Ruins, old and new.

Chania, Crete
Greece
July, 2009


The ruins look out over the azure waters, over swaying palms and bushy olive trees. They stand guard atop rocky hills and next to quiet coves.

In the land of the Minotaur, these ruins are not those of the ancients, but those of cheap credit and willing speculators.

Thousands of buildings, never to be finished, pockmark the landscape, as though it were Beirut, or Sarejevo. It is an ironic, ersatz mockery of the mathematical temples and agoras and crumbling walls that were built beneath the grandeur of Olympus.

At quiet beachside cafes and bars, men in speedos play backgammon and drink iced coffee. Tanned and godlike, as if they were chiseled out of the rock of the island itself.

Large northerners, like lost polar bears, waddle from beach shop to the chairs in the surf, some with breasts hanging down. Naked kids play in the tide, which is rough today. A ship passes by out at sea. Perhaps the Argonauts, on their way to defeat the cyclops.

The sound of vespas puttering around corners and waves gently caressing the shore.

Men walk with men and old women in headscarves carry shopping bags. Things happen here as they always have, despite the new resorts with their blue pools and ambient soundtracks, with the pale masses shipped in by the discount air liners.

Above, the ruins of cheap credit and willing speculators, silent backhoes and upturned dirt, slowly turn to dust.

And above them, the mountains. Somewhere in the clouds, the Gods.


JL