An opening from Christmas in Naples is a Sport

This is a beginning I have…I’m going to be crafting right now. Probably a lot is about to change but I might as well share what I have. Even if they don’t make it into the book. Isn’t this more exciting as a newsletter? Don’t know if this is the right moment to do that. At least, I can send a newsletter.

I wasn’t Zoolander, I wasn’t that pronounced as a character but I was a character and the sport of Christmas tickled me. I wanted to play the sport, survive, even. I knew where I was. Theater, sports: entertainment, spectacle, play, yes, these are all words that apply, superiorly.

“Christmas is coming,” I kept saying…

I knew they didn’t know but then Rosa SAID it. SHE SAID IT. She just doesn’t remember it because these people come from a volcano. She was gambling at the time. “Christmas in Naples is a sport, it’s really true, Meri, it’s really true.” In any case, that’s not really the tone of the book, though there are parts of it that are a bit like that but that’s what I’m figuring out right now.

It’s fun to talk about the sport as if it were really a sport because it’s already there.

As you will see…below.

Conversation is athletic. You will get fourteen people coming for you. It’s all…for sport, this is the point. Quick footwork. It’s competitive. This is how we talk. We do not talk, we make deals, and this is what my cousins seriously told me. I spoke like this. It tickled them. “Everyone,” Flora’s flat voice, “speaks like this.” Yes, yes, making deals. We didn’t even need language to understand one another.

“You do this,” si si, they even understood the word “deals.” Yes, that’s it exactly.

Here’s an opening I have right now.

Christmas in Naples is a sport not some hallmark holiday. The Neapolitans can trace back their lineage to the siren that attempted to lure Odysseus. This is ancient territory, the land before Christmas even. We aren’t playing patty cake baker’s man here. This is a sport.

And we just go. We do not need “start dates.”

The Neapolitans rose spontaneously from the subterranean channels to kick out the Nazis. No one needed to discuss it, send a note, or concoct a plot. They just blew like Vesuvius on the day. Same with Christmas. We just go. I didn’t know.

Last year, on December 2, Rosa cut into a pancetta-wrapped turkey stuffed with apples, prunes, and walnuts. I wasn’t expecting that. She said it, announced it. “Merry Christmas.” The next day, a live band hit the streets—Feliz Navidad. I couldn’t believe it. I dropped everything. I ran down alleyways under Christmas stars, dark and moody. A police officer stationed outside Intersport, our official sponsor, directed me to the opening ceremonies in an adjacent park dedicated to a man with glasses. I ran, I did, around the sparkling piazza.

Olive trees twinkled so fast, so fast. Ten years went by so fast. Men on stilts juggled past. Children flew in circles on swings, rode a dragon. Cheerleaders shook their pompoms in sexy Santa costumes. A short Italian man tried to dance with them, we were all dancing, the band played Feliz Navidad again. Santa took up shop, taking a seat in his chair, with an elf helper at the door.

Then, to make sure that the true nature of Christmas in Naples is clear before I begin my story, my play, how I got here, I could not linger: dinner. I lightly jogged to the pick-up spot to hop into the Christmas red Fiat to head to Sorrento to get to the prosciutto place.

Palms trees covered in Christmas lights streamed past our windows, glowing, down the bends toward Sorrento. Rosa and her best friend spoke about getting pizza with friends with streaks of gold across their faces. Lights wrapped around tree trunks, sparkling through their branches; presents and stars and snowmen and Christmas stockings floating in the night even over the tiniest streets without a soul. I was taken by it.

Christmas lights hung in strings above my head disappearing down the street.

The road it took to get here, lit up, a divine comedy.

Into the prosciutto place, big thighs to be thinly sliced, a bald man crouched down looked up. He turned on a Nutcracker under the bar. “We wish you a Merry Christmas,” the Nutcracker got to cracking.

We made our way up the stairs as one.

Zoom out—a ball flew across a green field, little ants running. Soccer was on TV. Cut—snowmen cheered in fits of confetti, more cheerleaders. The camera panned around the coaches. A man in mountain biking gear cut across the screen to take a seat in real life. A Neapolitan man paused and posed in chic black sweats under a canopy of Christmas lights.

So, as you can see, Rosa said it, and we sprang into action as one. We just know and we go.

I didn’t know. I didn’t know so much. Neither did my cousins.

I tried to arrive before Christmas, you see. I had disappeared to my cousins when I was about thirteen along with my father. It had been fifteen years. I had to think about it, whether or not I would pick up the phone. They knew nothing about what happened. I didn’t even know but I had reached a point in my life. I better start figuring it out. And here he was—a man who merits a full title: Franco Franzese.

I picked up the phone joyous, apologetic, tense. People lose touch, stay in touch, who knows? I was living in Paris, France, near Places des Vosges, though I was from America, the United States of America, that is, just to specify. Long-winded.

He was happy to hear from me. He wasn’t expecting me to pick up. Why? He had never tried before. No one knows what happened to you? What happened to you?

Oh, Franco. It was just crazy, crazy, sincerely, even. He wouldn’t believe it, but why did I do this? This is what I mean. I didn’t make sense in Italian. I could take sudden turns in my discourse not wanting to be closed off. Open and positive, I could hit the breaks. I was resolved. I lived with a lot of guilt especially when it came to family; disappearing was a theme.

