How to Climb a Volcano in Perfect Comfort
Marooned in Brussels, my thoughts naturally turn to the wonderfully named – for non-Icelandic speakers, at least – Eyjafjallajökull volcano. The other thing I’ve been thinking about is the third issue of Forté Magazine, which will be launched tomorrow. I wrote about Forté a few days ago (I will from now on, thanks to the editors’ kind invitation, be an editor-at-large for the magazine), but what I did not mention in that presentation was that the third issue is themed, though rather broadly, around fashion. So, I woke up this Sunday with fashion and volcanoes on my mind – a strange coupling at first glance, though not so strange, as was revealed after a bit of reminiscing…
Nowadays, I see fashion mostly as this Photoshop process that removes tiny hairs from the arms and cheeks of pretty girls, who have left California to escape competition from taller, thinner and blonder models, and who came to Athens to live in downtown apartments, three or four or six of them at a time, subsisting on half a banana, waiting around the lobby of the newspaper, next to the ATM, hoping for a gig.
When I was about sixteen, though, not aware of any model even dreaming of a gig in Athens, I almost started my own fashion label. Well, not quite, but like many teenagers, I did mostly make the clothes I wore: I tore up my jeans with a flick-knife and then lay them in the bath tub and poured bleach on them, I painted meandering cannabis leaves on my army boots, and so on. But perhaps the creation I was most proud of was this t-shirt: it was just a normal, xl sized t-shirt, and I do not remember what I painted on it, except that there was a peace sign and below that, the words: psycho-killer. What made this t-shirt extraordinary, though, was that I had painted every single square inch of it in acrylic, so when it dried, it was a solid piece of plastic, more like body armour than an item of clothing.
Now, there is quite a beautiful, unique place in the Aegean Sea, called Santorini, an island of the Cyclades complex, quite renowned for its rugged landscape. It is shaped like a crescent, and in the middle there floats a smaller island, which is really the peak of a volcano. This island is, as one would expect, totally dry, just a pile of blackened rocks and red dust, surrounded by sulphur-infused, greenish milky water. It is a sight to see. It is also devilishly hot, the heat oozing from the ground, as if the sun were not merciless enough, and the climb up to the volcano, a rather anticlimactic wide hole with some smoke seeping through, is quite demanding on legs, lungs and sweat glands.
As it happens, I went on holiday to Santorini that summer, when I was sixteen, and one morning, still suffering from a hangover, I put on my tight, bleached jeans, my army boots, and my psycho-killer t-shirt, and went to climb the volcano.
As years go by, I often ask myself: what could have possessed someone so as to make him climb one of the hottest and least hospitable places on earth in a solid plastic breast plate? Does it not seem like torture, something very much designed to inflict extreme discomfort and pain?
The thing is, I do not remember much from that time, but I surely do not remember any discomfort, any pain. So, now, whenever I say how much I hate fashion, I try to remind myself of that climb up to Santorini volcano – a testament to a deep quest for purposeless, perhaps misguided, but all-too-valuable freedom that clothing does, from time to time, inspire in people.
