I wish on a day like today it would rain and ever so heavily. The sun is nowhere to be found, asleep behind some clouds and I watch the dry branches sway in laughter outside my window.  It’s that time of year where you’re suspended between what is and what you wish were so.  The pond is melting only to be covered once again by snow in a week or two. The grass is brown and the sidewalk cold. Everything today feels cold- except my thoughts.  I have no camera to capture how my books rest on my window sill nor the way my pearl earrings rest on my velvet journal.  It’s how I feel- like some pearl smug in velvet… just caught in overwhelment, suspended between what is and what I wish were so.  I wish on a day like today it would just rain so I could hide in my thoughts. I am reminded of a poem I once read in grade school. I can’t recall the title of the poem, but it was about a man- a fisherman, who, with hands and face chapped by the cold wind, finds refuge and warmth in his own soul, which finds its way to  a diner off the coast where he watches rain hit the window pane in his dimly lit boothe. If only I could recall the poem. I wish you knew it, because you would know, just like I do, how weathered he was and how irrelevant this weathering was to the comfort of soul- it was his thoughts and the refuge he found in them and in himself.

In any way, words are inadequate for such a moment, and though I feel often times there is no point in even trying to bother with using words to convey this moment as it is, it’s all I’ll ever have to show for it. We need language, however inadequate it proves to be. Quite honestly, how do you show someone a reality? You cannot, but only bother to try.

It feels like New Jersey today. I’ve never been but would love to some day. It feels like hiding out and in the comfort of jeans and a sweatshirt, making tea in bare-feet on the hardwood and watching the rain… thinking back on just about everything, really. From how tall the pea and bean plants would grow in my grandparents yard to the way the flowers rest in London to the sunflowers in Tuscany.

Somehow, on days such as this one, they always seem to take me back to the way it would rain in parts of Italy (Sorrento, Assisi, and the Tuscan area) 

It sounded like a very prolonged languid and legato “one and two, and three and four and one and two and three and four…” It was so precious in that it could take you just about anywhere. Against the window it sounded like the waves of the ocean, and they’d wash over and over throughout the night and you’d wake up to the smell  of lemons outside. You’d wake up to the real thing, that is, the ocean, which the rain had mimicked the night prior and  had cradled you to sleep.  It was sensational and sensual in that I never felt more alive, even asleep. I remember waking up and seeing my dark hair rest upon the white linen beside me and it just felt so… easy. And I fixed my eyes to look beyond at the window beside my bed and it was just a complete comfort, and for a moment I felt safe and secure, like I was insulated by this life around me.  There was no darkness nor shadows on the wall. 

And I couldn’t even comprehend what I was going to see that day or what was to come. We made our way from Sorrento to Rome, which was tedious and rainy and again, comfortable. I remember walking up the stairs with my luggage to place it on the transport, and, having time to spare, I walked around. It had rained and everything was still covered in it. It was so colorful… like everything was meant to be there, and to grow color on it, color that would never fade like a fresco.

And now I look out my window and the branches, strangely enough, are not moving or laughing any longer. I wonder why or how this is as I am far from the Mediterranean and rather, in what could very well be, the windiest place on Earth! I am inside surrounded by books that are meant to inspire me. Somehow, words just don’t seem inspiring, (as I write…) ironically. You just can’t get that kind of reality in a book, however tragic. You may get the periphery of it, and you may truly appreciate it and cherish what these books offer and lend to you, but quite honestly, you need to experience the reality of what these books preach. You need to relate, and perhaps this is what language is… it’s relating, its…leaving room to desire what language excludes to encompass… it’s evoking and it’s… communication. It uses words, words that are so inadequate and could never compete with the sacred realities of life… it’s like love, don’t you think? I say love and you think and feel all these different things. Perhaps you see lovers passionately kiss, like that beautiful photograph titled “Kissing The War Goodbye” (an image I personally think is one of the greatest).  Maybe you see the face of your first love, or your last one or the only one. Maybe you feel like crying. I just don’t know… but that’s how inadequate language can be.

It’s a word that, in reality, can change a life or make one. Say ‘beauty’ and I will know it. Say ‘love’ and I will feel it. Say ‘blessed’  and I will understand.