Come for Christmas.

Oh, I laughed, my story didn’t go with Christmas. So, go early, I thought, and allow ample time.

“DECEMBER,” I began.

“PRIMO,” I said and I laughed.

“OSPETALE…”

(It’s ospedale in Italian.)

Franco Franzese was at the hospital.  

“SCUSA MARIA?”

 “December 1? I come December…”

I brought a fist toward my person.

“PER,” for, “December.”

I didn’t know the word for month.

“Four weeks makes?”

I couldn’t be polite so I apologized, said “mass” instead of “month.”

“…Si…”

He didn’t understand.

“I don’t speak Italian…”

I didn’t know the word for “anymore.” I started over. He cut me off.

“Maria, tutto okay, si. December…”

“Si? Vero?”

Vero means “true.”

Not speaking the language tickled me, made me bolder.

“Si, Maria, si…”

I repeated it. 

“Settimana UNA, non?”

Number one week.

I gave myself fists for using the feminine appropriately.  

“Si, MARIA, si,” he sounded as if we were saying the same thing.

I felt bad. I didn’t know how to feel.

“Okay…perfetto!”

I thanked him. I circled my fist around. “We…”

“Si, si, we’ll spend some time together, this is good, Maria, this is good.”

“Okay…”

 He cracked up at my “okay” in an Italian accent.

I thought I was impersonating them.

“Grazie…”

 He trilled the “r” in my name tight and fast and blasted.

“MARIA NorMALE,” etc.

“I am happy,” I said like a mascot.  

“Si, also us,” he said.

 “Si?”

I was strained.

“Maria, si,” he was confused.

“We all are…”

It was a little hard to believe.

My blog is back—these are the facts of my childhood

There are many many platforms. I’ve been sitting here, having just arrived at 37. It’s okay, it’s okay. I made it! Partially thanks to Barbara Harris street fighter—seriously.

I think I’ll start a separate newsletter for Christmas in Naples is a Sport. There’s a traditional menu and traditions and fun photos.

I’m beginning to “strategize” my content. I had a meltdown last night trying to figure out Later. You can’t do everything my father once said, so travel isn’t exactly my concern, but then, I’m not sure about sharing the themes I’m talking about, writing about, so I might just end up posting scenes from my life more so than putting on a sexy dress and telling you that you can heal from intergenerational trauma. But maybe I should. Get to a pool.

Should I wait until I sell my book to start a newsletter about it, do you know what I mean? I’m just juggling right now from the standpoint of having had my whole life open before me. I’m just trying to figure out social media in some capacity so I can just plug things in…I have to take this one step at a time.

I sing again…that was the most profound part of the awakening I went through though I could also talk about it as a story that was breaking down since a world held me up regardless if it was bad or good, to be simplistic, and that comes straight out of Hannah Arendt about the larger world. Based on what I went through, not so sure it was a psychosis.

In any case, I ended up in the hospital for a day because I didn’t know if I had been abused and it seemed like I was neglected. I remember Jason fondly at five years old telling me that I smelled, and he was concerned. Now I’m rather comfortable talking about what that was and very happy to be able to since sensationally that was rather tough.

Here are the facts of my early childhood, just to make sure they are very clear:

• A stranger took me out of my home the second she saw me when I was four years old…for a day…it ended up being four years.

  • I say total stranger because someone gave me the topic sentence. It’s more appropriate to say that a stranger took me out of my house and four years later….just because my mother bounced, it’s true. She manipulated a situation…and left her child…basically.

• Dr. J, my mother, accused my father of child molestation on the light end so this family was protecting me but that was really wild. As a psychological drama, it’s rather interesting, if not farcical in this case, just due to who Dr. J is though I don’t know this woman anymore…but delusional is pretty on point as an adjective.

• She was seriously unhinged.

• Then, four years later, this woman decides with a grand gesture that my father isn’t though she has no idea who these people are…to be frank. I could picture some “cool” cutthroat thriller about some mother who takes “destroy the child molester” to a whole new level. It’s one of those—might inspire someone to kill.

• My father then gets diagnosed with Alzheimer’s though it is Parkinson’s first after I go home to mirrors being smashed off the walls…and he doesn’t tell anybody. I found out about that ten years later. These years were repressed. What does that mean? It’s a good question. The Oldest Storyteller is a fiction about that. What that will become, I don’t know, but that’s the idea for now.

These have always been the facts of my life but due to the whole situation, it took me some time to get here. Very happy to be. Cohesive. Sensical. Able to show my face with that story, you know, publicly. That ended up, just that, being harder than I anticipated. I don’t necessarily care about what one would like to label what my brief crisis of self was but when you have a woman take you out of your house at four who believes your father is a child molester…then not…and then…she tells you that the way your mother handled you was inappropriate in that way…that’s hard. What am I supposed to do with that? Coming to understand that she didn’t know these people?

That’s not something you “say” without “meaning.” And again, that statement in my case just threw me in more than one direction.

I’m fine now.

I don’t know if I’m supposed to put this in notes, Substack.

