I am a private and solitary writer, and I prefer my writing to speak for itself. A writer-creator does not follow formulas, opinions, the sameness of all that is accepted out of fear, the expectations, and the illusion of gaining affluence, profit, reputation, and fame. A creator travels into dangerous and uncharted areas of thought and concepts of living to discover their originality and raw, uncivilized authenticity. Therefore, it is essentially life-giving to have distance and solitude.

Such a creator-writer, a seeker, a wanderer that becomes a defiant rebel reminds me of the silkworm that spins the purest and most beautiful silk, without seeking and longing for gratitude, acknowledgement, it naturally and quickly spins and weaves in solitude the art of silk. It is its natural law of being and existing; it must and does create within solitude and darkness, for all creativity is created in darkness and solitude, all life is created within this labyrinth of devotion and seeking.

Therefore, it is essential that I also remain in my solitude and keep sending messages in books, in bottles that I throw into the sea, or with birds in the sky, all my messages ask the eternal question "why?"

What I share with the reader is only a tiny cell of my world, a fragment, a very small grain of sand from where I live and travel into my labyrinth. My life It is only an interpretation, for those that are reading this, for all we are, others will interpret, but not fully ever knowing the process of spinning this fine thread, and nor does this thread from the labyrinth offer any solutions or safety or saving; for life is meant to be lived, not solved and not be saved from it.

An upbringing on the island of Samos, Greece. Before I met the mythological figure Aridane in literature, and the Philosophical Zarathustra by Nietzsche, I lived in a magical, brutal, but brilliant world, full of solitude and adventure; others would have called it abject poverty and abandonment. I did not see it that way, not because I was absent from my little life and in some delusionary escapism fantasy, but because of the richness and fertility that is and was alive in Nature that I was surrounded by and lived in.

This way of life, this world offered me battles and imagination, not to be confused with the escapism of a made up fantasy, at that time I lived with a great philosopher called Amalia, my grandmother, my yaya, and she stirred up my "creative quick" D H Lawrence, my imagination.

​As a young child I sat by the open fire with an empty stomach and listened to my illiterate grandmother as she exposed me without hesitation or fear to both the living and the dead, she spoke of two worlds and told me they both lived side by side, "as inward, as outward" "as above as below" as they coexisted and lived parallel to each other, a natural existence, for both needed and were part of each other, and these two worlds needed and loved each other, even if we out of our fear had divided, conquered and thought we could separate them from us and from one another, these worlds still continued to exist in us and around us.

​Could we only keep day and banish night? The dialectics in life and nature are part of us and offer us different aspects of our nature and destiny.

​At times she would advise me, in her soft and sometimes affirmative voice, that in these two opposite worlds, such as day or night, life or death, these two coexist in a million variations and interpretations in decisions and non indecision, what we may come to understand as our "grabby mortality and our grabby immortality" or our "messy little lives"

​Amalia would tell me that all these worlds and tensions live and breathe within the person, and cause many collisions, uncertainties and anxieties within the person even if that person denies and tries to escape them, they still live deep within, forming and shaping a life of their own that will influence every action that that person will make and every fear or hope that person will think and act on.

​These tensions coexist like day and night does, like the seasons, they are vital for our human journey and our human adventure for living "in love" because everything is in love in the natural world," Plato

​On the other hand she would tell me, if one does not take their own life deeply seriously, the path that was only meant for them, and for them alone, and they decide to become followers, surrendering their life to others, thinking that they will be spared and will exist in "safety and happiness" and deny their own nature and destiny and what lives within them, they will at the ending of their life "be torn to pieces" C. Jung

Although she did not know of C. Jung, she did know what happens to those that avoid and deny their true nature, their true character and their original fire, and their chosen path.

​At times, I thought she deliberately wanted to captivate my small senses with these stories, that were nothing like the stories for children that we tell now. The stories of today have been sterilized, sanitised and everyone gets what is subjective self-gratification. Everyone is "empowered", everyone is a prince or princess, and everyone wins in life.

​I thought she shared these stories full of raw and brutal life, full of terror and beauty, and unimaginable adventures so that I would not feel the hunger, but now, I know with clarity that "man cannot live alone by bread," Jesus

​Amalia was preparing me for all the battles and the storms that were to come, all my life falls and betrayals and untravelled journeys that life brings without warning, she was training to stand in the storm of life and not to be afraid, to become me without shame or guilt, to speak my truth without fear, and to live in a creative solitude, while offering philotimo, to honour friendship.

​She was repairing and disciplining me for my Life Journey and Adventure when life and others would remove me from her, and I would be tossed and blown into the world of "why"?

Amalia was training and preparing me for my life and she spared me nothing, through her oral history she disciplined me to deal with crisis and battles, and conflicts that life and others bring to all, she was teaching me to make decisions and choices that would go against comfort, safety and security and agendas.

​It was the birth and beginning of my true chosen character and nature and my true and chosen path, my destiny.

​In later life I had a choice to take the path, the cultivated and safe path, the cement path so nothing of life will touch me and to be accepted and to "fit in" or to be true to myself without the influence and fear that stems from the accepted ideologues or the fear of being rejected or being alone.

​I chose the road less travelled and discovered the integration and unity that lives within the inward labyrinth of mind, heart, spirit and soul, the creating and weaving of life in deep longing and love' what Nietzsche calls the ownership of oneself, your own autonomy that binds you to your chosen character and destiny.

​The world moves and breathes in the life and the world it is because everything is in love," Plato

​These are the natural laws of life and nature, the facts and laws of life, that there is terror and suffering in life, and from this battle we learn not to fear the terror and create a purpose and meaning from suffering, to be fearless and ask the eternal question that has been passed on from the beginning of time through every culture and every generation "Why?" and "How do I continue in love, without life crushing me, and without life defeating me"

​The mountains that I travelled on in Samos could have been Zarathustra's mountain, the dark, dense, and fertile forests could have been the wilderness that Zarathustra lived in.

​I felt truly free and alive in this solitude to discover through the rivers, my reflection, I saw myself as rich, I did not see my grandmothers abject poverty, I did not pay attention to my hand me down clothes that were given given to me, from other relatives, every loss, every catastrophe bound and wove me deeper and closer to my choices, my character, my meaning, my purpose, my fire, my life.

​I am and was ever so grateful for the depth, richness, and gifts that were offered and given to me as a child in my abandonment and poverty.

​Amalia spoke with defiance, determination, and deep affection. She had a deep lust for life, when she advised me "not to fear" but rather to know that "your life will become a shadow if you allow the disease of fear to infect you and control you."

​She was the only woman, the only person that I have known among the many people that have come and gone from my life, that breathed in freedom.

​For Amalia not to have lived her life, by her true design, by her heart, mind, and soul, and her chosen path was the same as if not being born at all.

​How did my illiterate grandmother know all this?

​I remember the first day at school when I was given paper and pencil and being taught the Greek alphabet. I remember her telling me with a firm but loving voice:

​"when these smart people, these educated people, that will teach you to read and write, don’t you get lost in any smart and sophisticated nonsense, that does not smell or taste from life and of life, what will give you meaning and purpose, on how to continue from past to present and future, how ‘to know yourself’"

​"Use what you learn to give fire to you, to see how their system works, but do not become part of their system. For I have heard among others in the village that some educated people are very clever and sophisticated, they are rootless and fragile in their ego, such people have a hole in them, and nothing can fill it up, they bring division as they neglect the basics of honour and friendship, they have no foundations, or fire, and only hide behind other people's ideas that they have not..."