Summer in Paradise Lost

Sun, sea, heat and time seems to have lost it's meaning and relevance. Greetings from Greeceland aka my own private paradise lost. As my annual hermit, detox retreat is about to come to an end I thought I would share some of my favorite things that made this holiday paradisiacal. And what better way to start than music. My most beautifulest friend Giuseppe aka Porcarorama has made a Sunshine Summer and Moonlight Nights mixtape that I have been listening to on repeat all summer long. Just press play and trust me when I say that this is the ultimate summer soundtrack.

And of course one should always look the part. Hawaiian shirts should be included in everyone's summer attire, especially the ones made by my beautiful surfer boyz from Paleo Faliro, the seaside area in Athens where I grew up. I am beyond proud of them for launching, in the midst of the financial crisis,  their own brand MOHXA, of ossom clothes worn by the surfers, skaters, hipsters and THE GROWLERS! They say that chaos breeds creation and such start ups by young people in Greece have started proliferating despite the financial crisis or precisely because of it. As a principle I am a big fan of MADE IN GREECE so check them out. Below is my summer's favorite. 

And cause one of my favorite activities whilst being a lazy sunbather is reading here are some of the books I enjoyed and a few of my favorite quotes from this summer's reading list. Enjoy, they all come highly recommended.

The timeless classic which needs no further introductions.

"There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness, for those bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible but pass by whispering and on tip-toe. But the worst of it it that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain…A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life…For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity."  

Hermann Hesse Steppenwolf

On an entirely different note I also devoured the ultimate summer read,  a cross between a pulp fiction crime novel and the genius of the likes of Mr Philip Roth"The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair" by 30 year old Joel Dicker is a real page turner and the perfect book to accompany you to the beach. At times repetitive and not a literary masterpiece yet nonetheless hilarious and well written and I was thoroughly impressed by the accurate grasp and depiction of American society that a young Swiss man has. I say enjoy this one as a guilty pleasure. 

Tom Robbins  in one of my favorite authors, witty, sexy, hilarious and with a sublime command of the english language, what is there not to love! Needless to say when his "autobiography" or more accurately what he has termed A True Account of an Imaginative Life was published under the title  "Tibetan Peach Pie" I couldn't wait to get my hands on it and I was in no way disappointed. 

"You see, at that juncture in my life I wasn't evolved enough to understand the fluid nature of romantic love (its indifference to human cravings for permanence and certainty); its uncivilized, undomesticated nature (less alike a pretty melody than a foxish barking at the moon), or, more importantly perhaps, that it's a privilege to love someone, to truly love them; and while it's paradisiacal if she or he loves you back, it's unfair to demand or expect reciprocity. We should consider ourselves lucky, honored, blessed that we possess the capacity to feel tenderness of such magnitude and be grateful even when that love is not returned. Love is the only game in which we win even when we lose." 

Almond picking has become one of my favorite summertime activities...

Because I am basically incapable of ever writing anything about summer without including something from GRACELAND…..Diamonds on the soles of her shoes….

My favorite beach 

Man Ray revisited or the kind of photos my mum takes when we are on holiday together 

Pastel decadence in Greeceland

2014: Only lovers left alive

Cause I can't think of a better way to great 2014 then watching the new film by the king of cool-Jim Jarmusch "Only Lovers Left Alive". A never-ending love story between the eerily elegant Tilda Swinton and the dashing rocker Tom Hiddleston. Against the no-mans land that is modern day Detroit we follow the afterhours wanderings of Adam and Eve, a couple that can't live without music, books and blood. Cause as Eve says, the only way to make eternity bearable and to deal with the way humanity, "the zombies", are raping and pillaging Earth, is to fill your time with love, compassion and DANCING.

"The most important thing is love,...I know that now. There's  no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon...I'm not quite twenty, but, thanks to you, I've learned something that many women these days never learn; Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed  and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes love. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn't that be to make love stay?"

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free."

"Still Life with Woodpecker" Tom Robbins

"Barking at the moon?"
"What about it?"
"That's all our love was to you?"

'That's all love ever is. Love is not a harpsichord concert in a genteel drawing room. And it sure as hell ain't Social Security, Laetrile, the Irish Sweepstakes, or roller disco. Love is private and primitive and a bit on the funky and frightening side. I think of the Luna card in the Tarot deck: some strange, huge crustacean, its armor glistening and its pinchers wiggling, clatters out of a pool while wild dogs howl at a bulging moon. Underneath the hearts and flowers, love is loony like that. Attempts to housebreak it, to refine it, to dress the crabs up like doves and make them sing soprano always result in thin blood. You end up with a parody. There're lots of pretty sounds that describe 'like', but 'love' is more on the order of barking."

"Still Life with Woodpecker" Tom Robbins

Go East when the wind blows West

Hello darlings and Happy New Year yet another holiday season has gone by and marked the beginning of a new year full of hopes, resolutions (to soon be forgotten, broken or slightly revised) and new adventures to come! What can I say I feel hopeful! and 2013 seems to have a good ring to it, maybe its the fact that it contains lucky 13, the most misunderstood number, or simply that 2012 was slightly heavy for a lot of us. Well no matter what comes our way we are going to have a heck of a ride! And all this has got me thinking about choices and about the wind and where it might take us.

"The word that allows yes,
the word that makes no possible.
The word that puts the free in freedom
and takes the obligation out of love.
The word that throws a window open
after the final door is closed.
The word upon which all adventure,
all exhilaration, all meaning, all honor depends.
The word that fires evolution's motor of mud.
The word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar.
The word that molecules recite before bonding.
The word that separates that which is dead from that which is living.
The word no mirror can turn around.
In the beginning was the word and the word was
CHOICE"

Tom Robbins "Still Life with Woodpecker"

and the master of words Walt Whitman once said

"ABSENCE DIMINISHES LITTLE PASSIONS AND INCREASES GREAT ONES, AS WIND EXTINGUISHES CANDLES AND FANS A FIRE."

Cause all through the Christmas holidays this song has been stuck in my head

If you built yourself a myth
You'd know just what to give
What comes after this
Momentary bliss
The consequence
Of what you do to me


Cause sometimes you just love someone like moonbeams



I love you like grave danger
Like moon shining disguise
When I wake up with your makeup
And spread blush cross the sky

A rainbow in the skies of Athens! Best way to end 2012

New Year Eve fireworks by The Acropolis 

We greeted the new year by dancing all night in an old tannery 

The most delicious Christmas cookies 

Lucky 2013



Industrial festivities in our favorite bar.

New Year Eve hippie hair

Givenchy Rottweilers

SONKE

And since we're in the run up to the Oscars and last night's Golden Globe Awards showed that ladies seem to be kind of the stars of show-business this year here's a video gallery of dreams and transformations featuring 13 talented ladies whose performances have left a mark on our celluloid dreams. My favorite one is the one with Naomi Watts. Enjoy!

The Hollywood Issue: Wide Awake