In any case, I got out of the hospital and I burst into my apartment like “no, no, no,” like no. I opened up all the windows and sang for the first time in like fifteen years. I had to sit down and I cried. Maybe this was what I wanted to do. And that’s what my cousins hit me with the second I walked back through their door, looking at me—Christmas in a family sport not some patty cake bakers man—what the HELL happened to you? You don’t sing? They chased me, even, “no sense, there’s no sense here.”

We had a sport to play, ancient, regardless of one’s hero home journey. They also, the truth aside, for there are many truths, were the first family to show “concern,” like you’re one of ours. What the hell is this? Franco Franzese especially. Very complicated.

Writing this book ended up being rather revelatory. “You don’t sing…”

They just couldn’t believe that. They looked at me as if I were a different person…a new person…walked into their house.

And for me, I had to really think about that.

Even the idea that these people seemed to know me better than my own parents.

I laughed, I cried, questioned everything.

Glad I worked that out. That I can say that …you can. You don’t have to inherit your parents—nope. Not true. Just not true. Should not be taught. You can heal on a rather profound level. I know people go through all sorts of crises even a mid-life crisis…oh no, I lived my life this way when I didn’t want this. Or, shit, I’m not twenty anymore, I don’t know. People go through all sorts of things.

My parents were mentally ill. Ill. I can explore what that means…but if you take these four years…you will understand what I mean. Now, I can take a step forward. It’s not that I was adopted by all these families sort of disconnected from that fact, if that makes sense. I did not go through foster care. My sister didn’t either. Both my parents were sick. Hello world. Technically, that made me predisposed to developing a mental health issue. Happy to say that’s no longer my fear. I was severely manipulated and one may blame the illness…es. Not the people.

This is my life rewritten—sense, health, sanity, etc. Gotta new lease on life. I started singing again…sort of reaching for maybe something that I loved that I couldn’t pursue in the past. I don’t know, everything is possible in a new way. I feel so much support to put myself out there so thank you.

I think when you get perspective on what has been driving your choices in life…that’s not exactly regret.

“My Way” by Frank Sinatra. They welcome me back with that. It’s my story. Not theirs. Though they all want to be the protagonist.

“Who’s the main character?” Making deals. “Which one of us.”

Anyway, I’ll post here sometimes, too, since I’m supposed to write everywhere and I’m figuring out what I want to do now. I might just post scenes in my Substack since I have a bunch of stuff. I just need to work out my system and this goddamn book really has been rather laborious.

I’ll look up some information around neglect, abuse, children who come from mentally ill parents since my father had an anxiety disorder, eating disorder (yes, at one point), remember…he was sick the whole time. He was depressed as well. Alzheimer’s is a serious illness. In my case, it’s easier to just lead with some terms. I can make a list in my case. My mother was “a pathological liar,” or so I concluded rather early, “hypochondriac, an addict,” etc. Maybe a special person, too, Dr. J. This is her real nickname: Dr. J.

My father and I disappeared to my cousins —why? Because he didn’t call anymore. From what I understand. He was sick, yes, the entire time. It just didn’t land on anyone. Not me though I knew. Anyway, those ten years are a different book. I told plenty of people once his doctor told me that he had diagnosed him ten years before. I could not follow up. Sort of disconnected.

But anyhoo, whoosh, got through that, you know what I mean?

Yes yes, also thanks to Barbara Harris street fighter.

That’s what I mean, it’s a whole new world.

I crack up because, you see, in Barbara Harris’ case, the idea that maybe there IS more to us than surgeons can remove…might…actually be believable to people. Isn’t that funny? On some level. I tend to approach everything as energy so that eliminates any problem. No one can say energy is not real. We believe it can’t be destroyed. So that’s all I have to say about that. I appreciate my stories in general because they all got me through…I wanted to tell them, share them. They were really my support through that.

I would rather sing at this moment in time. I’ll keep sharing the story around these four years…and Christmas in Naples.

I can picture someone I know going “OH.” Yeah, didn’t know that. I always said “I was adopted, sort of adopted” and how I spoke about it was a problem in itself. That’s another book. No, no, no, no more “Maria is a piece of work” and “poor her father,” no no no.

I started some healing videos. I guess on TikTok…that’s a steady stream of content. Every few hours…a few times a day. I’ll figure out Instagram. I’m just trying to get a system going so I don’t need to think about it…and wow, I have to comment 10x a day? Wow. And write. Again, someone suggested I get on social media to help myself which wasn’t a bad idea, I don’t think, but I’ve struggled with it.

People managed to do a lot at once so I’m trying to just tune into—let me help myself. I have goals. If my story lends itself to drama…which is…how I began, truly, then great. I would really embrace that.

I’m finishing the book. That’s my priority. Got it together, what I have. I’m crafting the structure of it right now. Having some trouble there but it’s working itself out. I’m using Post Office by Bukowski as a frame of reference because of the short chapters and flow and dialogue. It’s an autobiographical account, too, so it’s not memoir. This isn’t a memoir, I don’t think. Like, Post Office is about his time working at the Post Office. It includes his wife, etc. I’m trying to find more references like that.

