Life is complicated. We just finished (almost) building a house. Building a business. Building a gallery. Bali can be stressful. Imagine that.
I rarely long to go anywhere in particular. When you live in Bali, the travel bug doesn’t bite so hard. But now, after all this stress and the complexities of making and decorating a house, I really want to get away to something completely different. And simple.
The Perivolas in Oia on the Greek island of Santorini looks exactly right. Simple. Without the formality and rigour of a modern-minimalist tropical house, which is what I live in. That’s a change I could welcome right now.
Bali-dwellers, please don’t get excited by these images and try to emulate it. Bali is far too damp to try this kind of thing. It’s been tried, especially in the 70s and 80s, with dire and disastrous results. We all know those moldy, decomposing, dripping hippy dream houses. Don’t even think about building into a hillside or a cave here, or going for the free-form lumpen look.
Unless you build on Nusa Penida, and have a hundred guys to roll limewash on your walls and floors dawn to dusk. And a huge account with PLN to pay for all the dehumidifiers.
So it’s off to Santorini, then, for me, the would-be minimalist cave dweller. Imagine that’s me in the picture above. I’m certainly trying to imagine it.
