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rain, rain, pervasive wet and a buzzkill. After chores we huddle before our little fire and watch back to back episodes of battlestar galactica. The rustic appeal is beginning to wear a bit thin; 5 days without a shower because the water is so unbearably cold, and an ongoing sniffle augments the damp. Our laundry refuses to dry. And I get no bars. I’m switching to Cingular. Actually my phone doesn’t function, I tried to use it as an internal heat source by rubbing it against my cardigan and then dousing it in lamp oil…

every morning I wake up at 7am, and the water in the toilet is so chilly that a gout of pee steam envelopes me, which is less lovely than you would think…but today is beautiful and no goddamned rain at least, and we are headed to carnivale in Poggio for the day! A long wounded hour in the car with Romano race car driving has christiane a mite billious, but we round the bend past an abandoned hermitage and suddenly…people! The first real aggregation of people since leaving Rome. Even young ones. The costume du jour seems to swing between renaissance goth and oh holy Jesus, though there was an enormous group dressed as dalmations; disposable painter coveralls with spray painted black spots and socks sewed onto the ears. Some were even in a band that played mandolin Kiss covers. I buy a tie with a monster sewed onto it. We eat ice cream, wine served in plastic water bottles and porchetta sandwiches. I have decided (after some wine) that I shall document the event by inserting my lense into the nostrils of the best dressed passerbys. There is a giant combustible puppet with a hairy ass, but we leave before it’s fate seals. My favorite moment was looking up at an apartment window with the faces of 2-3 Italian grans pressed against it like ficus leaves, looking down aghast upon the throng of the merry. And an Italian who looked just like a dusky stephen fry. And a drunken old man dressed as a clown hitting people in the face with confetti. We return in time for a wonderful barbecue and rest contented and thoroughly full in every respect.

the sultry vixen has blisters from all her hoeing… in the garden, not to disappoint those hoping for a more demonstrative visual.  So blisters on fingers, nothing contagious or requiring salve. By the by, should you catch yourself in the process of weeding, I highly reccommend dresden dolls for your training montage; the perfect metaphor tottering effortlessly between a naval marching band and dust bowl sideshow. You’ll be having so much fun bending and plucking, you won’t even notice your back break in half.A short stint amidst hay and weeds, and we head to the bus for Narni, our hot shower awaits, bless. And it was good… In fact I do not believe christiane is ever coming out. We drive through the hastening verdant countryside to Carsulae, and jump the fence to enter. As I shoot a few of Brittney using a reflector in an ancient church, a couple of reps from the achaeological society barge in; they’ve been peeking via video camera. Oddly, we don’t get told off for fence jumping, just that we need to sign a document stating the never use of imagery for anything money garnering… Even though I was the camera clad pony, they had Germano do the honors, so as far as I’m concerned, these bitches are ripe for a nice magazine cover. Germano says jail in Italy is very nice anyway, and he could use the rest. The ruins themselves are epic in a singular way; they aren’t butted up, like everything else I’ve seen in every big city from Rome to Paris, against anything new. They are surrounded by meadows and mountains, and one truly gets a sense of scope, of the environment as it might have been, only fractured and abandoned. We actually have a bloody picnic amid the columns.  With the Umbrian wine.  After a long, ambling afternoon, I am treated to a more modern Italian moment. A couple has picked this particular parking lot to fuck in. Being that the cars here are like little pinpricks with wheels, it’s a rather yogic experience, I imagine. On the way back we discover first hand the ferocity of the Italian sheep dog, as one, deciding our presence on the road going 60 km was a threat, launched himself into the side of the car, and chased us 100 yards down the street. Apparently, when you happen among some sheep here in the country, on a leisurely walk perhaps, you fucking run away. Because the dog actually tried to eat our car.  We are spending the night at brittneys watch tower, an actual medieval one mind you, straddling an arch above the via Flaminia. After a long wander in Narni, and some tourist priced pizza, we sleep. At least for now…

decision is made to leave a bit earlier for Pisa, being that it’s fuuucking snowing! Not the ripest weather for trail walking. The hotel noticed, regrettably, that there were 3 of us in the room, and promptly, as all hotels are when it comes to the bill, raised our rate 50%. Hard to argue when they have my passport. Shouldve stolen the scrambled eggs at breakfast…I am engaged in conversation by a loquacious Senegalese on the bus, who speaks in a mixture of French, Italian and English, and whom I somehow easily understand; he is residing illegally in La Spezia selling umbrellas and wooden cats to tourists. we chat about Africa, Obama and my junker jacket for about 20 minutes before he writes down his email and disembarks. He asks me, between chews on a toothpick dangling in the crevasse of a split lower lip, to take his picture next time I’m in town. And I have a strange, compelling idea to actually take him up on it, to return here and photograph his tribe of immigrants, how they came to be here, what their stories are, how they manage… Perhaps for many, with soaring unemployment rates in their home countries, selling tat to tourists is the only option outside of crime. Sure they’re a pain in the ass when all you’re trying to do is explore and enjoy a new city; but I wonder if they merit more respect than we mete out? One thing he said sticks; that Italy is racist, hard to endure, but America is free of racism, because we elected Barack Obama, a black man. During my most recent meanderings across europe, i have heard on more than one occasion, a newfound respect for americans based solely on our mutual decision regarding the presidency. If you travelled after 9/11 like I did, breaking against the abysmal opinions of Americans inspired by Bush and his foreign policy, a statement of such brash, but utterly positive naïveté, makes me feel as though even if Obama does absolutely nothing in office, just plays foosball with his valet in the nude while watching the Twilight trilogy and Ginger Snaps, the simple reality of his election has done so much to repair our battered national image. We can finally stop pretending to be Canadian.

there are interchangeable moments that appear periodically in life, where the eyes are always closed, the sun is always out, spring is almost here, and the only sound of either wind or sea. I wonder, when my eyes open, where in time I will be, and almost always expect it to be other than the one it actually is.

There is a purple flower that grows between the flagstones in Umbria. It blossoms every morning in the direction of the rising sun, and turn along the stars axis, shadowing her slow progression through the sky. Observing this flower is like believing in god. My petal folded eyes hunt the warmth,

and wait.