A lot happens. Carmine’s band, the band. He’s leaving it behind, my right-hand cousin, we can speak somehow, and I guess I find it again. It’s sort of the Sound of Music this book, too. They just started singing to me nonstop because I didn’t know the songs. So pretty. They put on quite a show for me—utter chaos. And it was, family was chaos. But this was a different kind. All translating the songs in Italian, not English, at once.

I understand that maybe in a movie I might get there, chill, unpack, and hear Carmine play. It’s just like, okay, STEP ONE is that I don’t remember who I am. That’s step one in the story for me. That I know. For them, too. I don’t seem to understand that, though. I’m going to be reconnecting with my roots AKA my nature, nature, too which is, I think, a better way of framing what this is about. I’m telling them this story…too…and that’s really Franco Franzese’s shining role, you see.

I’m just struggling with the beginning. I feel like I should just get to the first feast where the key phrases of my life are revealed because then…we’re off.

I gotta get back to that.

I’ll post scenes from Christmas in Naples in my Substack. Here too. I figured might as well post everywhere for the moment since it’s all free and I’m shaping what I’m about now. I suppose I could just write a newsletter and say—published this here and here. It’s just that people use Substack as a publication platform as well. Maybe I’m not quite there yet. My friend thought it was “an energy leak” to start a newsletter right now though another writer said—do it. So I might do that.

Anyway, still experiencing some confusion around the world as it stands currently…a material girl living in a digital world in fact. It is what it is.

Thanks for reading!

Letting go and picking up the old in Balat...

I’m sipping my coffee the old-fashion way out of a cup and saucer. A duck takes flight in green to find the end of the rainbow in a crystal glass of water. You don’t have to go anywhere to find it—gold. Silk roosters and glass elephants hang from a door for new beginnings and good luck, so make a wish for greener pastures in a frame.

Old rackets on brick walls; let them hang. No more games that I don’t want to play anymore. Russian dolls stuffed in a USA boxing glove, some hurt, “so Memphis” a little flag reads, I breathe. A city I’ve never been to. Santa’s sleigh sits on a mirror inside a frame. I went down an old familiar road that I didn’t want to take, so I’ll leave it as a painting in an antique shop for its dark beauty, too. A woman wails on the stereo, the melodies we return to.

Tea cup sets on old shelves; flutes, flowers, saucers in stacks, and colonial couples about to dance next to blue and green glass, I don’t think about my mother. I thought that my story had value, but “everything is for sale,” the owner half-French says taking a seat in a chartreuse chair with wings below a portrait of an African woman. I want to leave some stories behind today to never look back. Voice sings the same words as the last—no, I don’t regret anything.

A little angel flies out of frame. There’s a light at the end of a couple of teardrops. Another woman’s jeans sparkle, “are you writing” to a chorus on the stereo; yes, this is my exercise, to sit in shops and reflect on old stuff, how I got here, works of art.

I miss a voice that I left behind long ago so thinking about leaving what I picked up along the way instead in neat stacks of porcelain delicate and strong. They didn’t feel like they were mine, anyway. Like the old rackets on the wall, it took more than one to play or just a wall, and we’ve all made false moves, but history is people doing the best they can with what they got, he said. I had to forgive my family for so much, and I found that I was unforgivable for a lot less; blame was an old familiar friend, so put the niceties away, la politesse over tea, and do one final turn over a fluttering vibrato in French in an antiques café in Turkey.

None of the chairs match the three wooden tables with silk lampshades.

She’s putting out vintage coca cola trays across the floor bright red. I could furnish a sweet little home here, but I don’t think I want to do that. In stacks, tea cups gleam pristine against stone walls with family portraits in black and white and a certificate of “bonne conduite.” Have a good ride. Baskets, an orange rotary phone, hand-painted trays, and miniature red glasses surround a wooden bar covered in glass jars, m&m dolls, fake flowers so soft, and bottles of sweet distillations of violet, jasmine, and rose. Plates and cups rise and shine. A youthful hand illustrated Paris, New York, and London behind the bar. “I didn’t want to end up here” sounds a little like someone else, which can be odd, because I picked up some things that don’t feel like mine; it feels like that sometimes.

Leaving things behind like empty saucers that others filled with their stories, too, to make room for something else. I don’t want this anymore, pinching an ear of a handle, listening to myself. The nude woman in a frame—what do you think she means? The expression on her face? So many ways to frame it, picking up old familiar shapes that I wished I had never let go—a reunion with what lost and found and lost again. A colonial couple dances in blue, light shining through the shade. Hats, hats, hats perched above a military jacket, African women walk with baskets on their heads in a line—bien venu: welcome. A gold bow around nothing but the present moment, I found a Russian doll on hand-painted Japanese trays, a painting of an African boy peeking beneath a hand towel that reads “travel often.”

Fresh green melon and pineapple on a dish, I pick up a miniature prong with a white handle. I yelled to her in the back—thank you in Turkish. She cries back as if it were a love song, too—gratitude. “I’ll think of you every step of the way,” Whitney Houston follows Piaf’s declaration that played again about starting over. Houston is leaving too; it just doesn’t work, but with love—I will always love you, waving goodbye. So many ways to say it with love, so “My Heart Will Go On” at the final corner in a blond café smaller than a closet with a cardamom coffee in china. Glass glows from thatched ceilings in sensuous shapes. Taillights break through an empty crystal glass. No harm done, in the end.

