Dante on the Move

Tag: religion

  • Over the Misty Mountains: From Marradi to San Benedetto in Alpe

    I said goodbye to Pope Francis, was humbled by the kindness of strangers, and struggled over the staggering mountains.

    It’s common that Italian bars and restaurants have TV’s on in the background, so over a breakfast of a croissant and cake I watched as the news anchor looked back on Pope Francis’ life. There was no doubt about it, he had been an incredible man. 

    Although I’m not a Catholic, for all intents and purposes it seemed he had been a good Pope too.

    I recalled how struck I had been when he’d blessed arriving migrant ships in Lampedusa and washed the feet of refugees. The news reported that migrants, along with homeless people and individuals in prison, had been among those invited to his funeral. Pope Francis had also spoken out about climate change. He would be sorely missed.

    500,000 pilgrims had descended on Rome to pay their respects. Kelsey, who lived there in an apartment by the Colosseum, said that the atmosphere was electric.

    I reflected that Prince William looked handsome with a beard and wondered how the encounter between Trump and Zelensky would go down. I had watched the entire video of his ritual humiliation at the hands of Trump and Vance at the Whitehouse and was left with the feeling that I had witnessed an act of bulling and extreme abuse occur upon the screen.

    11,000 police and security officers had been mobilized by the Italian state. 

    I watched Starmer greet Meloni with a kiss on the cheek and was reminded of the cruel recent UN approval for offshore processing centres for asylum seekers, a policy the UK had borrowed from Italy. 

    Franco appeared from between two baby chairs.

    ‘Buongiorno!’ he saluted me. He was wearing shorts and looked almost German with his fair hair and skinny legs. 

    ‘Buongiorno,’ I replied. 

    ‘Ah yes, the Pope of the people, he was,’ reflected Franco.

    I thought of Dante’s tumultuous relationship with the Popes, many of whom he’d put in Hell where they were buried in the ground headfirst with their feet on fire.

    ‘O Simon Magus! O his sad disciples!
    Rapacious ones, who take the things of God,
    that ought to be the brides of Righteousness,

    and make them fornicate for gold and silver!
    The time has come to let the trumpet sound
    for you; your place is here in this third pouch.’

    In this canto, Inferno 19, the prostituting of the Church-bride by her Pope-bridegroom picks up and metaphorises the sexualized language of previous parts of the Inferno. This canto is the first of several indictments of the Church in the Divine Comedy. Indeed, it picks up on some earlier indications that Dante links the clerical establishment with the sin of avarice. In Inferno 7 he says that he sees cardinals and popes among the misers in the fourth circle:

    ‘ These to the left—their heads bereft of hair—

    were clergymen, and popes and cardinals,

    within whom avarice works its excess.’

    I was captivated by the news but I had to get moving. Today was a long one and starting at 9 was already a bit ambitious, Franco warned me.

    He noted that one of my hiking poles was broken and I followed his gaze.

    ‘I don’t suppose you have any glue or something to fix it,’ I asked.

    His face lit up. 

    ‘I have just the thing’, he said.

    My host disappeared into a back room with the broken pole and reemerged ten minutes later. He had completely fixed it. It was sturdy as the mast of a ship.

    ‘But how did you manage that?’ I questioned.

    ‘Ah, it’s a secret,’ came his reply. ‘A bit of magic and good will.’

    I was beyond grateful. I was also grateful that after I’d finished my third espresso macchiato Franco handed me a fruit juice bottled filled with espresso.

    ‘You’ll need this,’ he said, ‘it’s for the road.’ 

    One of the passes I would cross today was named ‘Hell’s Hill.’

    I tucked it into my bag, delighted.

    I carefully removed a tick from my stomach as I watched a lady place flowers in boxes outside her store from the window. I realized I’d left my glasses and moisturizer at a previous hotel and was grateful for my contact lenses and Vaseline which I applied to my chapped face instead. 

