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(Originally written Monday February 13th 2017, at 8:16am)
I wake up in Florence and what else needs to go in a sentence that begins with I wake up in Florence? Nothing. Not a single thing. I wake up in Florence.
Today's the day my father's cancer was diagnosed. Today in 2007. In Italian a sentence like that can be written such that the subject comes after the verb, such that it seems incidental. You could say oggi è il giorno in cui è stato scoperto il cancro... Today's the day on which was diagnosed the cancer... ...of my father. Like with terza rima, a certain grammatical advantage.
He once told me, you know, everyone thinks Friday the 13th is unlucky, but that's never been an unlucky day for me. For me, it's February that has always been an unlucky month. (And maybe something about Wednesdays...? And maybe I'm not remembering this right.)
My father died before iPhones. Or at least. Before any of us had one. I don't have a recording of his voice. Seven years later when my mother's cancer came back I had learned from experience. You get smarter with each parent that dies, about the little things. Some big things too.
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Santo Spirito, Firenze]
[martedì 31 ottobre 2017 ore 13:02:02] [¶]
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I've seen you with the lights off
I've seen you and you think you love me
I've seen you with your hat off
I'm dreaming of a time you know me
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Santo Spirito, Firenze]
[mercoledì 18 ottobre 2017 ore 12:48:00] [¶]
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I make the morning full of things Vincentian. I have not watched a movie alone in a long time, and I have not looked forward to watching one this much, in longer still. What will it mean that a thing like this already makes me cry? That this makes me slow down the day, like yellow deepening? That lines like these make my life feel a little less, these days, like the colours of rain:
In my view, I am often immensely rich, not in money, but (although just now perhaps not all the time) rich because I have found my métier, something I can devote myself to heart and soul and that gives inspiration and meaning to my life.
My moods vary, of course, but nevertheless I have on average acquired a certain serenity. I have a strong belief in art, a certain faith that it is a powerful current that carries a man to a haven, although he himself has to put in an effort too. I think in any case that it is such a blessing when a man has found his métier, that I don't count myself among the unfortunates.
I mean that even if I were in some considerable difficulties, and if there were dark days in my life, I would not wish to be taken for one of the unfortunates, nor would it be right.
I must remember though, that not everyone wants to know these things. Perhaps they never will.
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Santo Spirito, Firenze]
[lunedì 16 ottobre 2017 ore 12:10:18] [¶]
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These days in a room with del Piombo's poetessa, of loving Vincent and considering Marcel. These days of a vendemmia selvatica and a wine from Val d'Aosta, of a matchbox, a Mastroianni, and a memory of Shahid. (“Because I'm a poet.”)
These days of catbite and bandages and betadine, of Toi Dericotte in your Inbox (“It’s precious!”) and a dermatologist in your armpit. These days of too much takeout and too much tea, more eggplant than you want (because you want none), more choices than make sense, and never — like always, never ever — enough writing.
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Santo Spirito, Firenze]
[domenica 15 ottobre 2017 ore 10:18:18] [¶]
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I try to tell Camilla what it feels like to buy an annual pass to the Uffizi. “You know when you've done something or achieved or acquired something that makes you so deliriously happy right after that you think the smile on your face couldn't possibly get any sillier? And then you think some more, and step outside of yourself and look, and you see yourself walking on a Saturday afternoon in October through Piazza Repubblica towards Via della Spada and Santa Maria Novella, with this thing you've just done, and you see that this — exactly this — is the kind of thing that makes you deliriously happy? And that makes you even happier, and the smile gets sillier after all? That's what it feels like.”
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Santo Spirito, Firenze]
[sabato 14 ottobre 2017 ore 15:10:18] [¶]
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I’m loving this week of Stein in ModPo. But there are other things too, in my life these days. And when Laynie Brown asks, “What is the purpose of purposefulness?” — for whatever reason, those things come up. And suddenly, here, I cannot help it. I abandon myself, at last, to think of the week’s drama, perhaps a longtime coming, but never quite long enough. To think of years. Roads stretching farther back than I want to travel. What is the purpose, indeed.
Why was I not then, the person I am now? Why did I not know how to be strong in their wrong-headed faces? Why with my family does it feel like I learn only in looking back, from long times ago-beyond today?
And here, here maybe an idea. What if I imagined myself five years from now? Imagined the woman, the ways in which she would be wiser. What would she wish I had known, this week?
And then I would write a blog post. With a title like this: Familiar, refrain. (Earlier I had considered: The F-Word.)
And then Mary Oliver, because it’s time I read Mary Oliver again (it’s life I read Mary Oliver more often than I think I love): I have posted this poem here before. Some times, some bloods, cartilage.
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Santo Spirito, Firenze]
[mercoledì 02 ottobre 2017 ore 10:24:18] [¶]
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