Mania in Crete

Heraklion Hideaway,

towards the end of our most recent trip in Greece, I was dealing with the inevitability of something I said would not occur in which I promised I could control; deep down I knew this would happen and that I couldn’t control it. Bipolar disorder has taken everything for me. So after a day of driving to the opposite end of the island, I found myself on a high promontory, looking down over the city of Heraklion, glowing with electric lights.

I remember seeing that picture of me the shape, dark and thin, looking proudly onto the city, and I remember laying next to you in bed at night and pairing these words with the image: You cannot bind my soul, it is inviolate. I have climbed the mountains behind me and I have. My spirit is mercurial. It adapts; it expands. I become the mountains behind me.

But deep inside I was dying all the time, getting burned with spiritual yearning, holding onto the handles of prayers that were on fire. It was unavoidable. In my world you just had to walk through the flames.

I was manic by the time I reached Heraklion. And I went to bed and was peaceful, and I watched these waves coming in and going out until I fell asleep: