wandering · the · twisted · path

music can move a person in so many ways... a song can lead your mind to travel, much as the printed words of a book can lead you to explore, imagine... remember. from the first time i heard this song, my mind escaped...... not to the imagined parishes of the south but rather, i close my eyes and see the rolling hills slide by from the train window. miles of them, covered with carefully tended grape arbors, interrupted only by the train rolling slowly through small town train stations.... a few people waiting on the platforms, the day's needs in their hands. moving onward still, past small farms surrounding stone and tile homes... then seeing the beginnings of the city creep into view.
i smile as i remember that trip to italy, long ago, the discoveries, the history.... the art i had only seen in photographs before. i began in rome and it only took me a couple of days to realize, i needed weeks to explore all i wanted to find there. i managed to find a hotel, enjoy meals, not get lost all that often in search of my next goal on a huge checklist stuffed in my travel book.
the coloseum with it's pasta eating cats tucked in the corners.... closing my eyes there to hear the roar of the crowds, the sounds of battle, the clank of metal colliding, the lions roaring within and then walking back into this century with it's cars racing around the remaining walls.
finding the vatican museums, standing inches away from "david", feeling my neck strain from trying to see all of the sistine chapel paintings.... pressing my nose to the glass guarding "the pieta". i still laugh when i pull out a map and remember the almost 2 hours it took me to find the pantheon, tucked far away in that plaza. i must have taken every wrong turn that i could have in that quest. i did far better at finding the spanish steps, spending time relaxing there, strolling the shopping district below or enjoying the people wandering by the tivoli fountain in the early evening.
pompeii was my first "long" trip on the train and when i also learned to spend a few extra dollars to take the express and escape stopping at every station with the local train or having chickens ride above my seat. wandering the streets there, knowing that all was lost in just one volcanic explosion.. seeing the castings of the people trapped in ash then.... it was a moment frozen in time.
i headed further south to naples to meet his ship..... by then, i had learned the trick to crossing the roads there...... there aren't crosswalks, you just have to look for a gap in between the racing cars and step off and keep walking...... don't try the squirrel bit of pausing...... that will mean maiming or death. i also knew his ship wasn't going to dock, so i was left to my own for the whole trip. i sat evenings at the hotel, watching the surrounding mountains glow deep red from the impending eartquake and volcanic action, felt the rumble of what felt like a dozen trucks driving by as it worked it's way towards release.
after a couple of days, i was headed further south to sicily, to meet an old family friend. again, the train slid past daily life.... the rocky shores of the southern beach areas, waiting as they loaded the whole train onto the ferry, the view of mt etna with it's snow cap and history of eruptions and then, watching the water slip by on one side, steeper mountains rise up on the other. it was there that i ended up the furthest south i had ever been in europe........ standing with my friend corrado beside a WWII nazi monument, as he pointed out the coast of africa. remembering how we both laughed when he asked the nun to back his explaination of the catacombs we had toured....... and finding out i had been correct, i saw dead people... he had seen refugees hiding in the torchlights.
those weeks were a joy in exploration, proving to me that i could manage to more than survive.... i thrived after the first unsteady steps there and i honed my skills at laughing, enjoying, moving at their pace of life..... being italian for those two weeks. oh, i traveled there again the next year... we were the 3 amigos from naples to berne, switzerland to naples again over the xmas- new years holiday ( ok, most of the time we were amigos, one of the party wasn't into discovering art all that much... seen one painting, seen them all was his attitude )
one song though, takes me back to the fond memories of that first taste of italy... a journey i enjoy each time i hear it........