My first week in Istanbul

I’m sipping Turkish salep pronounced “sah-LEP,” and I guess the stress goes at the end of the word as the verb is placed at the end of a sentence in Turkish. I got in last night after 1 AM through a gigantesque airport. Foreign language brings out my competitive side which is healthy, I think. How fast can I learn? It’s not quite that. How long does it take to retain a word? It’s a small act of love; making this small effort to connect instead of wanting to sound smart due to that scary bridge between you and the person that wobbles or doesn’t exist.

Salep is a beverage of hot milk, sugar, and thick from wild orchid tubers with cinnamon on top which soothes the nerves and relieves chest congestion and bronchitis.

The Hagia Sophia has been calling me, which isn’t a surprise. Every time I get somewhere, I ask “how far is that on foot?” I don’t tend to take transportation if I don’t have to. I got lost, went down sidestreets through a wholesale fashion quarter with squat slender buildings and boxes for windows.

Finished my salep.

A bath of blue, green, yellow, and red through countless windows in red striped domes and semi-domes, it’s just light and books and men praying in crafted spaciousness. I don’t count, I don’t think, though I am always frightened of doing something disrespectful as a tourist in a spiritual space. Patterns, patterns, patterns. It doesn’t end. It doesn’t begin. Pointed arches, foliage curling on stained glass, lights hang from stars in the ceiling on metal strings. It’s circular, cosmic. There is no image of God—it’s in everything; it even blooms on the carpet. I am alone in the Fatih mosque in a pink scarf covering my hair cleansed by light and space.

Patterns, patterns, patterns. Hand-carved blooms radiating on doors. The cosmos is in everyone and everything even wood—it’s basic. A raindrop at the end of a bulb, where does inspiration come from? Spirit never abandoned me and people, sometimes, I gotta tell you.

In spaces such as these, a work of art, I can put aside some of the brutal history that comes along with religion and power and get to the essence of a breath. Why such violence when this mosque fills me with such peace?

This is sacred geometry, mathematics meets poetry, a perspective on power. I remember Anas telling me about Morocco before the arrival of Islam, how that faith tried to erase their history before its introduction to the country. What gorgeous writing in gold curving lines with tails; serpent like as if written in the moment. Astral. Natural shapes become majestic. Patterns, patterns, patterns. We are bonded to this place, at least for a moment in time.

Some people made peace with their parents. I never knew what do with them and then I hated them. It’s a strong word, and I use it more for the effect. I felt spirit give me the space to just feel that and take my time. All in all, I don’t see them which I appreciate. Protected by spiritual walls. The call to prayer has begun. A cat is sitting on a panel in the pink carpet: blue blooms. In my case, my mother gave me away to a total stranger when I was four, and I was four at the time, so it took me some time to reopen my childhood. Not everyone comes from a happy upbringing. It’s a fact of life, too. I started over at 37 after a couple of years of unearthing my past and what it meant to me, and just continued forward, all the same.

A guard tells me to leave—it’s time for prayer and women don’t share the same space as the men. They have their own area unseen by them. We’re connected to the omnipresent thing; the inexplicable patterns that become impossibly beautiful. Between us, there is such separateness. You’re a part of this but you’re over there. I don’t feel comfortable joining the women. I am not Muslim, but I haven’t felt at any point unwelcome. I am a spiritual person who meditates. Writing as prayer; in the flow of a current that runs through all of us.

Thinking about psychology as an architecture; religion is quite a pillar in the world that exists inside of us. If you’re against it; that’s still a relationship. It’s there. Watching the pendulum swing; sides. Even psychology, bathed in a holy light, that was my passion, probably. I just got in touch with that since I started writing. I went through a deep change; there was nothing wrong with my life, but being told “you were repressed for a long time,” I had to agree and also wish I hadn’t gotten involved with some of the people that I did in the way I did.

I’m taking in what I learned right now. I never felt better, and the more I let go, honestly, like—let go, the easier it feels.

As a view outside one’s window, a church can even be part of the draw, but it comes with a history that’s hard to swallow because of its patriarchal perspective on power. Mosques in Istanbul glow hot in the night; they look like the future to me. It doesn’t inspire the same feelings because I don’t have a connection to it; it’s like foreign words, they don’t carry the same history and weight. Religion has waged so much war when one would think it would be about respect.

---

Now I’m eating lentil soup and olive oil with black olives. I’m home wherever I am, but I cannot say that, though I am where I am. We all have to eat though, that’s true.

---

Pop music plays on a terrace near a mosque under renovation. A soccer game is on the big screen. NFO vs EVE, whatever that means. Red and blue, a packed stadium. The sun is setting through plastic walls downing smoky the outdoor patio smoky with a hazy golden light. Patterns, patterns, wherever I look; cushions with monstera leaves on black and white triangles. I don’t know about this traveling. There are many ways through the world, so what’s yours? You start traveling in your own hometown and you come to discover just how many people, how many lives are out there.

I wanted to live. That’s just the thing.

The Oldest Storyteller appeared. I’ve been thinking about that character.

