Italian getting easier. It is fun like a game. Always guessing, throwing things together to see if a sentence comes out or if the person you are speaking with just looks at you like you are crazy. then you know a sentence did not come out. Today I visited the Loggia again and the Palazzo Vecchio and the Gallery di Uffizi. I saw the all the paintings and frescoes and statues of the renaissance from Bottecelli to Michelangelo to Raphael, even some Rembrandt. You are looking at this huge painting and you casually glance at the name and you see ‘Rembrandt’ and then you look at the painting again and you are like ‘the Rembrandt?’ holy shit. At this point I had to find food. I was in overwhelm. 

I haven't gotten out of this overwhelmed feeling. Completely surrounded by all this incredible larger than life art. things that I have been staring at in books since I was a little child and now you're just seeing it everywhere. and you realize, you know, o.k., I'm actually here. like, this is it. it doesn’t get more real than this or more authentic I guess. Depending on what angle you are looking at authentic from.

O.k. so all day I am just I don't know really trying to learn or, master say,  this ability to feel into stuff and feel through , in the moment feel into the resistance and into the lesson of it in the moment and then let go of it rather than think there is something there that needs attention. Or worse yet, try to not think it which is the worst thing you can do or try to suppress it or forget about it. It is an allowing process that says, “I am here. I am me. I am experiencing this. this is funny. This is not me. this is a thought/feeling. Interesting.” And then you just kind of get from it what you want and then you move on. You move through it. 

A lot of working on mastering that now. getting to that point where it is all the way deep inside you that you know without a shadow of a doubt that it is up to you and God and no one and nothing else. And that no matter what other people say or even you think sometimes that you really can have or do whatever you want. That it is truly our game. I know what you're thinking. but if I wasn't being whispered this in my

I have to find food. Stand by. More in a few minutes.

O.k. I finally found a real restaurant. Florence is really a tourist town. It is like living in Disney world. So maybe it is not a place to live but a good place to come and study for some time. But even the restaurants are known all over the world for what they are really, touristy fast food joints that don't care about the food they are serving. But I bet if you ask around you can find some really cool little secret places hidden away. After all real people do really live here. 

Was told today that they found me a better apartment. I almost didn't bother to go look. I was so tired. I have not been sleeping at all yet. Just so psyched from being here and it is so effing hot. I took a nap in the shitty little hot apartment I was staying in and then I forced myself up and walked maybe twenty minutes to this other neighborhood and when I get there I look down and there is this beautiful feather in front of the doorstep. All of a sudden the last few weeks I have been finding feathers again. it is the way that God or the spirit guides or angels or whatever communicate with me. it is just amazing. wonderful. I have felt so happy lately the last few months finding feathers again after so long. It is like they are saying ‘hey we are here, hanging out with you again. guiding you for this period. all is well. check out this apartment. you will like it.” 

Even when I get a certain thought that is a good thought----something that is good to do, then bam there is a big feather right in front of me on the ground. Just like about seven years ago. Wonderful. I really do think there are like angels or something or a God. I'm serious. I really believe in it now. I don't know what you call it, but it is like we have guides or something looking out for us. or a God. So I go into this apartment and the reason I am there is because I am told that it has AC which frankly is not something I am willing to live without. I don't care what anyone fucking says. So boom two days later and I've got this great apartment with AC, a beautiful loft bedroom and a terrace over looking all the rooftops in Florence and this building is classified monumental or historical because it was built in medieval times, the stairs all original from the renaissance. And its cheaper than what I am paying now. So I am just totally psyched to be in such a flow. Climbing up the stairs I smell roasted lamb the exact same smell from growing up with my grandma’s cooking. My heart just melted. I understood the feathers in front of the apartment then. This was the right place for me to be. Need to honor what you feel inside you do young Jedi, says Yoda. 

My humble abode in Florence

The owner is super cool. My age. Cool Italian girl. I could have just grabbed her right there and made love to her on the pull out couch. But she’s married... God I hate that. I hate marriage. It ruins all the great sexual encounters. We talked forever. I told her how much I love Roberto Begnini and she laughed and then she took me on her scooter and we drove all over the city with me on the back. I kept bumping into her because I would forget to hang on because I was looking at all the pretty girls. She says stop looking at all the girls and hang on. I tell her I can’t help it. I can’t believe what I see here. She stops in the middle of the road and tells me, ‘you will do very well with Italian girls. They like you. You are like Italian boy. Very Italian. Even though you are American. It is in your blood. Very obvious how you act.” It was in this moment I felt the happiest of all in a long time. like one of those life moments you where you will always remember. I felt like I don't know. Maybe just...  o.k. you know, connected to my roots. Like it was o.k. that I was born in America but in my blood I was still Italian and it showed and I haven't lost it all to the world of Britney Spears and GW Bushit. I remember la Princesa always would say the same thing. She would get frustrated by my Italian tendencies. Cleo especially would get annoyed by it. Too loud, too obnoxious, too much into girls, too macho, (me too macho. Now that's funny! I'm like the gayest straight guy I know.) Saying I was too Italian and needed to calm it down a bit. But I think that is only if you know me. I think that if people don't know me the English side comes across a lot more. I think I am too quiet and shy and kind of snotty really for my own good. But anyway yes this was good. Hey I wish I could say I took her back to my place which was really her place and made love to her all night, but I promised her I wouldn’t say anything about it.... Hehe. Instead we said goodbye and that was that. Or so I thought. 

Recognizing the simple things that I got from my grandparents. Memories are flooding in triggered by so many different things. The smells. Spinach, hors dourves of fresh cut vegetables, the smell of roasting lamb. 

[as delicious as ‘lamb’ is to smell and eat—I foresee in our not too distant future when just the words ‘the smell of roasting lamb’ will seem like an abomination to us all. can you imagine? We roast and eat lamb??!! I mean what is a lambchop? Isn't it like the ribs of a little lamb or something? my we are still so barbaric aren't we? ]