Where did Calabria go? Campania? Lazio? Florence? We were just there, and are now not there. We are now here—at home in Vermont. Exhausted computers and sheer mountains, thick walls and poor connections kept us detached from the wider world which was both a blessing and a frustration. How strange to be so reliant on lines emanating from cell towers like so many infinite fishing nets. We will have to travel backward, recapture a week ago, two weeks, three.
My memory finds me in Florence. Almost twenty years ago we lived here. There were no cell phones, no computers, or internet then. We called home a couple of times a month on the orange and black pay phone in the little piazza in front of our apartment. We sent postcards, the backs of which were crammed with images and news. We seemed very far away.
We go in and out of service like we go in and out of tunnels driving on the highway northward. We have made our own slow slouching from the toe of the boot and up the bony ridge of the shin. A drive in a day of sun—there have not been many of late—and the air feels hot. We arrive fairly easily into the center of the city, to the Piazza del Carmine. Luck is on our side. The Signora has returned from her walk with the dogs and is available to open our rooms, and we find free parking a stone’s throw from the towering front door. Our windows look out upon the cloister we share with the Brancacci Chapel where Masolino's Temptation of Adam and Eve and Massaccio's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden layer the walls with color and perspective.
--Deirdre
No comments:
Post a Comment