TUSCANY: February, 2003 (Part 3)

The following morning I climbed a steep, narrow pathway up, up, up to the Basilica of Santa Margherita, which was situated at the top of the town. I explored the inside of the church, lit a candle and sat in silence. My prayers, my meditations and my lit candles were wishes for a life of peace, purpose and creativity

For me, peace meant not panicking about paying the rent. Purpose was a reason to exist. I'd puzzled, cried and moaned for years about being blessed with a gift for acting, yet as my career had sputtered to an end I didn't know what to replace it with. Should I keep writing screenplays so I could join the millions of other writers in Hollywood with unproduced scripts? Creativity had to be more than the dinner parties I served up every month...didn't it?

My thoughts drifted away in the warm air of the cavernous basilica. Sunlight spilled across the nave from stained-glass windows on high. I was the only visitor. A spicy aroma of incense permeated the wood pews and brought to mind the masses my family attended every Sunday in the Orthodox Church. My brothers and I had no choice in the matter and tried our best to stay alert through long services held in droning Ukrainian. As payback we embarrassed my mother by wolfing down the after-service cupcakes. Fair trade, as we saw it, and the only merit churchgoing held for us.

In adulthood I discovered comfort in the ritual of Sunday morning services. I experimented with church. For a long time I attended an Anglican service, then I went to a "Self-Realization" temple, where all major religions are honored. William, raised Roman Catholic, rebelled and had nothing to do with organized religion. No, we wouldn't be wed in a house of worship.

I respected his perspective on the great unknown but sometimes longed for companionship in the wonderment of forces bigger than those we can see and touch. I needed to believe in something larger, in a kind of fate or destiny in order to find peace and purpose. William believed in talent, discipline and just a little luck, while my mind could drift for hours in mystery.

Back outside Santa Margherita, I studied the far-reaching landscape way below. Green and fertile earth stretched to the horizon. Squares of cultivated farmland held tiny houses with itsy-bitsy white sheets hung to dry across gardens and yards. From a height of over sixteen hundred feet, I looked at foggy clouds hanging over pastures. Birds twittered and hawks dipped low. I looked up at the moving sky. The fierce wind of the night before, still in action, had clouds scurrying as if in a sped-up film effect.

Should God have cared to listen to me, a tip of his head was all it would have taken. In such a place, it was easy to imagine a monastic life of peace and study. Here on the tip-top of Cortona, Emily Dickinson and I would take our leave. I wanted to marry that man back in Rome. I saluted God and took off back down, down, down to back my bags and bid farewell to the sisters.

On the train ride back to Rome I thought about my first trip to Italy.