O Dreamland

It was lying on a dusty pavement in Athens, Greece, 15 years ago, and I saw it and I picked it up and I kept it. I know nothing, absolutely nothing about it, and I don't ever want to know. According to Oscar Wilde the very essense of romance is uncertainty, and this small piece of paper occupies a space in my life which is entirely romantic.

All I need to know is that the image itself is beautiful and evocative and suggests too many scenarios and stories to recount. The words have no origin for me, so they suggest something different every day - A delicious slumber, an unattainable ambition, a cruel joke. The figure is sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, sometimes waiting, sometimes escaping. The hills and the landscape are real today, but might all be in the child's imagination tomorrow.

I had this image enlarged from the scrap of paper I found in the dust, and it is now framed and hung and part of my daily life. It is a thing I love without understanding.

If anybody knows what this is, where it came from, what it means, please don't tell me: