Train Ride Italy to Zurich
Travel Journal
I was soothed this morning by the sound of rainfall.
Calm and cooling.
A reminder of healing moisture
On a parched landscape.
Our friendship needed watering.
Our bodies like boulders in a stream
Were grounded, heavy and constant.
Yet thousands of miles apart.
My trip was to reconnect,
Follow in her daily life,
Swim in her lakes, learn her world,
And the obstacles she flowed past.
Our days were full.
Gifts of emotion and memories.
Shared in torrents.
As we climbed hills and floated in rivers.
We slid from present to past,
From the depths of our being to the surface of our joys.
Fifty-three years we have known each other.
Art students, then roommates, adventure buddies.
We held rituals in the woods of Aarau to part with fathers.
Installations with roses and river rocks, irons and sewing machines
To live with our mothers.
She nurtured me, drew me into friend circles, taught me to breathe,
To notice the space between raindrops.
We mused through the men in our lives.
With friends gathered around, she threw a pie in his face
When he showed up at Thanksgiving,
Still remembering her rage at how he had treated me.
The heat wave in Europe gave us 95 degree days and 80 degree nights
We traveled by train to walk Etruscan roads in Perugia,
To find the academy where she, at 19, studied on her first solo trip,
To remember the pensione where she lived with a pigeon at her open window.
We cooled ourselves in the pool atop our hotel overlooking an Umbrian landscape.
We drowned ourselves in laughter at the murals dripping on the walls of our hotel room
Where naked boys, penises erect, dove into waves of chocolate.
On museum walls, Giotto and Fra Angelico soothed our souls.
We arrived in Fabro to draw historic cities. In perspective.
And rolling Umbrian landscapes.
Outdoors. With others watching. In breathless, scorching heat.
Meeting challenges, obstacles. Always in search of shade.
I regained drawing as seeing, as patience and reflection.
I watched my hand make marks on a page,
Saying I am here with you.
Calming time, quieting the mind.
I watched her, fluid and confident.
And felt our time together, a full circle journey.
Two stones weathered in the stream.
Aligned. Secure.