• Difficulty - Family - Light - Loss - This really happened. - Travelling

    Seven months…interrupted.

    June 7, 2018 - By 

    I have given away our extra pantry items, our blender. We are down to the our tiniest bone of soap. Seven months. We had a text in the middle of the night. Someone we loved very much — gone. Reservations made. Ticketed. I am in the school office. Today is my last day, I tell them. But I have brought little cookies, biscottini, to my classmates and my teacher. I explain to them that I have had a death in my family. Oggi e’ il mio ultimo giorno, I say. Today is my last day. Tears are streaming down my…

  • Difficulty - Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    In ruins.

    May 22, 2018 - By 

    We are on an island. A big one. A place where streets are broken and the trunks of olive tree trunks are, in some places, more than a meter in diameter. There are cows the color of coffee with milk and milk with coffee. In abandoned lots. They are stunning, queste mucche, attualmente. There are expanses of grasses. Of more abandoned buildings. You can tell the economy has not treated them kindly. The sky is large here. I have counted at least four colors of bouganville. And towering blooming prickly pears, way over our heads. And beautiful but molto pericoloso…

  • Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    Un giorno normale — a normal day.

    May 12, 2018 - By 

    It was just a normal day. Up early, hulling strawberries for smoothies. We strip the bed to run the washing machine — which takes three hours — so the sheets can hang all day — so they can be fresh and dry when we sleep again. We open all the windows, wide. We have no screens. The morning air is lovely. We make tea. We snack on those apricots I got at the place down the street — the place owned by a large family from the South…where all the produce is amazing. At 8.15, the bells from the church…

  • For fun. - Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    Six Months Now.

    May 9, 2018 - By 

    Six months, now. We have our favorite curry cashews. We now have fresh basil growing on our windowsill. And teeny red roses. I am now saving my new soap for our return. The weather is warmer, yet I am still in wool some days. Our world of black and grey is giving way to color. The black and cashmere and down has been replaced by black and grey t-shirts…yellow bags, red skirts, rose-gold shoes, orange scarves and white sneakers. And also for the women. Except for when it rains. When it rains everyone goes back to black and grey. Gelato…

  • Blessings - Food - For fun. - Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    Doing what Romans do.

    April 30, 2018 - By 

    We were in this country for so very long before we made it down to Roma.   So many other things were pressing…so many other places were closer. And yet I felt the draw of Rome.   Allora — siamo andati a Roma. We went to Rome. Another surprise…on our way from the train station to our hotel I was very moved by the very fact of being a Roma.   I cannot even explain it. Non posso proprio.  I just can’t.  But so many feelings.  Of all types. Of course we ate good food — we went twice to…

  • Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    Of the Ligurian Sea.

    April 8, 2018 - By 

    It was for R’s upcoming birthday that we made the plan to go to Cinque terre…the ‘five lands’…referring to a group of fishing villages that for many years only had German and Swiss tourists. Now, thanks to unnamed American travel writers, overrun with Americans. I have to say that I didn’t know what to expect. Sure, it is true that I have had too many details in my head but after managing to accidentally make reservations to go to place seven hours’ away from where I intended to…(hey, I was processing so much!), I was able to reboot and find…

  • Darkness - Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    153 days.

    April 8, 2018 - By 

    It has been 153 days. Centocinquantatre’ giorni. One hundred and fifty three days of supermineralized water, watching where I step on the street, listening to conversations on the street and in the train…and looking for more music to enjoy. (Ti sto venendo, L.) 153 is the code for mental processes and intelligence in the Dewey decimal system. 153 is the sum of the first 17 integers. 153 is, apparently, a sonnet by William Shakespeare. 153 is the atomic number of an element temporarily called “Unpenttrium”. 153 giorni. 153 days. With the beginning of the warm some trees are starting to…

  • Darkness - Difficulty - For fun. - Light - Loss - This really happened. - Travelling

    Superpowers.