    And with that, I set off back into the mountains. I saluted Franco. He left me his number in case I needed anything. He had been another ‘trail angel,’ as Kelsey called them.

    Though I had enjoyed by brief interlude from the 24-hour news cycle during my cammino, now I listened to the BBC World Service as I ascended out of the town. The Pope’s funeral was about to start and I was curious about how it would be covered. 

    It was a sunny but fresh day and I’d known better than to wear shorts. It would be cold up in the mountains and so I’d put on my trousers.

    There was no two ways about it, the ascent out of the city was steep. My back and shoulders hurt today as well as my feet. Today was going be a beast. I could feel my calf muscles twinging to life. I’d done some gentle stretching the night before but this was a burn.

    The sweat dripped off my nose and my hands slid, sweaty, on my poles. I had only been going for 20 minutes!

    A few mountain bikers past who I saluted – it was a sport I’d never tried. Someone had laid stones at the bottom of a line of trees like a familiar cairn. 

    I’d felt on the edge of tears for the last few days. Maybe today would be the day.

    I drank water liberally since I was counting on stopping at the Hermitage to restock on the way.

    I was religiously checking directions. I really didn’t want to add time to what would already be a super long day.

    The radio informed me that there had been a bishop in Rome for over 2000 years and that there were 1.4 billion Catholics in the world. Pope Francis had spoken out against the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. He had said that ‘a pastor should never lose the smell of his flock.’

    50 heads of state and ten monarchs were in attendance. 40,000 celebrants filled St Peter’s Square and 100,000 more were crowded before large screens on the Italian side of the border. The Vatican was, after all, its own city state.

    Someone said that the Argentinian Pope had even been able to do the impossible, make Brazilians forget their football rivalry and connect across the border. He had been a champion of interfaith dialogue.

    Then came the 10am news bulletin. Trump’s administration had deported a two-year-old to Honduras in breach of due process. Of course he had. This is what I hadn’t missed about listening to the news. I felt sick at the thought to it and recalled the poem:

    ‘First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
         Because I was not a socialist.

    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
         Because I was not a trade unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
         Because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.’

    I followed the first of two detours that had been designed to avoid landslides, adding about two kilometres to my route. I dodged another group of mountain bikers, one of whom was topless. 

    It was very muddy on the path and I was immensely grateful for my poles to help me avoid a slip. Franco, you angel!

    There emerged a big rain cloud and the wind picked up.

    The radio continued with its commentary of Pope Francis’ funeral. 130 delegations were in attendance. Putin was not. He would have been arrested by international warrant if he’d set foot on Italian soil.

    Pontiff, I leaned, means ‘bridge builder’.

    In other news, North Korea had launched a new missile ship. What a world.

    A group of scouts came hiking towards me in the opposite direction. They saluted me cheerfully. Their backpacks suggested they were campers. I hoped for them as well as for myself that the rain would hold.

    I lost signal as I approached the Hermitage of Gamogna where an order of sisters lived and prayed. I passed two such nuns, one of whom was wearing a wooly hat, and they invited me to enjoy the church. The complex, a sign informed me, had been founded in 1053.

    I took off my cap as I entered the simple stone building and took awhile to sit on a pew and rest. It was incredibly tranquil. Before I left, I signed the prayer book.

    ‘With the wish of peace to all refugees and that I may complete this cammino,’ I wrote.

    I ate half of my controversial tuna and cheese sandwich in the pretty courtyard and refilled my water tank from an outside tap by which there was an abanonded toothbrush. I also drank half of the coffee that Franco had so kindly prepared for me. 

    Yum.

    A French couple were having a picnic and a couple of other hikers were making their way up to the church.

    It was 12.30pm. I followed the. prominent Cammino di Dante signs up to a field that was cordoned off with barbed wire – that’s not very nun-like, I thought. Then I crawled under it. My anorak was snagged. Would I regret this?

    I looked back at Oliver’s messages and texted him, waiting for his advice. There were footprints; somebody had come before.

