posts with no pictures

I apologize in advance for the lack of imagery and the sparse postings. Being here poses technological difficulties, and the swarm of thoughts that I can hardly keep track of when I finally do have a moment on a computer have hard time materializing as a concrete post. Nevertheless, here are a few ancedotes and rememberances of the last few months:

The fat Chilean in Milan has trouble keeping his pants on when he is drunk. He has invested in a pair of suspenders, but a little too late to save his reputation at the neighborhood bar, where he has been banned regardless of how many pretty young women he brings with him as an offering.

The rain follows us from country to country, making the farmers we meet happy, and us rather sad as the days go by in perpetual gloom. Books have been a solace, but a solace can never fully erase the dark clouds and wind that shake the shutters at night.

Food is an addiction, and particularly good food; an obsession. I find myself dreaming of bread, cheese, sausages, fish, gelato, and various other Italian delicacies, and have gained a few pounds in the month that I have been here. I desperately need the camino.

Sheep are indeed helpless rather pathetic animals. Two were eaten by wolves during our last days in Tuscany. We found the larger ones mostly eaten carcass with its head and bell still attached. Not a trace was found of Linda the lamb.

sicilia

Lemons. Their scent. Their thorns. The scratches left on my arms. The Sicilian sun burns, strong even as the air is cool. Fresh ricotta, a wood fired oven, the smell of smoke still deeply imbedded in my clothes. Pepe and his family, the sicilian dialect, seemingly impenterable until it suprisingly is intelligible.

Bth farms here in Italy have left their marks on me. The work is straightforward, the rewards are generous and abundant, the weather a friend and foe. Magna Greca, the Jewel of the Ionian and Mediterrean soon will be a glorious memory of flavors, frangrances, and sights. And then we'll walk.