I never know what things mean or why they matter until later.  I am still processing my experience. Every day I realize something I didn’t understand a month ago.   Milano was exciting for many.  I thought it was a strange place to end a trip that emphasized being vero.  Every day I was moved to tears by the real beauty, truth, and light in people, art, music, and the world around me. By the time I found myself at that mall, I didn’t want anything money could buy anymore.   I was pretty badly behaved in Milano. I cried for days and didn’t care who saw. I had no intention of getting on the plane. I fought with my roommates over whether or not I could survive the summer alone. In the end– I was just short of physically forced to pack and go. (“You’re my ride home! Pack NOW! We’re leaving!” Plus some colorful language. Madison became a real friend.)   Why did it feel like my heart was being torn out of my chest? First of all, I wasted too much of my life to accept more wasted moments and opportunities. The time to do anything is right now. Also, I disappointed myself by not being the person I wanted to be. I was a coward, worried constantly about nothing, and had regrets. Most importantly: I always said if I went anywhere–I’d never come back.. as if it never mattered where.   Italy became my home. This escalated very, very quickly.   In the end, this was something worth doing right. Running off with no plan at all would not have ended well. (Dropping out of school to get there quicker is not the right decision either. It took weeks beyond my return to fully understand and accept how much time, patience, and hard work this will take.) I would have no resources to fight this uphill battle back to Italy, if it weren’t for specific ways I grew there. I learned so many things I didn’t expect– but mostly how my own stubbornness and overthinking are what keeps shooting me straight in the foot.   I did a long adaptation of Dr. O’Connor’s favorite exercise on the plane. (It was a long freaking flight!) I didn’t think I’d ever post it (or anything about Milano at all) because I didn’t want to write anything negative. Negatives became positives, given proper perspective. The end of the trip wasn’t the end of anything.  It wasn’t even a new beginning, but a point somewhere in the middle.   5 Most Beautiful Sights: Views: Tuscany from castles and towers, Milano from the rooftop of the Duomo, any glance in any direction, anywhere. Uniquely juxtaposed architectural elements- mismatched buildings, cool windows, doors covered with graffiti.. The rainbow flag hanging in the Capital.  (This shocked me. I had mistaken Italy for very conservative.) Boys playing kickball in some part of Venice only locals and lost students see.  Narrow walkways, tiny bridges, hidden...

Our short, sweet trip to Poppi had some of the most meaningful moments for me on this journey.  The mountain air was crisp and a fine mist hung heavy even when it wasn’t raining.  No tourists walked the quiet streets.  We all felt compelled to whisper.  Views of the unforgettable mountain landscape rolled on forever, be-speckled in a red and yellow late spring bloom, tiny homes tucked away in places few will wander.   You’d notice some of those houses for sale on our happy, muddy walk to Castle Romana.  We swallowed the lumps in our throats with our dreams, for now, and laughed at each other, wondering who would slip first.  (It was probably going to be me but it was Emily.)  We were all glad for the walk after even a short bus ride, and proud of how strong this trip has made us.  I’ll never forget that walk through the beautiful countryside I wanted to camp in on my free day, had I not gone to Venice.  It reminded me of growing up on my grandparents’ mountain lake.   We were a good group in Poppi.  We missed Firenze but we had come together as a family by this time.   The Italian language and culture lessons with Giana, Alina, and Carlo, where we learned to describe ourselves and each other, were comfortable and fun.  Duolingo can never teach what an afternoon talking and laughing can.  Everything was first said in Italian, and then translated into English bit by bit.  I love being able to understand parts of lectures and conversations, and the longer we are here the more we understand without a second guess.  The Italian language spoken is my new favorite sound; I want to hear it all day and in my dreams.   I will teach English as a foreign language here someday, when all the stars align. Watching them teach was an inspiration—as was watching others learn and grow.  I was told I could come back to Poppi to take classes at the language school.  This possibility now feels real, and if I could infuse Poppi into a fragrance—I’d call it Hope.   Madison, Bonnette, and I found Oratorio Della Madonna Contro Il Morbo (Our Lady Against the Plague) wandering, looking for a church to sing in.  That evening was the 4th year anniversary of Bonnette’s father’s passing.  The following morning marked one month since my grandfather left the material world and became a part of me.  Though spiritual, I am not the kind of person who typically lights candles in churches or prays for peace.  Standing in that particular church watching that candle flicker put God and Grandpa in the same place again.  The caretaker was closing the church, but he kindly took the time to ask what language we spoke and explain its sacred history.   Some interesting facts about Oratorio Della Madonna Contro Il Morbo include: It was built as an homage to the Virgin for protection from the plague....