    The woodland I entered was dotted with little wildflowers that looked like miniature violet pansies, and here was the familiar sprinkle of primroses.

    I exited the patch of woodland through another barbed wire fence, but this one, I noted, had a gate mechanism you could cross through and a sign that clearly indicated that livestock were grazing. I must have missed the gate in the previous fence. The nuns were ok after all. 

    Oliver had helpfully signaled to me where the path goes right off the road – it would be would be easy to miss – and up, up I went along a dirt path. 

    It was now 2 o’clock and I was about halfway. I was hungry. I ate some more of my sandwich. I was so grateful Franco for fixing my pole. Today’s hike would have been near impossible without it.

    The brooding clouds delivered the first spits of rain. I crossed a field with the sign, ‘Attention, wild bull!’ and crossed a pass called ‘Hell’s Hill’.

    I followed a man who was walking slowly with stick behind his back. We kept pace. I was about ten metres behind. The path was now lined with a brown brush-like plant. 

    It was still two hours to the waterfall. I wouldn’t get there before six, I realized.

    I was straddling the border between Tuscany and Emelia Romagna as I walked, observing stunning sweeping panoramic views of the mountains which were many shades of green. I stopped to observe from mushrooms sprouting on a log. Enrico would have known how to identify them. 

    A hawk swept across the landscape, crying out. This was the only sound I heard as I started the descent. 

    The cloud hung heavy in lines over the mountains and as I walked, slabs of sedimentary rocks came unstuck from the cliffside. I was trotting again down the steep bank. Patches of a new plant appeared. Was it a kind of hellebore?

    Now, as I passed a small permaculture plantation where two hippy-like women were chatting, I could hear the waterfall of Acquacheta. And then there it was: I got the first glimpse of the roaring tundra which spouted water from the top of the sky.

    Dante references this impressive waterfall explicitly in the Divine Comedy. In Inferno, canto 16, he writes,

    ‘And even as the river that is first
    to take its own course eastward from Mount Viso,
    along the left flank of the Apennines

    (which up above is called the Acquacheta,
    before it spills into its valley bed
    and flows without that name beyond Forli),

    reverberates above San Benedetto
    dell’Alpe as it cascades in one leap,
    where there is space enough to house a thousand;

    so did we hear that blackened water roar
    as it plunged down a steep and craggy bank,
    enough to deafen us in a few hours.’

    A young couple were cuddling on a bench beside the torrent and a family with two children were accompanied by a golden retriever. 

    ‘Let’s wait for mamma,’ said one of the children to the other, ‘it’s too slippery.’

    As I contemplated the abundance of water, my own tears finally came. I let gulped down sobs as I slid my feet through the boggy path. 

    I was alone and I realized stopping for a rest on a stone bench just how much my feet hurt. I had another bite of my sandwich. It was 4.30pm so I still had a good three hours of light. I pulled out my laptop to check where I was staying and let the happy family go on ahead of me.

    Once I was back on the trail I passed another couple. A woman cried out, 

    ‘Mamma Mia, the water shines like a crystal!’

    It did. At the bottom of the cascade the water collected in iridescent turquoise pools.

    Each time my stick got stuck in the mud I thought of Franco once more with enormous gratitude.

    Now wasn’t a good time to be alone with my thoughts and I was reassured by the cries of the children ahead. One of them had written ‘Forza Milano’ on a rock using a stone as a pen.

    I passed another smaller waterfall and a refuge to my left. I was entering a zone for protected fish, a sign informed me. 

    I crossed two rickety bridges and tried to ignore the cramps in my feet which were becoming intolerable. I was an hour from my hostel still and the path was now largly up.

    I passed a little girl with Barbie and a man on a vesper. A couple were taking a sausage dog for a walk. If they could do it, I could.

    As I arrived in the village, I passed two elderly bearded men who were selling eggs and honey. I had never been so happy to see a recycling bottle bank which announced that I had made it to the town.

