The Alley

Mark Pol
3 min readNov 8, 2023
Picturesque view in Forza d’Agrò, picturesque town in the province of Messina, southern Italy

I taw a Puddy Tat. I did! I did Taw a Puddy Tat.[i]

A cat walks silently through the narrow street, to which my little Greek apartment adjoins. The alley is a connection between a busy thoroughfare and the boulevard. The cat now sits dead still looking around. The sound of the sea washes through the little street, only the laundry hangs outside. Occasionally a human sound escapes from the surrounding apartments. The sun illuminates the solitude. A narrow oasis in busy Chania.

Just finished a drawing in my sketchbook. I stare at the roll of colored pencils I always carry with me. The melancholy of it all calms my spirits. My, already days-long, cold is starting to get the better of me. The world is not waiting for me.

The sea sloshes against the edges of the natural inlet, in front of the Venetian port. At this time of year, the Greeks have reclaimed the terraces. In this part of Chania, the Greeks are not well off. The poverty there is almost palpable.

Still look at the narrow street. Occasionally a human appears, that human walks through my time slice. Actually, that human being should not be there. My time slice is disturbed by that. Eventually that human disappears into one of the small houses. I try to hold my time slice, yet it escapes me because my eyes wander.

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Mark Pol

I am an artist:painter. I paint and draw. Its a kind of figurative surrealism. www.saatchiart.com/markpol