bright white night light

1:00 am in Finland, now a twilight caressing water, pastel rainbow-wet laquer.  The Land of a Thousand Lakes, and not a moment of darkness from our northerly-poleness.  The Spring has just begun here, blue bells breaking from their caps, foxglove wild along the road.  I left the house for a midnight run, puffing the mist of tarn and light, just the cottonwood dripping it's tissues, and lilac turning it's shoulder toward the breeze.  The past days have spilled from the lip of the cup.  It seems as if our times give rise to curiosities of grit and diamond, and how I want to tell you stories, these of loyal and devoted poems.

I left raging Rome in a dust cloud from Napoli, on tour with Titubanda to the slums of Scampia.  In a rented bus we passed red wine from the jug (before noon), singing Richie Valen's songs, crunching cookies and dried fruits, playing soccer at the rest stops.  The hooligans are goofy, I spent a weekend wrought with pain from laugh-gut.  Scampia, you New Yorkers, is the Bronx times 10.  The people made giraffe-necks over balconies to see us marching down below, and oh to watch the children smiling from their windows, then rush the street to meet us eating fried polenta!  We slept in bunk beds and sprawled out on floors, gyrating across the night to the songs of Puglia.  There was flute and drum and a ghostly Arabic singing, while children sped acoss the piazza on motorcycles too big for their britches, nearly killing swarths of people (with the sounds of it alone).  

Before all this I'd been in sleepy Ciampino, where I found a little old man as I arrived off the train.  The day I departed he popped into the cafe where I stood, to which he insisted on providing an escort to the station, owing, of course, to our miraculous reunion.  He was sunken and spritely, with slanted eyes and a chisel-crow's nose.  The proudness of this noble grandpa, I didn't dare burst his bubble to tell him I knew where I was going.  We hugged and shared our stranger's vows, about paths crossing again and such, and I couldn't help but feel I had met the eldest of friends, that I was in the presence of enormous love.  You see: everything that anyone tried to tell me, about people, the men, and women, are not yet true.  The manly ones are not made of slime, they are kind and genuine and earnest.  The women are not catty and hateful, they have met me like long-lost sisters.

So back i was in Rome again, to the smells of garbage and subway, where I packed my bag and hauled off to spend a solemn night in the airport.  On the train I had a cabin alone, and felt a mischievous sense of emancipation.  I fancy-footed up and down the aisles when all a-sudden the lights went out and I was shuffled into darkness.  The night heat whipped through the windows, iron hiss of screeching tracks, a humble thrusting of side-to-side, and alone, in darkness, I was a kid in a candy store...one of my favorite moments yet.  I found a sweet little enclave with a group of homeless men and knocked myself to sleep.  In the morn I sailed to Finland, where I caught a bus through birch and glistening lakes, and stepped afoot to the harassment of a cigarette-fanged boy.  (I was wearing mix-matched dots and stripes and boots, some silver and my knapsack, for it was cold as hell and what I could manage.)  It seems because I am quite dark by now, and

folks assume I look "Romanian," this boy and others regarded me with stares having reckoned me a gypsy!  When I told them instead I was American, they laughed and would not believe!  As the gypsies are viewed with racist distrust, it h

as been interesting to wander the streets and wonder.  I have been spending these days with Karin and Jani, Vera and Aron, making food and taking walks and feeling the contrast of calm.  Today we gathered flowers for Midsummer, and wreathed the heads of the kiddies before jumping into the freezing lake.  

How many more I wish to share, how difficult to offer shards of mirror!  Did I mention that I am happier than I have been in all my life?  That there are parts of myself I never knew existed?  And these with all things fall like leaves, for 

tomorrow will earn what does not yet exist, and today will be buried as these ardent exploits ever are.  But for now, we live, and so, goodnight!

ROMA. Forse siamo pazzi!

Blahg!!!  Stories!!!!  Stories!!!!  An executive decision has been made.  There will be no more chit chat.  No more schlobble-hott!!!  We will have nothing but honest to goodness make-believe here, and that is all there is to it.  Traveling, traveling, who cares about traveling?  What is seen is my storybook, so make up your mind, for you are not real, and neither am I, grab your hat and here we go!  

