A goatherd

The "Historical Site" signpost drags the car off the main road onto rock and grit which make the small rental car groan. In an effort to slow the process down I take my foot off the accelerator relinquishing a little control. The stones crunch under the weight of us as I guide the car to the cliff edge to settle. My girlfriend gets out the car first, her hand tugged by the child in her who wants to see the ruins of an ancient city, here on Ithaca. By the time I've let the car sleep she's already at the weatherbeaten information sign reading about what we were standing on top of. A man with a face of soft leather sets out hay and corn in neat rows without acknowledging our presence on the peripheries of his day. 

The sign reads that to the north east of us are ruins of the ancient acropolis of Ithaki, dating to around 3000 years before Christ. I'm not sure why, but I'm filled with a sense of nervous respect which is usual when I'm visiting these types of places. Maybe it's because there was once life here, where now there are only rocks and dust. It could be that, but I suspect it's because the people who worked, walked, laughed, spat, ate, and sang here likely didn't expect their world would ever die, just like I don't really think mine will. I don't walk out of my Victorian terrace in south east London every morning thinking that one day a more developed human will be visiting the bones of its death as a holiday attraction. We presume that what we are is what will be, even though we know that's not true. This thought lingers in my throat as my girlfriend greets the man whose face creases into a smile before he chokes a motorbike to life and rides it out of sight behind the hillface. 

Together we walk between the clumps of hay and neatly laid corn as if being led up the hill, before my grirlfriend points out an empty goat pen. I'd been wanting to run into some goats during our time here, and although they'd flirted around the edges of my holiday, I hadn't yet seen any. The remnants bring out an excitement in the two of us, and so we begin to nestle into the ancient stone, following the lines where the city walls once stood tall, prompting each other to think about what could have been happening, right here, five thousand eyars ago. She runs a little ahead and I catch up, the way children do when a place in itself is entertainment enough. The energy between us and the land beneath our feet pops and fizzes, pushing and pulling us through the old channels. I wonder if stone sees time the same way we do, but before I can realise how myopic that thought was, we hit a dead end and have to turn around.

We are carried by a calmer energy on the way back to the car, the sea and sky in front of us now, their heavy blues soothing our overboiling into a steady simmer. With my partner ahead of me and slightly uphill, she looks almost godlike with the low hanging sun and creschendo of blue shades as her backdrop. She turns to look at me with eyes wide and wet, a look I know to mean that something great is about to happen, before I notice the twinkling of goat bells on the wind. She beckons me up over grit and rock, and as the entrance slopes reveal themselves to me, they are changed. There are what must be over one hundred goats downhill from us, a frothing, snorting river of fiber, horns and hooves barring our way. The song of the hundred collared bells is hypnotising. I stand unaturally still, eyes openeing up at the expense of the rest of my face, feeling my partner vibrating on the spot, an electron neither in one place nor another, but taking up all of the space where her body stands, energised by the sight in front of her. The goatherd sits on a stump toward the back of the herd at the bottom of the hill by our car, unmoved except for when one of his friends gets too close to his motorobike in which case he lets out a sharp yell which startles the creature out of its curiosity and back into its body. 

It has been a long time since life has captured my attention so fully that I become completely unaware of myself as an individual. As I write this, thinking back to this afternoon, I still can't remember what I felt like; however the sound of clashing horns, the rustle underhoof, the snorting, and the glittering of bells, laced over the sight of a hundred goats oscillating as one herd like the froth of seashore feels like my own memory, like I'm recalling myself.