Helsingborg & High Water

Dresden, Germany, following the bombings.

(To be featured in the upcoming print of Dime Show Review.)

My ancestors went blind drinking 

from radiators & distilling their furniture. 

Their gifts smell of ether

& iron. Their blessings

turn & rust. 

My Punnett square is chain-linked. My affliction 

is a family heirloom that looked garish 

in every room. With left hands & blue eyes, 

I have learned of recession. 

I have wondered how long it would take 

to distill my bedroom sets. I have wondered

how many stones my heart weighs, how 

much of me was carbon. I have wondered

of my dog, now blind and in Lismore, and if he

remembers me still.

My bones are Belfast, my lungs are Dresden. 

My tongue is Glasgow, my eyes are 

Birkenau. Trauma is a lineage that 

does not disinherit. Relief

was a coffin ship that never

made it to port. 

I have prayed for hands big enough 

to float me across the North Sea. I have prayed 

for fealty, lucidity, sanctum. I have prayed 

for vertebrae like braille that read 

“have mercy.” 

The Silver City sleeps tonight,

still across the Atlantic—but mercy, 

as it were, has been

granted.

— Cierra Lowe-Price, 2020

Euphoric Recall, Daddy Issues, and Moving Forward.

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”

— Hermann Hesse, Demian

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Among other things, I am a hoarder of happy circumstance. I am naturally inclined to remember the good, and forget the rest—this has served me well for the most part, and allowed me to be a person of generally positive expectation. However, it’s been in the last several years that some more difficult aspects of this particular disposition have truly risen to the surface, and I’ve been forced to examine and amend this perspective to fit my life as it is today. 

As it were, instances in my life wherein I had various places, situations, and relationships with people that I deeply enjoyed—regardless of how these things developed and eventually ended—have been seemingly difficult for me to let go of. I’ve spoken candidly about this before. Everything from the townhouse I grew up in, to the truck I drove in high school and college, to restaurants I’ve worked at and happy memories of past romances—the appreciation I was naturally inclined to hold for these things was deep enough that it had interfered with my appreciation of what was right in front of me. Some of the circles that I run in dub this as “euphoric recall”—and for me, it was rampant. Thus, it turned out to be one of my deepest flaws was this: I had been forever looking backwards, watching the scenery get smaller and smaller and trying to focus my eyes on it so that it cannot disappear from me, and meanwhile missing the spectacular view of what was coming. I was finally able to see this peculiar setting of mine for it for what it was, which at its core was a fear of loss and letting go (doubtlessly born from traumatic losses I experienced early in my life). I have since been able to take this mechanism of mine apart, and slowly learn how to rewire it. 

Of course, it has been a dubious process. Changing perspective is oftentimes difficult and unnatural—especially when it is not brought on by anything sudden or powerful, but instead a mere realization of inefficiency. There are still certain things that are triggers for me, certain places and songs and faces that bring up certain memories by whose ephemeral nature I am inevitably saddened. But, I have made great progress, and I believe that this sadness will one day approach an average breed of nostalgia. Today, when I feel the sting of loss, I take time to evaluate all of the wonderful things in my life today, and even more importantly, to be preemptively excited for all of the wonderful things that are yet to come. 

The first massive issue with the system which I had in place was that I was allowing the positive to overshadow the negative when and where the negative had a purpose. In general, I tend to forget the darker and more painful aspects of various circumstances. Selective memory, if you will, makes me remember things as being better than they actually were. As it were, a vast majority of the experiences and relationships I had had were undeniably unsafe and unhealthy, regardless of any fondness I might have had for them. So first and foremost, doing my best to accurately remember all pieces of these experiences has been a great help. I’m now able to look at a situation for what it truly was, appreciate that I’m a person that holds onto the good and be grateful for the good times that I have had, and work towards viewing them from a more holistic and realistic angle. 

