So far, the art work in the house are paintings by Ailyn and Sennen – with more of then being Ailyn's. She loves art and initially, getting the chance to paint and have her work displayed in the house was very exciting. Sometime last year, she became less enthusiastic about painting – which is a shame because I think she has real talent. So when I asked her if she'll paint more for the house – which has so many walls in need of art – she said she will use the one remaining canvas we bought last year – and that's all she promises.
I'm hoping once she gets going, maybe we'll do more. We'll see….
In the meantime, that's led me to begin looking at wall art. It seems to me if I've gone this deep into my Greek island motif with the house, I might as well keep going. Especially since Ailyn's art is a series of things she likes about Patmos: the sunset at Choklakas Beach, gelato and cats. All solid Patmos themes. In my perusing, I found a photo of Patmos in 1926. It shows Hora with a lot of open land around it and a man on a donkey on the hillside. If I'm interpreting it right, the perspective is from what I refer to as "Back Hora" – the part of town on the other side of the hill, behind the monastery, as opposed to Front Hora which is what you see from down here in Skala – the part that lies in front of the monastery. Pretty simple, right?
If I'm right, that means Hora's had a lot of growth since 1926. Today, Back Hora goes much further down the hill towards Petra and Diakofti Beaches.
On their boxes and also displayed on their wall, Christodoulos Bakery uses an old photo of Patmos clearly taken from the harbor showing both Skala and Hora in 1911. It's pretty cool – especially because the nature of the towns hasn't changed much. There's certainly been more construction since then – but not so much to make the photo shocking. If someone showed it to me without telling me the age, I would probably still identify it as Patmos.
From that photo, I can't tell how far back toward Choklakas Skala went. Probably not as far. Or how many buildings were on the hillsides around Skala. Probably fewer. In my Duolingo studies of Greek, I learned Skala means stairs or steps. Back then, I'm sure Skala was really the gateway to Hora – which was the real town of Patmos for much longer. The monastery – which at one point owned all of Patmos – was up in Hora, but it needed a port for trade and access to the world. It makes sense Skala would come from that need and be "the lesser town".
Today there are certainly Horaphiles and multiple constituents – the devout, intellectuals, artists, the Aga Khan – who feel Hora is the superior town and "the real Patmos". It's true far more of Patmos' history and of course its religious and cultural significant are seated up on the hill. From a practical perspective, Skala rules the roost. Skala has government, banks, supermarkets, the cemetery, gelato, the gas station, bakeries, hardware stores the bathroom fixtures and plumbing shop, the weird little shop that's just the Beyond from Bed, Bath and Beyond, the appliance and electronics shop, the elementary school and the list goes on. You can live in Skala and never need to go up to Hora – but you can't live in Hora and not come down to Skala.
The other day, I rounded a curve on the way to the beach and saw a new house being built on a hillside overlooking Sapsila Bay and it saddened me. It was nicer without the house there. And what an odd location for a house because the plot was an odd-size and it wasn't really near anything else. I actually wondered how they were going to connect it to utilities.
Then it hit me. My "baseline" Patmos is 2010. That's when I first came here, fell in love with it and that snapshot is what I use to judge Patmos. To Christos at Cafe Mostra or Nicholas whose studios we used to stay in – their "baseline" is probably quite a bit different – something less developed. My house was built in 1990 – so they may well think Patmos was better before it was built. The elementary school behind my house probably isn't the original site of the school – so it's outside of someone's baseline. Of course, not all development changes what someone loved for the worse. I'll bet there were people REALLY happy when the power plant was first built and while it's not the most attractive building on Patmos (nor especially ugly – they did a good job of making it blend in) – it made a positive difference in people's lives. I would guess the same of the Health Centre (medical center) – which is also really well hidden (if that's a good thing).
We all have our definitions of what "baseline" or maybe "ideal" is. To some degree how you feel about growth and change is a product of where you are in life's journey. I'm somewhere around midway and I like some development I like, and some I don't. I suppose it all depends on how it affects the feel or concept of a place.
