Border Crossing As I cram my suitcase with 'essentials' before flying north, a scene witnessed in northern Epirus is brought to mind -- terrain where gorges and ravines disdain the borders drawn by states -- a corridor for traffic between neighbours, used by men on foot, shod only in cheap plastic slippers meant for bath or beach. Carrying a grocery bag as luggage, food to last a day, they passed us going separate ways, their destination Athens. When we walked the Vikos Gorge -- a party from an embassy – we crossed paths with a cohort of young men, as many as fifteen, trudging south to something more alluring than they'd left behind, pushing on beyond vertiginous abyss and watercourse, where patrols were baffled by the labyrinth of crest and crease. The fugitives were like a slur to affluence: our Italian trekking boots embarrassed by their plastic scuffs; our rucksacks stuffed with more food than they'd eaten in a month; the feather beds and comfortable hotel awaiting us. What they thought could not be read in faces pinched with need. They plodded on, a ragged band of hungry, thirsty refugees, hoping for a crust of bread, a shallow cave to lay their heads when evening fell, and wolves were on their scent. Perhaps tomorrow, there’d be grapes and oranges awaiting them; farmers who would pay in kind for harvesting. The Integrity of Ruins The Parthenon A lifetime's food for thought is hived in contemplating certain ruins. Can it be that DNA of cultural memory restores the missing architrave, the ornament, the attributes of grace? Or is there solace in the fact that some part of the whole is spared, despite history's vicissitudes - the loss of faith, neglect, decay - an anamnesis that alludes to principles of perfect form, born of genius and time - synopsis, apogee of all a people dreamed of and aspired to in their lease on fate. As a fountain effervesces, fresh and self-perpetuating arcs and arabesques inscribing water's airborne trajectory, so the ruins of a temple, transposed to imagination, glimmer with audacious phantom trajectories of stone in space, shaped by visionary leaps, geometries of faith. Filoxenia If you should reach this city with your votive offerings intact, you will receive mementos in return from the metropolis: the voices of Athena's little owls on the Acropolis;