One of the biggest examples of this has been my relationship with my father. Many girls and women can’t help but to glorify their dads and put them on a pedestal and feel very attached to them—I’ve witnessed this time and time again, especially after their fathers have died. However, those of us who had dysfunctional or absent or addict fathers tend to be too forgiving, and to remember them only by their merits. The problem that this gave rise to in me was an unrealistic expectation of other men (failing to remember the great many flaws and the great amount of pain caused by our own fathers) and unnecessarily resentment towards them when and where they failed to meet my expectations (which they inevitably did), while still being innately drawn towards men who reminded me of my deeply flawed father in the first place. My father died of a fentanyl overdose when I was a freshman in high school, after an extended period of being very touch-and-go and failing to be present and satisfy his obligations as a parent. For many years, any anger I might have held towards him was lost on me. He was Tommy, he was my dad, and he was wonderful and brilliant and hilarious, and I would have done anything for one more day with him. After battling addiction myself, I was better able to humanize him, acknowledge that he was a broken person with his own failings, and forgive him. Moving from denial into acceptance was a powerful evolution that brought me great relief here, and my personal experience with addiction is to thank for this—among other significant parts of myself. Today, I no longer regret any of the things I’ve done or mistakes I’ve made—but I am also no longer bringing flowers to the grave of the person I used to be.

The second massive issue with this attachment system, as I’ve eluded to, is that this forever-backwards view impeded my ability to be present, mindful, and content with where I currently stood. I wasn’t able to love anything that was mine as much as the things which I had lost. The present was constantly being subconsciously filed away as something that would need to be dissected, categorized, and glorified at a later date, instead of being appreciated while it lasted. This was the more generalized equivalent of people filming a concert on their phones instead of watching the concert happen. And so it was that I came to find this way of life to be objectionable, and began making efforts to affect a change in my mental processing. 

This shift has been a major theme in the last couple years of my life, and the biggest measure of interpersonal growth that I’ve felt in quite some time. The healing of past trauma and renewal of a true and deep faith in tomorrow has allowed me to begin the journey of recovering from this unhealthy attachment pattern. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Just because something feels familiar, it does not mean that it is where you belong. At its core, that’s what all of this was always about in the first place—I felt safe in places that felt familiar, when I felt safe I was able to let go and feel free, and, of course, when I was able to let go and feel free, I was able to have deeply enjoyable and memorable experiences. It wasn’t of any consequence at the time that what had become “familiar” to me were situations which were chaotic and escapist and unstable people with whom I felt marginalized and endangered. It was home, and I was happy there. Until one morning I saw it in the daylight, and noticed all the crumbling foundation. “Wow,” I suppose I might have thought to myself, “this structure is compromised and possibly even uninhabitable. I may need to find a new home.” 

From there, it was about creating a new and more healthy familiar. This is easier said than done, of course—it takes years to get comfortable with a new “normal” and a whole new set of parameters and measures, especially with a life change as dramatic as getting sober. But, ultimately, creating a newer and healthier “normal” for yourself is always in your best interest, even if it is uncomfortable at first. When you’re used to staying in shitty motels, the Ritz, at first, feels somehow repellent. But eventually, you grow used to good sheets and room service. And then there will come a day you can’t even imagine how you used to sleep in the places that you once did. Not saying that my life today is like living in a luxury hotel, but you get the jist of what I’m trying to convey. We don’t get to choose what “home” feels like for us initially—but there will come a day when the warped floorboards and the ghastly wallpaper strike you as uglier than before, and this is your chance to move uptown and recreate what you want “home” to be. 

Today, my home is a stable and committed marriage with an emotionally available person that I can depend upon. He requires and expects certain things from me, he likes to know where I am and what I’m up to, and he has feelings that I am capable of affecting. None of this was “normal” for me before. Emerging from the shambles of a life of no dignity or accountability, the beginnings of our relationship were a massive culture shock for me. I had to learn the art of compromise and consideration for another person, and how to communicate with someone I’m upset with in a way that doesn’t ruin that person’s day tomorrow. Because tomorrow, we will both be here—and practicing gentility and empathy have turned out to be far easier and more productive than frequent apologies and hurt feelings. And so it is that growth, in this respect, has forced me to concede to the fact that the world and its people do not dance around me and my whims, and that my actions have consequences on others. 

