Will this be my last post?

I haven’t written a post for quite a while – since last October to be exact. I’ve kind of run out of ideas. I’ve written a lot about my love of Italy before and after having moved here to live 5 years ago. I find the food and style of life excellent and I mostly complain about the bureaucracy. So what else can I write about that might be interesting? Sometimes when lying in bed before going to sleep and my mind is not distracted by other things I start having memories. I’m really amazed at the memory capacity of the human brain. Some of the memories from more than 50 years ago are almost as fresh and detailed as those from yesterday. Perhaps even more so because they are from experiences less mundane than the day to day activities. At times I try to talk about these with Laura but partly because of my stumbling Italian and partly because mostly people don’t like to hear longwinded stories, I decided to write about some of the more significant experiences just for my own enjoyment in the writing process. I use Google Translate to convert them to Italian for Laura and check that the translations are reasonably accurate. I have shared them with my best friend here and she likes them and perhaps they might be interesting to others. So here is the first thing that I have written and I am publishing it.

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Yes, I remember everything.

I was inspired to start writing this stuff by the last song that John Prime recorded before he died of Covid in the spring of 2020. I highly recommend the song “I Remember Everything” which you can find on Youtube. After thinking more about it I would add Leonard Cohen and Robert Frost as inspiration. Leonard Cohen and John Prime are both singer songwriters and their songs are poetry set to music. Both have a strong emotional impact for me. Leonard is more refined than John in a certain way but I find John more visceral. I’d say that Cohen is more in the league of Robert Frost in the poetry area.

I am especially thinking of the Frost poem “ The Road Not Taken”. It’s about life and all of the decisions we make as we traverse our lives. The road taken goes only in one direction in life, you can’t turn back. It has big and small choices, it’s hurts and joys; all of which shape us and hopefully lead to wisdom. Being retired and having time to contemplate more has opened the window into some interesting experiences that I’ve had on the road taken.

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I am willing to share some of these stories with people that I know and trust so if you would like to sample one, leave a comment and I can send it via email as long as you swear not to publish it.

Joe

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