It’s these recherché moments that you never saw coming that soothe you and calm you when all you want to do is see the rain, when you’re muddled and suspended between what is and what you wish were so. When you just want to see that color once more, or hear words with curls in them like “bello” or  “oceano” or even  ” il spirito santo”.

It’s just that kind of day where you’re bewildered by everything and nobody can really make sense of this other than Norah Jones or Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail” or your piano.  It’s these conversations with yourself, starting from the moment you wake up with an  ” okay… here we go!” and a deep breath.  And I suppose this is the point, that you go… that you take as many breaths as you can, that you don’t measure this life by the number of breaths you take, but the number of moments that take your breath away… however cliche. Even if it is just a pearl earring on a velvet journal or the thought of rain along the Mediterranean… it is still taking your breath away.  You can afford to be bewildered in this life and maybe, just maybe, you were meant to miss certain things, like the rain, or a certain someone to show you how much you love the rain or that person. It’s what makes this life, life.  Surely, friend, you understand.  It’s where the clay is not that makes the pot… it’s the absence that makes the presence.

Like ‘ Georgia’, let it rest on your mind.

When was the last your heart gave out on you?

It would be foolish to assume your heart has never been overwhelmed. Surely, it has.

This very day, mine gave out on me. I went to the movie theater today. The movie was ‘P.S- I Love You’, adapted from the novel by Cecelia Ahern. Yes, the theater was full of women, but that is beside the point. I was there to understand a story, one, I might add, that was not stereotypical nor cliche.  The story revolves around Holly, a young Irish woman, who loses her husband only after a few years of marriage. Married at the age of 19, the two shared a life that was perfect by imperfection. Sounds cliche, right? Well, I promise you it wasn’t. Prior to his death, Gerry, Holly’s husband, writes his wife letters that she receives after his death. Enclosed in each letter, Gerry challenges Holly to do something lively. In one, he dares her to sing karaoke, in another he encourages her to go clubbing “with the girls”, and a few months after his passing, she receives a letter directing her to a travel agency where he had planned an entire trip for her in Ireland. By the last letter, a year after his death, Holly is still living in anticipation for these letters, and for him. However unlikely the story was, or hyper-real, Holly’s inability to fall out of love with her husband, now dead, was not superficial. In words, the film sounds very bland and surreal in itself, however the charm and thought in every scene was overwhelming in presence. I found the most difficult scene was the one in which Holly goes for a walk with her mother, a year after Gerry’s death. Before this walk, in which Holly’s mom gives her Gerry’s last letter to her, Holly says she “can’t breathe”. However expected or unexpected, it stuck with me.

To be in love, truly, would be an honor. I don’t think people realize that or respect that. That is to say, people don’t give love a chance and they really don’t appreciate it. I can say this, because I’ve witnessed such a  circumstance where love has been neglected, underestimated, deemed foolish, and unappreciated.  Do people not realize it is an honor? Do they not see? Is that what it is, is that why people refrain from letting love happen? So often I hear of “plans” and I hear people speak of love as if it were an inconvenience. That is to say, love is an inconvenience to their so called “plans”.

To me, plans can ve bery irrelevant to life as we know it. Let me ask you why it was given to you, that is life, in the first place? It was given to you, as every honor is given, so that you may come to appreciate and respect its everyday earnings. Life, is an honor, and to pursue an element of it that is very one dimensional and unemotional is a waste.

I don’t understand why love is so undesired. As if you have the rest of your life, when you are young, to fall in love.  Apparently there are other things. True, however, love seems to fall second best in competing in the minds of others for substance in life. Other than those that I know that are married, and a select few, I don’t know anyone who can outright say “I want to fall in love”. Most of the time it’s ” if it happens, it happens” which I agree with (completely) as you find love or you do not. Though, I know few who would let love consume them, and I wonder about this. Why? I suppose it comes down to priority, and as said before, it’s not a top one, for most, especially in youth.

I think love should be a priority. And I think you are a fool for thinking you can find “something” some other time, or that “something” will come back around when the time is right. Now is the time, there is no other time. You don’t know how much time you have, in fact, I can tell you that you’re not promised tomorrow. So why are you so smug? I’d like to know.

