Is it too early to look back at the year? If anything, 2011 has been a bridge over a gap for me, a time of massive transition if not quite transformation. I always hope for adventure, romance, and riches when I read my horoscope for the year ahead, but, truth be told, this one's gone pretty well. There's little to report. Few hard facts. And yet something has shifted in me. Tonight I looked out the window of the cab I was riding home in, and thought, are you doing what you were meant to do? would it all be alright if you turned to dust? The answer, of course, was no. The big answer? I'm not sure. I was talking to a friend today on my old phone, explaining how much I look forward to reinventing myself each January when all of my projects begin anew and I can re-design outmoded relationships, models and ways of thinking as they pertain to how I conduct my business, and life. I said that, while I don't have the answers yet, I'm confident they'll come to mind. I do know, though, that I thought about Rome today, three different times, and all in the context of steps. First, slipping as I descended the marble spiral stairs in between floors in my hotel, in the dark, and being profoundly grateful to have landed with a simple thump, seated, my dress, pooling, with my fur, in a dark cascade around me, nothing more than surprised. Second, the Spanish Steps, where I stopped in at Sermoneta and came out with long saffron gloves. They, more than anything, harbinger the harvest season to me now. Third, wandering the vast halls of the Palazzo Barberini, across the piazza from where I stayed, and becoming lost in the endless twisting stairwells; frustrated, until I appreciated my challenge for what it was: a princippessa problem, and my path.
Related, from the Lux Lotus archive: Letter From Rome (2009).
“To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.” Goethe
Posted by: Marco | September 27, 2011 at 08:59 PM