Tuesday September 5th
I wash and shave at the chapel tapple then pack my things and being naked appeals so I go for a walk amongst the rocks and boulders in the wilderness and scrub; such an indescribably liberating feeling being naked and strolling about in the warm air without any sign of humanity. This place is as timeless as my nakedness. No sense of past or future there is only now - the present moment. A warm wind blows in from the sea, fresh and clean and friendly. The sun is just over the mountains but already the day is golden. I have a dry cough. But what a world beneath my feet! I felt welcome. Rocks and stones, soil and sand, lizards, pipits, curlews, wild orchids, plants and shrubs, trees and the stillness of the ocean. All of these things seemed familiar, friendly, however temporary. And I knew I had changed because whatever it was that once motivated me to pursue wealth and fame, or to escape suffering and danger, had completely disappeared. I was all I needed.
Then - acute embarrassment! Out of nowhere, about 100 metres to my left, a man appears and he's clambering over the rocks in my direction. He is dressed in waiters' garb of crisp white shirt and dark trousers, and appears to be on some sort of mission. I crouch brown behind some boulders, hoping my body in its tan will be invisible against the sand and he won't notice me. As he gets closer he changes direction and storms off down towards the sea and out of sight. Relief! Whatever he was doing, I don't think he saw me. For a few moments I'd felt liberated and confident in my simple nudity, and then quite sorry at having to return to my shorts and the world of cluttered conditioning.
So I walk up to the chapel and sit inside in perfect silence and close my eyes in some kind of fragile spaciousness. I think of this Greece in all her September heat. My metal sunglasses so hot I can't wear them; my sun lotion, it comes from the bottle as hot as tea; of starry, starry nights and shooting stars and the moon in her charming stillness. And then I just sit and watch my breath.
I opened the chapel door and the sky was cloudy and dark but the clouds changed to white as I walked to Arkassa with Fleabag alongside carrying a stick in his jaws. If there'd been any flags the sun would have been 
cracking them but as it was, I just felt tired with the walk where every now and then Fleabag would drop the stick in front of me and look expectantly. He wanted to play just like we did yesterday with the plastic sandal. Each time I reached for the stick, he'd jerk forward but I'd beat him to it, pick it up and fling it into the bushes. He'd ignore this manoeuvre as cheating and find a plastic bottle or bring me something else instead. Plastic bottles are slippery when wet with saliva as I'm sure many of you appreciate, and they bob about when dropped on uneven surfaces so I had very little to do to keep him playing except kick the bottle every now and then. But eventually he grew bored with that and once in the town he joined some kids playing with a ball. They seemed to know him and it wasn't long before they were making a fuss and feeding him and that's when I think I lost him. I hope we meet again sometime.
But the biting heat slowed me down. I just about made it down and up the side of the creek then up the steps to the church. A true test of endurance. I sat in the cool of the balcony with my friends, the used candles, for about an hour until the flies found me again and I had to escape.
By then the sky was blazing and so oppressive I began to feel persecuted and miserable again and really had to find some shade. Then I remembered the chapels and once down there I took some photos of the mosaics and the beach but no matter how I kept myself occupied I have to say I have never known a day so hot or felt so trapped. Then the searing oppression faded into a beautiful soft evening and for me another wander behind the south-side hedges, now alive with the business of countless bees and the well-worn track bringing me through to postage stamp vineyards where the vines grow along the ground amongst fig trees and past one secret little olive grove with its wooden shack and kittens feeding from their mamma outside whilst papa keeps a wary eye the human stranger cooling his sunburned head beneath the sprinkling hose moisturising the vegetable patch and the two wooden chairs and the table under the lean-to and all the rest of homely living bits and pieces snaggling and bedraggling in a perfect little unpretentious haven. As the stranger left, the cats did not even twitch and neither did the bees; and I wonder how it is that bees don't fall when flying through the rain.
I stop at a kafeneion for a coffee amongst the old silent men and when one goes to pay he also pays for my Elleniko kafe - so even though we are strangers we are brothers. I just said out loud to myself how much I have loved this visit to Greece and how so much feels so familiar.
So I bade my goodbyes with handshakes and hugs to Biktoria and Lena and the friendly waiters of Petaluda and traced my way that moonlit night along the old goat track that leads past the monastery, the empty river gorge, the basket ball court, the bee hives and the little vineyard and on towards the scattered stars of Finiki with my footprints in her sand and all the while I wondered if Fleabag was alright.
Just over twenty minutes later I stepped off the main track and cut down another, winding down among the planes into my village, sawing crickets serenading, but instead of flopping into the first bar off the road as was my custom, something in the smell of pines and sage and thyme on that last night drew me up the little hill and past my bed from where I could see across to the distant wide horizon. I looked up into the night and saw galaxies and somehow felt involved, a part of the energy, in the turning of the earth.
I undressed and listened to the deep silence over the windless ocean. Half way to climbing onto my friendly bed I stopped and turned and once again picked my way in the dark down to the pebbly shore. I found an old wooden boat and thereupon I sat and listen to the quiet. The evening air came in naturally with each easy breath, clearing and settling my mind. Everything was still and calm. I seemed to have left my body and my soul back at bedcamp.
After a little while, I had this gradual realisation that whatever it was that I took myself to be, had disappeared and that 'me', the individual, together with the whole of existence, is but one totality which cannot be divided; that my self-nature is in everything and everything's in my self-nature and that life is dear to all. I was part of a true reality in space without limit and time without end. I seemed to see my basic nature as being together with the whole of existence, as one totality.
I sensed an absolute freedom, right there, in the normal and positive, happy and open, vitality of life.
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