The routes of the passing ships.

Thoughts while looking out my window…

I am standing in front of my window, watching the ferry sailing. It must have left Naxos about an hour ago, and it is now sailing to Ios and Thira. A few hours later I will watch it return with all its deck lights on, like floating candles, on its way back to its next port..

I am always surprised to realize that the sight of passing ships gives me such a feeling of pleasure and relief..

I feel that this is because for me, the passing of these ships has a deeper, more metaphysical role: the role of punctuating the rhythm of life on the Aegean islands..

The passing of the ships feels like the inner working of a silent clock; people here are used of looking at the sea, gazing for the passing of the next ferry as if they need to subconsciously re-confirm their sense of time in their everyday lives.

These routes define us all in some way. They don’t just link us with the rest of the world, but they also bring a kind of a deeper esoteric rhythmic balance to the island; a balance that in the old days was created by the elements of nature only: the position of the stars or the movement of the sun in the sky..

words: maria alipranti

photos: christos drazos