May 19, 2015

Dark of the morning, home, where it is so quiet after the Roman streets that the ears strain toward the single bird chirping in its sleep in the encircling woods. I feel better spiritually than I usually do returning from a trip like this, invigorated and fulfilled, as though I had been on holiday rather than having closed a turbulent chapter of my life, whether in success or defeat. Physically, twenty hours in transit is bound to wear on one. The last leg was delayed, of course, but I did finish before the stroke of midnight. When I finally lay down on my own bed I had a throbbing heel, diarrhea, a racking endless cough, tinnitus, and some of the most monstrous and persistent muscle cramps I have know. They came across my torso like ripples. I was in such a bad way that I had to laugh, and that, of course, brought on new cramps. But when I shut my eyes that other mind that’s in control when the mind isn’t was giving me fertile and beautiful images, of Roman luxuriance, and that was a good country to dwell in for a while. My cabbie from Via della Vita was an adorable Sardinian who was, in a kind of Angle-Italian patois, a heroic talker. Never had a moment to contemplate the situation, which, because of a wreck on the normal airport route and horrific traffic elsewhere, looked dire for a while. Only my perpetual impulse to be early and leave plenty of time saved me. We passed the anacondian line for the Vatican Museum, and he hit his forehead and said, “Why you the people do that to themselves?”
   
He said “Where you from?”
   
“North Carolina,” says I.
   
“Ah! Michael Jordan!” and it rolled on from there. He knew everything knowable about Michael Jordan and the NBA.  He began many sentences with “You mention,” as though I really had. Learned that cab licenses are inheritable and very expensive. He can’t visit America because his mom plumped down 150,000 euro for his license, and he has to pay her back before he goes anywhere. “I am in the prison,” he says. He was studying to be an engineer when mom suggested the cab license. There is a story there. Sat beside a giant Italian on the flight from Rome. We looked out after each other in sweet bashful little ways.
   
Ran into Harry Johnston in the Atlanta airport. It was grand to see him, though I had forgotten what a chatterbox he is and at the point all I wanted to do was sit quietly somewhere with my face in my hands. The babies I knew are in college. He showed me one of them winning a race on his smartphone. There was real love left in my heart for him, and when I gave him a card and told him to use the numbers, I meant it.  Sat beside an lady called Beebe Whitsides to Asheville. She might have been Ann Deagon, but for the soberer apparel. She is an Episcoplian lady and we have many mutual friends, and Harry said that listening to us talk was like listening to a play. Again, I wanted to sit with my face in my hands, but when she started in, I knew I had to see it through.