island.  But if you’re seeking true serenity, catch a morning boat from the old harbor to the neighboring Holy Island of Delos, just a mile away.  There you can wander to your heart’s content amid restored, millennia-old ruins of the once thriving center of ancient Cycladic life…and still make it back to Mykonos in plenty of time to hit the beach and enjoy the many pleasures of today’s thriving center.

 

SMELL.  Visitors who only experience Mykonos during its summer season, may be surprised that in springtime the island is green and filled with the scents of flowers, plus whiffs of wild oregano, rosemary, and thyme mixed in among the blossoms.  Other unexpected scents arrive from North Africa when the wind blows in hard from the south. The most common smells are no surprise: ubiquitous crisp sea air, seductive aromas emanating from the island’s restaurants and tavernas, and of course, those that visitors bring along with them from home. Such as that suntan lotion you simply cannot do without.

 

Having charted the impact of Mykonos on the five senses, I have a word to say about a sixth sense, one that many claim to possess but few do.  

 

It’s called insight, and when coupled with a gift for bringing out the very best in people, presents a hard combination to beat. Petros Bourovilis possessed those qualities and more. As editor-in-chief and later publisher of Mykonos Confidential, he shepherded the magazine through nearing a twenty-year reign as the class of the island’s summer magazines. Sadly, Petros passed away in 2020.  He is deeply missed. God rest your soul, dear friend.

 

–Jeff

A Confidential Mykonos Question

Jeff—Saturday

Into its fourteenth year of publication, Mykonos Confidential is the often imitated, but never equaled, summertime bible of the passions, pastimes, and peccadillos of a place like no other. 

This year, as in the past, its publisher Petros Bourovilis, and Managing Editor Ira Sinigalia invited me to contribute an article to the issue. It’s always a great pleasure and honor to be part of MC, and so I of course accepted.

For those of you who’d appreciate the opportunity of perusing Mykonos’ premier summer time publication from cover to cover (stopping perhaps to pause and contemplate life at pages 90-91) and potentially gaining a sense of what summering on Mykonos means these days, here’s a link to Mykonos Confidential 2019.

But for those of you who simply want to read what I had to say—in an essay titled, “A Question For the Mykonians”—here's how it appears in the magazine, and beneath that (in sympathy for all our eyes), its text:

“What did you do in the war, daddy?” is the title line from a 1960s film packed with well-known actors.  The film is a comedy, and back in those days Mykonos had not yet attained anything near its current star status, yet I see a serious meaning in that line keenly on point for what the island now faces:

Those confronting today’s threats to their way of life will surely be judged by those left to live with the results of their ancestors’ decisions.

As our world currently shapes up, I’d say the ancestor adulation market is in for a precipitous decline worldwide.  But I’m not concerned about everywhere. I’m concerned about here, on this island I call home, at this moment in time.

And that is why I wrote THE MYKONOS MOB, the tenth mystery-thriller in my Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series.  Yes, it’s fiction, but it ranges across the island, touching upon matters not obvious to the casual visitor, but well known to Mykonians who’ve experienced the many changes to their island.  It is for them that I wrote this book.

I am not a preacher and do not write sermons.  Nor is it my place to suggest how others choose to live their lives.  Having spent thirty-five fun-filled years on Mykonos, I’d be the proverbial stone-thrower living in a glass house should I attempt any of that.  My role as a writer is simple: entertain my readers. Yes, I delve into the seamier aspects of life, but that’s what a mystery-thriller calls for.  Nor can I take responsibility for how much of what I write later ends up actually happening.  I chalk that up to a Cassandra-like curse. 

Mykonos has undergone an extraordinary metamorphosis during my time on the island, and change on a cosmic level for those who remember its pre-Jackie Kennedy Onassis visit years. Going back further, it’s hard for those not touched by the island’s World War II-induced days of starvation and depression to imagine Mykonos as impoverished as it once was.

