Author and Artist
The Circus
A fictional travelogue; three minute read.
On a tight-fitting Florence street, a tightrope walker in a sloppy red coat and red clown nose balances on a wire stretched between two stone buildings. As he juggles, people pass under him. When he mimes a plea for tips, I drop five euros into his upturned hat. He bows to me. I bow back.
Florentine streets are a circus. The distraction I want.
A traveler’s optimistic cliché, cloned repeatedly in TV ads for European cruises, is meeting and making lifelong friends with the local population. In Florence, I want the opposite. I need to anesthetize my mind, to take my mind off my overcrowded high school history classes, my noisy neighbors, the Trumpists ruining my country.
Leaving my hotel, turning my face to the sun, jet trails and bell towers paint the sky. At my feet, a cartoonish bit of public wall art smiles at me. A modern statue defies gravity to strut out over the Arno.
I’m tingling, pleasurably on edge, reacting to the jittery unsettledness of not knowing what to expect. Whatever comes next, I’m slowly falling in love with Florence—once the hard-charging financial and artistic center of the Renaissance, an empire controlling other empires—is now softer, gentler.
Two off-white horses clip-clop towards me pulling a carriage with smiling tourists. Neon signage announces the Odeon—an all-in-one bookstore and movie theater. When I step into a museum exhibition, art-loving friars look like they are enrolled in a silly hat contest.
Vendors in animated conversation at decibel levels worthy of an Italian opera artistically stack fresh vegetables. In a store window, brightly colored leather purses in canary yellow, fire engine red, navy blue and lime green appear like so many suitors hoping to catch the eye of an Italian princess.
I stop at a lampredotto cart selling sandwiches made from some unlucky cow’s fourth stomach. A waiting crowd of hungry patrons is rewarded with tender, drippy sandwiches in crusty buns drizzled with green parsley salsa. I ask for extra napkins.
Florence has smells I want to bring home. The Arno cascading over weirs, sparkly and fresh in the morning light. A nicely perfumed female sashaying into a gift shop. The aroma of cappuccino. Loaves of warm bread stacked on cooling racks. The fish market. The deli.
At the Arno, I stop to rest against a stone balustrade. As the river slides silently by, a black-frocked priest joins me. Only a foot or two separates us.
“Are you American?” he asks. I nod.
“On holiday?” Again I nod.
“Florence is beautiful. Filled with art, good food. Pretty women.” For the third time, I nod.
“Are you happy here?”
My knees wobble, imperceptibly. My body temperature is jumping up and down. I exhale releasing the tension which comes from talking to a stranger about something that is none of their business.
Ignoring my silences, he keeps on, “Many come to Italy fleeing their responsibilities.” Maybe he’s intuiting that his nagging—what he probably thinks is street preaching—is reinforcing my atheism.
With a flatness suggesting he’s been rebuffed before, the priest steps back, then sermonizes a final time, “There’s more to travel, more to life, than a love affair with one’s own happiness.”
As I stare at him, I think about the dirty socks in my suitcase.
