Dear Florence,
It has been a decade since I left your beautiful streets, smoggy air, and the sound of mosquitoes whizzing past my ears JUST as I drift to sleep during a hot summer night. It has been 10 years since I have laid eyes on all things I found most precious and perfect -- your history I breathed, the art that made me sink, swollen with Envy, your people - as they walk nameless in the crowded streets on their way to somewhere else in your beautiful belly.
And I have come back to say Goodbye to you, finally after so long of trying to keep you locked in my heart so that I could never forget you. In my love for you I have crippled the very thing that brought me to your gates -- my creativity. In holding onto you, Ive kept all I learned and have learned nothing more, resulting in the stagnant, ugly waters in which I now stand and have been trying to get out of. Now I know why. You have been my Mistress for too long.
I know that by trying to hold onto you, I tried to keep you close so I would never forget you. Now my dreams -- my very lucid dreams I've had for years and are the only repeating dream I've ever had in my life make sense. In every dream I am close to Florence. Or in it -- at times, I can smell it. But I can see nothing, not even the people I went to see. Cant go where I want to go. I may get very close, but then something or someone whisks me away. Sometimes I yell in Italian -- so loud I wake myself up.
For years I have been plagued with these dreams -- and I thought they were there to remind me of what I love -- but now I see their purpose was to tell me to let go.
These dreams are much like my attempts at painting. I get a taste, an itch, and when I go to scratch it, with a specific purpose or technique in mind -- the end result is nothing more than the same color palette from school -- and the same kind of disappointment in myself and my artwork that I have at the close of these dreams.
Florence, your Golden Age of which I so identified is long past -- your people have moved forward. They found automobiles, electricity, computers and planes, without minding the rules of your Renaissance. Each addition took creativity, new thought, built upon the rules before them. Each modern creation is, in and of itself, a Renaissance.
I am kidding no one -- my memories of you are fading. The truth is I am not a better person than other people because I got to live there -- having lived there is not what makes me special, creative, and it does not define my ability to live with purpose.
You are my longest lover. I have lingered in your light too long, though I dream of the day you will touch me again. I want nothing more.
I've spent a decade saying I left my Soul in your city -- and now I am aghast at how foolish I have been.
My Lover, I let you go, here on this paper from your very land. Perhaps now I can find myself, and one day find my way back to you -- not in shackles -- but in gratitude.
Blessedly Free for my Golden Age, Hollie
After writing that, I simply fell into a puddle, overwhelmed with tears, grief, and a great relief. That was the night I gave up Italy. My two years there ended abruptly, for three reasons: 9/11, we ran out of borrowed money, and my Italian boyfriend and I had to end our year and a half together in twenty minutes, due to a family emergency in Naples, just two days before I left the country for good. I placed him on a pedestal he had no place sitting on. It is sad that quite frankly, I didn't remove him from that pedestal where he sat like an untouchable God until about five years ago. That was the nature of my codependency.
It was wrong of me, and still is wrong of me to exepect him or anyone else to bring to me the happiness and joy that is only found by looking up, to the maker of all things. But as Calvin said, the human heart is a factory of idols.
I hate to say it, but his family emergency may have been a lie. Its possible. Who knows. But there I was, late afternoon, standing in my living room, crying my eyes out feeling as if I had been punched in the gut. Writing this, I recall standing with my hands at my sides, palms up, desperately just sad and empty. The large square window was open to the small courtyard without a view, and the afternoon sun just poured into that room (the sun does not shine anywhere in the world like it does in Italy). I felt as if I had been bathed in it -- yet -- there he went. My tall, strong, and handsome, curly haired and milk skinned Piero disappeared into the dark, meandering hallway I hated, that led to the very door I would exit myself in two days time, on my way "home."
When I wrote this letter, I let go of my most Precious Thing. Whats amazing is I just realized is the night I wrote about in my last post is the night that forged the very artistic style I lament in this letter, the one I am still stuck in. Now that has all come together, I look forward to what healing will bring.
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That is a picture of the Pazzi Chapel, an early Renaissance chapel built by Brunelleschi. If you've ever seen the movie Hannibal, that is the building of the Opera scene. As it happens, Hannibal Lector is my favorite villain of all time. Another happy accident: I was there when the movie was filmed. The chapel is attached to my favorite structure in all of Florence, the church of Santa Croce, where my favorite artist of all time, Michelangelo is buried.
And,
My last apartment was literally one block to the right on Borgo Santa Croce.
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