    I passed a campsite up the windy hill and finally made it to my accommodation for the night, Ostello il Vignale. It was very basic, a room of bunkbeds with a shared old-school drop toilet and very thin blanket that would do little to keep me warm during the night. 

    The church bell sounded out six and with that, exhausted emotionally and physically, in the words of Dante when he is overcome in canto five of Inferno,

    ‘I fell like a dead body falls.’

  • An Infinite Spring: From Castel San Niccolò to Casalino

    The expansive green landscapes and spectacular church complex of Romena will have you dreaming.

    The first thing I did in the morning was to line my eyes with a thick rim of turquoise eye liner I had purchased along with sun cream in the town pharmacy yesterday. Meeting Anna in Montemignaio had left a big impression on both of us with her organic, healthy way of life and I sought to emulate something of her serenity. I wouldn’t be able to keep sheep with my work schedule and pickling my own walnuts appeared too much labour, so make-up seemed like a good enough place to start. 

    ‘Sei Bellissima,’ said Alina. And with that, we grooved on down to the song of the same name by Annalisa. 

    Then she introduced me to her chat GBT mentor. He’d searched me up online and recited a shockingly accurate amount of information in a friendly tone. 

    I’m a luddite. On this trip she is teaching me how to use the new technology my students swear by.

    We had another delicious breakfast of pesto toast on the patio in the rising sun and were up and at ‘em and back on the Dante trail by 8am. We passed houses where dried grain hung outside the porch. It shone golden in the sunlight. A child who looked about 8 sped past on a motorbike.

    The stunning hilly scenery around Castel San Niccolò is interrupted by industry. The path is thick with hoof prints and acorn shells and lined with buttercups, dandelions and grape hyacinth. Butterflies and petals from the blossoming trees sweep across on the wind. 

    Interrupting the hedgerows are flaming trees the colour or Alina’s hair. 

    We saw the first cows of our trip, stopped to pet a number of horses and were hissed at by geese who appeared menacingly above the fence like the three-headed Cerberus. 

    On our way out of the town we crossed a stream. Alina had the sense to remove her trainers and traverse it barefoot. 

    I got wet feet. 

    I feel like Virgil would have chastised Dante for this stupidity as he does many times on their journey together through Hell and Purgatory. Alina just laughed. 

    We’d spent the last couple of days crunching through brown leaves in a climate that could have been mistaken for autumn if it were not for the primroses. But exiting the forest today, it felt like Spring had truly come. A gentle hike up afforded expansive views across the surrounding hills. The sun shone brightly on our faces and now it was my turn to be reminded of England. Alina said it also recalled Crimea where she would spend her holidays as a child.

    As we stopped in a field next to a towering hay bale which was taller than me at five foot two, I was reminded of the poem L’Infinito  by Giacomo Leopardi, an Italian poet born in 1798 in Naples. 

    The Infinite

    ‘This solitary hill has always been dear to me
    And this hedge, which obscures from me
    The endless horizon. 
    But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts,
    Endless spaces beyond the hedge,
    An all-encompassing silence and a deeply profound quiet,
    To the point that my heart is quite overwhelmed. 
    And when I hear the wind rustling through the trees
    I compare its voice to the infinite silence. 
    And I recall eternity, and all the ages past,
    And the present time, and its sound. 
    Amidst this immensity my thought drowns:
    And to flounder in this sea is sweet to me.’

    ‘Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle,
    e questa siepe, che da tanta parte
    dell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
    Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
    spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
    silenzi, e profondissima quïete
    io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
    il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
    odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
    infinito silenzio a questa voce
    vo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno,
    e le morte stagioni, e la presente
    e viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa
    immensità s’annega il pensier mio:
    e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.’

    Once again, I’ve taken a stab at my own translation. ‘Naufragar’ – to flounder or to drown? I wish I had Anna’s Zingarelli dictionary.

    The poem, written in the Marche region in 1819, is a prescient nod to the modern mindfulness movement. This is something my colleague Will at the University of Birmingham refers to in a recent work as ‘McMindfulness’ for its ubiquitousness in social prescribing. Every other person seems to have an app on their phone, but how mindful are we really? 

