Padma has gone to yet another Christmas lunch with yet another group of volunteering ladies who knit blankets for homeless people or sell tickets in the shopping centre, which gives me time to catch up with my reading. I'm coming to the end of "Travels with Epicurus" which I didn't so much read as slowly chewed through with great delight.
In it, Daniel Klein journeys to the small Greek island of Hydra to discover the secrets of aging happily. Drawing on the lives of his Greek friends, as well as philosophers ranging from Epicurus to Sartre, Klein learns to appreciate old age as a distinct and extraordinarily valuable stage of life. He uncovers simple pleasures that are uniquely available late in life, as well as headier pleasures that only a mature mind can fully appreciate.
I was a frequent visitor to Hydra during my eighteen months in Piraeus where, within sight of my apartment at # 2 Bodouri, the ugly Russian-built hydrofoil, a blue-and-yellow hermetically-sealed sardine can, hurriedly took me to this island where time slowed to a standstill.
This charming little book is best read while playing with your kombolói, a loop of thirty-three amber beads that are known in English as worry beads. However, kombolói have nothing to do with worrying; they are about time, about spacing it out, about making it last. I still play with mine when drinking a glass (or two) of retsina or drinking in this book.
They say that armchair-travelling broadens the behind, but this utterly delightful book about a jaunt to the Aegean island of Hydra and through the terrain of old age led by a droll philosopher also broadens the mind.