I had a visit with my grandmother today. As we drank espresso she didn’t recall stories or moments of achievement in terms of intellect or moments where she felt superior or “won” something… rather, she told me what she missed, and that was love. This love epitomized in one being, one no longer alive, that is, my grandfather. He has been gone for nearly nineteen years, as long as I have been alive. She said she misses the jingle of the back door, the one he’d always walk through after work. She said he’d whistle, and she knew he was home. I asked her what else she missed and she took a deep breath and said “everything”.  She told me every night before she goes to bed, she kisses his photograph by her bedside, and every morning, that photograph is the first thing she sees. To think of love- one that grows old, to me, is spectacular and at times,  beyond my scope. That is an honor. You are honored to have someone love you and to feel that they need you, they must have you. They just must. It is an honor.

To think that people brush it off as a phase, one to be pursued when the years of youth have been exhausted, is frustrating for me. How do you not want to share youth? Love is not constraining. It is the complete opposite, and thus I don’t understand why it is perceived as this inconvenience. Foolish.

My heart just gave out as I watched my grandmother weep for herself, the part of her that cannot be found- him. And I began to cry, too. And I continued to on my way home ’til I reached Bragg Creek and decided to turn back and head for home. I couldn’t help but feel that love was an honor, one I wasn’t sure I’d ever bow graciously to in acceptance.  I felt as though something or someone were missing, and I knew exactly who it was, and there was not one thing I could do about it. I cried because she missed him so. Holly and my grandmother. This pain actually happens. It’s there and it doesn’t leave ’til you’re allieved from pain altogether. Pain isn’t just a thought in the movies, it’s real and my heart just broke. For her love, lost, and for the one I cannot seem to find.

My writing is just rubbish right about now. I’ll give you a song, though not my own:

“Apologies” by Grace Potter & The Nocturnals.

“Oh he said it’s crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
Cause I don’t wanna fight this war
It’s amazing to see me reading through this scene
Of love and fear and apologies

My love is like a blanket
That gets a little bit too warm sometimes
I wanna wrap somebody in it
Who can hold me in his arms
Cause when it got a little too hot in there
He was always stepping out for air and he froze
Oh he froze”
 

The sky had rained that entire night and by morning had broken into clear blue. It was a Sunday morning in Assisi and the air never smelled so sweet. While the room was a velvet jewel box, the sun stained curtains gave way to a lighter view of the main road that led to the mountain of St.Francis. It was refreshing to be some place I had never been and to wake up in its splendor, however simplistic. That morning Kayla and I left before anyone else was awake and we made our way down the street we had wandered the night of our arrival.

I was craving strawberries and thus decided to buy some at a market I was told to venture to. Finding this market was an endeavor on its own, though we walked back that morning with a brown paper bag full of strawberries and ate them along the way. It was a beautiful day and I couldn’t quite grasp the concept that I was miles and miles away from the familiar, though I felt it in the shame of wearing my blue jeans on Sunday. The people of Assisi made their way faithfully to mass, dressed quite beautifully, while I simply passed them in jeans and a bag full of strawberries. I was so humiliated, though Kayla didn’t seem to mind. We walked a few extra blocks to find a telephone boothe so we could place our first call home. Kayla went first and I waited across the street while she talked. Through the glass I could see that she was smiling and I heard her say “it’s amazing”. And I thought it was, too. I think I was just stunned more than anything, to the point of feeling completely and utterly ridiculous. My hair undone and blowing into my face as I ate strawberries on some foreign road- I couldn’t feel anymore displaced.

 Kayla hung up the phone some time later and I made my way across the street to dial home. I calculated the time difference and figured I wouldn’t get a hold of anyone on the phone, and thus waited on the dial for the answering machine. I’d tell them that the flight went well, that we landed in Rome and made our way to Assisi no problem, that it was beautiful here, and that I wished they could see what I could at that moment. I would attempt to describe to them where I was and what I saw before me. I imagined they would keep the message on the machine ’til my arrival back home.  After a few pauses the ring-tone stopped and I heard my brother’s voice tell me the number I had reached, followed by “…we’ll get back to you- thanks, and have a good day”. My heart just sank. It just fell. I don’t know what it was. It was like the sensation of being on an elevator or when you’re climbing the stairs in the dark and miss one - I just fell. I watched a ladybug make its way along the glass of the telephone boothe as I tried to immediately recall what I was going to say after the beep. I couldn’t remember. I just felt so intensely sad, and all at once. ” Hey, it’s Sandy…”- and I was done for. I wiped away the tears before Kayla could see and I managed to say that it was beautiful and that I loved them. 