    Leopardi’s poem reminds us that contemplating the infinite nature of the horizon when in nature can return us to a sense of peace. It’s not quite the same as having a low-pitched American drawl telling us to ‘feel our feelings and let them drift by like clouds in the sky’, but it’s something akin to it and dare I say superior?

    Alina and I spent a moment of silence contemplating the hedges and horizons around us and were quietly moved. 

    Walking up to the steep path to the rural church and complex of San Pietro a Romena, we were greeted by a man selling groceries from a battered old vehicle. At first, I thought it was an ice-cream van – damn. But it turned out to be a worthy pit stop anyway. 

    ‘Where are you from?’

    We replied.

    ‘Oh shit, there’s a war in your country,’ he told Alina.

    ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ she said. 

    ‘Bastardi, those who make war should make love,’ he continued, a look of lust creeping over his narrow eyes.

    Raffaele was eating straight from a can of tuna from which the tin lid flapped like a fin over the side. He had breadcrumbs around what he called his ‘muzzle’ and beseeched us to ‘stop and eat something with me!’ 

    He had a fuel stove and paper plates in his van. 

    We kindly refused the offer – we had a Tupperware full of treats from the deli yesterday to attend to. Alina said the way the salads had mixed together reminded her of the first day of January in Ukraine where you eat all the leftovers. She is a stickler for not wasting food.

    We purchased fresh strawberries and a huge bag of peanuts in their wrinkly shells for 5 euros and went on our way after exchanging a sweaty, and perhaps slightly too familiar, hug.

    San Pietro a Romena is a tranquil oasis which extends way beyond the Parish church over the cascading fields. 

    Located on the slopes of the hill dominated by the remains of the castle of the Guidi Counts, on the right bank of the Arno, in the territory of the municipality of Pratovecchio Stia, the baptismal church is a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture. 

    The building, declared a national monument for its importance, was built in 1152. The place name of Etruscan origin, Romena probably already housed a temple that was readapted in Roman times. A Christian building later rose on the pagan building. 

    Descending under the staircase on the right wall, you can admire the traces under the present raised presbytery of an early medieval church built between the eighth and ninth centuries.

    Art adorns the church, though it is simple: rustic tapestries and painted wooden panels.

    Volunteers were cleaning and delicately placing olive branches in preparation for Palm Sunday. 

    Surrounding the church is a range of art, a conference suite, a meditation room, a café, bookshop, and gardens containing medicinal herbs and olive groves. There is no escaping the sense of tranquility afforded by the expansive complex. 

    A blend of Tracy Chapman and reggae played in the background as we perused the gift shop which was run by another spectacular 80-year-old woman who wore fashionable round, green glasses and a coral necklace. Behind the till, on the wall, friends had photoshopped her face and a glass of wine onto an image of the fashion icon, Iris Apfel with the quote, 

    ‘First they say enough, you’re crazy, then they make you a saint.’ 

    We admired her massive rings. One was made of silver, transformed into a circle of beads that encased a large labradorite. 

    ‘Oh cool,’ came the voice of Alina as she pawed a book about one of her favourite singers, Gianmaria Testa. It turned out he had performed here. The singer and guitarist, who died in 2016, is something of an Italian Leonard Cohen, though in his lifetime he didn’t receive the same critical acclaim.

    Throughout his musical career, Testa continued to work as a station master at the train station in Cuneo. One quote from the book read,

    ‘Poetry is literature’s form of combat.’

    A dozen other quotes and pieces of art were scattered across the complex. These included a steel silhouette of Banky’s Girl with Balloon and a beautiful white sculpture of a couple embracing.

    On an old door there appeared the words,

    ‘Everyone is looking for a bit of bread, a bit of affection and to feel at home somewhere.’

    The place was very quiet, but we were informed that on Sundays it attracts up to 1,000 people, as we would soon find out.

