4/17/24

Yesterday was a day filled with melancholy. The temperature dropped about twenty degrees and it was a little rainy. But it’s more than that. I designed this experience with finite time to allow a full emotional arch and I’m past the top of the curve. I’m already feeling nostalgic.
In the piazza I saw a few people, but I could sense I was pulling away so I decided to go for a walk. When I first came here I would spend the morning writing, then walk the rest of the day. I’d explore for hours in all directions, alone in my curiosity. Everything was new and distant and walking helped get my bearings. I photographed everything I saw, like a dog marking its territory.
I’m building enduring relationships, recreating long lost family ties, and there’s something about inhabiting a space in ancestral time. As a child, what I knew about being Italian was that it was “ethnic”, it was something to be minimized, and people liked to speak to me in a funny accent. To this day people joke about organized crime. So I knew there was something to it.
Coming here brings depth, it’s not just a thing I’m seen as, but a being I inhabit.
I walked through the neighborhood, past my grandparents’ homes, over the hill and into the
trees. And the sights and sounds and smells of the woods rekindled childhood memories of play and wonder that are essential to this process.