RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 29/10/05

Walking through Citta della Pieve, Sunday afternoon - timeless - of grand Italian villas built in colonial style now run down - like ‘The Leopard’ - once bustling with life and fortune and now cobwebbed and overgrown, waiting for rennovation – imagining the lady of the house greeting her friends and visitors from the pillared entrance as they arrive up the tree-lined drive toward the pale blue and white house – the light came reflective from the west, diffuse in the late autumn haze, acute through the golden brown leaves – for a moment it all turned into the set of a movie, some poetic sensed European arthouse flick with reminiscent symbols of endings (which of course are coming close) or change – dreaming of another time, yet also highly present in this one – spiders webs hanging from street signs of roads called ‘via G. Gallilei’ or ‘via Giordano Bruno’ and caught in the fading sunlight – strange that now they celebrate and remember men they once branded heretics and burned or imprisoned - of countless citizens of all ages sitting together on benches and talking, sometimes emphatically and profusely, or else watching local football matches played by school kids from open terraces – in anticipation of tomorrow’s festa, like xmas eve or something similar, full of potential, enjoyment, of eating, and of marking the year change (clocks going back tonight, harvests ended) – waiting for sleep and nursing hangovers, dancing underneath the twisting vines and wisteria heavy with seed pods like butter beans.