May Days

Oh, summer. I think you are here now, end of May and the heat like this, the way the sun is dappled in the balcony windows, playing in patterns on the floor. The way I feel it on my skin on the drives home now (windows open because the air conditioner doesn’t work, because the

Kitchen

Take it like a snapshot, those days spent in my aunt’s house on Knyghton Road, just past the lake and right off of Emerson Avenue, back when we were kids and the drive felt like an adventure, like this part of town was fancier than our own. I loved that house — the white fence that

Five Good Days

The sun shone through the window of my bedroom in our little Viennese Air BnB every morning, and all of the chandeliers glittered. I can’t say what it is about the apartment that felt so perfectly Viennese, perhaps the yellow and ochre painted walls in my bedroom, the wood floors in their herringbone pattern, the

A Little Bit of Vienna

There is a little bit of Vienna in my coffee this morning. A little bit sprinkled onto the yeast buns that are filled with plum jam, that Corrie and I share at a charming place downtown. We have been here five days now and it is strange to think that today I’ll be boarding a

Cardamom (and Vienna)

Cardamom stands on the keyboard and deletes things. She climbs right up to something I’m working on, and she steps on a letter, a number, a way to erase it all, and she looks me in the eye as if she’s done it on purpose (she’s doing it now). She takes her paw and pushes

Liberation

It’s springtime here in Italy, but hardly so. I was hoping to write about the sunshine, but it’s gone at the moment (grey skies and low temperatures outside). I wanted to write about these cold days, but Sunday actually felt like summer. We are straddling these seasons, still halfway in winter at times — when

Morning Conversation

Here’s another little drawing I did of Cardamom and her morning conversations with the birds outside. Have a great weekend! Cardamom sits on the balcony of our 5th floor apartment while I am making lunch at 7 in the morning on a Thursday. Outside there is a breeze as warm as springtime, and the windows

Driving Lessons

I follow the road an hour a day, out into the countryside and all the way to Loreto, and then back to Macerata in the evening. Some days work takes me to Porto Potenza instead, right there along the Adriatic coast, five minutes further away but an easier drive, a quiet drive through towns that

Another Easter

We have a Christmas CD that has been stuck in the car since before December. It still comes on when I’m driving — Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, so much so that the jazz notes have accompanied us all the way into this early spring. I barely even notice it anymore. When I start

Teenage Music

When I was a teenager, I was in love with the sound of my own voice. I loved to hum, to sing, to send dreamy whispers out there, loudly into the world. We drove in cars and played mix tapes and sang every note of Closer to Fine, even the high ones. Every day had some