When I was at the Convent, eating the meals prepared there, with the sweet nuns holding platters of fried zucchini blossoms and veal with lemon and tureens of risotto con funghi, I thought to myself, “Why would I live anywhere else?” Why would I live far away from this prosciutto, from this mozzarella?
Why would I live anywhere else but this place, where men’s names are like flowers. I am not quite sure what the point is of dating men in Denver or Boulder. Men with names like Tim and Mike and Bill and Bob… what’s the point when I could be in Italy with a man called Floriano or Alessandro, or Fiorello or Ambrogio?
Why really, would I want to buy cheese at Whole Foods when I could buy it at Volpetti in Rome? Why would I ever want to buy 
oddly green pistacchio ice-cream at Safeway when I could be in the Sicilian Gelateria in Florence, getting a vero pistacchio gelato?
Why would I want a cappuccino (that is sacrilegiously dumped into a to-go cup) at Starbucks when I could get one at Cibreo Caffe in Florence, or at Sant’ Eustachio in Rome?
Why would I want to go into the “Leanin’ Tree Musuem” in Boulder when I could go into the Galleria Pitti in Florence and gaze upon Raphael’s Madonna della Sedia?
I am sorry America, that you can’t add up to Italy for me. For better or for worse the United States of America is my country. It is the language I will always be best able to express myself in. It is the land of my birth, it is where I vote and pay taxes. But it refuses to give me affordable health care. And it did not produce Raphael, Michelangelo, Lorenzo de Medici, Humanism, the birth of modern love poetry, Petrarch, Brunelleschi, the Roman arch, Donatello and Dante and Alberti, Botticelli, Galileo, the Republic, the Renaissance, the Studia Humanitatis, the cello, the piano…
The U.S. did not create the pizza, or mozzarella di bufala, or prosciutto or Brunello or Vin Santo. It does not have islands with a caressing sensuous sea like the Mediterranean, 
and it doesn’t have a language that sings. And somehow, my country doesn’t seem to know as much about romance as Italy does.
and it doesn’t have a language that sings. And somehow, my country doesn’t seem to know as much about romance as Italy does.I was in the hospital for 3 weeks in Italy and it was free. In the U.S. I’d be under the enormous weight of owing over $100,000 to a hospital, if it had happened here. Now WHY would I remain here? Because my family is here. Because my sense of community is here. Because in Italy I’d always be a foreigner. I might even always be illegal. Yet I can’t live without it.
I can’t live without the Ponte Santa Trinita’ at sunset. I can’t live without stopping to hear the musician on the Ponte Vecchio at midnight. I can’t live without a late summer dinner at a trattoria table in a narrow Trastevere street, and wandering afterwards, amongst the paintings displayed in piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. I can’t live without the violets in the Campo dei Fiori
market in March, I can’t live without the Chianti countryside in the spring with the iris and poppies under the olive trees. I can’t live without the train to Naples and the hydrofoil to Stromboli and the Aeolian spaghetti on Salina with the best capers in the world. I can’t live without finding my bike at the Florence train station after a trip to the islands, getting on it in my sun dress, with a pack on my back, and biking through the Piazza del Duomo, headed home to Sant’Ambrogio, with the bells of Giotto’s tower resounding around me. 
market in March, I can’t live without the Chianti countryside in the spring with the iris and poppies under the olive trees. I can’t live without the train to Naples and the hydrofoil to Stromboli and the Aeolian spaghetti on Salina with the best capers in the world. I can’t live without finding my bike at the Florence train station after a trip to the islands, getting on it in my sun dress, with a pack on my back, and biking through the Piazza del Duomo, headed home to Sant’Ambrogio, with the bells of Giotto’s tower resounding around me. 
April 19, 2009 at 1:58 am
Sounds like you found your paradise. Good luck.
April 20, 2009 at 7:14 am
There is the home of the mind and the home of the heart–they aren’t always the same. There are pluses and minuses everywhere, but to experience the joy of a place where you truly feel able to experience your essence is a blessing not to be ignored.
April 20, 2009 at 7:30 am
Your description is bellissima!
April 20, 2009 at 10:05 am
I understand, I understand…so when will you return?
I ask myself that about France on almost a daily basis…
But, in the meantime, life goes on!
All good wishes!!
Anne
April 20, 2009 at 12:43 pm
It’s all a balance of perspective and what you choose to see. See beauty in the present moment. Accept and appreciate the simplicity of everyday life where you happen to be. I happen to be in Portugal, beautiful and also frustrating. Missing Boulder, only removes me from surroundings and myself. Much better to simply be where I’m at than torment myself about where I’m not.
April 20, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel tormented. I love the co-housing community where I live. On gorgeous warm spring days like this, I am incredibly happy and thankful, to open my door and see the chubby little chirping birds in the tree, see my daffodils raising their bright heads to the sun, have my tea on the south-facing porch. I am glad I’m not surrounded by concrete, and I am thankful to live in a place that is so peaceful. I have these contended thoughts often.