    ‘The door is always open’, the lady in the café informed us.

    A wooden placard beside the door displayed a quote by Marcel Proust,

    ‘Real travel doesn’t mean looking for new lands, but having new eyes.’

    A sign in the café read,

    ‘A coffee, 3 euros’

    ‘A coffee please, 2 euros.’

    ‘Hello, may I have a coffee please, 1 euro.’

    After a peaceful break, we hiked up the hill to Branda font. It is referenced by Dante in Inferno, canto 30 which depicts mutilated souls who, as follows the principle of contrapasso whereby the sin becomes the punishment, have been damned for representational and economic fraud.

    Dante was clearly struck by the streams and hills of the Casantino landscape too and likely stayed in the castle on the hill. He writes of one soul from Romena who counterfeited money,

    ‘The rivulets that fall into the Arno
    down from the green hills of the Casentino
    with channels cool and moist, are constantly

    before me; I am racked by memory—
    the image of their flow parches me more
    than the disease that robs my face of flesh.

    There is Romena, there I counterfeited
    the currency that bears the Baptist’s seal;
    for this I left my body, burned, above.’

    Dante then stages a meeting with Guido, Alessandro, or their brother,

    ‘I’d not give up the sight for Fonte Branda.’ He writes. Dante also mentions the Castle of Romena where the forger Adamo produced his florins.

    The punishment of those in Hell is that they are perpetually tormented by memories of their past lives without being able to move forward. 

    Alina and I moved forward, walking past the castle through an avenue of lego green cyprus trees.

    On our descent into the town of Pratovecchio, we encountered rusty tractors pulling ploughs in fields and beehives buzzing with life. It was easy to imagine Dante here, sat beside one of the many streams. Time seemed to have stopped in this part of Tuscany, if it were not for the electric cables and roar of motorbikes on the asphalt road.

    In Prato Vecchio, known for the swallows that inhabit its grand porches, we stopped for a drink in a small café where we met a musician, theatre producer and yogi from the south of Italy, called Massimo Kyo. He had medium-long hair which was half tied back and kind eyes. He told us his second name had come to him in a dream. 

    Like Raffaele, Massimo Kyo also asked us where we were from. But he was somewhat more diplomatic in his reply when Alina responded with ‘Ukraine.’

    ‘Oh…I mean, how do you feel?’

    She was surprised at the question – ‘no one ever asks me that,’ she said. 

    During the next hour of casual conversation he informed us that ‘Casentino is a magical place where you meet the people you have to meet’.

    When we shared that we were on the Dante trail he offered up the theory that Dante had experimented with natural drugs to enter his imaginative afterlife. 

    ‘Young people here go and look for mushrooms that grow in cow shit nearby,’ he explained.

    Massimo kindly offered for us to use any of his music or jingles we liked for the podcast we have been recording as we walk and invited us to spend the next day together, saving Alina’s number in his phone as ‘Alina walker’.

    I went to pay in the bar, commenting that I liked the tattoos of the bartender, one of which showed the stylized outline of a little girl holding her mother’s hand. 

    ‘Oh, this is my little girl who never was,’ she explained.

    ‘She’s beautiful,’ came my reply.

    The toilet was an old school squat. 

    We spent Sunday, our rest day, with Massimo, returning to Romena where he showed us his favourite spots. They included the Via della Resurrezione – the Path of Resurrection. On the way a sign read,

    ‘Before long you will do something new, in fact you’ve already started, don’t you see it?’

    The path ,which was pitted with art, flowed through the olive groves , ending in a stunning waterfall that fell into a turquoise pool the colour of my eyeliner. We sat and Massimo asked if we’d like to sing some mantras together.   

    We did.   

    I was taken back to Sri Lanka and to Tye, my mantra teacher who would bring us all to tears with her harmonium singing the Ganesh Maha Mantra, Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha.

    Thereafter we discussed our hopes and dreams. I shed a tear as I declared that one of mine was to finish the cammino. 

