Happenings of the Days.

Celebrating a birthday at Vin Café or Barrique with wine and aperitivo snacks a-la-casa. Sharing wild stories of burning couches and eating hostess snacks off the road. Birthday Unicorn cake putting my taste buds into a state of ecstasy.

A pizza parade for dinner, and our ever-able waiter Valentino smiling at our excitement about a festa di pizza.

A worship service in our private chapel lit by candlelight for a wonderful balance of warm faces in a cool light blue room. Be Thou My Vision, personal poems, French philosophers, and a meditative saxophone and guitar duet by Philippe and Federico.

Hands oily in Burnt Siena and Prussian blue or dirty with wet clay. Floating on a cloud of paint thinner fumes. Visions of Dante’s hell in the midst of visions of life and community, good conversation, and beautiful music in the studio.

Unpracticed muscles sore from planting tomatoes all day in Roberta’s farm and stooping to pet Nina, Roxy, or Polo.

Chapter meetings ranging from ant problems to excursion details to planning a princess party to introductions of our lives.

FULLY enjoying a 5-day gelato festival and branching out to try flavors like olive, fig, wine and cinnamon and orange, hazelnut, licorice, lavender. The winner definitely being a cherry fior di latte with graham cracker crumbles--- enjoyed more than once on the final day of the festival… nothing wrong with 4 gelati in one day.

Passing Clandestino and the man with the tiny table and chairs offering to tell fortunes. A woman pushing a baby in a carriage and two men stopping to look at it. The man in the leather jacket with the bulldog. Rachele telling me our plans to make pizza at her house. The old man with the wiener dog with a beard. The cat that always lurks in that alley. The man who sings outside his kebab cafeteria.

The unwanted sound of middle school boys whistling at the “inglese.”

Pre- and post-dinner dance parties. Nn-sta Nn-sta Nn-sta.

A 50 year anniversary of Lamborghini which included Orvieto as a stop on their journey from Milan. So many millions of dollars in one piazza.

Being granted free access to roam and draw and enjoy the caves of Orvieto underground in order to draw inspiration for our Dante paintings.

The biggest party this neighborhood has even seen spewing from our monastery. Wands, face paint, princess crowns, dancing and music, soccer, crafts, cake and cookies, pizza, the works. And our neighbor Grumpy Gramps even accepted our invitation and dressed up to come watch from the gate. Finishing up the night with a little jazz from our Italian friends and my professor on the saxophone. A reading of Paradiso and scat echoes with the spoken word.

A run in the rain around the city walls and wondering what motions to take. Do I burrow into a nook in the warm porous tufa, becoming a caryatid helping hold up this beautiful precious ancient stone? Or do I, “filled with rapture, [my] soul yearning for freedom, space, vastness” (Brothers Karamazov) fly out to the hills in the distance never to touch down; enjoying my moment with the hilltops who bask in their shining instance of being spotlighted by the sun among the attention-hogging Italian countryside. Neither for now. Happy cat waits for me at the monastery.