And that’s what makes its current celebrity and off-the-charts good fortune an understandable joy for all who love the island and its people.

And in that lay the conundrum. 

How much of a good thing is too much? How much candy can you eat before getting ill? How much heavenly sunshine can you enjoy before it kills you?  You get the idea.

It seems impossible that in little more than a single generation the island achieved worldwide renown as a 24/7 summer-playground for international celebrities, the super-rich, and holidaymakers from around the globe wishing to be in on the glitz of it all, transforming long-impoverished Mykonians into among the wealthiest per capita people in Greece.

But, like everything, it came at a price.

Much of the island’s traditional agrarian and seafaring ways were sacrificed to cater to the holidaymakers.  Its dozens of breathtaking beaches now boast world-class clubs and restaurants, many designed to keep sun worshipers and partiers onsite and consuming from morning until well beyond the witching hour.

Locals who’d run traditional businesses out of buildings in town that had been in their families for generations realized they’d make far more by turning their shops into bars, or renting their spaces to national and international fashion brands. Outside of town, farmers found themselves making more from the sale of a parcel of land than they could ever hope to make in a lifetime farming that same soil.

Off-islanders, drawn to Mykonos by its seeming immunity to the rest of Greece’s dire financial circumstances, have invested heavily in catering to the whims, wants, and fantasies of holiday-makers willing to pay whatever it takes to be part of the island’s anything goes tourist season experience.

Let’s face it folks, the world realizes Mykonos is a tourist goldmine.

I won’t bother to quote statistics, prices, or champagne sales records, but they continue to greatly inspire the island’s investors, and keeping one’s investors inspired is a very good thing.  After all, they’re who’ve kept the sun brightly shining on Mykonos while so much of the rest of Greece has struggled against the darkness. 

I bet you think the next sentence is going to begin with something like, “On the other hand…”

Wrong. I’m not a naysayer, and though a true downturn in the tourist industry is always a risk, I see a different one confronting Mykonos’ future.

To wit:  How far away from their island’s cultural and societal roots are Mykonians willing to stray to accommodate their island’s new reality?  It is a question for each Mykonian to honestly answer and act upon to the full extent of his or her own beliefs.

That’s not my passing the buck on offering an answer to the Ultimate Question; it’s stating a respectful reality. I am not properly qualified to offer an opinion on how today’s Mykonians should shape their island’s future.

After all, it is their descendants who shall judge them on how they chose to act—or not.

—Jeff

The Bitter and the Sweet

Jeff—Saturday

First the Bitter.

All of Greece is in mourning, and I’m purposely not posting photographs of the source of its grief.  The world’s seen enough of those scenes by now. 

The fires this week that claimed so many lives weigh heavy on the nation’s mind. So, too, do the responses of its government officials to criticism of both their preparedness and reaction to a far from unexpected phenomenon—wildfires happen across Greece every summer. It is a developing story, with finger pointing well underway. Indeed, the head of the junior coalition party sharing power in the current government (he serves as Defense Minister), in an interview with the BBC, blamed the victims for building their homes illegally. Here’s a link to that much talked about interview.

As would be expected, much speculation is being bandied about in search of an explanation for how this tragedy came to pass.  Some theories are rational, some clearly not. For a good primer on where things stand at the moment, I suggest reading an article in Wednesday’s New York Times, by Jason Horowitz, titled, “In the Aftermath of Greek Fires, Suspicion Combines with Grief and Recrimination.” 

Barbara and I add our prayers to those of the many from around the world sharing in Greece’s mourning. 

Now for the Sweet.

Not actually sweet, more like bitter-sweet.  It’s an article I wrote for the just published thirteenth-year anniversary issue of Mykonos Confidential, the sleek, annual summer magazine celebrating all things Mykonos that’s come to be known as the “Bible of Mykonos.”

