Yesterday morning, the new students found a skull near the Cave of the Nymphs.
I bluffed that it was a goat skull, knowing that I had seen it last term during one of my solitary trips down to the chapel in the rocks, but the girls looked closer and saw human teeth. They spent today at the police station reporting it.
I had seen it several times, always pausing to look at the teeth, never stopping to think it might be human, that it might have a story. There are a lot of cow and goat skulls jutting out of sand or clay all over Paros, Antiparos, Despotiko.
I wonder if it is ancient, I wonder if it is recent. I wonder why it has been two days since I’ve made one of my little pilgrimages to light a candle. I wonder how long the wildflowers on the island will last – the asphodel, the campion. It is beautiful right now.
Wow… very mysterious. What tremendous fodder for the imagination! Mayhaps it is a nymph skull? (Impossible to imagine that you are actually living near a place with the real actual title of “Cave of the Nymphs.”)
I have been contemplating skulls too… but deer skulls. (which definitely cannot be mistaken for human skulls. Specifically, I’m wondering if it would be completely morbid for me to take this deer skull I found months ago home. Is it bad feng shui? I have a growing collection of shed deer antlers, and really I keep casking myself how different is a skull really? when it comes right down to it…. but the skull kind of creeps Johnny Lunchbox out, so I’ve refrained from taking it home. I do however make regular pilgrimages to visit it.
Your B&W are fantastic. i love them so!!