florence

Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to carry on that counts.Winston Churchill

I__ considering keeping the shutters open, even if people are spying on me at night from the apartment across the street. Especially if they are spying on me. It makes me feel less alone. I have a mental camaraderie with that imaginary person and their imaginary gaze. I find myself performing myself for them and exaggerating my facial expressions so they can see me more clearly, like actors project their voices on stage. I__ miming myself.

__he Emersons who were at Florence, do you mean? No, I don__ suppose it will prove to be them. It is probably a long cry from them to friends of Mr. Vyse__. Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch, the oddest people! The queerest people! For our part we liked them, didn__ we?_ He appealed to Lucy. __here was a great scene over some violets. They picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans who have failed to come to Cissie Villa. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine__ great stories. __y dear sister loves flowers,_ it began. They found the whole room a mass of blue _ vases and jugs _ and the story ends with __o ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful._ It is all very difficult. Yes, I always connect those Florentine Emersons with violets.__

There are many of us who live alongside others, less fortunate, watching them go through everyday suffering for one reason or another, and we__e not moving even our little finger to help them. It__ in human nature, unfortunately: for the most part, the only people we genuinely care about are ourselves. However, once in a while we encounter different species, different kind of human beings among us: full of compassion, willing and wanting to help, and doing so with joy and happiness. Those are a rarity. But you know what, my dear? Being one of them is not a special calling- it__ a choice. So what will you choose, huh?

He was an indecent man, I told myself - prayerfully - and then I prayed for him to become decent.

I was scarcely the first, nor the only current, girl of impressive derivation to be unceremoniously thrust through the iron gate at the entrance of Le Murate by parents whose aspirations for their daughters did not include marriage. Our paths to the convent were varied, but no matter. We all wound up in the same habit.

There was a pleasantness to the air and a spirit about the town that did not come from its color, but from some inner, tasty citrus quality. It made Alexia wonder fancifully if cities could have souls.

There are many of us who live alongside others, less fortunate, watching them go through everyday suffering for one reason or another, and weâ__re not moving even our little finger to help them. Itâ__s in human nature, unfortunately: for the most part, the only people we genuinely care about are ourselves. However, once in a while we encounter different species, different kind of human beings among us: full of compassion, willing and wanting to help, and doing so with joy and happiness. Those are a rarity. But you know what, my dear? Being one of them is not a special calling- itâ__s a choice. So what will you choose, huh?

Which one of them would make you the most sad if you had to live your life without him?

In America, Walt Disney opened an amusement park.And in Florence, someone was savaging the remnants of a Tuscan nobleman__ family.

Dante Alighieri wrote his first book in the prosimetrum genre _ La Vita Nuova _ in 14th century Florence. Since I__ compiling this collection _ my first indie publication _ in Florence, just blocks from Dante__ house, and since his book involves a lost love, and __ New Life,_ I thought it fitting to emulate this style in my own casual, intuitive fashion. My hope is that the juxtaposition of poems, journal entries, essays and prose will create a story; a memoir in anarchistic vignettes.