Italy – A Wabi Sabi Life

February Memories

“Memory is the power to gather roses in winter.”
Anonymous, cited on a Mary Engelbreit card

Every day I see photo memories of that day stored in the cloud. This month it’s been the winter sojourn to Andalusia as COVID was nipping at our heels. Cross country skiing during cold COVID days. Walking Annie, both of us bundled in winter coats. Starting last week, it was the first days of my solo, midlife gap-year, three-month trip to Europe, now fourteen years ago. Photos of Bologna, Italy, my first exploration into a country I knew I’d love, but had little idea then how much. Like an dear friend I can’t wait to see again, I visited various regions of Italy three times during those three months, and five times since – Emila Romagna, Veneto, Lombardy, Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, Sicily, Puglia, Basilicata, Campagnia.

Castello di Procena, enroute to Acquapendente

A year ago, inspired by a heart-to-heart conversation with my husband where I invited us to both reflect on the dreams we had yet to realize, and what and how we could help each other do so in the time we had left, I was struck with the idea of returning to Italy for an extended period. I’d come to the realization that my big dream of living there was highly unlikely for many reasons. But what might it mean to adjust to the 90-day limit for visiting Canadians?

And so I began bringing shape to my dream. Drawing on the lustrous threads from that first-ever visit, I planned to depart this year, mid-February, and return mid-May. I’d live in Florence, where I found the perfect apartment in the market and cafe-rich neighborhood I’d first visited in 2023. Bright with lots of natural light, a soaker tub, well-equipped kitchen and spacious bedroom, and a lovely, English-speaking ex-pat host, I made the deposit. Too, I’d return to Venice during Carnevale, pulling through that golden thread. I made deposit on the Zen-like apartment in a glorious treed residential area, a bit beyond the Castello neighborhood I’d first visited that first time.

“*possibility in the palm of a hand,”* Venice 2011

Sitting with it, looking at dates, wanting to be in Italy during Easter, I modified the original three-month plan to become “70 Days for 70 Years,” a celebration of my upcoming decade crossing birthday. Catchy, the container for some writing, my dream coming to life glowed. Curiously, I kept putting off booking my flights.

Sitting with it a few more months, after a wonderful trip to Mexico for last year’s birthday, and the arrival of our wonderful Walker, I came to know I didn’t want to be away that long from my life here – with Sig, with Walker, in our home, in my community. Yes, I could have modified it, but that wasn’t the answer. I simply knew I simply needed not to go, now.

This past week, seeing those fourteen-year-old photos of Bologna, and of Venice during Carnevale – which really was an unexpected stroke of good fortune to be there then – and knowing if I had made that dream my reality, right now I’d be in my apartment in Florence. I’d be packing my overnight bag to head out on the train to Venice.

More wistful than sad or disappointed, I feel deep peace knowing I’d once again heeded my intuition. I’d picked my own bouquet of fragrant winter roses and was content with that.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Komorebi

Flying home two weeks ago, with no foreknowledge, simply intrigued by the two-line description, I watched Perfect Days, a 2023 Japanese film written and directed by Wim Wenders. After three weeks of slow travel, designed with time to stay put and settle into the experiences of southern Italy, it was a soothing transition back into our quiet life at home. Clocking in at two hours, the film is described by The Criterion Collection as:

“A perfect song that hits at just the right moment, the play of sunlight through leaves, a fleeting moment of human connection in a vast metropolis: the wonders of everyday life come into breathtaking focus in this profoundly moving film by Wim Wenders. In a radiant, Cannes-award-winning performance of few words but extraordinary expressiveness, Koji Yakusho plays a public-toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose rich inner world is gradually revealed through his small exchanges with those around him and with the city itself. Channeling his idol Yasujiro Ozu, Wenders crafts a serenely minimalist ode to the miracle that is the here and now.“

The main character seldom speaks. Day in, day out, his routine is the same – thoughtful, simple, purposeful marked with moments of gratitude for the sky, trees, and the light shimmering among the leaves.

The film’s final frame, shown above, defines the central principle grounding the story, and served as its working title. Reading, I smiled with recognition and appreciation, and sighed knowing its essence, as I am one whose first memory is of komorebi.

A few years ago, I wrote here about my love affair with trees, then inspired by a Sunday reading of The Marginalian and quote by Maria Popova, “A tree is a light-catcher that grows life from air.” My love affair with skies became conscious when I travelled to Iceland in 2018. While I fully anticipated the landscapes would tug on my heart, I had no idea how indelible the impact of those skies.

