Italian Stream of Consciousness

I don’t know what day it is – somewhere in the neighborhood of May 20th.

3 planes, 1 bus, 2 trains, and I’m almost there. Speeding along the NW coast of Italy from Genoa to Viareggio, so many memories flooding back of the last time I was here, riding the same train, though traveling the other direction.

It’s moments like this that inspire deep reflection on all that has happened between two markers of time, and that sense of wonder at all that changes yet remains the same.

It’s funny to feel so far away from home yet so close to a more true home at the same time…wherever you go, there you are.

We are always traveling, things are always changing, yet here we are, always in some way, the same.

That presence seems to emerge almost effortlessly when traveling. The senses perk up, awakened out of the winter slumber of habit.

The mind quiets so that the experience can be embodied, embraced fully, so as not to forget the splendidness of the moment.

I’m reminded of this as I gaze out to see a cigarette that dangles like a ballerina’s fingers from the old man’s weathered lips, those which have undoubtedly told a thousand stories, as he lackadaisically winds his moped through the chaotic traffic of Milan.

I can feel the weariness of my body from travel, yet the excitement of my spirit from the new beauty that surrounds me coupled with moments unexpected.

Yet no matter where we are, we are constantly having new moments. Not even the most familiar of experiences are in fact that. They are each unique, just as this moment is, for every being, everywhere. If we can awaken to that, life is never boring.

To see light, and the way it casts itself so elegantly upon every surface, as though it has a timeless existence… to smell the seducing and contradicting blend of sweetness and sourness… to feel freedom and constriction… to taste the known and unknown… to hear the soft breeze and the mechanical hum… This is to accept this living as a juxtaposition of masculine and feminine, of angels and demons, of light and dark, of life and death, fully, completely, overwhelmingly present in each moment. This is to embody life, to breathe inspiration, to live in wonder and awe.