Roma,

you succulent stem.  You have swept me within the folds of your creases and it sure is hot in here.  Our story begins with the magic Pepé, who found a certain passport and $500 (which I was not aware had gone missing) and returned them with a smile just hours before departure.  I boarded a jetplane without a flutter in my heart, and shed a tear only for that Shanation, eggin' me on as she was, while the dawn disappeared.  

New York City, my goddess, I love you, reflecting your children to the sky like a bobbling Christmas orb.  "I wanna swim in the Hudson...", but Molly said, "That's a bad idea..."  So we lay between the bridges, getting wet between our backs.  I caught a night flight 

outta there, and landed myself in Dublin, a village covered in green pasture and cow.  Straight on til morning, and the lovely Italian Laura, with house keys like an ancient treasure chest, making chickpeas and barley, taking me for the first of many gelati.  We got ourselves locked inside a book store and the firemen had to break us out.  Then it was those manic musicians of Titubanda, la Brunella, to be sure!, who swooped me for the insane asylum, the adventure of my life.  How could it be true?  My only dream, to escape with the marching musicians to shake a tambourine, and there it was, handed to me, just like my vision, singing and dancing with all of the old and rejected insane of Roma, as if tomorrow were yesterday, and all things carried the weight of small kites.

Then there was a woman on the bus.  I had noticed 

her before, but we were packed like fish.  From the back, some violent thunder, she came with sparks spun from a pinwheel.  "Brrrrrrrrrrrrrutto insectoooooo!", rrrrrrr's ping-ing every crack.  I looked back to see where from.  She was stout, and butch, and my first impulse was that someone had offended her for her manliness. How I tried to understand her!  Someone had made an insult, said she smelled like she was from Napoli.  Sweating and spitting, cursing and seething, she threw herself back and forth, trying to escape the caged bus.  No one would move to let her out, she was broken and stuck, on fire.  She pushed her tiny way through the crowd, screaming all down the walk, and was left spitting smoke.  Once she was gone, as the sound of her began to fade, the riders: laughed.  But not just a chuckle, no, horrible, foul mockery.  And perhaps I didn't understand.  Perhaps I was the fool.  But in my imagination, she was a child on the playground and this, her dogged bully.  I thought about her walk home, and if she'd cried.  I thought about her life and felt sorry to have witnessed her only thus.  

I went to that St. Peter's house, and realized churches were built so big to make us feel very small.  That, or to touch the grandeur of the 

unfathomable breadth of a 

concept like god.  There, I entered the area "exclusively reserved for prayer".  The man asked me, when I entered, if I understood how to pray.  As we were speaking in Italian, I needed to ask him again, (was he really asking me that?), to which I raised my brows and nodded, "Sí?")  He let me pass.  Once there, I began to sit with my heart, and ask it what it was in the first place.  There were nuns, and later, a priest.  I won't go into the whole story of all that happened here, but what came from me was some sort of feminist revolution.  I knew the female was nowehere to be found in this place, I couldn't feel her or touch her, and everything I witnessed was proof of this.  I shed a tear or two, and I don't even know why.  Perhaps out of relief, or grief, or just being tired.  In any case: 

I miss everyone, though this solitude is priceless.  I am grateful for all I come to 

know.  

P.S.  --

Things I have come to wonder at:

1) The 2-buttoned toilet - it seems here in Italy they have 2 buttons.  The smaller for pee, the larger for poo.  My friend, Laura, models the two.  

2) The 3-pronged cane (for the elderly):  the largest prong, in the middle, touches the ground.  The other two are waaaaaay shorter, leaving one to wonder, are they merely a high-fashion raquet?

3)Doggie bags:  It is condsidered rude to ask for a doggie bag.  For me, it is considered rude to throw food in the garbage.  Interesting.

4) Paying for the bus. No one seems to do it.  Everywhere I go.  You get on the bus, you get off.  You are supposed to pay, or get your ticket stamped, but no one does, including me, faithfully following suit.  Wonderful.