For a tourist, Italy can seem as overexposed as a sunset; every view recognized in postcard after postcard. Writing seems as redundant as any visual document. Others have described these narrow streets, these views, the moods, the weather, as well or better. The Brownings lived here amongst others, but perhaps more familiar to me is …
Category: Travel
Postcard from Venice
I had meant to write. I have a whole stack of postcards – even a pack I bought at a church that had obviously been taken in the early 1950’s – full of strong jawed gondoliers assertively clutching their oars and gazing over the Grand Canal like the early explorers must have looked out over the Grand Canyon…
San Michele
San Michele at closing time. Row upon row. Modernist architecture mixes with the Baroque. A voice that reminds me of Fahrenheit 451/ 1984 announces in many languages that it is the closing hour. But before that the bells ring the hour, echoing over the water. The perpetual fountains stop their flowing by the same clock.
Water and Voices
Water echoes like a bell in languages I do not understand, I stand on the dock at San Michele while full Vaporettos pass one after the other.
Lament
Thought I would drop one last line before my long hiatus has passed. My paints and materials have already begun their return journey, in no time I will be back at home.
Deconstructionist Roundup
Today breakfast in Sheridan at the Silver Spur. I saw a man at the counter eating a half dozen or so scrambled eggs smothered in thick white gravy. It was reminiscent of the Big Horns with a fresh coat of snow.
Medicine Wheel
I am no longer waking at 5 am – I do wake for the windstorm, the meows signaling freshly caught mouse, the sprinklers outside my door that do little but dampen the mulch – but 9 am now and the hills’ brow still shades it’s chin though the sun is already high.
Creek Bed
Burnt or chafed – the orb of my left shoulder. Indeed it is scratched – mapping red my morning pursuits. The surface suffers here…
Doubting Thomasina
Some nights here there are as many bugs on the screen as stars in the sky – and there are a lot of stars – like dust blown over black granite.
Sizzle in the Thousand
Today I went for a nice tromp around the ‘thousand acres’ – which is the grazing land at the ranch, with very tall hills, big rocks, sage brush and grassy bits. The blooms of flowers and the seed heads at then end of amber colored grasses dipped slightly in the light breeze and gave the hills a sort of glowing undulating aura. I saw pretty flowers in many colors, floatee butterflies, skipping grasshoppers, buzzing flies and bees and la and la. All was a fascinating percussion of chirrups, whirrs and the gattling retreats of the grasshoppery sort as I gallumphed along through the hills.