"Only that day dawns to which we are awake."— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Keith is in the hospital. I don’t have time or thought space to do much more than put this message out there, in the hopes that you’ll send us love and Light. When we saw the doctor on Thursday, he told us that if we didn’t improve in 3 days, we’d need to get a [...]

Rest in Peace, Luciano.

Sicily is ripe with incidental adventures. Letting them happen was part of what made our trip wonderful. And Favignana was the butterfly-shaped island that brought that into Sicilian-water clarity.

We didn’t have any plans, we just wandered. We wandered in many circles, but that was okay, too. The light kept shifting, so the streets kept changing. What is it about island light?

It occurs to me that I should probably address, in post form, our flagging health. Particularly for nurturing, parental types who could be alarmed by my descriptions of our incessant search for benches to catch our breath.

Sicily is scented with jasmine and wild herbs—fennel and oregano and something sweet and toasty, maybe fenugreek? This mix of cultivated and untamed is seen everywhere. Trim lines of grapevines leading to dramatic, craggy mountains. Neat rows of olive trees divided by a riot of shimmering undergrowth. Stately Greek ruins rising from a profusion of colorful, delicate wildflowers. That’s just Sicily, or at least the tiny corner of Sicily we were able to explore.

Nicolas and his friend played a four hands piece for the competition. We had never heard of four hands music before this year, which was a surprise to Nicolas’s music teacher, who loves it. She believes it encourages students to work on maintaining tempo, as speeding up or slowing down will throw off the partner, culminating in the piece falling apart. Another benefit, which I am sure she is not unaware of, is that the pressure to not let a friend down is greater than the pressure to not let oneself down.

Keith wonders how I can reread the same Jane Austen books over and over. I already know what happens, there are no surprises. No novel plot devices, no introductions to compelling characters.

It’s true. I know them all already. That’s the comfort.