Every Day in Tuscany Read Free

everyday life among the most hospitable people on earth. I made a home here, without really meaning to—the place took hold of me and shaped me in its image.
    How did I let this happen? There are many crux marks in one’s life, small ones and large. To take a decision, my friend Fulvio says, his usage much more precise than the grammatical make . To take a decision also takes you. Even though when I stepped out of that car I did not know how my life would change, I did sense something at that moment. I wanted an aperture, an opportunity to merge with something limitless. I, in the fullness of my ignorance, was willing.
    And Italy has proven to be inexhaustible. To take the gift of a new and very old country—a whole other sphere of language, literature, history, architecture, art: it falls over me like a shower of gold. It is paradoxical but true that something that takes you out of yourself also restores you to yourself with a greater freedom. A passionate interest also has a true-north needle that keeps you focused. The excitement of exploration sprang me from a life I knew how to live into a challenging space where I was forced—and overjoyed—to invent each day.
    The coming twentieth anniversary offers a time to reflect and pore over possibilities for the years coming quickly toward me. I’m old enough to lay claim to owning some wisdom; I fully believe Basho’s pithy sentence, passed on from the seventeenth century: The journey itself is home .
    The second twenty years . Transition feels sweet. I’m balanced between worlds and can roam forward and backward along that strada bianca , that white road of the innermost journey. Moments of change. A chance to say yes, or possibly, no. A day like no other. A week straight out of a horoscope. Someone standing on the other side of an abyss, holding out a hand. A new life plan. Forty trees to plant. A journey back. A ticket sent. A fountain to build. A swim with dolphins. A gift to give. A mirror reflecting another era. A blue glass heart under my pillow.

Winter into Spring

Buongiorno, Luca
    IN WINTER-COLD BLUE LIGHT, THE BELLS OF Cortona ring louder. The cold iron clapper hitting the frozen bell produces clear, shocked, hard gongs that reverberate in the heads of us frozen ones in the piazza, ringing in our skulls and down to our heels, striking the paving stones. In leafy summer, when softened air diffuses the bells, the clarion call accompanies but does not insist; the bells remind, punctuate, inspire. As a benison to the day, the reverberations settle on those nursing cappuccino in the piazza, then fade, sending last vibrations out to the circling swallows. But in winter, the solitary sounds feel more personal, as though they ring especially for you. I even can feel the sound waves in my teeth as I smile my umpteenth greeting of the morning.
    Returning in early March, I’m thrilled to see my friends in the piazza. We greet each other as though I have been gone for a year instead of four months. I love the first trip back into town after an absence. I walk every street, assessing the state of the union. What has changed, who has traveled to Brazil, what’s on display at the vegetable market, who has married, died, moved to the country? What’s on exhibit at the museum? Half of an enormous cow hangs by a hook in the butcher’s, a square of paper towel on the floor to catch the last three splats of blood. Under neon, red meat in the cases reflects a lavender light on the faces of two venerable signoras leaning in to inspect today’s veal cheeks and pork roasts. Orange lilies against the glass steam the flower shop window with their hothouse breath, and there’s Mario, a blur among them, arranging a row of primroses.
    Winter returns Cortona to its original self. The merchants along the main street complain that all winter long the town feels dead. Non c’è nessuno . There’s no one. They wonder if the tourists will return this year. “The dollar is broken, the