The theme for this year’s issue, as envisioned by its publisher, Petros Bourovilis, was “My Summer of Love,” and so that’s what I wrote about.  Whether or not my tale is what Petros expected I cannot say, but I can assure you it’s all true, and reveals how I came to write my first mystery novel on Mykonos.

PS. In the interest of full disclosure, I also was asked to participate in the fashion shoot section of the magazine (for comic relief, no doubt) and most of the photos in this post are taken from that totally fun experience, as captured by photographer Thanasis Krikis, and styled by Stefanos Zaousis . Thank you, one and all.   Here’s the article:   

  

“My Summer of Love” is a tricky subject. It can mean decidedly different things to different people. Perhaps that’s why Mykonos Confidential chose it as the topic for the likes of me to write about?  After all, as varied and complicated as love relationships can be, so too, are our respective relationships with the island of the winds.

My Summer of Love experience occurred unexpectedly on a stifling August afternoon in 2005, during my third decade of summers on the island.  I’d not yet given up my New York City law practice, but had returned to Mykonos committed to writing a book about this place I call home.  I had no desire to write a guidebook, or wax on about summer tavernas and island romances.  I planned to write a serious novel, one that told the truth as I saw it about the island’s people, politics, culture, and beauty, but in a way that held my readers’ interest as we explored life together on the island. 

A murder mystery-thriller format seemed the natural way to go, but my plans encountered an unanticipated setback when my closest friend on the island deeply opposed my idea.

We’d been friends since my first day on Mykonos.  I happened to pass by his jewelry shop on my way into town from my hotel, and though I forget how he’d lured me inside, the next thing I knew I was (unsuccessfully) dodging drinks, pastries, and candies.

Unbeknownst to me, I’d stumbled upon the most loved man on Mykonos.  A consummate gentleman and fervent booster of the island, he had an extraordinary circle of local, national and international friends, all of whom made a point of regularly stopping by to say hello to him.

Over the years we developed a deep friendship, sharing our birthday parties (he was seven days younger than I), watching out for each other’s children (I escorted his older son to his first days at Syracuse University), and attending together many a Mykonian panegyri, concert, baptism, wedding, and funeral. Without my realizing it, he’d subtly turned me into a Mykonian—or at least as close to that elevated status as a non-Greek American could hope to achieve.

Me, Tassos, Renate and Thomas McKnight

That’s why, when he expressed his heartfelt concern that placing a murder mystery on Mykonos might harm the island, I put my project on hold. Disappointed as I was, I did not want to write anything that might harm his business, or reflect badly on him in the eyes of Mykonians because of our friendship.

Then came August.

I’d stopped by his shop one evening around eleven, and he asked if I’d like to join him for dinner. He said he was “about to close,” but I’d been down that road many times before.  I knew that as long as a single potential customer lurked nearby, he’d remain open. True to form, we finally made it to the restaurant around one.

He had a lot of things on his mind, and I did a lot of listening.  Then out of the blue he said he’d decided I should write the Mykonos book I wanted to write.  I never asked him what had changed his mind.

We finished dinner, I walked him back to his home, and said goodnight. 

Around daybreak the next morning I received a call that my friend had suffered a massive stroke, and was at the medical clinic waiting to be airlifted to Athens.  I made it to the clinic as he was being wheeled to the ambulance for transport to the airport.

That was the last time I saw my friend alive. He died on August 3^rd, with family and friends at his bedside.

I know what you’re thinking. How could this horrific tragedy possibly serve as any sane person’s Summer of Love?

It’s complicated, but real.

His body arrived back on Mykonos by ferry to the old port. Tradition had family and friends meeting the casket there to accompany his remains to church for the funeral service. Fittingly, the procession passed by his shop on its way to Agia Kyriake.

I’m not Greek Orthodox, so I did not think it appropriate to participate as a pallbearer.  I walked close behind the casket, trailed by a crowd of hundreds. As the line of mourners approached Kyriake, Mykonians pushed me forward toward the casket, politely telling me to participate as one of the pallbearers. When I said, “I’m not Orthodox,” one of the pallbearers insisted I take over his position, saying, “You’re his friend, that’s all that matters.”

