This text was sent to us by veteran seaman Gabriel Panagiosoulis, originally from Kefalonia and now living in New York City with his family. It is a deeply personal account, woven from memories, emotions, and experiences gathered during the years he sailed the seas as a steward aboard merchant ships.
We thank him warmly and wish him all the best.
Until I stopped running…
I found a berth. I signed on to one ship, then another, then six in all — five of them Kefalonian — and everywhere it was the same story…
Complaints about the food: the eggs too runny, the pilaf not fluffy enough, everyone wanting chicken breast, the pasta overcooked — and all the while I was running, running…
For years I kept running: from port to port, from woman to woman, from ship to ship, from room to room.
In Antwerp we went ashore leaping from lighter to lighter while unloading wheat offshore. We found our way to Schippersstraat, to the shop of Stathoulis, the Kefalonian.
In Hamburg we drifted past the illuminated windows of St. Pauli, always hurrying, always running. In Bremen we reached Golden City… and once again I ran, desperate to leave — though I did not know where I wished to go. Another ship, another land, another corner of the world.
And then the same in India: women counting your time by the wristwatch, ports crowded with conjurers and illusionists, multinational crews passing like shadows through the docks. I ran searching for a place to rest, searching for people who felt real…
I run.
The moment I stepped into the bar, she rose from her table, came toward me, and pressed herself against me. The Portuguese sailor from São Vicente, from the ship Takana, stood up and said quietly:
“It is not worth it for sailors like us to quarrel over a woman…”
He opened the door and walked away… and the woman remained with me.
Even now I keep running, trying to make my way back to my village, everything carefully arranged…
Then a voice says to me: Stop. Where are you going? The company that was meant to take you to Kefalonia no longer flies there.
I froze.
I drew a breath and looked around me. I greeted the sun and the beauty of the natural world. I savored the fragrance of flowers.
And so, at last, I decided to stop running.
I lost much of what I once had while I was forever in motion. Today I have become one with nature. I became a gardener. I became a house cat. I became a spectator of life — but above all, a spectator of those black-and-white films projected by the memory of my mind, films that are wholly and unmistakably my own.
And all this now, because of age — that final companion which, in the end, always claims the upper hand.
Photo caption: SS AENOS, 1953 — On the bridge wing, serving coffee with cold water at ten o’clock. On the left, myself.
G.P.