But back to trees and some of those that caught my attention in Italy last month. Some captured with komorebi:

Taormina’s “Duca di Cesaro” public gardens

Borrowing from my earlier post on trees, I’ll conclude in the same way, with a poem by Mary Oliver, in gratitude for the trees I gaze upon in my yard, and in vistas miles and oceans away, and for my friends who share a special kinship with them:

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Rembrandt’s Late Self Portraits

Rembrandt’s Late Self Portraits

You are confronted with yourself. Each year
The pouches fill, the skin is uglier.
You give it all unflinchingly. You stare
Into yourself, beyond. Your brush’s care
Runs with self-knowledge. Here

Is a humility at one with craft.
There is no arrogance. Pride is apart
From this self-scrutiny. You make light drift
The way you want. Your face is bruised and hurt
But there is still love left.

Love of the art and others. To the last
Experiment went on. You stared beyond
Your age, the times. You also plucked the past
And tempered it. Self-portraits understand,
And old age can divest,

With truthful changes, us of fear of death.
Look, a new anguish. There, the bloated nose,
The sadness and the joy. To paints, to breathe,
And all the darknesses are dared. You chose
What each must reckon with.

– Elizabeth Jennings, ‘Collected Poems’ Carcanet, 1987

First post in a month, and this poem fits the bill. To be confronted with one’s aging self – the fatigue that lingers from almost two weeks of jetlag; stiff and aching knees upon waking, and after playing pickleball; vision that increasingly, more often than not, needs the assistance of my glasses; hearing that fades in noisy spaces; crepey skin and protruding veins on my suntanned hands – I could go on, but suffice to say, with truthful changes and a new anguish, there is still love left.

Italy was terrific. She never disappoints, even though it was quite cool for a few days in Taormina, Sicily. The Fairweather Goddess made her presence known, only giving us showers when indoors at a cooking class, touring Palermo, driving in a small touring to a vineyard luncheon on Mount Vesuvius, and full out sunshine when it mattered most – during our drive along the Amalfi Coast on, what locals call, the “Via Mama Mia.” Having arranged this trip, I was pleased that all our plans came together, with the only travel delay back in Canada, where we sat for over an hour on the tarmac during our final leg home from Calgary. I had no idea, as I was sound asleep.

Home less than a week, Sig drove to Kamloops to fetch Walker, our sixth English Setter. Not a year old, he’s playful, eager to please, a quick learner and from one side, looks so much like Annie that I occasionally lapse and call him by her name. It will be quite some time before he becomes the walking companion I had in her, but we’re both amazed at how much he’s settled in six days. Too, we’ve concluded, given our fatigue with the full-out attention required (managed in part by putting a bell on his collar, silence signaling we might need to check out what he’s up to), this will be our last dog, a reckoning as we stare beyond our age, the times.

*Walker… we all fall into bed after a full day*

At the beginning of this year, I wrote here about “an eldering landscape,” that inevitable next threshold that defines this age and stage of life. Balancing the sadness and the joy, in this stage, in this poem, I think back to one of our seven touring companions in Sicily. Patricia, an eighty-five-year-old American who, with her sixty something daughter, climbed every stair, walked every cobblestone path, sipped every taste of Sicilian wine, cooked with us savoring every morsel. Late self-portrait, hardly! I’ll take a page from her album any day.

I’m happy to be home, and back here on the page with you, dear friends.
Much love and kindest regards.

When I Returned From Rome

WHEN I RETURNED FROM ROME

A
bird took flight.
And a flower in a field whistled at me
as I passed.

I drank
from a stream of clear water.
And at night the sky untied her hair and I fell asleep
clutching a tress
of God’s.

When I returned from Rome, all said
“Tell us the great news,”

and with great excitement, I did: “A flower in a field whistled,
and at night the sky untied her hair and
I fell asleep clutching a
sacred tress …”

Francis of Assisi
as rendered by Daniel Ladinsky in Love Poems from God

The photo was taken during our last day of sauntering in Rome a couple of weeks ago. I was surprised to see in the foreground of “iconic” Rome -the Colosseum and Arch of Constantine -the bird perched in the tree. I loved our five days there, wandering with minimal places to be – me with the paper map and keen eye for detail helping us orient, my husband with Google Maps on his phone inevitably losing the way when it lost the signal – an evening food tour in Trastevere…

…a late morning at the Galleria Borghese…

...and a serendipitous meetup at Piazza Navona for aperitivi and dinner with traveling compani0ns from Morocco.

When I returned from Rome, I didn’t do as Francis did, though I did feel with great excitement the sacred tresses of earth and daytime sky as I walked with Annie in our neighbourhood.

It’s good to be home.
Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

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