Florence: November 24, 2017
Day 066 of “Something You Protect”
We left directly from Siena to a place I could not have imagined.
The hills of Tuscany were wrapped in fog. We parked the car and followed the road on foot. The mist revealed more of the old carcass of San Galgano with each second. A bolt of lightning had crashed the tower into the roof, and this church was deemed unholy 3 years later. This was around the time of the French Revolution. There was still sanctity there, the silence and images of old wishes prayed so hard the stone carried them still.
Above the church was an old hermit’s home. In that chapel, I saw a sword in a stone. A dozen cats came to the archway, and an old woman told us cats are like people in that they are both so often abandoned. Her family doesn’t seem to want to help her and her husband. She hated the cats. I looked her in the eye. I stayed there while she raged until she eventually went back to work the shop. Alesso and I drove on.
I never thought I would be back here in Florence, especially with such a good friend as Alesso. We stopped in a bookstore called Todo Modo. Alesso found me a collection of essays on semiotics, and I bought him an Italian version of Hannah Arendt’s Violence. He didn’t know it was a gift to him, and I signed it while he was still away looking.
I smacked him in the chest with it, “Thank you, my friend.”
“For me?” flipping through the pages.
“Absolutely. Thank you for sharing so much with me.”
“I’ve never read this.”
“You’ll love it.”
He rages against the destiny of his small town with books and ideas. He gripped the weight of this new tool in his hands, “Thank you,” he said with the density of a feather.
After, we went to Le Giubbe Rosse. This cafe was a place known for intellectual powers. Montale was here, the futurists, Dali, and Tzara. We had an aperitivo, and we both said “Ciao, Montale,” as we exited.
More soon,
Trevor