A heaven like Heraclee
We’ll be leaving in a day or three. School’s starting again soon, so I’m taking some last summer looks around.
When it’s vacation time I want vetted recreation - who wants to take chances?
Last spring, in the last few weeks of school, on the metro or when I should be studying, or on cold nights - when I should’ve been studying - I’d try to visualize these pactolian Héraclée beaches.
The bright, exclusive, Héraclée summer sun - that electrically-radial herald of beachy fun - bestriding a seaside indigo summer sky - like a fiery, winged messenger of heaven-spun blessings.
Hemingway, a man who lived in pedestrian Florida, wrote that the French Riviera was ‘the garden of Eden.’ Picasso said, ‘in sunflower sun, the clean, quartz-grained sand of Saint Tropez glitters like diamonds.’
Héraclée is slower, wilder and more natural than touristy Saint Tropez and its beaches are practically deserted. Craggy hills slope down to a pristine shoreline, where the sand is as soft as cotton.
We’re at a private area, where ‘plage-attendants’ (severs) circulate among vanilla colored cabanas, dressed in understated, tans and beiges - silently delivering food, amenities and drinks.
Waves chatter a timeless prose that lulls you to trance in cool bungalow shadows - this mile of riviera strand - totes private - is clothing optional.
The heat of the day brings out fragrant scents of native scrub blossoms - jasmine, rosemary, mimosa and thyme, sea salt and umbrella pine to produce aromatherapy-like fragrances that seemingly dissolve time.
This shore of sanctuary, where the scented air itself seems to compose rhyme, has always been a poet’s muse - with its golden afternoons and moonlit, tinsel-flecked tides.
Héraclée is whatever you want it to be - you’re free to inhabit multiple polarities.
It’s not, in fact, heaven - but it’s close.
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Songs for this:
Don't Forget the Sun - The Explorers Club
Summer Girl (Bonus Track) by HAIM
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