I wanted to keep on living, growing, so I made a choice to evolve. I did. I’ve had to adjust some of my relationships, but we’re all creating our own realities. I tend to take on full responsibility. Maybe that’s a product of having had two parents who were mentally ill. I don’t know what the trajectory of their lives was. I’m not feeling low; we make decisions on many levels. I don’t know what to say about not having been fed properly as a baby; that was a rough thought, sensational, to be confirmed by someone who didn’t even ask “How are you doing?”

These four years I spent in another house came crashing down in a confusing world; mine, but I have to keep in mind that there was so much I didn’t grasp as to what was driving my life. If I find myself slipping into old patterns of behavior, it can be painful. It’s less that there weren’t positive motors, but right now, I’ve been struggling with whether or not I want to be living abroad.

I understand that now with a pipe on my lap and a blue and gold glass hookah like a fountain catching the last rays, a swell.

These first couple of days hit me hard. I didn’t want to be here. All my stories that I wanted to tell supported me in getting through a difficult moment, but I experienced how a change in my world, let’s say, came with its challenges. I’m becoming so much more…I hope so. I hope that would apply to everyone. Sometimes, I would rather abandon my story and start totally anew.

There’s a larger world out there, so it doesn’t matter, but navigating out of my tiny world to reach a new point of view has been a little—step on the gas. I’m thinking about the oldest storyteller right now because I’m working on an application, and the way the Pacific Islanders charted the currents…the goal was to reach that land mass out there…and they knew if the boats into the currents that they would get there eventually even if that meant curving rather than traveling on a straight line.

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Flowers in tiles on columns; what a life, a heavenly light in bloom. What’s the day look like after you die? One life, no? A long one. If I wasn’t living like a student, I would feel a little better, but I’m just looking for a job and coming above ground, really; that’s really what it was.

I’ve hardly had a birthday party in my adult life—yeah, it’s the simple things, isn’t it? I want that now; a group of friends and someone to bring me a birthday cake—one whole person. To throw myself a party. I have to scratch my head; I must have done it, but that’s what I mean. I feel like I could create a community around me now, a family type of thing.

Time bends, the oldest storyteller says in a city full of strangers. He told me long ago, “a few years,” he always reminds me, “everything is going to change.” Things really did change.

I wanted to deal, heal, and move on if not reach my potential; it’s just some people in my life appeared to have to go. I didn’t want to lose hope. Madonna said there is no greater power than the power of goodbye…so there are many goodbyes I’m saying right now.

I asked myself long ago, what does it mean to change in a world that never stays the same and that you wish would change, some things.

Birds soar over domes outside these plastic walls, over plastic flowers. Time, it will take some time, but not much to turn a life around. It does feel like a new life. That was some story back there, looking at my camomile tea in a glass saucer. Letting go…saying goodbye…

Time bends even through the plastic coverings on this terrace, patterns made by rain, some crappy material you can’t even recycle takes on an otherworldly glow.

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The doctors in their scrubs are fresh out of the hospital drinking beers at 10 AM after a 48-hour shift. You can tell when someone is in a totally different timeframe than you are. It’s their night off, the light of day. We stood on the morning porch with laundry hanging. They’re smoking cigarettes. I say I am tired and pause with my cup of coffee. I apologize to them…The ER doctors in Istanbul, Turkey don’t mind with their 40s at 10 AM, calm. Go buy filters, they say, and make my own coffee. I just got here. I don’t typically like staying in a house.

I write this from a hookah bar with “I’ll be missing you” the remix playing on a big screen TV between two stained glass windows with men in a smoky brown cafe in Fatih. I’m drinking apple tea and smoking my hookah.

Cerese called. “I am so sorry I am missing…”

Thank God for her.

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I leave the shisha bar up the street at 5 AM. It does not close. The doors close, but the shisha bar does not. I worked for two weeks straight since my last droplet and came into a new space. The great affair is to move, and we do. I had to settle into a new head space. We keep moving…

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I haven’t heard a peep from my roommate Anastasia from Russia for two weeks. We seemed to emerge at the same time. Our roommate Muhammed is caught between our questions, finally. Helping me put my laundry into the machine, he says, “my mother says do this.” I make Anastasia jump. “You move like air.” I do not make sounds at home, that’s not typically what I do. I do not turn on lights. I avoid this. I do not want to disturb anyone.

Thus far, on my travels this year, Marrakesh, Morocco was a monastery time since I was still going through pain. Summer in Vico Equense was about dealing with my own relationship with bonds, what I want to bond with, too, that’s very important. Not that. That.

They don’t know that. They don’t have the problems that are in my family, so I could deal with these dynamics that came to the surface privately. Fes, Morocco was home = cosmos. The castello in Vico Equense was military. Defense. Protection. What my walls even are. Learning to put them up but not embracing everything—saying no. That’s an important one. Istanbul seems to be about intimacy, taking care of self, and setting up a sanctuary though I am not home. Home and hearth.

Is this time about travel or is it about home? I am here for three months, about, and three months later, editing this, I would never judge someone for not wanting to travel. I want to stop imposing on myself.

Istanbul is a remarkable city that opened its mosques for me to meditate in. “Conflict is good,” a Muslim-American conflict resolution specialist said who works at the highest position for the United States. This was an authority, honored, who never made me feel small. My system of thought, though; much had to shift, and I’m embracing the space rather than trying to fill it, and even as a character in my mind, she draws out wisdom out of me.

