PART ONE

I

imagine the Florentine station; I do not remember it. The nexus was certainly loud, and it was certainly chaotic but I know this because all train stations are and it would have been memorable had it not been. It is just the vaguest of images that ceaselessly shifts and meanders when I seek to summon it. Pieces of recollections of terminals from Paris, Geneva, Rome, and London try to form some composite but I know to not trust them. Memories are the petty minions of the mind who shift blame and lie to avoid taking responsibility. They will not admit to any failing until quite thoroughly cornered. I say they because it would trouble me gravely to imagine such a task assigned to a single sentience. Only a crew of many mindlings could conspire to throw so many disconnected and irrational images up so very quickly in an attempt to convince me that my quest for remembrance has been satisfied. No, I recall that place no clearer than I recall the womb.

 What is clear, or at least what I am satisfied with, is my memory of an interior wall indecorously festooned with advertisements for tours of Tuscany and fine accommodations to be found without. I recall the wall because I had spent an unwelcome amount of time negotiating with a hawker (who remains remarkably nondescript both in my mind and on these pages). He was quite determined to set me up with a comfortable room for a modest price and could even, with but a phone call, have his father come to drive me to the hotel. I had delivered myself unto Florence a naive sacrifice, with neither preparation nor forethought and the Italian entrepreneur was working hard to take advantage of this. His shadow gestured vigorously against the pale-green cave wall and I watched it distracted. They don't truly gesticulate as much as the stereotypes would have us believe but then that is why it is a stereotype. My own dark doppelganger was passive but I was weary from a too long transport. I stilled the shade with a resolute word of defiance, tossed out a weak 'grazia', and slung my several bags to push on out through the doors and onto the dusk-laden Firenze streets without having paid my silver to the boatman of this canal.

 Without, I in took a deep breath and a most singular view. Before me were Quattro cento facades, narrow sleekly curving roads abustle with quirky yet overtly practical autos, beneath a splendid deep azure skyscape. Every home, every stone intoned a silent, resonant hymn of reverence for the age of mankind. Yes, some punks had tagged with spray a wall that had stood for six hundred years in a vain, mocking attempt to make his mark of defiance but the wall defeated him and remained a voice that spoke so much clearer on the side of dignity. Later, when deluded by revels, I would spray mine own pungent urine against such walls, they would again triumph and continue to declare for the strength and respect of mankind despite us. Empty, it would still be a humanist city.

 This was the right place, for me, at this time, to be. It was not revelatory so much as affirmed. The weight of this conclusion was uplifting while the weight of my kitbag was keenly felt where it dug into the shoulders and the carry-on slung right left my left hand free to wield the sleeping bag just as my paint box depended from the right and I'd barely slept on the trains from Paris but even so I was possessed of an energy of attunement. This would be the city of my rebirth or rather, of my birth for I had been incubating in art school and it was time to see who I was, what sort of artist I could be. This was the opportunity to move beyond the nausea and into an existence of my own devising and if not of my own devising, at least of my own choosing from a sampling of the lives of others.

 I walked. I was vigorously on the path of life and it took me to the Piazza del Duomo. How could it not? How could a child who, in his first waking moments lifts his eyes upward to the white silhouette of the Baptistery not be filled with hope for a bold future? His eyes sweep softly, suddenly beyond to Brunelleschi's Dome and this carries his soul and his dreams higher still. What hath man wrought!

 My rapture was distilled by both load and loneliness. I had to find a place to drop one or both and just as importantly, I had to prove to myself that dismissing the hawker's hotel offer was nothing worse than imprudent. I'd heard that Anne was living here now and I knew, I told myself, that I would find her. That this would occur was not in question no matter how surely I knew it to be irrational and pathetic and I did. There was no superstition allowed into my life and no gambling. I would not offer sacrifice at the temple of Fortuna. I spurned the metaphysical yet I knew that I would find Anne.

 Don't imagine that I loved her. We were but friends and it had been years since we'd been in touch but there was a narrative thread that bound me to her. Was I here because of her? It was likely, but not certain. The thought that perhaps she was in Italy was impetus for me to step from the breech. There was no Siren Song but even if there were, I'd cunningly filled my ears with wax years before.

 Rucked up, I marched on with resolute purpose and without any direction through the winding Old World streets. The city was still alive and lively as the summer eve darkened and I pressed on through their lives as though I had mine own. It was fascinating to me how real-world people lived, worked, shopped, and played in this ancient and noble city. I then stood amidst the Palazzo Vecchio and marvelled at lovers splashing one another from the Biancone while a mother scolded her petulant child beneath the David. Life among the majestic. Life amongst the immortals. It elevated the living and these lives that flowed about the stone, seemingly oblivious to it, ennobled the architecture yet more. I'd lounged among the Rodins in the Tuileries Gardens but there was something here in Florence that changed everything about my appreciation for the place of art in the world. Paris is a city that has art in it, Rome is a city that exists upon its art and Florence is a city of art. Appreciation with no pretension.

 My heart and mind spun as these sensations and understandings near overwhelmed me such that, as my awestruck gaze fell from the brickwork heights of the Arnolfo tower, I was overlong in realizing what they had settled duly upon. I cannot know how long I had then been viewing her before I realized that I was studying the bouncy blonde stylings of my Anne.

II