Gee but it’s great to be back home…

Ah, were that but true! No one enjoys transitions from vacation to work and so I should not use this blog as an opportunity to reiterate truths repeated the world over – it was better, tastier, sunnier, funner, on vacation, it is dreary, lonely, dismal, frantic, etc etc now that I am home.

What do I miss most? What would I love to import back here? Not the olive oil or porcini mushrooms or the perpetual sunshine or the sense of history. It’s all grand, but what I would pay millions to bring with me here is this: the ready and willing attitude of friends and strangers to stop nearly anything and everything to have a conversation with you. Curiosity, coupled with a desire to share thoughts and insights, no matter how trivial. Early in the morning, late into the night. The natural, easy sociability, in chance encounters, sure, but especially among friends.

On a more optimistic note, I am HAPPY to see the likes of WiFi again. Two weeks of Italian dial-up blogging (without a phone line during one) has exhausted me. But it did convince me that I am dedicated to the blogging enterprise, regardless of technical obstacles, time pressures, readership issues (I canceled my tracking registry and I refuse to add comments so that I never know who is reading unless I get email notes and comments; thanks for those good words last week –you know who you are!!) and in spite of my perpetual thematic ambivalence.

The blog has survived a curious sort of summer. Lets hope the blogger pulls herself up to speed as well, and with alacrity.