Landscape 7: Concrete Living

A wall of wooden planks is erected straight upward into the air, at the oblique side of the mountain slope, in an apparent random location in the landscape, a wedge of air in between the wall and the mountain, then the dirt road, next to it, a pile of shattered limestone rocks. The planks are gray and dusty, worn and torn, covered by traces of prior usage and concrete. Near Polikarpos the top of the limestone rock of the mountain pyramid has been scraped off by the dental shovel of a bulldozer. The hill sides run out into the open sea like the barbed tail of one of Poseidon's monsters. At random locations around the island in the pristine ridged mountain range random squared boxes have been scraped and hollowed out of the massive rock. Transformed into several new shapes of popular construction the limestone has been resurected into hundreds of white washed family pensions with little balconies with white taverna chairs at the doorside, green or blue shutters, homes half under construction, never to be finished, the steel rods rusting like newly constructed ruins on the rooftops, empty skeletons in the maquis landscape devoured by the goats. A little further, leaning against the stapled rock, brown red matrices of woven steel rods, leaning against the rock, unused, along eight concrete tubes of one meter in diameter for rain water drainage. Out of the concrete ceiling, electrical wire hangs down, hastily attached dangles a light bulb without shading. A hole in the wall crumbles open, and the television cable is led loosely on the ground to where the television now temporarily stands. In the bedroom facing the south east, from where the tormenting winter rains flooded the mountain slope, black stains of mold have formed. You could paint them over with white paint when spring comes, like the rest of the house, but they would return the next season again. When it rains, the walls suck in the water, until saturated, they burst like blisters, the rain pours directly into the hall, the supporting wall that separates the kitchen and the living area, until the towels are drenched too, and the blankets, and the shoes, the suitcase. Concrete is the lego of the islands. Bridge railing and bridges, road sides, dividing walls, the staircase to the beach, roads, squares, the moles at the harbor, the dockage, the ferry landing, the ramp up the mountain, transformer houses, the hydro-electric dam, the pig stable, the water reservoirs to irrigate the olive grove, the balustrade, the balcony, the chapel, the church, the belfry.