I also love Boulder. I will tell anyone who will listen (who doesn’t live here) what a great place to live Boulder is. If I didn’t like Boulder so much, if for some reason I was condemned to live in super cold, super gray city in the US, with no organic food and with a lot of violence, I would have moved to Italy easily.
My sentimental Ode to Italia might not have expressed this, but what is interesting is the dilemma that arises when one does find plenty of contentment and peace where they live, AND at the same time, they realize that part of them is very attached to another place.
My Ode to Italia came out of some serious reflection that I have been doing about my life, now that I am divorced, and don’t have kids, and don’t have full-time work in my field. I have been trying to do a lot of visioning about living my authentic life and what that means. And as much as there is so much that I love and appreciate in Boulder, and in my co-housing community, what comes up, when I do that “visioning” is that there are things in Italy that I really don’t want to live without.
So it is not about being tormented. It is about getting clear on my authentic life.
April 21, 2009 at 5:53 am
I’m all for an authentic life!!!! Go.
April 21, 2009 at 10:52 am
You may well be American, but your spirit is purely Italian. You perceive things and feelings that I usually don’t. But they are exactly the same things I miss when I, living in Venice, am abroad. I don’t miss the Mediterranean sun, I miss the Mediterranean soul. So dear Chandi, you understand the essence and magic of Italy. As long as those little things are in your mind, you’ll always be Italian.
Stef
April 21, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Come back at once. You need a refreshing dose of reality! Our Marche house conversion is now finished (YOH!) but visits to the geometra continue endlessly. Yesterday we went in for the umpteenth bureaucratic episode. He now has two 10 inch thick files on our case. We put our signatures to the squillionth document, and were presented with yet another bill for several hundred euros.
Not the whole story, of course. When Giulio the scrap merchant came round in his rusty van to pick up some rubbish, he brought a Roberto Benigni videotape and insisted on lending it to us, to help us understand Italy. I found that truly moving.
April 22, 2009 at 4:53 am
Ah Julian, the wonders of Italian bureaucracy! I don’t envy you dealing with that, but you HAVE accomplished purchasing and renovating a house in Italy…. no small feat. Good for you!
I am only too aware of the horrors of Italian bureaucracy. I had to deal with it almost daily when running my wedding business over there. The town hall, the Pretura, the Prefettura, they had me running in circles… and the nightmare of it was that if I didn’t get it right, a client’s wedding would not go through and I could have been sued. No wonder I started getting gray hair!
I also experienced those horrors when I tried, for 6 months to get myself and D legal. We ended up being illegal the whole time. I have only received such obtuse answers one other time in my life. That’s when I was on the peace walk from California to Moscow in 1985 and the reason we got for the denial of our visa applications to walk through the Soviet Union was because “people in the Soviet Union don’t walk. They ride buses.”
April 23, 2009 at 9:15 am
Chandi, I loved your description of Italy and the magic it creates in your soul. I fully understand its not about not appreciating what we have but a deeper truth of how there are places that can enrich our true selves and etch a priint into our being such that we feel it in our bones. I have this feeling about Devon and always have. Rather than work against it I try to think what a blessing to have such a feeliing about a place that it hurts at times. I know this means that eventually I need to spend time there. If I had spent the time you have in Italy I can imagine I might feel the same about it. These attachments are gifts because we have been able to spend time in incredibly beautiful places of the world.
November 1, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Dear Friend,
I believe there is a difference between people who WANT to live in Italy (or France) or perhaps some other country….and those of us who MUST live in such a place. It is truly as if our souls are called,from birth to be there. Nothing quite ever feels right, like a badly made shoe. Meanwhile everyone around you is wearing cheap shoes, and so doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about….and “Who are YOU,” they usually infer, imply, or demand, “to imagine there is anything more; anything better…” those voices, i have found are particularly American. I just wanted to thank you for writing of your experiences in Italy, and in particular of HOW you write of them. I feel such a kindred voice in yours, as I have been hearing myself ask exactly these kinds of questions during the past year that I have been back in America (after living a year in rural southern France)! Due to family obligations and health problems I have been stuck here much longer than I ever dreamt of. In addition, there is no one in my present ‘world’ who has ever supported or understood my need to live elsewhere. Your words inspire me to continue to believe that I can and MUST return to my dream: this time to Italy!!!!! You can never truly know how much these moments reading your words have been a message from the Divine…that, yes, indeed, God does give us dreams for a reason!!!!!
P.s. if you have any ideas on ways to live in Italy, I would appreciate any advice…..I am old now (49) and not so able to backpack and bum around….My french is great…but I would love to learn italian!!!!
Ciao Bella!!!!
Buona Fortuna!!!
November 1, 2009 at 6:42 pm
p.s I forgot to mention, Chandi. I had a life threatening illness and was drastically ill and in hospitals for 14 years, when I received a kidney transplant in the 15th year (the 45th year of my life) I had learned the things that truly mattered. I had seen many people die, and I never heard anyone say they wished they had worked more or spent more time indoors….France was my beginning to saying YES to all the things that matter….life is so delicate…we never know what comes next!!!!