We wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Fiesole 14 x 19,5 cm - 5,5 x 7,7''

 

THE WITCH OF LARCIANO

Ute, our landlady, is afflicted with

just enough craziness to make me

want to keep my distance—

but there is none. There are olive trees

and pine forests and some drop dead

lovely and untamed-looking chestnut trees.

You can hear the wild boar snuffling at two

in the morning helping themselves to weird

Ute’s vegetable patch. But there’s no distance to speak of.

Ute’s come to press magic feathers and beads

against my bronchitis, hold my hand, and chant something

medicinal. Maybe she isn’t crazy, she means well, she’s

eccentric. Maybe she won’t kill us in the

dead of night, slice and dice our bodies,

hang us out to dry somewhere in the garden

then store us in jars with her jams, peppers, and olives.

We’ll see. Most evenings I read Schopenhauer in a

deeply carved throne-like African chair crowned

with the pipe-smoking head of a village elder.

Weary of the German’s pessimism, no matter

how much I agree with it(look, if life isn’t

one long suffering road trip, etc.), I light 

my own small pipe, also made in Africa.

I then bless the valley below me with an improvised

slightly stoned gesture of acceptance, because

at this moment anyway, life is just too good not to.

Ute, dressed in threadbare sacred gown of

faded purple festooned with scattered moons, ex-

ploding stars and Zoroastrian charms, is crossing the dried

out lawn on bare feet. She’s bearing a cup

of peppery hot chocolate. If I could fly away

I’d alight and perch on the black tower

of Larciano, some hundred yards down

from us, and observe her from a safe distance

where, just beneath me, a wedding party would unveil its bride.

Philip Glass - The Kiss