Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

I've been writing again, and here's something different.  Vignettes and notes from the long piece I'm finishing this week.  Sometimes, the fiction we write can leave marks.  Deep marks.   While in Greece I've been working on the day job and getting back to my roots and me.  Enjoy the notes and windows into the next phase. Next time I'll pull out the notes on dating again.  Joy.  Now there's an absolute joy, so much that at one point I forgot how to speak English at the luscious advances of an American in Greece.  (Note the dripping sarcasm).   Greece has my heart in many ways, even with a stress and workload--this year--of epic proportions.  I am obsessed with life here, I keep coming back, and it feels like home time and time again.  Since that first voyage in 2013, when my best friend had to drag me back on the ferry to Turkey, to now when I wander Athens.  I stroll along these streets with such ease, knowing this c...

How does one start the next narrative? I do not know, yet here I am.   I'm back in Greece after a blissful month in the South of France.  There, I had elongated days filled with walks, stone fruits bleeding with juice, and the clicks of heels along smoothed cobblestones.  Of course, I stopped in Paris for a few sunsets, and then I spent nearly a month in Aix.  Knowing me as an urban dweller mainly thriving from smog and city noise, friends were keen to watch me as the days rolled by.  I have a hunch a few had bets I would lose my cookies and run back to the winding streets of Paris with panhandlers and pickpockets, tourist queues, and the endless noise and complacent stress of city life.  Instead, as the days lingered, I found a rhythm and solace within the small town.  Vendors at the market started to recognize me; the cafe I went to for iced coffee treated me as a local after my third visit--realizing I was there a long haul--as I blundered my F...