We rely on each other’s differences, too, in that, this woman has walked into war zones and situations that I have not. There’s a bigger world out there that wants to embrace you, so she represents that, too.

The spaces themselves cleanse, the writing on the walls fluid and stunning as if done in the instant. It vibrates.

I sit back and think about decoders, people who are gifted at deciphering a language group. They can reflect on the lines, the symbolism, the writing, and begin to compute the patterns, the logic, the meaning.

I heard about a decoder who works for the government—they just called her one day in college. It’s not a secret. She is a federal agent, not a secret agent. They need people with certain skills. She was studying ancient languages, Francophone, I believe. She was so good that the government called and said, you are basically decoding—work for us.

And the thing is, I know, because I can, because her friend is allowed to talk about it. He doesn’t know what she’s doing but he has the basic information. If he couldn’t talk about it…he would know. Isn’t that interesting?

Don’t do that.

There are people who penetrate a network, even ancient, and begin to create a map for those that just see lines and symbols. “Oh, I understand the meaning or the message…” eyes that can see through the surface, so many layers. Sometimes, when I read “oh they intercepted a message,” I think, “did they want you to?”

There is more than meets the eye and sometimes what you see is not exactly what you’re seeing. You think—diamonds over a line, it’s not connecting, but there’s a connection. This symbolism makes up a whole message, word, I don’t know in this case. Is it a phrase? If I were to move over that piece, it might lose its sense; a B becomes a P, something. It’s a sentence that isn’t constructed on a straight line, perhaps, but then, I sift through my own symbolism, since that might not look like a kingdom to someone else.

I can probably already deduce due to context that it’s probably God-related. Koran. Isn’t it all? I’m looking up and around the walls. Is it the feminine holy wisdom that created the masculine that my friend told me about? That’s what Sophia means, for example, but then, how do I know that? She read it, but that doesn’t mean that’s what it means…that’s the other thing. Information and our interpretation. It means “divine wisdom” in the feminine?

Learning is one of the great joys of being human. Our ability to learn, write, and create a whole system of thought and architecture that meets the eye in more ways than one. Language is a kind of architecture. There’s structure. It holds us up. For some, that might appear very real, which it does, not flat. “I’m walking inside a structure,” I’m getting to know what it is. Like math, too, maybe. This + this = this, so I identified the verb? I heard that there are three columns for consonants in Arabic, and this is classical Arabic, so I don’t know how that translates, but they make up the root of the word. The vowels change the form of the thought: noun, verb. To farm versus a farmer. In Turkish, you place the verb at the end of the sentence. “Coffee I want.” Arabic is not Turkish, not at all, but it’s on the walls. Turkish is a relative of Japanese, and I heard Basque is too. Arabic is the Semitic language group along with Hebrew.

Isn’t that amazing about language—how it connects us? Our ties extend beyond blood since language is fundamental in our architecture as well as how we relate to the world, and it turns out how we relate has even older roots since languages are organized into family groups. It always comes back to that, and my family group was hard to relate to, but I felt it connected me to so many, so I’m making my choices as to how I want to relate through this fuller, firmer understanding of my foundation. I feel the ground beneath my feet in splendid architecture.

Hello from Vomerò

Naples is a beast, a beauty, a theatrical mystery with neighborhoods that have their own drama if not mystery. On the hill above Chaia overlooking the picturesque Posillipo is the affluent Vomerò where I stayed in an ancient church cave that a young fisherman converted into an Airbnb. Traveling inspires our inner voyager, so first, to get there, I walked down the famous Via Toledo where French writer Stendhal wrote the famous words: “to me, this is the most beautiful city in the world.” Behind palm trees, the facade of the funicular rose tall and pink, and who doesn’t want to take a cable car built in the early twentieth century? If “funiculì funiculà is coming into your head; a journalist wrote that classic Italian song when the first funicular railway opened on Mount Vesuvius in 1880.

The architecture is worth the trip to Naples, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, but Vomerò, in particular, offers a stunning display of Neapolitan Liberty which the last station stop features in pink glass. Out of the funicular station, I hung a left and curved along an architectural heaven over rolling hills—Liberty in all its facets and shades—with spectacular views. Tip one if you’re staying in Vomerò: just walk around. Take Via Luigia Sanfelice and Via Fillippo Palizzi. You’ll see a flourishing graffiti down some steps: “maybe we’re crazy,” and then you’ll turn left and Liberty mansion in orange gold sits across the street from a grey castello. A street in Naples can unfold like story. You don’t know what’s coming around the corner.

Continuing on Sanfelice, however, I had to get to my Airbnb first. I passed the Villa Santarella where Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti lived and worked. The castle grey and pink—a classic Neapolitan color combination—was constructed in 1909 in the Liberty and also Renaissance revival style, somehow, or so I read. Right beside it, I found a villa behind a gate that could have come out of a novel.

A young strapping fisherman was waiting for me at the end of the block next to a sweet graffiti of the word “bird” on the side of a light pink building. Down a set of steps, we reached another skinny and steep set as if we had arrived at some tiny hilltop town and made our way down to his cave. Over the stone wall across the sea was the island of Capri, a tiled portrait in blue and yellow marked the spot in front of his front door with four windows.

