I woke up with Hemingway on my mind today and a future so uncertain I knew I needed to write. Is this going to be everyday? The world is changing and the groups want to do what I do and perhaps they are better at telling the world. I wanted to simply walk and take a coffee thinking about lunch and what surprises were in the little shops along the way.
So alive each step and going so diligently towards something I do not know is my nature. The path of waking, plugging, and filling a known entity with subtle joy is so daunting to me. I want to know what is behind the strange window and not how many eggs I have in the fridge.
I make the days sound so romantic and so full of careless walks and while there are these moments; to get where I am and have been, exhausts too much of me. I drive myself crazier than I drive myself to joy.
I lubricate every part of my brain and sometimes the road gets too slick and the turns so hairy I wonder if I will make the other bank. At the same time I come home again only to find each time I know the place much less than before I left.
I returned here even seeking that lost part of me and found only frustration at the things I love in disharmonious meetings. The light was so blue for the day and only again the morning I left.
I feel like I am narrating the Terrence Malick film of my life. I want the score to be Morricone and the direction to be my own. You see, that is what it is; the direction.
Maybe I am part north, part south. Perhaps I am a bit east and some west. I know my legs want to go but not simply for the sake of going and that even in the spring the light can be false.
I sat in a little enoteca here and ate salumi with cheese and a local white wine watered down by its own inferior grapes. I was rushed from the door by the servers wanting cigarettes, lunch, and to jerk themselves off before they went back to work. I would probably want me to leave too.
It was 20 years ago I set foot on this floor and I almost cried from something inexplicable when I saw the facade. My fleeting memories and poorly constructed philosophies pale to even a simple bit of flooring someone with superior skill laid to view before a single person ever claimed to be "American"
I should have just stayed longer in Rome and found a few parks to sit and a few berries to pop and soldiers' statues to ponder and lenses to change. I tell myself I want to spend quiet in Italy but I lie.20 years later I am still pondering the reasons I first came and what I will do again. Rome is hard and hard to grasp. Yet, it is so joyous to behold and the simple pleasure of simply making it somewhere on a hot day by a prescribed time is a joy like few I know.