publishing peace

I believe that life is made for the moments you run to, climb to, or work for. I've made plenty of memories like that. Just last week I sat here writing the tale of a bell tower that I climbed just for the view. The city of Rome was jam packed with running from historical monument to historical monument just so I could see what I came there for. But there are also other moments. The moments where you can find some rest from your adventures and make a piece of home. And for all the miles I have traveled, and all the memories I've made, I think some of my favorites will be the ones where I wasn't running. I was just breathing. I don't even know where I went last Saturday. It was somewhere on Lake Maggiore, for a picnic with the host son's class. And I didn't get very many photos, because it was warm and golden and gray and green, and it felt like a gift in a way. I know that sounds kind of silly, but it was kind of like that same God who touched Adam'...

Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close to you forever. I stood this weekend on the rooftop of a pink-and-green bell tower overlooking what felt like millions of red Tuscan rooftops and gripped the metal cage boxing us all in, keeping us safe but also keeping us from taking flight, which is kind of what I felt like I wanted to do. As I pressed my forehead to it and watched the golden light cast hazy shadows over the old, beautiful buildings, this thought came into my mind. It's a line from "All the Light We Cannot See", a book by Anthony Doerr. Interestingly enough, the title of the book has also been in my thoughts. It's an idea in itself; an implication that there is light unseen, but that doesn't make the light any less there. There's something hopeful, comforting about that -- and motivating too. That there is light to seek, that everything is more than just what you see, that every person is magic inside.  It makes me feel swept...

I don't know where to start this. I don't even really know what to write about, because every time I try I find myself in a kind of daydream -- a vast, crooked mountain watches over a little town tucked into a valley that is green and bursting with wildflowers. Sounds idyllic, but it's the reality of Zermatt, Switzerland, where you can find the Matterhorn: a towering specter of a rock jutting high above the land.  It's quite a lonely peak, bleak and weather-beaten. I've heard that often it's obscured by clouds, but I was lucky. When I visited, the sun never stopped shining. There was a cool breeze through the canyon. And a polka concert welcomed me at the town center as I stepped off the train. Overall, my timing cannot be characterized as anything but providential.  It was worth the price of the train ticket just to be there. If you're following along with me in my travels, you might remember how last week I was in Rome -- and there is so much that is bea...

Of the many hardships I have had to endure on this sojourn to Europe, the worst by far has been sleeping in airport.  I'm only sort of kidding. Have you ever tried to sleep by yourself in an airport? In a foreign country?  Let me explain. I was already on edge, as it were. Having "one of those days". And in the morning I was going to Rome by plane -- only a 45-minute flight, but we were flying out at 7, and I had no way to get to the airport that early in the morning, so I had to stay at the airport. I had a mental breakdown on the train on the way there, probably making all the other passengers very nervous, and also my cab driver from the train to the airport.  And then I finally got there, checked in, and tried to get through security, but they wouldn't let me through to the gates until the next day. That was just one thing too many for me, and so, with all the wretchedness of any proper Regency-era heroine, I rushed to the bathroom, locked myself in, and wept. ...

I hate romantic movies with sad endings. I guess I should clarify what I mean by "sad". I'm not talking The Notebook , where they die in each other's arms, I'm talking La La Land . (Controversial, I know.) Or Me Before You. Every time I watch one of these movies, it's like, "really? Of all the beautiful stories about romance you could've chosen to use your immense cinematic budget and resources to tell, you pick this one?!" It's a travesty, really. In my opinion, a complete waste of time. I don't want to suffer through the inevitable blunders, miscommunications, and possibly painful moments in a romantic film only to get to the end and find out the couple did not end up together, esp ecially when it's about dumb stuff that could be solved in a conversation if both participants were willing to figure it out. Because what, I ask you, is even the point of telling those stories, if not to help us to believe that in the end, if it...

I've seen things Shakespeare has seen. Really, that's remarkable. History considers it likely that Shakespeare had visited Italy, or even that he was secretly Italian, because of how accurate and intimate the accounts of the places he talks about are. It's not hard to remember as you glimpse fair Verona out the window of a train. That's where two teenagers fell in love, crossing stars that would inspire so many others to cross it was like embroidery stitches. That's where Romeo beheld Juliet on her balcony and said, "what light through yonder window breaks?" You really can't forget this when the sun comes out from behind the clouds for a minute and Verona is lighted. It's like Juliet herself commissioned the heavens for me. "She's young and she falls in love easy. She's a real romantic," she'd probably say. "Let's give her some magic." And so the clouds break and the light comes in. It is the east. Juliet is t...

I was not favored to be born Portuguese. In a way, much of the country is a mystery to me -- the customs, the history, the geography, the language especially. But what I do understand is saudade . If you plug that word into Google translate, you get "missing" -- a direct translation for a word that seems not to have one. It is the melancholic remembrance of the way things were, a word for the heartbreaks, big and small, that inevitably follow any sort of significant change. It is a love song for the things you've lost over time. In truth, it's hard for anybody, especially a non-expert like me, to really put into words what saudade is; but it is a universal emotion that somehow hurts and connects. Everyone feels it. Saudade is what colors the city of Lisbon, spilling into everything from their cobblestones to their street art to the fado music played only in dim lights, where everyone puts down their forks and listens. Saudade is even audible in the cadence of th...