 I rationalized that this feeling was temporary and that I was simply overwhelmed by the situation of being in a foreign country without those closest to me- with the exception of Kayla. Even at that, it didn’t make too much sense, but I was beyond it by the time we had wandered through a park. Though that night, I wondered,  my heart estranged as Kayla braided my hair on my bed by the balcony.

This feeling emerged once again while in Florence, days later, though the tears were much more fluent.  The day had been exhausting and the air had been thick.  At five o’clock the streets were unfamiliar, and it was as though I was walking through a station of the metro. There was color everywhere and it was far too much for me to appreciate, and all at once.  It was hard to walk at my usual tempo as bodies just pressed and passed.  We had all vowed that we would not travel alone but always with two others, at least. I thought this was a fair promise to make, one I wouldn’t be tempted to break, though I was and I had.  The girls  wanted to walk  every store that night, thrilled by all the pretty things they could purchase. I told them I was going to head back to the hotel, that I could find my way back no problem, and that I’d see them later that evening.  Our hotel was far from this metro, and somewhat deceiving in its place, as locals didn’t even know where it was when they would ask me who/ where I was staying.  I wandered from street to street, as they quietly cleared by seven o’clock.  The sun’s yolk spilled upon the town of Montacatini, and dripped out of sight, leaving  the night a purple hue.  Lightly it showered and I walked through it, deciding to finally make my way back to the hotel- which I couldn’t find.  I don’t know what I did, but the gods weren’t pleased with me, as the rain came down with such velocity.  Time had elapsed. It was getting dark and it was raining hard, to the point where I couldn’t feel the rain anymore.  I began to panic as I was drenched in rain, lost, and had that eerie feeling of being followed.  I walked down the center of the streets, so that I could visually grasp anything and anyone that could approach me. I remember turning to my side and looking back at the road I had walked. It was desolate, pink from the streetlight, narrow and confining. I was so completely lost. I stood there for a good minute or two and thought of all the worry I was bringing Kayla. I had been gone for hours. I wondered if she thought I was lost.  “Have you seen Cass?”

I thought about it and I felt guilty. I was on my way. I walked another block down that same road and turned right. There I found  a boy I was travelling with, and he was waiting by the doors of our hotel. He opened the doors for me and didn’t say two words. He never did exchange words with me that entire trip, though he spoke of me with his girlfriend,  while I was in ear-shot. He opened the doors and I thanked him as though I meant to walk through them at that time. I jogged up the two flights of cobbled stairs and up to my hotel room, which I found to be empty. They were probably in somebody else’s room down the hall or still at dinner, though evidently unconcerned with my absence. Without peeling off my wet clothes or drying my hair with a towel, I dialed Michael, my boyfriend of a year at that time. I had a calling card and I knew that he’d accept my call regardless of the hour. I remember pacing the room as I waited for him to pick up. I just needed to hear that voice.  His mum picked up and she told me she was happy to hear my voice. I was happy to hear her’s too. Truly. Michael grabbed the extension and that feeling crept back. I just fell.  I told him of where I had been, and even in the act of being lost, there was this aesthetic to it, one that I appreciated and wished he had shared with me. Through this aesthetic of losteness, I was scared, likely terrified, and having him on the other line, while I watched the rain from the open shutters, made my forehead crinkle and my eyebrows fold in fury. I couldn’t swallow and the hot tears burned down my cold cheek.  Both the call home and the call I placed that night, evoked this burning sensation that confused me, completely.  I don’t know how to describe it, really. I had seen beautiful things, walked in the rain, and alone, and I was okay. I took my photographs and cherished them upon clicking “review”. I had gotten lost. And I was okay. Terrified, but okay.  I can’t describe the sensation of refuge in the familiarity of love. It’s like when you were little and you had this epic day at school… you painted a picture, your teacher said it was lovely, you played bingo, you won, you shared your lunch and read a book in the cubby corner… you did all the things you anticipated, though when your dad came to pick you up at the end of the day, you ran into his arms, carelessly crumpling the picture you had painted and carried, ’cause it was your dad and those were his arms. And that’s what made your day… not so much the blackout on bingo or what you did with that brush that day. It was like that, I suppose.

