Blog TLC-Travels to Italy

Why Travel?

1/5/2017

Somebody asked me the other day why I keep going to Italy. Why my home and husband and life here aren’t enough. This question at first made me defensive – there’s an implied judgement after all. Or, two. First, that I spend time in Italy to make up for some kind of lack, and second, that my life here should be enough to fulfill me.

After my initial reaction, though, I realized that while the tone of the question wasn’t to my liking, the underlying assumptions were, in part, true. I do in fact travel to Italy to fill spaces that my amazing life here in the States does not fill, and while many would call it a lack of gratitude or humility, or that I need to get a grip on reality, the fact is that in order to be whole I need what Italy is and offers. And I’m not ashamed of that, or embarrassed by it, nor do I feel it’s something that detracts from what I have at home. Let me see if I can explain it.

I’ve always been restless. From the time I ran away from my mother in the department store and was five aisles away before she found me, to the explorations of the forest surrounding my house when I was 7, 8, and 9 that landed me a number of times in bedroom-jail for not being home by dark, to the number times I ran away from home at ages 15, 17, and finally 18 for good… and my realization at about age 15 that settling down on any level wasn’t going to be easy, if possible at all, I’ve known that finding one thing, place, person, or life that would keep me happy was going to be impossible.

So I adapted. I started traveling, and I found that the farther from home I went and the more I experienced, the more beauty I surrounded myself with, and the more smells and textures and tastes and sensations I indulged in, the happier I became.

Being in an unfamiliar city, or in a country like Italy that is filled to the brim with stimuli on every level, allows me to immerse myself totally in ways that just don’t happen where the spaces and people are familiar. Though it’s true that at home the sights can be immense and the skies limitless, the tastes can be hot and the wine rich and silky against my tongue, the familiarity here gives pleasure a softer impact. And while others are content with softness and with ease, I am not, and soon it will be time to pack my suitcase and leave again for the next red and gold sunset, the next 2000-year old ruin or stone terrace or clatter of coffee cups.

Because it is true, what the above question implied: traveling, especially to Italy but really anywhere, fills the spaces that are left empty even in the moments I am feeling closest to another person. Even in the moments I am wrapped in warm blankets on the couch at home, dogs and husband close by. Even in the moments I am surrounded by friends and family. In those moments, I am still always yearning for more.

Because when I am surrounded by voices that speak a language I barely understand, when the sun heats my body from a different angle, when I take my first sip of wine at the restaurant with a view, when my terrace overlooking the valley all the way to Assisi spreads out below me and the sound of dogs barking drifts up from an unseen farm, when the sun sets behind the hills and lights everything on fire and I stand on that edge… in those moments I am whole.

It is in traveling that I have learned how to stay in one place.

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Being Miserable in Italy

8/8/2016

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I didn’t know I was miserable until the first morning I woke up in Perugia and looked out the window at the valley below me, one of the most outstanding views in the world, and felt… nothing. I drank my coffee. I stared at the morning sun rising over the mountains behind Assisi. And I felt… still nothing. I had a chocolate croissant, twisting and turning it over in my hands and in my mouth. It was tasty but still I felt… nothing.

Soon I was in tears so I guess that was an improvement over feeling nothing, but it was devastating to think that Italy, which until this summer had been my safe haven, apparently had nothing to offer me.

And I very quickly decided that state of affairs would just not do.

I spent every morning for three weeks in front of that view. I made coffee carefully each day upon waking, and drank it in small sips as my eyes drank in the beauty of that view; the layers of history were covered with layers of greens and gold and umber and browns, and I contemplated the stories that could be told about the generations of lives and loves and death in just this small section of Italy I could see from my window. I ate my chocolate croissants slowly, paying particular attention to the flakiness of the pastry and the smoothness of the chocolate as it melted on my tongue.

And I wrote. By hand. Sometimes a page, sometimes five or six pages. I wrote and I drank coffee and imagined people’s laughter and tears, and I wrote more. I let the flavors and the sights and the smells and the sounds that drifted from the valley—sheep calling to each other and dogs barking and sparrows diving for insects and an occasional baby laughing—seep into me. And I wrote more. Poetry and thoughts and dreams and lots of sentences that began with the words ‘I’m unhappy and I’m staring at the most beautiful view in the world….’

One morning I woke up and made coffee and opened the window and sat down and picked up my pen and realized… suddenly… I was no longer unhappy. Instead I felt a quiet joy and a growing sense of connection to the world that I, until that moment, hadn’t realized I hadn’t felt in years.
The first sentence I wrote that morning was this: I am full of joy and I love this view, and I cannot imagine a more perfect moment.

It’s two months later and I wake up every morning now here at home and I make coffee and sit at the window of the view that is not quite so stupendous but still lovely, and I write. And my first sentence every morning is still: I am full of joy, and I love this view, and I cannot imagine a more perfect moment.

What ‘caused’ this shift? What changed?
The easy answer is that Italy worked some kind of magic, and that is in some part true. But Italy is, in the end, just a place. It is full of wonder and beauty and passion and years and layers and, yes, magic. But it is backdrop, and echo chamber, for all that we are and can be, rather than some kind of panacea.

The more accurate answer for what changed is that it was the process of waiting, of writing, of watching and listening and of being that changed me. And Italy provided the space and the beauty and the moments in which to let the magic happen.

Come with me. Let Italy be the space in which you find your bliss.

Our next adventure happens May, 2018!