Today, home is responsibility for my children, their happiness and well-being. This is one of those things that is so huge and overwhelming that I have to take it one day at a time, otherwise I inevitably find myself imagining my girls in therapy 20 years from now talking about how I made them sleep in their own beds and scolded them for making messes. 

My home is being sober and in bed at 10:30 on a Saturday night, watching ER and tinkering with various crafts. I was talking to a friend last night about how the fact that I genuinely look forward to spending my evenings in such a way would be a hilarious disappointment to the me from ten years ago—but this, I believe, is a good thing, as it shows that I have evolved. 

Home is being present, and dependable, and as selfless as I can be. It is making plans for the future, and doing the things I need to do before I take the time to do the things I want to. It is so many things that I never knew or wanted or knew I was capable of wanting before—but here I am, safe and free, and grateful that I have been able to build this life that is mine. Today, these things are all my new normal, where I feel comfortable and at ease—and I am so glad for this. I am able to see how it was all born of an initial and honest awareness of myself and my circumstances, followed by a genuine and continued effort towards improving both. 

I heard someone speak about grace last night. I think that grace largely involves not feeling entitled to more than you have and being able to find gratitude and contentment in that which you do. I think it also depends upon an ability to forgive others enough that their shortcomings cannot rob us of our own serenity. Everything that other people do is a reflection of how they feel about themselves, and if we take their actions personally, we are taking on more than we need or are able to carry. Keep close those people who embody what you want your home to feel like, and graciously separate from those who feel all too familiar. If we are able to temper our ambition and expectations with this sort of grace, then I think we will never be strangers to joy.

One of the most key things to hold onto, I think—no matter where you are or what your present situation might be—is to find something on the horizon that you can fix your gaze on. It is imperative to have things to look forward to, to spend more time imagining the future than ruminating on the past, and to muster the dignity to pursue better things for yourself. Love yourself enough to recreate your life and your circumstances to be as fulfilling and wonderful as they could possibly be. There is good everywhere you look. And also, out there on the horizon, there is that which is even better. Be happy where you are, and also look forward to where you might be headed—most importantly, be self-aware enough to know where you will be the happiest, and stack the deck towards that outcome to the best of your ability. 

Your future self will thank you for it. 

Stock New Year’s Eve Post: Quasi-Homelessness, Potty Training, and the Power of Intention.

“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

Greetings from Texas! My family and I have been down here at my in-law’s for a little over a week to celebrate the holidays. We have come down for the last three years in a row, and now it’s a bit of a family tradition. I really enjoy being down here—they have a gorgeous property in a town called New Braunfels outside of San Antonio—and the weather itself makes us briefly consider making the move nearly every time we visit. But alas, human attachments to our hometown, et cetera. 

Moving along: I have always deeply envied those people who can just pick up and move to New Zealand or Hawaii or wherever else—I don’t know if it’s bravery they have, or perhaps lack of reason to stay put, or something else more magical entirely, but I intend to cultivate it one of these days. (My ultimate fantasy generally involves a tiny house and a rooftop vegetable garden—but fitting my husband and two small children into 400 sq ft of space seems a little less than sustainable. For now, I am resigned to living in a spacious house in the burbs with a beautiful kitchen and a massive deck. Poor me.)

I did live in Atlanta once, briefly, the year after I graduated high school. I’ve been thinking about my time there a lot lately, actually. It all seems kind of surreal—in retrospect, anyway. Storytime: In 2010, I managed to get myself kicked out of a small liberal arts university where I was studying art. My mom drove down to pick up my bedding and lamps and whatnot, and left me outside the campus (from which I had been banned) with a bag of clothes and a list of homeless shelters. I like to refer to this period in my life as “the time I was homeless in Atlanta,” but in reality I was only legit homeless for a few hours. A girl that I had met down there, Sam, offered to take me in. Her house wasn’t in Atlanta, technically, but in a little town outside of the city called Lithia Springs. Lil Nas X was born there, actually. Anyway, I lived on Sam’s couch for a few months. And when I say I lived there, I mean I was literally the guy on the couch. I’m pretty sure entire weeks would pass without me going outside. I had no place to go. No phone, no car, no money, no options. Six teenagers, plus me, lived there together—it was a strange symbiotic social network: two of the girls worked at Papa John’s and all of us pretty much subsisted off of the leftover pizzas they brought home, someone always kept beer in the fridge, Sam kept the lights on and the water running, and the rest of us tried to pitch in when and how we could. The details of my time here are kind of fuzzy in my memory—I did my best to keep the house clean, I believe. I remember that two of the guys who lived there were “rappers”—mattress foam bedroom recording studio and all. One of them had the full name of a particular brand of whiskey, and we had a remarkably brief and hateful romance. I remember being entirely alone on Christmas day, drinking Mountain Dew in the bathtub and burning myself with cigarettes. I remember that the cold followed me down to Georgia, and several of my roommates saw snow for the first time that December. I remember shaving off my hair in the bathroom with a pink Lady Bic. I remember tagging along to a New Year’s Eve party, and at midnight when everyone else was cheering and kissing I looked around the room and didn’t know a single person there… I think that this was the exact moment wherein I felt the most alone my entire life, and I think I vowed to myself that night that I would never be so alone ever again. 