    March 16, 2018 - By 

    Look at me, walking down the street. I have a swagger. My swagger says that I have almost made it through winter. I have the confidence of a woman who can almost completely avoid something disgusting and offensive on the street…with a sixth sense…without even looking down. It is only the bandage on the back of my right heel which betrays my current nearly-successful attempt at finding just the right, practical, sturdy and awesome pair of shoes. The sun is out. There is a soft breeze. I am wearing my black turtleneck. My black jacket. My uniform. My awesome black…

  • Being Human - Difficulty - Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    An expat in blue jello

    March 11, 2018 - By 

    But what, oh what, is a little old-ish expat to do on a rainy Sunday morning? After a breakfast of colomba and tea and strawberries from yesterday’s market…it is hours and hours before we can listen to the news we like on the internet. I apologize in advance…this post is a bit disordinato. And podcasts, yes, we listened to them most of yesterday, after going early to the mercato — another rainy day. But early at the mercato there were fewer people, hurrah, as well as strawberries, later-season artichokes (but I bought twenty of them anyway), onions, cabbage, garlic, mint,…

  • Art - Being Human - Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    Mountains on the moon…Firenze.

    February 18, 2018 - By 

    We have disappointed our hosts, again. They left us slippers to use…pantofole…but we have not used them. Le pantofole were left for us, on an embroidered linen towel, next to the bed. Apparently we are cretins. But you know, it was not because of us that the glass table exploded yesterday morning at breakfast. It just — shattered. Il tavolo esplosivo. For no reason. At what point does tempered glass stop being tempered? Like a person…does it hit its limit, finally, just like the most patient, the most ‘tempered’, of us? I have fallen in love, all over again…and yet,…

  • Being Human - Fear - Hope - Light - Loss

    “You did nothing to me” (“Non mi avete fatto niente”)

    February 12, 2018 - By 

    The San Remo 2018 Music Festival has chosen its winner!  Italian artists Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro won with their song “Non mi avete fatto niente”…(“you did nothing to me”).   Although R and I also loved Annalisa’s “Il mondo prima di te”, this Meta & Moro piece was stunning, was moving and, as the winner…a well-deserving piece and, in my humble opinion, a great one for the world stage…possibly as an entry in Eurovision 2018…but I am unsure if it automatically gets entered in the larger contest. This song, “Non mi avete fatto niente”, is a song of hope.…

  • Fear - Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    The Post Office.

    January 26, 2018 - By 

    I am sweating. I am gripped with fear. I am at the post office. This errand, in particular, I have been avoiding for weeks. Yes, we ordered some sneakers for R from amazon.it (don’t judge…it has been a lifesaver) and no, they didn’t work out. So yes, with my prepaid packing label taped to my package (yes, I had to do a lot of research just to find tape), I mapped out the way to the closest Poste Italiane and walked there. When I arrived, rehearsing in my head, over and over “devo restituire questi pacchetti” (I have to return…

  • Childhood - Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    Bergamo

    January 5, 2018 - By 

    She told me that what she missed the most was that in winter, when the day was sunny, that the actual sun actually warmed the landscape. Because in the North, in the U.S., a super sunny day can also be subzero, fahrenheit. What a novel idea…that the sun is warm?! We were walking down from the Città Alta, the Upper city of Bergamo. We had gone up on the Funicolare and were now walking down on the top of the city walls. On the landscape were the close Alps and farther afoot, we could see the Appennini…the mountains that run…

  • Difficulty - For fun. - Light - This really happened. - Travelling

    Venice: slag & vaporetto roulette.

    December 30, 2017 - By 

    Venice…Venezia. I want to embrace you. Wrap my arms around you. I adore you. I am excited just being here. I cannot explain the reason why — I have no idea. I love the green Adriatic, rising and falling between your structures. Buildings, where we stand and sit and rest and eat — always knowing that sea life is teeming under us. I love knowing that the magical underneath is always underneath me. I love knowing that while I sleep, octopus chase in the deep below. You are amazing. You are a hodgepodge of old and new and good and…