Postcards

With two months and a thousand miles between myself and Maine, I feel the same awkward surge of love and discomfort for that singular place that one sometimes feels for one's family. 

I love you, island life of mine. I love you and I dread you and I hope to never take you for granted. 

I left Maine with my island boy and we drove to Massachusetts and flew on to Rome. From Rome we took a northbound train. 

Aboard Trenitalia we pass elaborate villas undercut by tangles of shantytowns. We pass a craven hill of sheep and their lone guardian: a white dog facing the train tracks, head high. We pass palm dates and lemon trees and high rise apartments. My first steady image of Italy is that of the fountain outside the train station once we arrive in Orvieto. We walk towards the edge of the fountain to wait for our ride. A nose peers out of the water. A serpentine old concrete man lies submerged in the fountain, the top half of his head visible, a stony hooked tail snaking out behind him. I want to see this place, Orvieto, a bit before our ride comes and takes us out into the boundless country. Sitting on the edge of the fountain next to the old fish man's concrete head, I finally catch sight of the town. Orvieto proper stands high above us atop the steep walls of tufa rock that once kept invaders at bay.

We are in Umbria, and the valleys and silver edges, staggering cliffs and deep, creased corners give way to a pacific warmth dulled only by the patina of pale dirt and quiet resignation.

Each town is perched and tantalizing. I climb the low lying branches of the olive trees, up over fields of wild fennel and mint.  Each olive is perched and tantalizing. Some are deep indigo and some are pale green, some blotchy. I reach for each one, fingers grasping and combing, to rake them from their branches. They tumble to the net below and lie still, little fallen acrobats at rest.  

Our day in the olive groves is spent. We head up the hill, back towards this beguiling stone house, readying all our senses for wine and a hearty dinner. We are calm and watchful. The house was built into the curve of the dusty road, directly below a hilltop village and far from Orvieto. We have no car of our own. We seem to have stepped, if only slightly, out of time, caught here, between the filtered play of light and the rainbursts. Out of the dusk, church bells toll, and soon the howls of one farm dog are picked up by another dog all the way across the lake and the valley and then yet another far off dog. They call out to each other, they argue across the vast distances. We are caught here, enchanted, as canine expression and the flight paths of small birds punctuate the evening. 

Before long a week has passed and we've boarded another train. Now we navigate the narrowest of canyons: the dark city streets of Florence, where each piazza we encounter is a cold reckoning of stone and marble and tourist flash. Each day the city is preyed upon by the masses, and its treasures, as always,  kept behind glass and dusted lovingly by careful artisans. Leather, espresso, feathered hats, marzipan, ground minerals, razor thin meats and fine woven threads are loved dearly in shops across the city. 

We sit by the Arno. An egret stalks the shallow river bugs. A green bottle bobs up and down. A much more clamorous river of small trucks and scooters careens by on the road above the riverbanks. In parks across Florence, although we cannot see them from here, people are gesturing and sighing. No music plays. Everyone is self-absorbed and self-conscious. A woman is walking her cat below the plane trees. A young couple is trying to get both of their faces, smiling wide in sunglasses, in the shot with the Duomo. A man in a tweed jacket treads pensively below a statue, crushing acorns beneath the soles of his shoes onto the cobblestones, to feed the crowd of pigeons trailing his small, priestly strides. 

Our bags are so weighty and so unwieldy, we want to cry. We are carting around tins of olive oil from the grove in Umbria, a large book of stamps from a wistful train companion, jars of Maine marmalade and Texan spice mixes to give as gifts for our hosts. We leave our biggest suitcase (empty) on a corner, and buy a rolling duffle bag from a street vendor. The handle on that bag breaks the next day. We give up, we move on.