Several weeks ago Pa and I decided to take the ferry to Patras, rather than the longer journey around northern Italy to Greece. There being no easy way to get from San Giovanni to Brindisi, we chose to spend a couple of days along the way in Taranto - three local trains on Trenitalia rail with little room for error.
The leg to Paola went as scheduled, as did Paolo to Sibari, where we’d have a short wait.
Arriving in the rain,
we discovered the wait would be longer, due to a sixty minute train delay.
It being an open air station and the temperature hovering around forty, we headed out, finding a little kabob place not far away. What looked good on the menu was wanting in some respects.
Nevertheless, it was filling.
Returning to the station, we passed the time studying the only thing we could find of interest.
The 564 eventually arrived with an engineer intent on making up for lost time. Somehow he shaved thirty minutes off the projected two hours, pulling into his final stop of the day, the Italians on board generally pleased with the outcome.
But it was really dark,
and no apparent way to get the 3 miles to Nonna Maria’s B&B but walk.
It’s a funny thing about Italian taxi drivers. They seem to know when someone is on foot. Within a block we had a ride. Ten minutes later we were there. Or so we thought. Up and down the street we looked for Nonna’s place, but without success.
Finally we asked a tall lanky fellow lurking in the shadows. Of course he knew and within a couple of minutes we were buzzing for Nonna. A young man showed up at the door, introducing himself as Giuseppe. Nonna’s son we assumed.
Turns out there is no Nonna. Being an entrepreneur - Giuseppe owns four B&B’s and is in the process of buying a hotel - he thought foreigners would be more likely to book at Nonna’s rather than Giuseppe’s. Fair enough.
But then we were told we wouldn’t be staying there as he had a “very nice place” for us, just down the street. We got a little suspicious. But what were the options?
Five minutes later, and on a deserted side street, we were there.
It all went well after that, as it almost always does, and soon we were curled up with Harris’ Pompeii, two days before the eruption,
and nearly everyone clueless.
By ten it was lights out, but then midnight and an incoming text from Juliann. She’d sent a new tune by The Lonely Bellow.
If you're homesick
It's your heart telling your mind that you love somebody
If you got regrets
There's a possibility that you got something to check off your list
It's a long walk home and a short life to live . . .
Hmmmmm. I think Ju meant well, but it kept us up for awhile, thinking about loneliness, and solitude, and the considerable differences. The ache of one and the necessity of the other.
After a while I went to Notes, where I keep, and regularly add to, a number of Folders: Recipes, Good Reads, Inspiration, Poems, Quotes. I started browsing, looking for reminders.
There was Nietsche
No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life.
Herman Hesse
You must unlearn the habit of being someone else or nothing at all, of imitating the voices of others and mistaking the faces of others for your own.
E.E. Cummings
To be but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which one human being could fight.
And the short-story writer Elizabeth Bishop
. . . I now see a wonderful cold rocky shore in the Falklands, or a house in Nova Scotia on the bay, exactly like my grandmother’s, unbearable as the reality would be. But I think everyone should go through a stretch of it. Perhaps it’s a recurrent need.
About the time Ju was eighteen, I gave her a copy of a poem by Mary Oliver,
A month ago she sent it back with a thank you, having found inspiration in it at a time when she was considering a major career change that would require her, Adam, Lorelai and Freddie to relocate.
The Journey
. . . but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do,
determined to save
the only life you could save.
I’ve added it to Notes, along with the other reminders that we’re never too old to save the only life we can save.
Maybe Fabio gave Giuseppe the up front that a Yank named Fred, who talks to his “imaginary friend“ named Pa, were coming his way.