The arched raised loft was his fisherman spot with a dark blue SMEG fridge and nautical decor. Though he had an ashtray from Grand Hotel Vesuvio—the most famous if not expensive lodgings in Naples—his place was simple and well-done, but I liked that little touch. He came from a family of fishermen and bought this little gem a couple of years ago and treated me like royalty but he was laidback—he even offered me a private driver…his friend.

I passed the funicular station and headed up some steps next to an escalator with chic Neapolitans in leather and hats hanging out between handsome buildings and graffiti. At the corner of a grey apartment building with wooden shutters, the terrace of fonoteca was packed; a stylish bar that sells craft cocktails and records! I got a Negroni, a classic, and perused some jackets with a cool, fun crowd. A friend of the fisherman had a citrusy drink in a tall glass with fresh mint in it. As a solo traveler, I never feel alone in Naples, because the city lives outside and Neapolitans are warm, boisterous, and prone to strike up a conversation.

Up the street, I found Cantina La Barbera, a secluded restaurant tucked down an alleyway with an enclosed outdoor terrace, woodsy. A large table conversed with voices that cocooned me in a warm embrace. The owner welcomed me as if I were a special guest if not home. He took his seat at a table with the restaurant musician was there who plays Thursdays. And Naples is a music capital, so I’dgo back to check out a local musician.

I had a fagioli and meatball soup with rosemary followed by a zucca risotto thick and creamy with tartufo and fungi. Excited to explore the interior, the staff led me through the dining rooms with bright colors on the walls, empty at this time of day. They have a pizzeria downstairs in a tavern with archways, and Naples unfolds like a story; always a surprise or a delight to discover. “Come back,” they said. “Oh, most definitely,” I said. I admired the restaurant’s hot red emblem in the window of the facade on my way out.

Up a curving street with bustling bars, an apartment building with a curved yellow facade was dramatic in direct sunlight while the street remained in shadow at the end of the day. Naples is a city of contrasts. Every traveler has their style; I love finding a neighborhood that I can explore that also offers me sites to see and good drinks and eats!

A couple spots to check out in Vomerò

Castel Sant’Elmo

Everyone goes to Egg Castle on the lungomare, the seafront promenade, but I send travelers to this 14th-century fortress situated on the highest point in the city for sprawling views of the city, sea, and Vesuvius. (He’s always there.) A small novecento museum gives you a taste of modern Neapolitan art from 1910 to 1980 in the futurist and neorealism styles. There’s a Scaturchio at the Castel as well, a pastry shop famous for making sfogliatelle for over two hundred years. It’s a small seashell of a thousand crunches stuffed with ricotta, cinnamon, and candied citrus peel that is purported to be packed with potassium and other nutrients. You have to get this delectable treat if you’re in Naples—it’s a must. Most people crowd the location in centro storico and it doesn’t offer these breathtaking views in clear chairs. If you’re feeling indulgent, the cafe crema is dessert in a plastic goblet; a cold, thick, creamy shake for hot days that you can take to go.

Certosa di San Martino

A grand monasterial complex stands right beside Castel Sant’ Elmo as a premier example of Baroque architecture. Erected in 1325, the grounds are palatial with a hundred rooms, two churches, a majestic courtyard, four chapels, three cloisters, gothic dungeons, and hanging gardens. Make sure to allot half a day, at least. The royal chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro is considered to be one of the finest artistic achievements of the city with a dome covered in paintings. And why not? You went from twentieth-century art at Castel Sant’Elmo to seventeenth-century Neapolitan painting.

Villa Floridiana

Take a coffee or a Spritz to go—porta via—and stroll through a park that was once the grounds of a royal villa that is now a ceramics museum. Under oaks, pines, palms, boxwoods, and through camelia roses and English meadows, the grounds are romantic with artificial ruins, statutes, enclosures, caves, and a small lake with caretta turtles. The neoclassical decorative arts museum houses gorgeous ceramics from the twelfth to ninetieth centuries that even include styles such as Chinese Ming, Qing, and Japanese Edo.

Vanvitelli Metro Stop

The Vomerò metro stop is on the best line in the city—the yellow number one—because it became a public art project. Every stop is a work of art filled with colors, mosaics, installations, and photographs. Among the hundreds of artists that are featured in this spectacular underground theatrical event are William Kentridge, Robert Wilson (Toledo), and Sol LeWitt. The city spent five billion dollars to introduce the city to contemporary art. I tend to take a trip through the subway early in the morning to avoid people entirely. At the Vanvitelli stop, black and white photographs of the architecture cover the walls with escalators ascending and descending through futuristic metal cages with a hot blue swirling lighting fixture in the ceiling.

Naples inspires stories though it’s packed already with myth, folklore, devil sightings (ha—it’s true!), and unbelievable true tales, so it sparks one’s creativity no matter if you lean toward the dark or light. A telephone rang in the space from the television screens on the platform below; a psychological play took off in my head, even a breakout absurd dance number of an almost 50s diner feel. I cannot recommend doing Line One enough, and the metro takes you straight to Garibaldi, too, so it’s a direct line to the train station.