We carried his casket into the church, and I never felt closer to the people of Mykonos than I did at that moment.  My feelings only grew stronger once we left the church, and wound our way through the town’s narrow streets toward the cemetery.  Locals I barely knew kept stopping me to share hugs and tears over the genuine sadness we all felt at the loss of such an extraordinary soul.

During that brief bit of a summer afternoon, I was immersed in a communal outpouring of pure love, unlike anything I’d ever experienced before—or after.

Amen.

There is a remarkable postscript to this story, one I credit to the spirit of my dearly departed friend.  During his funeral, as I stood at the foot of his casket struggling to maintain my composure, I stared up at the church’s dome. Spread out before me in what I can only characterize as a vision, I saw the perfect story line for tying together all the many ideas for my book.  It was as if my friend were saying, ‘Okay, Jeffrey here it is, now write it.” 

I think it’s fair to say that my debut novel, Murder in Mykonos, is a product of “My Summer of Love.” Even today, it stands as a tribute to the memory of my friend, Tassos Stamoulis, proprietor extraordinaire of the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry shop. God rest your kind, sweet soul, my friend. 

You remain deeply missed by all lovers of Mykonos. Perhaps now more than ever.

—Jeff

"Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?"

Jeff—Saturday

This week marks the twelfth year of publication of Mykonos Confidential, an annual summer magazine celebrating all things Mykonos.  All the glitz, all the hype, all the shopping, sipping, supping, seducing, and sunning for which the island is renown, wrapped up in one sleek, four-hundred page “Bible of Mykonos.”

Yes, it’s a cheerleading magazine for modern day Mykonos, but its publisher, Petros Bourovilis, has a long history of telling it like it is in his editorials, and encouraging his contributors to do the same.  This summer’s theme for the magazine is the island’s “Bohemian Past,” which necessarily involves reminiscences of a lifestyle far different from today.  How one evaluates the changes depends on your perspective.

I was asked for my thoughts on the subject, and so I gave them. 

In the interest of full transparency, I should mention that against a half-century of “old Mykonos hands” the magazine has kindly included me as one of “fifty-six people who symbolize the Mykonos Free Spirit.”

In keeping with that label, which I proudly wear, here is the article I wrote for this summer’s Mykonos Confidential issue, titled “Is Mercury or Mykonos in Retrograde?”

That title should give all you astronomers, astrologers, and music fans something to ponder. 

In astronomy retrograde means “a body in motion in a direction contrary to that of the general motion of similar bodies,” in astrology believers say you’d best “ready yourself for frustrating times,” and in music (at least for me) it conjures up visions of Queen’s incomparable Freddie Mercury shaking up the rock world with the eclectic punch of his 1975 classic song, Bohemian Rhapsody. All three offer unique insights into the state of our island.

Over the decades of this writer’s life, a once obscure and impoverished Mykonos transformed itself from wartime years of starvation and bitter struggle, into a modern international symbol of tourist hedonism and 24/7 glitz—barely pausing long enough to digest its good fortune and appreciate its natural gifts.  Yet, as quantum levels different as modern day Mykonos is from what it once was, first time visitors to the island, whether arriving by sea or air, still are awe-struck at their first glimpse of this dazzling white beauty set off against a stark desert mountain landscape.

Astronomically speaking, Mykonos adopted a trajectory retrograde to the orbits of its neighboring Aegean islands, fueled by an unwavering commitment to the benefits of unfettered development and entrepreneurial freedom.  Today, the results of the unquestioned economic success of Mykonos’s retrograde model has driven other islands to alter course, some to follow Mykonos’s lead, others to maintain a tighter fix on their cherished old ways.  As to which course is wiser, that depends on the goal, and what one is willing to endure to attain it.