    ‘You will,’ Massimo sagely confirmed. 

    Though I don’t believe in God and think this life is all we have to make what we can of it, I really did feel like a pilgrim.

    Perhaps I do have a latent spiritual side after all. 

    Before we left, we returned to the giftshop where I bought Alina the Gianmaria Testa book and, at Massimo’s advice, some ‘nardo’ oil, made at the property.

    Known in English as Spikenard, nard, nardin, or muskroot, nardo is a class of aromatic amber-colored essential oil that comes from a flowering plant in the honeysuckle family. The oil has been used over centuries as a perfume, a traditional medicine, or in religious ceremonies across a wide territory, from India to Europe. It is said that the Virgin Mary used it to anoint the body of Jesus when he was removed from the cross.

    Back outside, Alina gifted me a beautiful artisanal necklace that she had bought which depicts an almond tree. The accompanying card contains a quote from Luigi Verdi,

    ‘Like the almond tree, you are the first to flower and the last to give fruit.’

    ‘It reminded me of you and your Dante book,’ Alina explained. ‘You’re flowering now, and you have to trust that the fruit will come.’

    On the way back, Massimo took us to the supermarket, kindly relieving us of the one hour hike up to Casalino we had done yesterday which would have been strenuous with shopping bags, however beautiful with its surrounding fields and pathway through the ‘park of endangered fruit trees’. Alina had experienced foot cramps on the steep hill and so we’d stopped to record our podcast overlooking the fertile valley which was lit up by the sunshine like a strip light over a painting in a gallery. 

    I bought Massimo a little succulent with three buds,

    ‘It’s us,’ I said. 

    He blinked a few times and smiled.

    Back at our air b and b we had an aperitivo with a selection of regional cheeses and made daisy chains in the pretty garden which we accessed from our apartment, number 74, via terracotta steps. 

    Alina’s method involved plaiting the flowers together whereas mine relied on poking holes in the stems and threading them through. I was thrilled to do this since as I child I bit my nails and was unable to do so. 

    I was reminded of Dante’s dream in Canto 27 of Purgatorio where he encounters the Old Testament characters of Leah and Rachel who were traditionally interpreted allegorically by the Church as figures of the active and contemplative life. Dante writes,

    ‘… in my dream, I seemed to see a woman
    both young and fair; along a plain she gathered
    flowers, and even as she sang, she said:

    “Whoever asks my name, know that I’m Leah,
    and I apply my lovely hands to fashion
    a garland of the flowers I have gathered.

    To find delight within this mirror I
    adorn myself; whereas my sister Rachel
    never deserts her mirror; there she sits

    all day; she longs to see her fair eyes gazing,
    as I, to see my hands adorning, long:
    she is content with seeing, I with labor.’

    We drank hot water, a habit Alina had picked up in her decade in China. She looked lovely in a forest themed patterned cotton top and trousers made by her fashion designer mum.

    ‘How have you packed all this into such a small bag!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’d make a good refugee.’ 

    We both laughed. This is the kind of dark humour that keeps me sane.

    After a simple dinner of spaghetti and green beans, we were delighted to discover not just a bin but a bucket and washing up basin into which Alina and I placed our aching feet in hot soapy water as has become tradition.

    Before bed, we sat outside and contemplated the full moon. 

    ‘You know no woman has ever walked on the moon?’ I said

    ‘Yet,’ replied Alina. ‘Who knows what wonders the future holds.’

    I held my necklace in my hand and made a wish. 

    Recommended listening: music by Massimo Kyo: https://open.spotify.com/artist/72MZKpGf1ARioeXiHAWXCw?si=4CfTY_SbTk2KGSCMCRCPWw

    Recommended listening: the music of Granmaria Testa: https://youtu.be/4f_4HW340Cw?si=JRfV45WqVPUDwt0B

    Recommended using: Nardo oil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spikenard#:~:text=Spikenard%2C%20also%20called%20nard%2C%20nardin,Nepal%2C%20China%2C%20and%20India.