Tonight is New Year’s Eve again—nine years away from this memory—and very little about my life is still the same. This past decade has been a remarkable evolution in my life, to say the least. I vividly remember the house party I was at ten years ago tonight, drunk, ringing in this decade with my then-boyfriend. I was a senior in high school, and substance abuse and emotional turmoil were the name of the game. Tonight, I’m over four years away from my last drink. I’m married with two children, on Christmas vacation at my in-law’s house, looking forward to starting my new job as a hospital technician next week. I spent my afternoon carefully curating a financially efficient meal plan and grocery list for the upcoming week, and I very well might not make it up to midnight. I suspect that at some point in the middle of the night I’ll wake up to my oldest daughter climbing into bed with me, and if I’m lucky, she might even take off her pull-up beforehand and pee on me in her sleep. 

Outwardly, I frequently laugh at myself and say that I must be old now—but really, I guess I’ve just finally reached a place of contentment and self-awareness that no longer requires all of the lights and thrills that I once needed to feel alive (albeit under somewhat forceful circumstances). Today, talking to my sister-in-law about books and making future vacation plans with my husband does it for me just as much as high heels and vodka once did. Although there is admittedly something mildly uncomfortable about saying this aloud—I feel like I’m announcing a premature retirement and throwing in the towel on my youth, even more so being as that I was the first of my friends to get married, have kids, or stop drinking, which no one (least of all myself) would ever have predicted—there is nevertheless a grace and simplicity to my life today that I never imagined I would have. Sometimes I struggle to live in gratitude for this life I have today, with all of its stress and restriction—and yet, this is where I always manage to land: there is nowhere else I’d rather be tonight than under this blanket, stone cold sober, using a pug as a footwarmer. 

Still, I find it so easy to sink into a strange and sometimes dark place of remembrance. It’s like a ball pit that has no bottom, and eventually you lose sight of the daylight and forget where you are. I do that a lot, if we’re being honest—disassociate from the present and get lost in memories, so much so that my emotional reality gets stuck in the past. There is just such a stark contrast between the life I used to live and the life I live today that at times I find it difficult to reconcile that the same person has existed in both worlds. Sometimes it’ll take my three-year-old daughter running up on me and asking me to help her go potty to snap me out of it (sorry for the recurring theme of potty training, it’s a whole thing) and remember that I am no longer a quasi-homeless 19-year-old. 

Thus, I have a deeply resentful relationship with my capacity for memory and my deep emotional attachments to it. It has been the cause of several fights with my husband, as well as the emerging central theme of my forthcoming collection of poetry. Deep down, I just want to be an entity that exists entirely within the present moment—someone who doesn’t get sad about things that happened nine years ago, and who doesn’t experience anxiety over things that are yet to come. (How idealist of me, yea?) 

I feel that my generation in particular is the first to be put at such a grave disadvantage in this respect: I suspect that it was easier for our parents to grow up and focus on what was in front of them and let the past go than it seems to be for many people my age today—because, well, social media. I have instant access to photos of myself from that New Year’s Eve party ten years ago, and I’m still Facebook friends with more than half the people who were there. I feel like we all get so caught up in who we have been, and it’s so easy for us to not have to let go of anyone or anything—we wonder how and why we are this way, and I believe that this culture of constant self-review is the answer. Thus begins and ends my love-hate relationship with social media: I don’t have to lose any memory, good or bad. 

