my favorite thing about the
castle, is that the town church
is part of the house. inside the dining room
Lusia's mother can listen to
mass through a little window
that looks straight down
onto the altarat breakfast one morning,
we were being especially raucous
and Luisa's mother put her finger up to her lips
and said in her lovely little voice
"shh...mass", and then chuckled.before i left,
i asked you what book
to bring on my trip.

"arriving at each new city,
the traveler finds again a past
of his that he did not know he had:

the foreignness of what you
no longer are or no longer possess
lies in wait for you in foreign,
unpossessed places."

-excerpt from italo calvino
invisible cities

i read each page twice.