random upload of photo to write about.

There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.

                -Wendell Berry

Italian Dream

A good thing

- in Italy - 

that most houses stay

with their foundations

with, perhaps, their Umbria and its bells

and can be walked past by the old man

who remembers stealing a loose rock from the stone fence

decades earlier, perhaps throwing it and 

unfortunately

hitting his target.

The world is there.

Largely the same.

And the bend in the road

Down from the heart-shaped town

through the sunflowers

the olive orchards 

down until the road flattens for awhile

then winds up.

We show them

how to make life transparent

and its moorings 

susceptible to the wind

how the ground below you

can become something else

that never had anything to do

with you.

You can see through one house

to another.  They are all the same.

And our histories are all the same.

We want what they want.

They want what we want.

We'll get it.  Want something else

or look through our window

and not want that

meet someone

and not want them

Context is an embarassment.

Subtext is worse.

Ours is a two-dimensional life

suspended in corn-syrup.

Sweet, clear.

You will be happy.

A calendar will tell you when to be a bit happier

for a day.

Entire lives drift past you.

Houses, lovers, thoughts that never took root 

drift like another sourceless mood.

This is okay.

There is no meaning to it.

Any history is bullshit.

And the air 

or the fluid that we turn in

is not sacred either.

Place is something

we can do without.