A retrograde astronomical path

In terms of astrology, even non-believers have likely heard, “Mercury is in retrograde” tossed out as an explanation for why things are going very wrong, be it a business deal, politics, romance, or a broken lawnmower.  For sure, Mykonos has had its share of those moments (with the possible exception of the lawnmower), but just like Mercury, it manages to hang in there until things turn around—with one significant difference: Mercury always returns to the same orbit, Mykonos does not.  Where that might take our island, only time will tell. 

Astrologically speaking...

Now, on to the music.  Bohemian Rhapsody is regarded as one of the greatest rock songs ever, much the same as the rock known as Mykonos is considered in the tourist world. Many have analyzed the meaning of Freddie Mercury’s lyrics, but I tend to go with the description he offered as its composer: It is simply the story of a young man who accidentally kills someone and, like Faust, sells his soul to the devil, but on the eve of his execution calls out, “Bismillah” (“in the name of God” in Arabic) and with the help of angels regains his soul from Shaitan (“the devil” in Arabic).

I can only guess at the plethora of parallels observers of all things Mykonos will find in comparing that “simple” explanation of the meaning of a song with the state of their island.

Just to fuel the buzz, permit me to quote the opening and closing lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody. [For those interested in the entire experience, here’s a link to Queen’s official video performance.] 

I think most would agree that the first two lines capture the essence of modern day Mykonos:  

“Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?”

As for its final two lines, they’ll undoubtedly elicit more serious discussion over the state of our Island of the Winds:

“Nothing really matters to me.

Any way the wind blows.”

Thank you, Queen, for giving us all a lot to think about.

—Jeff

Mykonos, Confidentially Speaking.

Jeff—Saturday

The first issue of Mykonos Confidential hit the lanes and beaches of my island home eleven years ago.  Since then it’s become the often imitated, but never equaled, summertime bible of the passions, pastimes, and peccadillos of a place like no other. 

As its publisher, Petros Bourovilis, wrote in his editorial piece welcoming readers to this summer’s issue, “Since the beginning the objective was a magazine that would capture the essence, soul and energy of the island. We have made it all these years.”

In June, Petros asked if I’d write an article for the magazine describing how life on the island has changed during my time here. No constraints, no editorial guidelines, just tell it as I saw it.  That was a difficult offer to refuse, and so I accepted. The magazine came out a week ago, and I’m pleased to say that no lynch mobs have appeared at my door.  But the summer’s still young.

I titled the piece, “It’s All About Balance,” and consistent with what some say is my determination to live dangerously, I’ve decided to share my published thoughts with a broader audience.  So, with the blessing of Mykonos Confidential, here are those reflections on my thirty plus years on Mykonos.

“As long as the soufflé rises, don’t worry about the earthquake.”

I actually never cared much for soufflés, and certainly am not a fan of earthquakes, but somehow that phrase popped into my head when Mykonos Confidential graciously asked if I’d write a piece about our island for its Summer 2016 issue.

If I’ve learned anything from my years of creative writing it’s that when the muse beckons, listen.   So, armed with that image of a soufflé, and my commission to capture the essence of modern day Mykonos compared to my memories of thirty-plus years past (I shall not say how many “plus”), I set off on my quest.

My original appearance in Mykonos Confidential

As the serendipitous Fates would have it, I found inspiration on a glorious early June Saturday afternoon in a gala birthday party thrown by two of my favorite people at a beach club synonymous with the best of the modern day Mykonos experience.  It came to me in a vision of epic proportions, laid out almost as clearly as the day’s cloudless bright blue sky and sparkling turquoise to ultramarine sea, with all the necessary characters in place about me ready to play their parts amid the perfect setting for telling the tale. 

