Oh what beauty I have discovered these past two days! In my sunlit countryside walks around the south side of Florence I feel entirely enveloped in my own world. Ephemeral though it may be. Being alone I don't feel alone, but I am accompanied by all the city and all the country. I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize myself looking back.


***from my journal entry 26-09-02***

It rained and was very cold the past two days. But today, to my immense joy, the sun gratiously came out and we had a beautiful afternoon. When classes had finished I went up and up on a narrow stone street south of the school. On either side were the tall, weather-worn, faded-paint faces of what must have been apartments, indistinguishable from one another except by the laundry hanging in front of the windows or the flower pot by the entrance. Then suddenly after another turn in the road the world opens. And there I stand under the blue sky and the Tuscan sun. Elegant branches of olive trees peering over ancient stone walls. Vines and wildflowers in the path. It smells like a country in the sun and it warms me from the inside out and drawns me into its heart.