A Passage from the Dead Tree Scrolls

There’s a wine article sitting on my desktop that is going on four months overdue. It’s almost finished, just needs a little editing. It will generate revenue if I go the last step. It is destined for a newspaper; you know the kind a little boy used to get up early in the morning to deliver on his bicycle? But, for the life of me, I cannot find my way to finish it.

I have run up against a wall. Call it relevance. Or maybe timeliness. During this period which we find ourselves collectively in, I just find it hard to justify writing about something like a particular wine when there are so many more things swirling above us, this amplitude.

I waited for you at the train station, but you never showed up. So, I guess I’ll go to Tuscany without you.

It was a long shot, for sure. We had casually talked about meeting in Rome and taking the train to Tuscany. It was over a couple of bottles of wine. And then we stayed up late. And then? Do you remember? I think I do, but it could have just been a dream besotted by too much Frascati. If it was a dream, it was lovely. If it wasn’t, why aren’t you here?

The folly of youth. Of hope. Of expectation. And the letdown. It was a pattern for much of my 20’s. Probably much longer. But all those years now melt into one passage of juvenescence. And when it comes to Italy, it’s tinged with a romanticism that either wasn’t there in the first place, or if it was, it was only in my imagination. Now, in 2020, those fanciful anticipations have been rendered inappurtenant by larger forces of destiny. We’re in a social hurricane and firestorm the likes of which we have no idea when it will die down. So, we barrel down and go in, deeper inside. Where it is cool and dark, yet still filled with light and hope. The hope of innocent youth as re-imagined in this timeworn biped vessel.

A letter, found in an abandoned home, next to a stream of unconscious and constant agitation

[Editor's note: this letter was unsigned inside an envelope on the desk of the empty home. It could be the letter was written by the owner of the home. But we have no idea who lived there as all records disappeared after the Great American Passage in 2021.]

Dear Italy,

What I am about to write to you might not be welcome. After all, I am merely an imperfect American. And we all know now that Americans are finally being leveled by their own foolish acts after all these years. Finally, the chickens have come home to roost.

And that is what I am writing about to you today – home. Yours. And ours. Let’s start with yours.

Dismantling the First Mountain

The life of a career. It’s a curious ascent. One spends so much energy in getting to the top of the mountain. To be the best. Number one. To master your craft. And to represent all that you stand (and climb) for the best that you can. To spend years climbing to the peak. To sacrifice any number of things, material and personal, in order to behold the sunrise at the summit. And then?