It’s taken me a long time to see that the pain of my past wasn’t home—it was just a detour along the way. The trauma that I endured seemed to have had a Stockholm-like effect on me—I was determined to be strong, so I convinced myself that I was happy and belonged where I was and that the things I endured were normal. I made myself at home in every low place that I found myself. The journey to where I am today has been a largely psychological one, mostly of teaching myself that just because something feels familiar, it doesn’t mean that it’s where I belong. 

For those of us that grew up in dysfunctional homes and watched people in dysfunctional relationships, that dysfunction feels more like a home than any sort of genuine peace or happiness or understanding. However, I am here to tell myself and everyone else here that we all deserve that peace, that happiness, that understanding—and above all, the healing that we need to truly believe and accept this notion. 

Tonight, I think over the last ten years of my life. I hold each of them with gratitude for bringing me to where I am today, and for helping me to become who I am. And I lay them to rest behind me, to the best of my ability. Instead of looking back, as I so often do, I want to rewire myself to look forward. The future that awaits me is so much more full than the past which I’ve already lived—there is no revising or editing of the things I’ve already done and said, there is only the shaping of the things I’ll do and say tomorrow. I want to invest my energy into my future, my happiness, and my growth—throwing it blindly over my shoulder is a waste, and that’s what I’m doing every time I find myself living in a memory. So, everytime I catch myself being needlessly remorseful or reminiscent, I’m going to consciously redirect my energy into instead daydreaming about the future. I’ve read enough books about the power of energy and intention to realize the power of my thoughts, and so I’m making a deal with myself to steer mine in a more positive direction. 

As I’m already a person that’s constantly setting grandiose and unrealistic goals for myself, I’ve decided that instead of setting “resolutions” for myself this year (to be a 130 lb vegan who reads a book every week and wakes up at 5am and goes for a run every morning), I’m simply going to hold space for intention. Tonight, I am holding space to be more grounded in the present—because, ten years from tonight, I’ll have a teenager and a pre-teen, and I don’t want to look back on this brand-new decade before me and see that I spent the precious days of their childhoods fretting over nonsense that was out of my hands either way. 

So, this is the intention that I hold for myself and everyone tonight: to find both gratitude and gravity in the present moment. To spend more time looking at people’s faces than into screens. To find the strength to be more honest and vulnerable with myself and others. And to look forward instead of backward.

Mahalo. 

A photo a year, my decade in review:

2010 — Atlanta, GA - I wore those pants for over a month. Few photos exist of this year otherwise.

2011 — St. Louis, MO, Luke & Johan’s old apartment - I got a chest tattoo and began the restaurant grind.

2012 — Webster University, Spring Break - everyone in this photo is on shrooms.

2013 — Pepper’s Bar, literally all the time. School, work, and vodka sodas.

2014 — Mandarin, CWE - still drunk, but pretending to be classy.

2015 — Dunaway Books, sober poet.

2016 — Three’s Company ❤️

2017 — I love you all so much 👰🏻

2018 — And anotha’ one.

2019 — Gulf Shores, AL - family vacation 🏖

Thanksgiving, Nudity, and Communes.

Welcome: The First Blog Post

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

— Albert Einstein

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Alas, the first blog post. 

Just to be upfront, this blog is going to be more for myself than anyone else, so it’s going to be a little sporadic and varied in content. 

To be honest though, I’m looking forward to having a blog—I’ve never actually had one before, and I’ve been listening to a lot of really fascinating podcasts lately, so this will be a nice place for me to comb through new information and ideas that I find fascinating. Especially since I’m taking a little break from social media for awhile (inspired by an episode of Sahara Rose’s podcast, The Highest Self… also, finals). Inevitably, my feelings will make an appearance. Feel free to share yours as well—this is a safe space. 

Moving right along. You can find out pretty much anything you could want to know about me on my About page, you can read all about my adventures in poethood on my Poetry page, and you can even see some moody self-portraits I made for my senior year art show on my Visual Art page. Here, then, I shall focus on musing. 