My kids are growing up in not only the same town, but the same neighborhood as me. They go to the same schools. Their world is as close to mine was at their age as it gets. Westlake Village hasn't changed that much. Certainly, some businesses have come and gone – but often in the same shopping centers and locations. When I want to reference where something is to my friend Mazyar who I grew up with and who lives five minutes away – sometimes it's just easier to call it by what we knew it as growing up. For a few years, we still referred to the Whole Foods shopping center as the Lucky's. The Chevron at the corner is still Stan's even thought his son-in-law Kelly runs it now. TJ Maxx is Hughes. The UPS Store is next to Aunt Lefty's (Pizza) even though there has been a line of different restaurants in that space for at least a decade. And so forth.
There are things that have changed – some I don't like, some I do and some which I started out not liking and just don't care enough to continue to not like them. Like Target. It was nice when that area was brushy hillside. How it's a Target shopping center. It's kinda' blah looking. But you know, you can't fight Target and what's done is done.
For my kids, Target is part of their baseline and I'm sure they can't imagine Westlake without it.
One change I really like is Stonehaus – a cafe and wine bar with lots of pretty outdoor seating and gardens. Only when my friend Leanne first took me there, it had been years since I had lived in Westlake and I knew something felt off. Then I remembered it used to be a Chevron station. So now I always worry a little bit when I see little kids playing on the grass there….
What's interesting is how we conceive a place in the course of our lives – and to what degree our own age plays a part of it.
I'm not sure I would have enjoyed Bali before it got electricity in the 1980s. But now it's harder to enjoy Bali because it's become so much more developed than the time I lived there. The Starbucks next to the Ubud Palace – the seat of the kings of Gianyar for hundreds of years and the site of traditional Balinese dance each night – was a hard thing to accept. Starbucks isn't my Bali. But does it completely ruin my Bali? Not on its own. In combination with other things, it might one day.
To me, the Ubud, Bali of 2004-2006 was splendid. Developed enough to have a supermarket with boneless chicken breast and imported cheeses but undeveloped enough that there were still a few rice fields along Monkey Forest Rd and lots to ride through come and going from my house outside of town. Of course, to someone else the supermarket was probably an overstep and to that same person or maybe someone else, there should have been yet more open rice fields. Maybe that person's Ubud would be worth trading in some boneless chicken breasts for?
I can't say with any certainty that Ubud with Starbucks isn't more enjoyable. For many, it probably is. Our kids sure liked all the gelato shops that had sprung up around Ubud – while there were none when I lived there.
Whose Bali is the best? Moreover, if I first encountered Bali in 2025, would I have liked it as much? Could have I liked it the same or more? It's impossible to know.
Rosy Retrospection is a cognitive bias in which we smooth over the past – remember it with more fondness than we may have had when we actually lived through it. It's a little like Mommy Amnesia which causes women to forget many aspects the birthing experience - and which keeps our species going. We all tend to find the past rosier than the present. The older we get, typically the more concern we have for the future.
Its counterpoint is the End-Of-History Illusion which we generally can't imagine developing further than we are today. Therefore, we have trouble seeing a trajectory in which things get better – including ourselves. We can more easily acknowledge that individually and societally we have developed tremendously over time – ie. we can look at science and technology and see how far humankind has come in curing disease, increasing longevity and developing more creature comforts – but we can't imagine that process will continue at the same rate in the future. Our view of the future tends to be more static.
In other words, we are generally designed to be less optimistic about the future than the past. And this becomes more pronounced with age.
Maybe I'm aging better than some – because for all the things in the world that intensely worry me, I also am hopeful humanity can find solutions to many of them. We've come through crazy and amazing things. Sometimes there are serendipitously amazing choices like the Marshall Plan, inventing drugs that make HIV something people asymptomatically live with indefinitely, eradicating small pox, enabling children and grandparents separated by continents and oceans to talk face-to-face.
When I look at photos of the Patmos of 100+ years ago, I love how the island is fundamentally the same – the feel of it comes through and is so recognizable. I also know, I probably wouldn't have liked living there nearly as much. I'm the guy with a clothes dryer and a dishwasher – two uncommon appliances on Patmos. I just upgraded the living room air conditioner to be twice as powerful. And would I be so happy about my house being supplied by well water if I had to actually fetch it instead of a pump pushing it up through my pipes to make my shower, toilet, sinks and appliances work? That's a hard no.
Next time, I see some new house being built in a spot that feels less-than-desirable to me, I'm going to try to remember that Westlake wouldn't be Westlake to my kids without Target and I wouldn't shower without the well pump. I'll take a breath. I'll remember Rosy Retrospection. I'll count to ten to let it sink in. Then I'll judge.