Firenze, what can I say?  Heartbroken and homesick for you, my tears flow like your sweetest wines and words of inspiration on Dante’s rock.  The things your streets have taught me are things I will never forget or be able to explain to many people.  I never had so many powerful life lessons in one place.   Our first night strolling out as a group, I refused to rub the boar’s nose.  I can be intractably stubborn when I’m just that convinced of something: you make your own luck.  As far as making my own luck— in Firenze, I nailed it.  I lost makeup, clothes, my iPad, all my purchases from the Uffizi, my digital video camera, and my debit card.  ALL the pictures I took are gone.  I was late.  I was lost (really rather often).  I ended up not getting to do many of the things I wanted to do like climb the Duomo and tour the Boboli Gardens.   How can anyone have such bad luck??  The answer is simple.  You don’t refuse to do things in Italy.  You take every opportunity to learn or experience local culture.  I should have paid homage to the boar on night one!  I cast my own maluche.   Bad luck was only bad luck.  It didn’t get the best of me.  One of the first things I was told after falling down the rabbit hole was: sometimes you have to get lost in order to find yourself.  I felt like maybe I could overcome my past and the decades I spent truly lost.  Internalized, those words prepared me for the challenge; I would be a world traveler and navigate the cities alone. This set me up for another powerful lesson: sometimes you have to lose everything you don’t need to appreciate what you do.   I was in the company of amazing people and given the opportunity to truly connect and rely upon them.  The friends I made here (friends I didn’t even want to make, truth be told) were worth more than a million iPads and I wouldn’t have talked to a single one of them, had I spent every night chatting on Discord with my best friend.   The saddest thing I saw happen in Firenze was on our passagiato after dinner out.  A string quartet was playing and everyone stopped to listen.  A nearby vendor selling bracelets was drunk and shouting obscenities at the musicians and the crowd.  Most people ignored it.  It wouldn’t be the first or the last time someone got drunk and made a scene here.  Some believed he was upset because the quartet was absorbing any money he might have made that night.  Some thought they heard him crying out that so much bad mojo might jinx the boar.   In Firenze, you are not just tolerated.  Whatever you are is celebrated or taken with a level of acceptance we don’t have in the States.  No one shamed this man for his behavior....

Written Tuesday May 21, 2019 at 4 p.m:   I loved the essay “Lightness” by Italian Calvino.  I could write for days about it and never say enough—but was given a firsthand lesson in Firenze.   The weight, the inertia, and the opacity of my experiences in just this past year have come at me harder than the rest of life combined and I needed to learn how to just start letting things be what they will be with grace.   I came to Italy with much less than I thought I needed but much more than I did.  I realized that today when the only electronic device I brought (with all my social crutches on it) got stolen when I sat on some stairs to check the map.   I took a deep breath and was okay.  I had been WAY more upset about being late to the Uffizi in the morning.  Having to find the next museum alone with no resources was the thing that made it more okay.  I have probably talked to 2 dozen people today in the little bit of broken Italian I struggled to learn but didn’t need to use yet.  Everyone I talked to was nice and wanted to help.   When I got to the museum, I asked around to see if anyone knew where to get a cheap replacement but if I was going to do the whole “no phone” thing, I should have left the tablet home too.  That tablet was heavy.   I avoid keeping paper journals because line by line, I edit obsessively.  There is no freewriting.  Messy handwriting, scratched out words, even a pen smudge demands a rewrite.  Not being able to finish anything that can’t be absolutely perfectly how I want it to turn out is also heavy.  It’s held me back my whole life.   The mismatched harmony, beautiful defacement, and juxtaposition of unlikely architectural elements is what makes Firenze beautiful.  Old buildings never get torn down to build new things.  Beautiful new things simply get added.  I should not be editing my journal.  It should be my piece of Firenze to take with me.   Right now I am sitting next to this man at the pizza place in the Piazza.  He is standing with his arms thrown out, looking between the sun and the Duomo shouting about what a beautiful day it is and how wonderful it is to be alive, and here.  Yet, he lives here.  He has embraced everyone who’s passed him and spoke.  I am watching him leave.  He has nothing in his hands a and a smile on his face.  He knows lightness.  He is comfortable just being himself somewhere.   So instead of getting a new tablet or a phone, I got 3 sketchbooks, bearing the images of my favorite pieces of art now that I know what they mean: the divine spark, David’s courage, and new hope every spring.   I feel lighter already.  For the rest...

  (Written at 3 a.m. Sunday May 19, at the Hotel Meininger. Timestamps mean nothing in a place where what happens happens and if you don’t have WiFi you don’t!)   I came here with a sense of déjà vu I can’t shake, rode into Rome overwhelmed with a feeling I honestly can’t identify.  I have been here an infinite number of times, yet I am here for the first time.  As I pass some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, I remember the lines to poems I wrote so long ago there could be no possible connection.    Italy feels like universal human experience, something we all have memories of encoded within our DNA.   My trip to the Vatican made me refocus.  I was very angry there (not unwilling to experience it— just the opposite.  One should experience a thing completely before they decide they definitely don’t condone it.)  I was angry at the gross excess, that I was born into a belief system that made me believe I was made wrong, and how easy it is for some people to excuse themselves while condemning others.   Then I connected with the notion that “a small spark” of divinity is alive within each of us, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  (I can’t post the picture I definitely didn’t take.)  If a person like me can have any sort of spiritual revelation at all at the Vatican, and parts of my own belief system can be found there alive and well on a Saturday morning.. nothing is what we think it is and everything is worth doing.   But is it really just a small spark?  An accurate human brain drawn around the image of God suggests that we are the creator in addition to the created.   Walter Pater (English art critic) postulated that the female figure God is protecting represents Eve; the 11 other figures symbolize the yet unborn human race that will come from Adam and Eve.  The Catholic Church refutes this interpretation and considers the teaching of pre-existance of souls as heretical.   The Catholic Church loves to hide universal truth by gaslighting people into believing they don’t inherently know it.  No factory, no matter how mismanaged, could produce a product that is defective 100 percent of the time.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  It is not logical to assume God would create things that weren’t perfect already.  We have put too many of our own standards into something we have limited resources to perceive or understand.   That said, I look every day for a window I saw in a dream. I am still waiting for the smell of fresh coffee brewing and I am still waiting for that rain.  (It was most definitely not this morning’s rain.  Will it rain in Firenze?  Unpopular opinion: I hope it rains every day.)  I look everywhere for faces I recognize and signs that we really are all connected.  I...