Things I Am Liking

The call for a quality of life that has increasingly become more and more difficult not really to achieve, rather to desire and be content with.

Hi everyone, it’s so nice to write from Italy.

Every time I return here, I remember how much I get out of slowing down, of wanting less; every time I return here I easily notice what is around me without greed. I notice with ease what has been part of my routine and what has been a source of joy that wasn’t the direct result of praise, hard work, its reward.

Yesterday, for example, during a walk, Catherine, Ben and I ate wild local plums straight from a tree (and from the ground) — some where so warm, probably hidden in the grass for hours — fallen after the strong winds — that they tasted like the marmalade my grandmother made when I was little. We noticed unripe blackberries, poisonous red berries that trick the eyes resembling wild strawberries, a grasshopper-turned-meal in a spiderweb, and a strange hard mushroom that had grown out of woods and green moss.

Catherine stood still, and in immaculate silence, by the side of the narrow winding street we were on, downhill, on our way back to my parents house:

“If you are silent,”

she said,

“you can hear things that are far away, and that other people can’t hear. Did you hear the train?”

I did not.

I haven’t written one of these columns in a while.

Since I have arrived in Italy, on July 4th, I have been without internet connection when out of range of the house wifi; in fact, I have decided not to use the expensive international data plan on most days, and this is what changed in the way I observed my surroundings, whether made of boredom, sleepiness, a storm, food, or stories I listen as I try to fall asleep at 1 in the morning.