What Dreams May Come

Sunflower fields can be planted only every other year. They need a year to rest before producing those mesmerizing giants of the floral world. This summer is sunflower year in Abruzzo. As I make my way down the farm road leading west out of town, the fields change depending on the direction for which I view them. They are like thick velvet when you run your hands over it - as you change the nap, the color trans forms. So it is with the fields. As you move along they transform from green to hazy yellow to bright gold. Above is the wide wale corduroy of a newly cut hayfield, it's neat rows gracefully following the curves of the hill upon which they rest. Deep into the journey, the sun begins  its descent. It seems not to set,but to dip towards the earth, kissing those golden blooms on their brown little faces. The new grown hay switches over to iridescent green. Olive trees, always shining, take on an even brighter silvery sheen.

Sunday, during a duluvial rainstorm that kept three women penned up in my kitchen with no food and just a bottle of wine, I listened to a young woman, timid since her arrival here one week prior, open up about her fears and frustrations. About job, marriage, career. About her imagined life versus her "real" one. From underneath a reserved surface there emerged coals ready to ignite. As if while she was here she had allowed herself to lift the cover smothering the latent flame and permit it air to feed itself. She said she wanted to return. I was not surprised. I've seen it happen before. Part of the magic of this place - Castiglione M.R. specifically and Abruzzo in general, is the way it opens a window into your desires. What you would do and be if you didn't think you had to do or be something or someone else. Something about this place loosens the locks that keep a lid on those desires. It propels you forward into "Yes, and...." mode. It grants permission not only to dream but to consider the dream reality. What is it? Is it the expansiveness of the landscape? The openness of the people, who don't hesitate to touch you or hug you while you talk with them. The way they throw their arms wide as they approach an old friend, arms extended straight out to their sides, closing only when the friend can be folded inside them? Is it the way people's voices travel unhindered from balcony to street, from doorway to shop entrance? Is it the way music echoes from one town's patron saint celebration all the way across the valley to your own little terrazzo? Is it the way the mountains play hide and seek daily, now you see them in the morning, now you don't behind the clouds in the afternoon, so coy and mysterious and existing completely on their own terms? Do they simultaneously remind us of our own power to exist that way and how small we are? So we' d better get moving and take control over our own existence. Whatever the reason, this place has a tendency to open you to aspirations you've kept buried or pressed down. Maybe it has to do with seeing, day after day, the old women walk slowly, pausing often to catch their breath or adjust their posture to ease the pain in their backs, legs, hips, shoulders, as they steadily make their way to church or market or garden plot. Moving, moving, moving towards their goal no matter what. I am glad I have this place that can be a viewing stand in the midst of it all. A vantage from which to safely open yourself to your dreams and perhaps begin to move them into,the tangible realm.