over iced coffee in Syntagma Square.
Who would want to tramp out to the countryside to look at desolate, god-haunted ruins when you can sit at an outdoor cafe and look at beautiful, young, blonde Scandinavian women walk by in summer undress? The ruins will always be there, but these fine Nordics are like flowers in the meadow who should be savored while they are in bloom. You can visit the ruins any time.
On a hot Mediterranean afternoon, what is so cooling as the sight of a tall, blonde young girl dressed appropriately to the season? It is not lust, as that would heat the blood inappropriately for such a hot day, but rather a soothing contentment in the rightness of a creation in which dwell such shining creatures as these.
Do not talk to them, of course, lest their refreshing grace prove a mirage, a trick played on the mind by heat and bright sun, and these goddess sprites turn out to be only ordinary young girls, the divine aura surrounding them merely the play of sunlight on their perspiration.
While their mere existence is their gift to us, our willful self-deception is our gift to them, which we tender anonymously and at a discrete remove.
Reminds me of that recent poem by Rob Lock:
ReplyDeleteI saw my doctor
wearing a pink bikini.
She looked fine
and I felt better.