santorini | on the meaning of breathtaking
santorini - impressions
the phrase “breathtaking views” has been used so much to describe beautiful places - that we are no longer sure exactly what it means. I will tell you what it means. in santorini, it means that while walking along white village footpaths along the caldera - a land ridge left by the collapse of a volcanic - you look out over into the unreachable sea — as silent as an infinite lake — and cannot believe that you are alive to witness such a beautiful place. this is the material of dreams, and movies which take place inside dreams (but cannot afford to be shot in santorini). it means, in contrast to the rest of your life - the inside of a computer screen, the interior of your home, the daily sight of your town, village, city worn mundane by familiarity - this kind of beauty is so unfamiliar, so disruptive — that it seizes you out of the habitual reality in your head, and you are flooded with the awareness that you will never see anything like it again - you are speechless, unable to do anything, except take out your phone cameras and exercise your thumb, wishing to capture, to remember, to summon the magic of this place, for those future inevitable days when life seems dull and ugly. the word breathtaking means that momentarily, you have no breath. but maybe it also means the opposite — that this is the moment when life slaps you with its beauty, and you revive. and maybe, you start breathing.
