Life's Joys

Left this sunny morning out my front door to a symphony of booming timpani (church bells) issuing forth from Santa Croce. Rosiland ('Sing out Louise') Russell would have approved. Really, the effect of these bells is so show-stopping that if you ever feel unmoved by it, you are finished, done, pack up and go home. Even an agnostic can feel an interior swell of something BIG: bigger than the little ME that orchestrates so many daily routines. 

Savoring my spiritual hit, I walked then, across the Arno, past the Pitti way in, to the side entrance of Boboli Gardens. Encountered there the absolutely nicest middle-aged Italian woman at the ticket window; she was: intelligent, friendly, smiling, gregarious, gracious, unhurried, etc. She seemed to love tourists, waving me in as she could see there was a group in front definitely needing assistance. Finding the Gardens for instance, although we were clearly 'there'. 

Then, from that entrance I am immediately upon 'my' statue, the huge white marble lozenge, upright, by Kan Yasuda (1997). Who is this Japanese man who has so intensely nailed my innermost psyche? I am sure there is a universal of sorts resonance with a pure, smooth, un-written-upon object, and I for one am very much drawn to it. I was Oh So fortunate today to approach in the near-stillness of birdsong, and have the disk all to myself for a church-like intermezzo of some minutes. When others came I was amused to see their reactions, and pleased with all manner of egoic smugness that most seemed not to see what I see there; made it more mine, in that grossly, gonna come back and bite you, immature, sense of ownership way. . .

I was photographed with the lozenge, a first. I spent a good amount of time touching it too, running my hands over its silky smooth and bitterly cold surface. It was as hard to keep a hand on it as it would be to try touching a red-hot iron, it was that cold. Still, it abides.