The cast at play at Jackie O's Beach Club

Thirty years ago, one of the owners of the birthday celebration venue first visited Mykonos.  It was a very different time.  But then again, so too were the days thirty years before his initial visit. Back sixty years, Mykonians impoverished by World War II and Greece’s post-war conflicts struggled to scrape by anyway that they could, be it in the island’s barite mines, off the land or sea, or from a fledging tourism industry.  Beach life as we know it today did not exist, and the best land was viewed as agricultural, away from the seashore.  It was daughters who inherited the seaside land…but that’s another story.

By 1986 beaches were popular, and tavernas sat close by many. But rarely did a hotel, sparingly a home, and none of the clubs in the form we now take for granted.  Today, their absence is an exception, growing more so every year. Whether that’s good or bad is not for me to judge, just observe. And so I shall, through these snapshots of some of those who came to celebrate on that Saturday afternoon.

The party celebrated the 50^th birthday of one of the island’s pre-eminent restaurateurs, one half-of a couple that’s infused the island with grand ideas and exquisite execution.  It’s not been easy. It never is for new ideas to take root on such gritty island ground, or to survive the trampling down and nibbling away by the nature of the beast known as island ways.  That creature thrives among herds of old allegiances and family ties conditioned to keep new ideas and their practitioners at bay.

Birthday boy Egidio and Niko.

The story of the birthday boy and his partner’s successes on the island is one of determination, skill, and flexibility, not unlike that of the two who created the birthday venue, for each couple measures its businesses on the island in terms of decades rather than generations.  In other words, they’re newcomers.

So how did they succeed?  To me the answer is simple: They grasped the shifting desires and tastes of the island’s clientele, while never losing sight of Mykonos’ natural beauty as its quintessential draw, and that staying in synch with the unique physical and psychological nature of the island is paramount to success. 

Respect for its beaches and the constancy of its architecture is what makes Mykonos the draw that it is, not trendy foreign tastes attempting to make it seem like somewhere else.  Madison Avenue-style display windows imposed on classic Cycladic structures—and their rapidly spreading minimalist modern progeny—are not thinking outside the box, but an unimaginative denigration of the island’s historic natural beauty. Visitors come not looking for the shop or bar or fashion they know back home.  They come looking for Mykonos.

Those who hosted the party get it.  That is why they prosper.  And they also take care of their people, both employees and guests.  It is the essence of Mykonos hospitality: an appreciation of people.

Which is precisely what that party was all about, friends from around the world gathered together to celebrate in a place of joy.  I saw old faces and new. Greeks, non-Greeks; gays, non-gays; locals, non-locals; rich, non-rich, all there in abundance listening to 80s music, grazing on modern cuisine, drinking what they desired, wearing as much or little as they wished, dancing, sunning, playing, perhaps even praying, but all smiling and doing whatever made them happy.  

I stood watching old Mykonos stories being remade by the young in their own words, and though time will fly by for them surely as quickly as it has for me, I can assure each one that those memories will always remain the property of their maker—and just as fresh as the new memory I most cherish of that afternoon.

It began as a flashback to more decades ago than I care to remember, when one of the island’s great foreign beauties was captured au natural windsurfing at sunset.  The photo became a postcard, the image a legend.  She’s a grand friend and great lady who emigrated here long ago, and represents so much of Mykonos’ past. 

We sat chatting through much of the party, and deep into the late but still hot afternoon, as the happy hordes danced poolside, and the drag queen show drifted off into memory, she slipped away to poolside, dropped her wrap, and slid into the pool the same as she once appeared on that postcard. 

Not a soul turned to gawk, or say a word. She did it as unnoticed as a golden, falling leaf.  I looked beyond the edge of the pool to buildings going up on the other side of the bay, each so out of touch with the island’s natural beauty and past that one longs for them to crumble.

Then my friend emerged from the pool, dried, and gracefully dressed, demonstrating her propensity for creating memorable moments out of the simplest of ingredients.

Much as a determined soufflé will rise against the earthquake.

Let us all rise.

—Jeff