Florence 4

May 20, 2011

The one sure thing is that I will have to return to Florence to know exactly what it is I’m seeing. It passes by like a walk down the library aisle, fingers trailing longingly over the unreadable books. Today it was the Pitti Palace, with (I think) the hugest collection yet, a maelstrom, a cloudburst, a glut, a treasure chest of which, if there is a bottom, it was not delved by me. The Medici lived like no one in the world never has. Boboli Gardens afterwards, though DJ’s immobility limited our travels there. The Boboli was Paradiso degli uccelli, the bright beings flitting and singing in the emerald dapple. You could see them when they left the trees and came down to drink at the fountains. If I had awakened in the Boboli, I would have known it was not the US, from the strange callings of the birds, more complex, somehow, than the forests of Carolina, if only because less familiar.. We lunched at the Pitti café, where a bold sparrow ate from our fingers.

Email informed me that Riding Funhouse is a finalist in the AWP competition. The joy of even that still-distant happenstance made the day light for me, made every outcome acceptable.

One really doesn’t need to enter a museum, such is the beauty of the Italians themselves.

Tremendous blast on thunder on the street late in the afternoon. Jove is so evident on the walls and pedestals that I was able to think for a moment it was really he.

La pazzia dei grandi non va lasciata incustodita