It is a hot summer afternoon at the beginning of August in Santorini. It is the middle of tourist season when all the young beautiful women parade up and down the Old Port road in Fira seeking ‘selfies’ on the escarpment overlooking the caldera.
While they have a penchant to expose most of their wonderfully tanned bodies, sometimes unfortunately garbed in semi-transparent sashes, inevitably their eyes are appropriately hidden by sunglasses, a seeming inversion of the Muslim dress custom.
I am sitting underneath the canvas awning of the Santorini Art Gallery near the Energitismo display of ’wearable sculpture for beautiful women’, wonderful artistic jewellery for all to admire from Ascione (Mediterranean Coral), Roberto Lanaro (Contemporary Steel and Copper), Roberto Perziano (Murano Glass) and Antonis Karakonstantakis (Stones of Mt Olympus), each to complement the epitome of femininity. We are consuming a wonderful fresh Santorini melon and sipping a fine grappa, imported from Veneto very recently.
I am considering the absolute limitations to assets – the true meaning of consumables – noting that, when I consume just two more portions of melon, it will be exhausted; and I wonder if there are any materials in the universe that are self-replenishing, totally sustainable. I ruminate that, of course, not even the sun can fulfil this specification, this wish for eternity.
My attention is taken by a young couple who enter the forecourt. He, I am not sure, but she is a glorious specimen of young beautiful women at the peak of youthful femininity. She is wearing a white short top, flowing over and just below her breasts, and white lace ‘short shorts’, that accentuate the curves and suppleness of her derriere and related female assets to perfection. She walks with sensuality and confidence. I gaze wistfully at her with more than admiration at her fortune (and his). I comment to my associate concerning my recommendation that he admire the young lady, and he retorts that ’there are two others already admiring her’ and I reply, ‘there are now four’.
The spark then lights in my otherwise dimmed brain, and I realise that I have found the infinite resource. No matter how many people were to admire her, this lady can satisfy each one, thousand upon thousand, without even a word lost or a touch by her. Through her, admiration is an infinite resource, unlimited in its quantities of beholders.
In my geriatric reverie I return to eat the last piece of melon and lick the bottom of the grappa glass – a finite asset - and I settle back for eternity awaiting with pyrrhic hope another of the beautiful women to admire.
Follow us