Chapter 1. Return

 I was awakened early in the morning by the restless chirping of swallows on my front porch. I uncovered the warm blanket reluctantly and feeling slightly depressed.
"What a strange dream," I thought. "Roses... hundreds of scarlet roses, as red as blood. Night covered everything around me, and I waded through the thorny bushes. Their huge, swollen buds throbbed and bent before me as if they were alive.  They whispered to me incessantly. Their sound was like a swarm of hungry insects - vile, horrible, penetrating into my heart. The chaos of unbearable sounds had strangely coalesced into a phrase that sounded like a message. I desperately strained my ears to catch their secret meaning. Large crystal drops of dew fell from the rose petals. But they were more like tears. The roses were crying. Their mournful, pitiful moans tore my soul. The tears grew larger and larger. I looked around for a moment and suddenly realized that I was already standing shoulder deep in water. The coldness of the water pierced me, paralyzing my body, but my heart was pounding in my chest. The water kept rising, but I couldn’t move. I was overcome with primal fear, and with all my bein,  I realized the inevitability of my end...". 
  I had a clear feeling that I had heard the message of the roses in my dream, but when I woke up, I could not remember it. Only a few fragments of their pitiful call rattled around in my head:
"Find... you need to find..." "What a terrible nightmare!" I thought. "Sleeping in a new place is never easy. I should buy two comfortable feather pillows, then I'll sleep well."
   I glanced at my watch. It was early morning. Not finding my slippers next to the bed, I stood on the icy beige marble floor. The house was not very old, but in those days people loved to do everything well, to last for centuries, from materials that nature itself gives us. The coldness of the glossy marble floor, like an electric shock to my legs, finally dispelled the remnants of an incomprehensible dream, and I went out onto the veranda to see what made these restless birds disturb my sleep. A pair of swallows under the canopy of the house darted from corner to corner, talking to each other, as if animatedly arguing and discussing some important issue. After watching them for a long time, I realized that this was a newlywed couple looking for a place to build a nest and then raise their chicks. “Like people,” I thought, watching them consult, “and how can we believe that they have only instincts? What nonsense,” I thought, “they are just like us people.” It seemed that this place was already familiar to them, they had already been here once, and it was no coincidence that they chose to build a nest under the roof of this house. They returned from distant hot lands to give new life to its offspring. Turning my gaze from this bird bustle, I noticed that the morning sun was already rising over the small hills in front of the house, covered with fluffy pine forest. The spring morning air was filled with the sweetness of flowering pine trees on the shore, a couple of kilometers from my house. I took a deep breath to feel this sweet nectar of pine trees as strongly as possible with all my receptors, and at that moment I felt how my whole being triumphed over my return here, “Lord, it’s so good that I’m here again!” Thank God I'm back in Halkidiki!
  After a whole year of staying on a noisy, hot island, after its endless tourist bustle, it seems that here in this silence I again hear the voice of God. A small house located at a distance from the nearest villages was exactly the housing that I needed now.
  Behind the house grew several fairly young olive trees, creating a pleasant lacy shadow on the young green lawn on a sunny afternoon, and in front of the entrance I was greeted by a garden that required good care in the future, but nevertheless pleasing to the eye with its magical spring transformation after a short, but rather cool Greek winter.
  The spacious veranda overlooked the side where there was a view not only of the sea but also of Mount Olympus, shrouded in ancient Greek legends, and in the evening, right above the dark silhouette of the mountain giant, one could watch sunsets, a real triumph of light and color, as if the Greek Gods themselves were arranging for me a colorful performance, proclaiming their divine presence.
The long coastline stretched for kilometres on the left, abutting those fluffy hills that were visible from the veranda of the house, and on the right side, a long sandy shore reached the nearest coastal village. Since I arrived here, I often went for a walk to the sea at sunset, and from afar I watched as the night came in that village the lights gradually lit up. (look how it was) Their flickering from a distance was like fireflies quietly hovering above the ground. There was something magical about all this that caught my eye again and again. Several kilometres of distance made the image of the village unclear, blurry, similar to a mirage; sea spray from the waves created a foggy strip on the horizon, which shimmered with warm pink light from the setting sun. This made the image of the village even more mysterious and alluring. However, until today I have never had an opportunity to visit that side.
  Thinking about the coming day, I leisurely opened a new package of ground Greek coffee and, inhaling the spicy aroma of the dry drink, felt a pleasant anticipation of a new day. While the coffee was standing on the fire waiting for the moment until its thick foam rose to the edges of the coffee pot, I fried a slice of rustic corn bread in local olive oil. “Mmm, what an aroma and what a beautiful color, nothing other than Greek gold in liquid form," I thought. "Those who buy oliv oil in supermarkets have never had the opportunity to feel this taste bliss and slightly tart but not at all bitter aftertaste on the palate.
I grated a slightly overripe tomato, leaving only its tender pulp, which I then carefully placed on a crispy slice of toasted bread and sprinkled with a pinch of aromatic dry oregano. The finishing touch was the soft white sheep's cheese, which I layered thick and thick on top of the bright scarlet tomato flesh on my sandwich.
  My culinary process was interrupted by the sizzling sound of boiling coffee, the foam of which had just rolled over the edge. “Oh, I missed it again, really, shouldn’t I be watching the coffee all the time while it’s brewing? And how do the Greeks always manage to capture that very moment so accurately?”
This happened every time I plunged into my world, where again and again I nurtured new ideas for my paintings.
I have always believed that a painting must first be born in the head, acquire feelings, experiences, magic there, and only then, having gone through all the stages of formation, earn the right to be embodied in reality.
I have never chased the number of paintings, releasing them one after another from under my brush. The painting, not first born of feelings, always seemed empty to me. I cannot say that I have never painted such artworks, however, I have always parted with them quite easily without the slightest feeling of regret.
Just a beautiful picture could interest me only at the beginning of my creative journey. However, it was probably here in Halkidiki, along with my paintings, that some kind of magic began to be born, something more behind all this stunning beauty that I can observe in these divine places. Here I feel something very special. Yes, perhaps I could call it the well-known and quite comprehensive word inspiration, but my feelings tell me that this is something else, something more...
Having placed my breakfast on an old, but still charming, nickel silver tray and throwing my white plush robe over my shoulders, I took the tray in my hands and sat comfortably at a table on the veranda to enjoy all the gifts that today’s beginning of the day offers me.
  The morning was sunny, a quiet warm wind played with a simple decoration of sea shells that hung under my roof and created pleasant sounds. The spontaneous notes of shells knocking against each other formed a harmonious musical composition from the light streams of cool wind from the sea.
I slowly drank sip after sip of freshly brewed coffee, taking a bite of my crispy hot sandwich from time to time. I looked at Olympus, which looked completely different in the morning than at sunset. The gentle blue shades of the mountain almost merged with the color of the sky. Some contrast to determine the exact silhouette of the mountain was emphasized only by the snow-capped mountain peaks, still reminiscent of the past winter. The base of the mountain was foggy, as if in the clouds, it gave the feeling of the mountain flying, Olympus seemed to be hovering over the sea, obviously and too clearly reminiscent of Roerich’s * paintings, written in his famous, but such a difficult journey through Tibet.

  I silently looked at this morning's serenity; it seemed that the whisper of endless thoughts left my fussy mind for a while, which plunged me into some kind of timeless infinity where there is no past or future. And this blissful, quiet morning did not foreshadow anything unusual for me, as it seemed to me at that moment...

* Nicholas Roerich was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, philosopher, and public figure.

Read Chapter 2 ➔