It had been a good day, despite being lost, but I needed the refuge and the reassurance, and in those two moments as described, I felt it in its finest. I don’t believe I’ll ever forget it. Pieces of me. Occupants of my own desert places.

From the postcards I collected that hang on my wall to the letters I wrote that I hope have been stowed, I reflect upon that time and I wonder about times to come. Even now, at 1:30 am, a day before I leave to make my way home for Christmas, nearly two years after my temporary departure from this home, that feeling is setting in. Though I am older now, and as it were, “single”as I have been for some time, I wonder what and where I will seek refuge. Home, surely, though that too is evolving, but if I were, at this very moment, drenched and shaken from being lost in the rain, I wonder who I would call. Would I have anyone? Of course I’d have my family and my best friends, no doubt, though would I be able to seek refuge in a particular other? Could this ever be offered? I wonder and this increasingly becomes a question. My mid-November, I wonder. I am so unbelievably unconvinced and again I wonder…perché…

Among the coloring and chime of champagne glasses, the thousands of twinkle lights strung above, jazz tappings, and the hum of people buzzing and bumbling ’round, swaying in and out of periphery, someone asked me what I wanted, in the midst of it all.

“If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?”

 It gave my heart a great deal of swing. I looked beyond my inquirer, seduced by the twinkle of the lights beyond him. I was suddenly unconscious of my champagne glass in hand, and the hundreds of pretty dresses that pushed beside me and caught the white linen of the table, flirting loose.

My new friend caught me. Completely. Where would I be? Of course, this frightened me. If I wanted to be elsewhere, why wasn’t I? I thought on it. It’s only wasteful to commit yourself to something other than the present moment. There are people to meet, to be heard, and to be understood. Things to savvy and savour. Does it matter?

And this is why his question frightened me.  I knew exactly where I’d be. Despite whether I should know where I’d rather be or not, I knew.  ” I… I… would be…”

Why I couldn’t grasp the words, is beyond me. Like a martini, shaken and not stirred, I was drowning and swimming for words. Has this ever happened to you?

He pressed on, inquiring. “Where would you be, Cassandra?” It broke my gaze from the light. When someone says your name… the moment cannot be denounced with great passivity.  It becomes personal.  Incredibly so.

“I’d be somewhere that doesn’t confuse me”.  And I was already there.

“Why, my favorite place to be”. And with that, I fell into the percussion of my stiletto, hitting the cobbled streets to the jazz tappings of Billie Holiday’s “Them There Eyes”. 

I remember it well…

“Down each avenue or via, street or strata”. The grand cafes, glass stores, stray cats and bambini’s. The streets, crowded- people drunk with love.  I can smell espresso, and the thick cologne worn on every giovane. Beautiful brown eyes that sparkle and bubble.  Un regazzo, waiting for his mamma. “Buona Sera, Signora”.  The streets warm and worn, above them the glow of the street lights, dim and pulsing to a tarantella.  Colors on a “wet black bough”. Look back and see it blend.   The vogue of it all.  Hear a trill on the piano and watch the fountains flow to the seductive beats of 1933.  Walk the Spanish steps in your baby blue dress, watch it ripple and swish like the air, thick with thieves. Stealers of your heart. The night stained purple with a tint of mahogany. One grand urban symphony.

That’s amore.  Come romantico. Baby girls walking the ledge of the trevi with pappa’s thumb in hand. And those regazzi with their pirate smiles.  Lovers intertwined, heels swaying to the pin drop beats of the big band.  Come Bello. The night is yours, down to your three inch heels.

The stars so wise, pinned and embedded in the velvet sky, see them shine above the pillars just as wise. Walk the wrap around. Grazie and per favore. See the casas row on row. My paramount, and all those Marilyn Monroe’s.

Feel the crowds part and tangle free. See him standing there.  This one’s on me. Dancing in the streets to Chet Bakers “Isn’t it Romanic”, twirl me, catch me, dip me, laugh with me.

