Italy

No matter where in Italy the author finds herself, there is inspiration for more writing. It’s in the air. Like many places, it should be approached from the sea rather than from the air as we modern travelers take it. In a gigantic country, approach seems to come from land. But Italy offers every kind of welcome to the navigator. The water alone, with its varied colors in the ranges of green to deep blue, sets the mind afire with ideas of who and what swim there. What gods and goddesses watch us? More ancient Greek ruins are to be found in Italy than in Greece. The perfume of nature awakens the mind as the lemons of Sorrento hang in gigantic clusters from the trees from which they were once plucked by women only, wearing gloves, packed like truffles, one at a time. Every little town, it seems, has a beautiful theater in which the glorious sounds of Italian opera have been sung for centuries. We wonder what lies beyond those gigantic heavy doors as we walk in every street in urban Italy. Every spot sparks the writer’s imagination. We come ashore and wander inland, among the mysteries of the past and the future.