Explored the rocks at the southern most tip of the island. Stared into the sea and clouds seeing nothing... 20 miles north of Levitha, once known as Lebynthos, a deserted island where ships wreck and Daedelus and Icarus flew over escaping from Crete... 20 miles south of Samos, birthplace of Pythagoras and Epicurus... to the east 5 miles, the island of Leipsoi 30 miles from the coast of Anatolia, Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, ancient Ionia and Miletus, from whence hailed Thales the first philosopher... Westward 180 miles lay Athens via Mykonos 70 miles away from which my boat would return tomorrow and rescue me from exile to escape this isolated confinement where the only entertainment were the visions generated by sensory exhaustion and cultural deprivation. Did John have the same anxious boredom waiting for his boat? Could explain a lot. What if he had had a cable subscription? Would that have altered his visions and changed history? Probably not. There is always someone else out there seeing things no one else sees. Instead of seven seals and four horses, it could have been seven ducks and four groundhogs, and a porcupine in a pear tree.
Sitting on a rock in the bay, I wrote back home to my mom a rather prosaic, but practical letter. After she died 19 years later, I found the letter in a drawer among other items that mothers save forever. It required no Prochoros.
My last night on Patmos,
I beheld the
black horse
of famine —
starved as I was for something other than mackerel and macaroni —
and dreamed of
baklava
under the gibbous moon.
Behold a pale horse with sun burnt rider snoring below.
