Markos Zouridakis is a graphic
designer interested in illustrations and
photography from Athens, Greece.
Find out more at:
www.behance.net/markoszouridakis or
www.flickr.com/photos/nodatadesign.
lofty windows set into stone and suspended chandeliers draping from fifty
feet above into stylishly bare alcoves. All clay and dirt outside. No landscaping
whatsoever. I am fairly positive that nine out of ten houses would have sported a toy
dog. I didn’t care to check. The frontier spirit lasted me only so far as this—when
the binary choice is Pomeranians or satellites, I’ll go with the GPS every time.
I have a map of the country pressed between glass and pine on top of the
coffee table in the front study. It still has all of the stickers we used to mark our
places each time we moved through to somewhere else, tracking old histories in
a way the satellites never could. I don’t let either of the kids put a glass on top of
where you are, but they like to sit there, tracing the lines of America’s wide rivers
with their hands until the glass is too smudged to see through and everything
hangs under the vapor of their breath. They point out the colors to each other
and make games of it. Jason likes to sail boats in the ocean off the coast of
California, and Lily is especially fascinated by the orange states. She has asked me
if they were on fire, and if so, did the neighboring states ask the fire nicely to stay
inside the lines, or did they train it, or was it something the fire just seemed to
know how to do. I don’t have the heart to tell her the orange is just orange. I have
told her this is something you will know all about.
Details of your absence remaining unimportant to those under the age of
ten, they miss you in every way.
Work is going well. I am adding on a new greenhouse. We should have
tomatoes year round. Mike spends his evening searching the sky for asteroids
and talking about accretion disks while I drink coffee and watch him through
the window. How’s this for small talk? It’s hard to make. Is this how you avoid
the inevitable? I’m more used to giving in. I am used to being your connective
tissue. I am used to information spreading despite myself, but I don’t know what
information seems right to spread anymore. Some things I have folded onto the >