 And that’s where I’d be.

Dissolve into reality, swig that champagne and say ” I”d be in Rome, but how about you, where would you be?”

It’s the simple things and remembering them, as my Noah has reminded me. Call this an ode, I don’t mind, here’s to the people and things that thrill me. The things that “move ‘n groove” me as Miss Aretha would say. I doubt this will be read by anyone, but if it is, likely by someone in this “note”, whom I cherish. This is, perhaps, my way of just letting go of the people and things that consume my mind and lay heavy on my heart. Here’s to you…

• Sitting on the back of a boat with my dad in Mexico listening to Jack Johnson’s “better together”. The sun was melting into the ocean. We were on our way back from the island where we caught fish and made jambalaya on the beach in our bare feet

• Conversations with Jordan Urbani.

• When Uncle Danny calls me blue eyes.

• Mr.Dearden’s classes and appreciation for literature.

• Conversations with Adriane Dull and her parents in their kitchen.

• The first time I ever met Sarah Hill- and her family. I can’t and won’t forget it. The most embracing people I have ever come to know. You’ll walk into their home and they’ll have Otis Redding playin’ and all this soul, and they’ll ask you if you want a cup of tea while arranging flowers in their kitchen.

• Dad and I laughing hysterically at the George Cannyon  concert in Bragg when we were all singing ‘The Ring of Fire” by Cash and some guy shouted at the top of his lungs  “and it burns, burns, burns!!”

• Cullen Hamill’s mum saving me a ring with a heart on it from a cupcake.

• Deciding to leave my old junior high school without consulting anyone. I walked to my grandmother’s house with all my books and belongings and told my mum I had an appointment at Springbank Middle School the next day.

• Piano lessons from Maria, from the age of five ‘til I was 14. I’ll never forget when she showed me her daughters dress for her performance in the Calgary Philharmonic. It was blue and languid. Maria wanted me to play at her daughter’s wedding that following year.

• Football in the fall.

• Playing guitar with my brother and my dad. I always learn something.

• Receiving a 4 on the  English AP exam.

• Falling asleep in a box of Christmas lights when I was six or seven. I can still remember the feeling.

• The first day of grade two when Camille and I ran from opposite ends of a long hallway and met in the middle with the biggest hug.

• When Jillian Maki’s mum told me that my mother was an inspiration. I was in grade four and waiting outside the office. My mother had written a tribute to a former student who had lost her battle to cancer, a student who was a friend to me, as well. She was lovely and her tribute was too. “Kelly danced to the beat of her own drum”

• Mr.Naderi giving me an additional 10 percent on my Math 30 final grade for just working hard.

• Playing soccer with Pede, Sandro, Rich, Stevie, Kayla, and Brandi at midnight in an alley way in Montecatini. Only to have Kayla head the ball into someone’s backyard (who happened to own a bull dog). We argued who was going to get the ball for about an hour. Stevie jumped the fence and retrieved Sandro’s notorious soccer ball. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone run so hard and fast in my life.

• Babysitting the Monohagn  kids and doing the “Madeline voice” for them. Their bedtime kisses, our trampoline tents, and talks in the long grass were my favorite

• . Kim Keller impersonating Mick Jagger.

• Being with the Urbani’s, Johnsons, and Keller’s. Singing into mops and empty bottles ‘til 4am. Anytime.

• Conversations with Daniel.

• My parents laughing at me when I failed my driver’s test and started to cry.

• My 18^th Birthday and reading cards ‘til 5am. I never felt so blessed.

• Having two articles published for Mr.Faber’s “newspaper”.

• Meeting and being friends with Matt Lajoie. He’s shown me a side to music I neglected to appreciate. Hearing ‘Impossible Germany’ live from Wilco, with Matt, was awesome.

• Having dinner at Nonna’s with Andrew, Noah, and Sarah. These people complete me. When I watch Bridget Jones’ diary and her friends toast “to Bridget, just the way she is” I think of Andrew, Noah, and Sarah. I would toast to their being anytime, and I know they’d take me just the way I am.

• Receiving a grade no less than 100% on Hodgeson’s essays.

