On our drive home (that would last fifteen hours and saw us arrive home at three am) Ali sweetly indulged my curiosity about the 16th century garden known as Bosco dei Monstri in Bomarzo, Lazio (just beyond Rome). The Monster’s Grove–it’s visionary preferred Sacred Wood of Bomarzo–is something Mannerist and surreal, created to astonish and [...]
Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing never happened, it is still conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never. Franz Kafka, 1917
I had learned through the little research I did before leaving [...]
It was heaven. A hangout of the original Bloomsbury Group: Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, Keynes, E.M. Forster, and also Piaget, D.H. Lawrence, and Winston Churchill. It is believed that English botanist (and special friend of Woolf) Vita Sackville-West planned the garden. It was the setting for the legendary elopement of actress Greta Garbo and Leopold [...]
Whenever I hear the word “culture,” I bring out my checkbook. ~Le Mépris, Godard, 1963
We spent the following day on the gorgeous island of Capri, or part of it, as you can see above. One lands at the large port (x number 1) and can from there take the funicular to the main piazetta of [...]
The colors! The cars! Surprisingly little has changed on the Amalfi Coast in the fifty years since this photo was taken for a tourist book in Rosa and Franco’s collection.
We spent the following four gorgeous, smoldering days on the Amalfi Coast, without a moments rest from the thought “If someone would pour a bucket of [...]
“BASTA!” is the word to know, it means ENOUGH! and I learned it quickly. Without this term I would have simply expired from the whole fish baked with capers olives parsley garlic, handmade pizza, handmade pasta pomodoro, asparagus and gambero pasta, meatball pasta, cold octopus and mussel salad, and on and on.
Every meal prepared [...]
For my birthday we visited Le Grotte de Frasassi and it was incredible. Thirteen km of the caves are known (it is thought that they extend at least 35 km); we were invited to see about a kilometer and a half of that.
“The speleologists held their breath when the stone began to fall [...]
“You really can’t go home,” Ali said. We were standing in the dark in front of the summer apartment in Senigallia once owned by his parents. All his childhood and teenage summers were spent there, or in the two treasured movie theaters that are now a car showroom and a casino.
We stood staring up [...]
I’d like to tell you about swifts, a magical bird who turns the European twilight skies into vast aviaries. Some swift facts:
1. Like bats, cave-dwelling swifts navigate by echolocation. They call out and listen for their own echoed answer to find their way in total darkness.
2. Many species glue their nests together with saliva. The [...]
“I am so awake,” Ali says into the darkness. Me too. Late night talk ensues: this weekend marks the halfway point {week 20 of 40} of our time here and as such, the mind turns to evaluate how we’ve been doing thus far.
I had many fantasies about nine! whole! months! to do whatever it [...]