La Dolce Far Niente

I cast my gaze out to the furthermost point of the horizon where the Ligurian sea met the translucent sky, liquid meeting gas, dissolving into each other.
It hadn’t taken me long to walk from the marina, past the glinting fiberglass of luxury yachts, through the cobble stoned streets spattered with citrus and olive trees, fragrant and symbolic. Past houses strewn with antique maritime paraphernalia and religious adornments. I let my fingers trace across their rendered surfaces, painted the pastel colours of the sorbet rainbow. I drenched my pallet in the smells of traditional dishes and enjoyed the silence of the afternoon siesta, punctured only by laughter of children and enthusiastic cheers of men supporting their beloved football teams.

Observing the beautiful vista of coastal Italy, I was content and contemplative.
Admiring how the ordinary could indeed be extraordinary.
I wondered how many had stood here, reflecting on their time, their place.
What they had seen, what they had felt, what they had desired.
Had they been content, immersed in natural and honest beauties of their town, just as I was in that moment?
Or had they been restless to see the world, to experience new and foreign places, just as I had been a year earlier?
Reflection and Gratitude, for your life, your experiences and your happiness, in countries foreign and familiar, are two of the greatest gifts travel can bestow on you.
Ambivalent to religion, rather a practitioner of kindness and common sense, I had not thought to partake in communion or felt remorse in not doing so. Yet standing in front of Duomo di San Lorenzo, admiring the grandeur of the neo-classical architecture, it was impossible not to feel a higher presence. I was in awe, Italians do impressive with skilled finesse.
A poignant ending to my time in an emphatic religious culture, I sat on the marbles steps leading up to the buildings entrance and pondered on what this building represented to so many others.
The people that had walked these steps to mass, children running and playing with their friends, their parents oblivious, gossiping idly.
The hundreds of years it had withstood, the hardship it had seen combated only by faith and the evolution of humanity it had witnessed.
I appeared unimportant next to it, yet privileged that I could add my footprint, my story to these steps.
San Lorenzo, the patron saint of Imperia, looked down on me through cast bronze eyes. In his gaze, I saw myself anew, happy and free.