To Ápeiro
Where the land meets the sea and the present meets mythology.
WINTER 2025
WORDS Lara Somoroff
PHOTOGRAPHY Kelt van Meurs Avila
In the dawn of the day, I laminated this white pumice with soft steps. Gentile. You never know if you are walking on shells. This place, the island of Milos, whispers to me. Desolately scavenged by Saracen pirates, above mines, and between ruins; I am drawn to it. It is here where we set ourselves up; I’m in a black silhouette that slashes the milky landscape and Kelt is with his camera, slung to his neck and resting on his left palm. It is here where we feel drawn to enact a history that seems familiar yet far off. We find ourselves at the spot early in the morning, before anyone else lays their eyes on the ground. While the shade of the low-brimming sun is still dispersed over the cool white rock, we try to find the sweet spot where I and the impending sun can meet; so that once the sun shifts into focus it can fully orbit me, channeling the vast history through me. When the sun strikes it activates the laden presence of the female Venus, morphing me to the ancient Greek myths I so love.
It is here where we created a story from all the mythologies that linger and loiter in Greece’ s vast structures. Perhaps influenced by a reading from a chapter of the Odyssey, or a dream ignited by the salt crystals that seep into our skin as we sleep, or seeing the silkened drapery of the Vénus de Melo in the Louvre, or in the various incomprehensible energies stirring from the bristled winds, slashing waves or scorching sun. It was a beautiful moment of surreality, where both of us––Kelt and I–– became consumed and inspired by the landscape. This island has its own story. This is my telling of it, loosely based on the story of Nausicaa and intimately based on my embodied experience in this place.
And with my eyelashes clenched I saw it possible. When the dream begins you can only really perceive a blank white space, it is bare with possibility. But when a dream begins, you also think back to where it actually began.
When I looked beyond the land whose white chalk plastered my feet, my skin and every inch of me, I saw the vast waters. The waters whose waves, and salted sprinkles whispered to me: ‘water is stronger than stone’.
And I began to wonder, then, how water could prove this very power to me. I thought, water works symbiotically in a tango-relation to time. Water, if you wait long enough, with a simple, minute (my-noot) sequence of drops, will penetrate a hole through the stone. Water creates form, while, all the same, it takes away from form, in constant osmosis.
Long before I came to this island, the island belonged to that world beyond me. In Poseidon’s name the sea veered cycloptically, tumultuously slashing travelers who tried to thrust against its currents. And so they say, ‘always be guided by the currents, don’t try to push against them’. Beneath the surface of the petrifying Aegean waters lies an aquarium of tranquility. That omnipresent blood roots itself in small oyster shells at the sea’s very bottom. It is the blood that pumps through every organism and which guides each on their way. This blood is a female force, a vanity, the very pearls of the oysters that suckle to the deepest part of the sea bed. The pearls adhere together in an overspilling nucleus of possibility. Once enough pearls attach themselves, the force grows, the reaction sparks, and the energy spouts, penetrating the very surface of the waters from which they were submerged in. A golden gleam of magma emerges. A great beauty concocted in explosive desire. That is where the white embossed rocky surface arose.
Silhouetted in grooves and protrusions, wherever the water seethed through. It is the story of this island. And, the more time transgresses, the more this fossilized piece of past, of ancient history, undergoes a constant state of sculpting.
I open my eyes.
The beach breathes infinitely, to ápeiro, with an illusory horizon of white foamy rock. On all days the white absorbs and reflects the sun. The sun pasteurized the land and gave me my intuition––my sense of presence. On most days I watch the ships.
I live alone on this land, and when the ships emblazon my horizon I can’t help but to hope someone will wash up on my shores. My name traces the nautical ventures that slide across the Aegean sea; Nausicaa they call me. I see a vastness in the distance and the more I see the more I feel. The more I feel the more I know I am where I’m supposed to be. The ocean’s iridescent molten pearls is how this island and I came to be. The undulations on which I stand embody the birth of destruction. And so my fate lives on––creating birth from destruction. ‘She who destroys ships’, my name reminds me.
Those very ships that I see in the sun’s distant beams, bring me someone, I wonder, I hope. For day in and day out I read the sun and I swallow its luminescence. It intangibly tangifies everything around me, bringing life, transferring energy. I know, though, that I shall destroy their ships to allure these travelers to stay. I console them as my own and give them shelter. So whether the Saracen pirates or a man who has long been at sea, my bright pumice palace seduces with an aura of serenity. They never leave. But I am still alone (in theory). These visitors only become more ingrained, wriggled in between salt and sand grains. Fossilized in spirals, specimens, and milagros amongst and entangled in the spines of my land. Everyone who comes becomes a part of my story, the history.
The wind blows.
I stand on the cliff, dividing it into two.
I am on the dinosaur’s back. The spine upon which everything else grew and which always remained. That withstands winds, sands, salty bruises, elevates me and grounds me all at once. The spine where I stand upon to watch who washes up and who washes away.
If you live in a land of abundance you always want more. And if you live in absence, you also long for more. An empty chalice desiring to be made full. So here I am on Milos, my island. Whispering to the seas, asking the Athenian blood to keep nourishing me. I am alone but I am amongst all my encounters all at once. To ápeiro. The infinity blesses me. The land keeps giving, the water keeps sculpting.
Oscillation between form and formlessness creates my statue, my stature. Nausicaa, my dialectic nature: she who creates thereby destroys.
Nostalgia matures innocently.
If I walk the same chalky surface, I can feel the umbilical path of my island again. My history is inscribed within its moulded body. The land is my umbilical cord, between me and the mother, my Athena who conceived of me. For in her eyes I was there to provide and protrude, standing high above the waters to watch and reflect, observe and protect, convocate and contemplate. What never leaves never has to stay. This dream of mine is scored on my soles.
Wherever I walk, I walk soulfully.
STORY CREDITS
PHOTOGRAPHY Kelt van Meurs Avila, WORDS, STYLING & MODELING Lara Somoroff
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