Thanksgiving was yesterday. My husband and I have spent most of today lounging around the house watching Frozen with our girls, and feeling generally lackluster from our oddly-timed binges yesterday (sidebar: being sober for several years now, I find it amusing how truly sensitive our bodies are to the things we ingest—I used to eat shrooms before work just to spice things up a bit, and now I can’t even ingest carbs after 7pm without feeling hungover in the morning). 

I truly was inspired with feelings of gratitude yesterday. I grew up with mainly just my mom—life was pretty quiet and even solitary most of my childhood. The holidays often felt misplaced in our too-quiet home and I grew to dislike the season in general, especially after my father died. Today, my family has grown: my sister is married with three boys, my Nana has become a big part of our lives over the last few years, and I have two girls of my own. Moreover, the family that I married into is big and loud and undeniably spunky. Every Christmas, we spend two weeks in Texas with my in-laws. The days are full of lights and delicious food and warm moments and an unnecessary degree of generosity, and I look forward to the holidays now more than ever—because what I have today, that deep human connection of a community to share love and gratitude with, is something that my life was missing before.  

Virginia Satir, an often-quoted family therapist, once said: “We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”

The Greecian island of Ikaria boasts a life expectancy rate notably higher than most any other place in the world. Residents of this island credit their longevity to a Mediterranean diet, active sex lives, and nearly constant social engagement with other people living on the island. 

The 1960’s series of “Rat Park” experiments shifted academic mentality towards the treatment of addiction in humans, after qualitatively determining the importance—even for rats—of belonging to a community. 

If being in communion—and arguably even direct physical contact—with others is so detrimental to our well-being, then why have we insisted on individualizing to the point which we find ourselves today? The goal for many seems to be living alone, not having to compromise with anyone, and being entirely self-sufficient. However, I don’t think that people truly realize what the psychological and interpersonal effects of such a lifestyle are. Half of the US population is on antidepressants, and we are in the middle of a full-blown opiate epidemic. Naturally, I do not wish to come across as being so ignorantly reductive—of course both of these issues are incredibly multi-faceted and legitimately deserving of varied considerations—I just believe that being actively ingrained in a social network (a real one, not a virtual one) has the potential to enact positive benefits far beyond current consideration. As someone who lived by myself for three years—while it undeniably had its perks—I can tell you that there were an uncomfortable amount of hours where I stared at a wall in complete silence (sidebar #2: this scene reminds me of the film Cashback, which is lovely) and emerged from my apartment feeling like a non-entity. Which, if you ask me, just doesn’t even out with the intermittent glory of not having to wear pants. (sidebar #3: most humans can agree that pants are unnecessary, especially inside the home—so let’s just all get comfortable with our bodies, do away with latent Victorian modesties, and cosign one another’s comfort, shall we?)

Why, then, is the utmost value placed on not needing others? If anything, we should be putting forth effort into nurturing (healthily) co-dependent relationships with friends, family, and members of our community. Seriously guys, let’s all move into respective communes, farm animals, revert to barter and trade, and garden in the nude. Can you imagine how many hugs there would be in a day?! Everyone would achieve self-actualization in like a week. It would be glorious. 

*stows away this argument in an artfully carved wooden box for safekeeping, until the next time one of my friends is going through a break-up and I try to lure her into living with me and my family*

Well, anyhow—thank you for coming to my TedTalk on gratitude and goat farming, and let me know if you know of any good communes. I was going to focus on the concept of Black Friday in this post—but the underpinnings of consumerism are already a bit conspicuous, aren’t they? I suppose I can touch on that another time (sidebar #4: the book “Everything that Remains” by the Minimalists is fantastic—think Marie Kondo vibes, but more cerebral and self-examining). I have included links to academically legitimate versions of some of the sentiments I have expressed here—feel free to indulge! The “Rat Park” experiments were oddly poignant—to me, anyway.   

I hope y’all have a peaceful and restorative long weekend, and that you each have oodles to be grateful for.

Rat Park article: http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/9728/

Greek island: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crp/2011/679187/