Karousades Village

I am presently staying in the small village of Karousades, which lies in the north of the Greek island of Corfu in the Ionian Sea. I've come to write a creative project, a nonfiction book about living and working here when I was eighteen, when I got myself into some troubles and in the end had to make a troublesome escape. This story is one about youthful misadventures and hopes and dreams and discovery and, I suppose, incompetence, but also how we come to reflect on these aspects of youth later in life. Perhaps pine for them while also knowing them to be incomplete. In the case of my story about Corfu, such reflections are inflected by fatherhood, and the thought that my sons will soon be the age I was when this story is set.

The village itself is perfectly preserved as it was at that time, and also somewhat in decline, for not changing is usually a sign of slipping backwards. Far fewer people live here now, and most of the shops and tavernas have closed. When I bought a bus ticket to Karousades, the ticket seller asked me twice if I really wanted to get off at the village, and then the bus driver did so, too. When I disembarked and asked for directions, the villagers I spoke to assumed I'd gotten off at the wrong stop. Everyone is facing the sea in an island like Corfu, it seems, and hillside villages like Karousades come to struggle.

Of course, for someone writing a book, quietness and separateness are not terrible things. I have met my neighbours and the village butcher, the grocer, and some of the old men who sit on the narrow benches in the village square for hours at a time. Here I have included some pictures I've taken of the village during breaks from writing, some on my phone, others on my DSLR, including a short time lapse clip which I took from my balcony between five and nine one evening.

Time lapse Karousades

Balcony office