#wild abandon

[howifeltabouthim]

He didn't answer texts? Not acceptable. This guy should be howling at your door . . .

Susan Minot, from Why I Don't Write and Other Stories

[hokeoutsider]

“Wild Abandon”   T-Marie Nolan...Ebay Outsider-Art Auction...Sept 23-30                             Acrylic Painting on Wood...15″x 14″x 3/16...

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[elladastinkardiamou]

Nights in deserted places of the Dodecanese

It is summer on Tilos, and afternoon has turned the abandoned wheat fields golden. There’s the breathy whistle of bee-eaters as I pick my

It is summer on Tilos, and afternoon has turned the abandoned wheat fields golden. There’s the breathy whistle of bee-eaters as I pick my way down the path, Lisa eagerly pulling on the lead. A harmless black whip-snake disappears into the rocks. I let Lisa cool off in the water first, then from the grey pebble beach I swim with a mask, seeing a painted comber – a zebra-striped fish with yellow fan-tail and a blush of blue underneath – and armoured grey parrotfish.

If winter is a time for long walks, summer is for long swims. When the sun is baking hot, it’s essential to dive into the sea’s soothing, silky coolness. The summer months warm the water, making it easier to keep going until my muscles ache, explore around the headlands, scare myself looking down to rocks dropping away into the depths. I also love the pure pleasure of lying on an empty beach and listening to the waves, drowsy from swimming, falling asleep. There’s something sensual about lying on warm sand, like being pressed against a body. 

- from Jen Barclay's Dodecanese travel book Wild Abandon.

[aileuromania]

And with that, I have completed all the elite specialisation ascended weapons. This Wild Abandon torch is probably going to go to Kaylee when she gets to level 80, leaving Vyssinada free to become my new Spellbreaker, but for now this very Norn looking torch is on the thorny twiggy girl.

[howifeltabouthim]

Then I said to myself: 'Why not, why not do it, this is the kind of situation in which you're meant to do anything you want.'

Mary Gordon, from Spending

[howifeltabouthim]

'I am chaste,' she whispered, abandoning herself gladly to her passion, 'but you I could not resist.'

Tanith Lee, from Death’s Master

[elladastinkardiamou]

There's a sense of stoicism in the voice of narrator Jennifer Barclay as she rambles through the deserted towns and villages of the Greek Islands of the Docadenese.  There is also something of Robert Graves' introspection and isolation in Barclay's resolve to convey everyday life on Tilos, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Rhodes, Kos and Nisyros to understand why many former thriving villages have become deserted. As Graves was trusted to report from Majorca through his poetry and sagely wrote about Claudian Iberic exile in his 'I,Claudius' novels Barclay, is entrusted with her patch in Greece to give a sense of an idyllic world far beyond the yawning gape of a developer's back hoe. However as cracks and fissures appear in the ancient landscape of her travels a question remains: What lies beneath the surface of such an Idyll?

[elladastinkardiamou]

The Author of "Wild Abandon" on the Forgotten Corners of the Dodecanese

Just from the book’s title, one can see that Wild Abandon is not your usual Hellenophile-penned tribute to Greece, just like Jennifer Barclay (Falling in Honey, An Octopus in my Ouzo) is not your usual travel author.

Barclay, who was raised in England’s Pennine Chain, has studied at Oxford and traveled all over the world. Since 2011, she has permanently resided on Tilos.

She and her four-legged friend Lisa dedicated five years of their lives scouring the Dodecanese in search of hidden treasures in these touristed isles, buried by the dusts of time; ghost villages, abandoned buildings and remote landscapes of untouched beauty are the places that draw her, while her protagonists are authentic islanders who keep memories alive, along with a vanishing way of life.

“This project of exploring the abandoned places of the Dodecanese started with a thought I had while on Nisyros in spring 2015, when I first saw its almost deserted villages on the rim of the volcano, and the churches built by islanders who had emigrated to America,” she writes. “I began thinking about how much changed, and how dramatically, over the course of a century in most cases. I set out to learn more by exploring different islands, and revisiting places I already knew to look deeper.”

This bizarre and frightening summer, and in light of the profound impacts the pandemic is expected to have on our way of life, Barclay’s solitary wanderings, her constant contact with nature, her teleworking, as well as her attachment to simplicity and freedom render her book exceptionally timely.