• Dinners with the Ciaramella’s, and having my own tub of “special” ice-cream at their house.

• Sitting beside Marco on the flight to Italy. 10 hours felt like 10 minutes

• The Matheson’s. I felt honored to celebrate Kayla’s 17^th birthday with just her and her family.  Having tea at Mr.Matheson’s was and is exceptional, too. His apartment is like being inside a jewel box.

• Free desserts/ conversations from Franco at Buon Giorno’s and his guaranteed question: “still single?” (Might I point out, Franco is 43)

• Having the privilege to befriend, know, and work for Ronnie Knowles. The first time we met was in his coffee shop, down the dirt road from my high school (which is in the middle of nowhere). We talked for nearly 2 hours, at random. Working for Ronnie and Susan was one of the best experiences of my life.

• Blue jeans and white t-shirts.

• John Mayer concert with Mike Pede

• Paul’s dad calling me “Sassa” for the last 15 years

• Beers with Dad & Eric Clapton

• Carine. She’s just lovely.

• Swimming out to sea with my dad in Mexico

• Finding old records

• When James Slater talks to you and places his hand on your shoulder and starts off with “oh man…”

• The old man at ‘My Favorite Ice Cream Shoppe’ who plays the piano.

• Spending a day with Joel Steeves.

• When you’re driving and can’t stop smiling ’cause you’re thinkin’ about someone

• Baby girls in polka dotted dresses

• knowing what you want in this life. clarity.

• Wearing extra-large wool sweaters to the beach at night

• when words become superfulous

• feelin’ and knowing the words “I love you”

• thoughtfulness

• serendipity

• the city lights

You’re born. And you grow. You grow to find that the leaves look different from how they did ten years ago. They look like how they used to. And how they used to was something you never could apprehend before, they just were and they just was. They fell and upon you. Stuck in your hair, in the hood of your jacket and on the bottom of your boots. They followed you home after school, blown in on some October day. Of course, you never cared to notice. There were other things, too. Things to believe.
You believed in his guitar strings. On summer eves they, those strings, were the last of what you would hear before the night washed over. And some mornings, when your curtains filled with air like the sails of a ship, they, those strings, were the first thing you heard. And you believed in them. You were home and you could hear it and you could feel it. It was music to your ears, drooling thick like honey from a comb. Still, there were other things to believe and to find, too.

Like less is more. The snowflakes on your lashes, and how they made you laugh. Like all good things never last. The yolk of the sun drippin’ out of sight, its pink residue leaving you enough light to find your way back home from the park. Like only fools rush in. The first pangs of love? Or lust. Like the moment. The rain in Florence sliding down your shoulders. Like Carpe Diem. Your feet ache from dancing at your cousins Wedding. Like quality not quantity. They’re watching you blow out sixteen candles. They care. And always will. They can laugh at you when those same sixteen candles have burnt your hair. You’re crying, not ‘cause of the smoke of the candles, or your hair, but because you’re laughing so damn hard. Like Da Vinci’s perception of simplicity. Ultimate sophistication. It’s the way the sun filters the blue of his iris’ eyes. He’s looking back at you in his Phoenix football jersey. He’s 14. And he’s grinnin’ at you. Like he did when he was three. And you were the only person that could make him laugh. Like Landslide. The changing seasons and ocean tides. The lights comin’ up in her eyes. Christmas ’99. You always loved the glow of the office buildings. You felt you were in Manhattan. White linen off the clothesline. Basil in the house. Picking tomatoes. Church bells and the knell of time. Spring. Cherries and Vogue in the summertime. Front porch lovin’.

And then came the leaves.

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

La vita e bella.

You watch them fall. The leaves. You drive through them. You’re on your way home. What is home. Where is it. You found it, but what is it. Is it a place or an idea. You grew up way too fast. You blinked. You’re not sure. Maybe home is wherever you are. “Scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far.” Maybe it’s exactly where you are, and where you are lies in his eyes, and his guitar strings, and her white linen. The Florence rain. Letters and postcards. Pain and its gain. The light coming up in your eyes. Don’t think of things you could have done. Or how the clouds got in the way. “It’s clouds illusions I recall”. Don’t give yourself away. Indeed, I’ve looked at life this way.