AMALFI: February, 2003 (Part 3)

I picked up a picnic lunch at a grocery store and wandered through pottery shops and a small stationery factory, where designs in cerulean blue and shiny gold curled around the edges of embossed linen papyrus. I bought a small compass in a store filled with all things seaworthy. After perusing the goods of the town I strolled along the beach, with its shuttered-up restaurants and boat-rental kiosks.

It was easy to imagine hot summer days and a seaside filled with lean, tanned bodies splashing in foamy waves. Still, I was more content to be alone here in winter. I took a bus way up the hillside to the town of Ravello, where I wandered gardens studded with alabaster statues of naked Italian men. Stone plazas offered views of the winding coastline far below.

The weather, though sunny, became increasingly cold. An icy wind tore at my jacket and I stopped periodically for cups of hot milk or chocolate. My sunglasses clouded as I stepped inside the warmth of coffee bars.

Freddo! a shopkeeper greeted me.

Si, si, I answered, rubbing my gloved hands together as if to show I understood.

I ate my lunch parked on a bench overlooking the ocean. I read my book under a tree and imagined an everyday life in such a place. So remote, so far up, so far away....

Nope. I loved it, but I couldn't live here. And now I was missing my boyfriend back in Rome. I left the Amalfi coast after a few days. As the countryside passed outside my train window, I pondered the facts. I had three more days with William then I was back to Los Angeles.

Peace, purpose, creativity. Where, when, how?

Once in Rome, William and I shared a dinner of salad and cold meats on the bed, caught up on our news and whispered love thoughts to each other, but no one went to sleep engaged to be married. Certainly no one in this room at the Excelsior Hotel on the Via Veneto was set to exchange time-tested vows and sign on the dotted line.