APPROACHING SEVENTY
December 2008
 |
| Castelnuovo della Daunia watercolor |
I left Italy thinking
the Italians knew how to live. Not just because they enjoy their food and wine
and their outgoing attitude to friends and family, but because they seem to be
less uptight about life and less concerned with pretentious displays of wealth
or position. However they are concerned with fashion and style, and they dress
with fastidious care.
I returned home from
my first trip to Italy 2 months ago, and have been addicted to a fantasy of
returning to Italy to spend a year writing and painting in the tiny village of
my grandfather, Castelnuovo della Daunia, located in the northern part of
Puglia. I find myself clinging to this fantasy because it gives me hope that my
life is not at a dead end, a disturbing thought that has been creeping into my
consciousness lately.
The truth is, I don’t
know what to think anymore. I will soon be 70 years old, an age that looms
large and carries with it a lot of heavy emotional stuff. Mostly stuff like I
am too old to be thinking about my “somedays”, or scheming about how I can
spend a month let alone a year in Italy. And I’m too old to think I can become
any more than I am in the world of art.
On the other hand I
remind myself that it is not the numbers that count, it is how you feel. It is what is in your heart and your
head that determines how old you are. If I think that I am too old for all of
the above, then I might as well just roll over and die, and I am not ready to
do that.
I don’t know if I
really want to spend a year in Italy. Maybe what I really want is something to
look forward to, something to add excitement to a life that I fear is growing increasingly
dull and mundane. This may be a good time to remind myself of important lessons
from the past: if you don’t think something can happen, then it probably won’t.
But if you nurture your ideas and give them time and space, those that were
meant to be will grow with a chance to bloom, those that weren’t, will die.
Perhaps the years ahead won’t be so dull after all. Who
knows, I may even make it back to Italy some day.
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