Kenzie Travers, Italy
I’m leaving my heart in Italy, where I only have eyes for the hills of Tuscany- endless lumps of green against the soft blue sky. Grape vineyards and miniature square yellow houses scattered across the hill, clay tiled roofs baking in the sun. Endless landscape, with the occasional stone tower peeking up beyond the trees, castle walls extending from the medieval structure; the ruins of a divided society.
The train chugs past the clusters of the villages, bringing me back to Florence, where a bell tower rings, and vibrates through my skin as I watch the man inside bang and bang madly from below.
Every time I turn the corner from San Borgo Lorenzo, the Duomo takes me by surprise, like a giant paper drawing blown up and suspended in the air. Taking my breath on the occasional walk back to my apartment as I look up and am reminded of its existence. The sunset over the Arno River, a murky green against the yellow and red shops of the Ponte Vecchio.
For the small village of Panzano, tucked away in the Chianti region, with a butcher shop, Antica Macalleria Cecchini, where Dario Cecchini supplies the people with unusually cut meats and the best olive oil I’ve ever had.
With hand painted tile shops and a seemingly endless view of the country side. Where old men sit on benches and watch the Cypress trees grow tall into the sky.
The elevated coast of Pompeii, the air thick with the scent of wisteria, hanging lazily in the shaded parts of the ancient ruins, gives me a feeling that is bigger than myself, erupting inside me like Mount Vesuvius, pouring molten rock into my veins and spewing ash into my mind, clouding it with thoughts of this unexplained life.
I imagine the ancient Romans as they watched the volcano erupt, curious and bemused.
Standing in awe at the massive piece of Earth, crying and bursting with its insides. I imagine the mountain being formed, as Asia and Europe pounded into each other from the tectonic plates, rumbling the ground for miles, as the orange corralled sapphire water sunk below and was hidden from the sunlight in a cave.
The black sand beach of Positano, kissing the edge of the Mediterranean sea as it rolls in and out, in and out, bearing gifts of weathered glass from the sea; thick powder blue pieces, softened around the edges from the rolling salted waves.
Fog whispers over the enclave of the hills, as if covering up a secret beyond the perilous cliffs. “Positano bites deep, wrote John Steinbeck in his article featured in Harpers Bazaar.”It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone,” Steinbeck wrote.
I flew over the wild, jagged waves, impersonating cobalt stone as it reaches into the air and spits wet powder into my face. Flying past magnificent walls of rock, trees suspended over the death defying drop. Flying from the pile of deep red, peach, and ginger painted houses, where people reside and wake up and go to their coral jewelry shops and casually run the steep steps extending from the mountain every day and maybe don’t think twice about its secluded beauty or what life is like beyond it.
My lipstick stain was left in Monterosso al Mare, where I tasted the most succulent squid and bruschetta; the ripest diced tomatoes and bread soaked in olive oil, rubbed with fresh pesto- what Cinque Terre is known for, chopped basil, garlic and parmesan cheese.
The basic flavors bursting, like the brightly colored village from the serrated hill of Manarola. I descended the precipitous cobblestone stairwells between olive groves and lemon gardens, the smell of the Earth, potent, as farmer’s cut grass and swat away flies, yet ignoring the tourists whom flood by. In Vernazza, a man in a Speedo rests between two boulders, facing the Ligurian Sea, a beer held to his lips. I inhale the northern breeze; inflate my diaphragm with the breath of the coastal atmosphere.
I’m leaving my mind in Italy.
Where it has been entangled in the lace of Burano, blown by the glass in Murano, and masked by the characters of Carnival in Piazza San Marco.
Popped by Italian champagne bottles, and sent down the stream by a gondola. The magnificent buildings so powerful against the sky, sunlight cascading of them
My mind is trapped inside the knightly citadel walls of Monteriggioni, where I feasted on bread and thick salami, rich triangles of pecorino cheese, and sipped dark cherry colored wine bountiful with an aroma of spices. A place once protected from the war against Florence, a commune written about in ancient roman poetry and essays.
Lemon gelato melts on the cobblestone plaza, while children sporting blue soccer jerseys hop over it, leaping towards the drinking fountain in the center.
What I once called the place that I grew up is no longer my home, it is the place where I am scared to end up after my time in Italy. Italy is where I learned about life, about patience and friendships and reality. It is place with small streets and small cafés, but also a place that gave me a bigger picture- a bigger window to throw my problems out of, to grow flowers and to observe the people; a window of opportunities. It is where I will leave my heart, so I will have to come back.