Photo: Carlos de Paz from A Coruña, España, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons He had crossed A Quintana dos Mortos for the same place and at the same time for years, and yet he had never seen that woman before: dressed in white light she was sensually laid down on...
It’s a bright July day. We’re driving back from Rosemarkie Beach when you ask, ‘Have you ever seen a clootie well?’ I’m certain you know I haven’t. I’m a Londoner who grew up in the wide spaces of the American Midwest. You’re an English ecologist inhabiting the...
On Via San Lucifero, nestled among the prickly pears, there is a house with cracks in the plaster. The plaster is painted the color of the inside of an almond but mottled here and there with patches of blackish mold like rot. Against the house there is a vine of red...
Most of the houses have beendug out from the ash, but the shapeof the mountain will neverbe the same in this lifetime: a jagged mouthwhere the peak blew off. The optical illusionis that the mountains never get closer or fartheruntil suddenly they rise up, icy...
Photo: Corrie Pappas My friend Alberto told me a ghost story once I’ll never forget. He works at the 12th-century Castello del Trebbio, outside of Florence. I wanted to find out more about the Pazzi family, who lived there in the 15th century. They were a banking...
of loadbearing supports and span-riseratios. Of harmonic proportionsand Pythagorean mysticism. I couldn’t marvel at the bright shops jutting from the Ponte Vecchiowithout a lecture on ancient architectureand the ongoing perils of gravity. I couldn’t wonder aloud how...
