Day 6

Greetings from Italia!

It's becoming harder and harder to know what to share as we do this thing that we've done several times over, now.  I've spent most days in the van sleeping, and probably obsessively turning over the details of my life, over and over again.  It's probably a good thing that life feels like its full of such possibility at the moment.  But when I've got nothing but miles and miles of countryside and time, it's all I can do to quiet my brain and remember that I can't figure everything out.  Or maybe anything out.  Plans are a funny thing.  Without any thought of them, you are wayward.  Hold too tight to them, and you're poised for a disappointing awakening, I think.  Perhaps if you are to fall into the rhythm of traveling, and life, too I suppose, you've got to adapt to the delicate tightrope walk of plans vs. improvisation.

I like to think about music in that way too.  It's my tendency to become too attached to a melody, or one certain way of arriving at a feeling.  Especially on tour.  I like the worn path.  But I forget often that in the beginning, the roads were endless, the melodies plentiful, and each song, each piece so full of possibility.

It's daunting sometimes.  Such has been life inside my brain lately.  It's been too much!  But I am reminding myself to just put my mind exactly in the moment that I am in, for once.  I'm in a cafe that is somehow playing songs I dread from American radio that somehow even over the ocean I still can not escape.  It's cloudy out.  I just successfully ordered my coffee in Italian.  Doppio Espresso, sort of an easy one. I shouldn't be proud of that, but God it feels good to say a word in the local language.  We've just spent the last two days in Slovenia and Croatia!  I couldn't say a thing!  Croatia felt just like any other European city to me.  I didn't get to see anything other than old, narrow streets, mountains and well, a gorgeous coastline.  That was amazing.  I'd come back if for no other reason than to put my feet in the water and stare out into the sea.

Now we are somewhere in the North of Italy I would guess?  I saw mountains.  And signs for Schio, the nearest town.  And now, very suddenly, it's time to go.

until next time!
-aisha