A beautiful line from Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf: “The compensation of growing old is that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained – at last! – the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence, – the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.”
Writing a book about my ‘odyssey’ allowed me to take ahold of each experience, turn them around, slowly, in the light, and allow a cultural reality to become known. Finally, a type of key.
Living a nomadic lifestyle made sensory overload inevitable. Living in the middle of it, especially at the beginning of a new life/address/home – expectations were there, met or not, yet the experience of a new address, allowed me to turn it around, slowly, and let the shadows show light.
It was only by putting it in words, thanks to a blog I kept since moving across the pond. I could return and revisit the emotion, live it twice and make the experience whole. Risks were taken, confusion could follow, then once the distance gave space; I could turn it around, slowly, in the light.
It’s why Gore Vidal and so many others wrote most effectively when there was distance. However, it didn’t stop him from engaging in the news of the piazza. Near his ‘perch’ in Ravello, his villa high on the cliffs overlooking the most beautiful views of the sea. There was drama, this was Italy, but then he would detach himself and go back to his perch and muse, “It is a wonderful place from which to observe the end of the world.”