Black eye

Today I got myself a black eye trying to help a randaggio (stray) in my garden.  It wasn't his fault. I handled him wrongly and he punched me ( claws out) in the face. I will not be winning any pageants this week. It caps off a bit of a bleak January, I have to say. 

Pirate has offered to defend me, should it happen again.

Just look at that face. Terrifying.

Pirate X

 It has been a little while but I have a new story out. :-)

click here to read Pirate X

Yay

New year, new blog

 So 2022 has arrived with little fanfare on my part but then I wonder who really felt like celebrating this year. 

My new year gift to me is a new blog. 

https://nopanino.blogspot.com/

My intention with this blog is to write about the more travel-related things I do. You see, last September I began a travel writing course online because what I would really like to do is shift away from teaching or, at the the very least, make a side income so I can improve my standard of living enough to keep the heating on :-) The course is quite intensive but I have an excellent tutor who is an incredible support and an extremely successful travel writer - Dan Scott. I am learning heaps from him but I also fear I am going to run into my old nemesis - confidence ( or the lack thereof) when it comes to actually trying to get paid for the work. I already baulk at the idea of pitching and selling myself but I know if I don't shake this shackle, I will be forever doomed. I know I can write, I just don't know how to tell the people with the money I can. 

Fingers crossed, anyway.

Christmas wishes

This is the view from my school in Pisa. I mostly teach online but once a week I brave the virus-infested public transport to engage in humanity face-to-face. I prefer teaching online, though. My introverted soul finds it less draining and when I finish class in the evening, I no longer have to plod the cold hills home. Right now my students include nuclear physicist and tribunal judges. I always feel intimidated when I start these course, but I often find that the people in these classes warm to me very soon and we have deeply engaging classes. I enjoy teaching smart people. They challenge me and I challenge them. Christmas is coming, though, and I find this a little more difficult. Obviously, I get them to talk about their plans and hopes for Christmas and they talk about their family reunions and parties with friends. I always beam like the sun as they talk, hoping none of them ask me about my plans because I have none. And mostly, I am OK with this. Students see me as gregarious and probably assume I am very social but I am only really alive and engaging with a few people in my life. This is not on purpose. It is just how I function and always have. It is just only in recent years have I accepted this aspect of myself and I appreciate it. I don't waste my energy on small talk anymore and I prefer to give  my light to those I feel most connected with. That said, I feel a little down this Christmas. Last year with lockdown it was easier somehow. I felt more secure/ most at peace than I do now and it is hard to not feel a little sad. I suppose my hopes for this Christmas are less ambitious, too: that I have hot water in my shower ( unlikely); that my mother feels strong ( inshallah)  and that those I care about, care about me in return.

midnight runs

The dark nights have come to San Miniato once more. Sometimes when I wander the empty streets, I can hear an howl hooting. Is it calling my name, I wonder, like in the famous novel by Margaret Craven.  I have only ever seen one owl in this area and it was a beautiful white one. It gleamed like fresh snow on a branch. 

But that was a few years ago.

Sometimes I dream that I go running in the night. Like at 3 a.m. in the morning, I get up from my bed and I disappear. I go different places. Sometimes to cities or remote stretches of road that would scare me if they were real. And then, sometimes I wonder, when I have woken, whether it was real after all. 

Winter feels like a weighted blanket this year. But much colder, of course.

Stone-hearted

 Yesterday I reached for my paintbrush and a stone to paint which should sound like a good thing, but I don’t think it is. I haven’t painted stones since 2013 and I associate this hobby with a period of great hardship and sorrow. That’s not to say that I don’t love the things I painted back then. They were, and still are, beautiful life expressions. I still have a few of them even now and others I have given to people whom I love and trust. But it bothers me that I feel the need to paint now because I know it means I am feeling broken again.  This time, actually, I feel even worse. I feel my peace has been broken. My trust has been destroyed and after I have shown such courage, such vulnerability.

Lockdown, I think, was a better period for me. It protected me from giving too much of myself, of my light and creativity, in the flesh. 

I hope I am wrong.  I am an INFJ - HSP after all. I feel things very deeply. I worry terribly, too. Although, unfortunately, I am also very intuitive.  But yet, perhaps my peace is not gone, perhaps it is just resting and my trust is safely resting, too. I hope so. The idea of that returning darkness, after finally finding my balance, terrifies me.

Rar

 Gosh, it doesn't seem to matter where I live but every year at this time my central heating breaks. Luckily, for my landlord I don't tend to get angry about these things. I mean I get frustrated and my fingers are frozen but I remain pretty zen. Actually, I rarely get angry which means when I do it can be quite fierce. Betrayal of trust is what really makes me angry, I have realised. It makes me quite dangerous. 

RAR 

The Four Seasons

This afternoon I went to a performance of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" at La Chiesa di San Domenico" in San Miniato. The audience consisted mostly of people over the age of 70 who had miraculously avoided covid although I did get cornered by the mama of a boy I have taught for the past 4 years. Fortunately, I adore him so it was easy to wax lyrical as the musicians strung their bows.  

It was a wonderful performance. "The Four Seasons" is such an exciting and evocative piece. I can only imagine how exhilarating it must have been for the teens in its day. I mean some of the wildly, rhythmic parts are so powerful and thrilling. How the youth of that time weren't forever caught casting aside their corsets and codpieces in a  display of frenzied passion is beyond me. Or perhaps they were. Perhaps Vivaldi performances were just one big "hook up" fest.

Anyway, at the end of the concert I cried a few tears. Partly because the music was so compelling and partly because of my Myers-Briggs Personality type - which is INFJ. ( A story for another time.) The great thing about compulsory masks means the tears could dribble down my face and no one could see them.

Now, of course, I want to start up the violin again. I used to play as a child and if memory serves correctly, I was actually quite decent. My mother was tyrannical though and so I started dreading practice because I hated being watched and then being  forced to perform in front of others ( INFJ anyone?) I guess acquiring a violin as a possession at this point  isn't probably the wisest of investments.

Sigh. In an alternate world I am a classical violinist who rescues baby goats.