WEEK 1 - Reportage

May 9, 2013

Different, sweeter, more natural, the air filled my lungs as I grappled with the fifty-pounds of essentials I once thought I could not live without.  After trudging through airports dragging my supplies for the five weeks in Italian paradise, my mind was reconsidering the many choices I had made to get to this point.  The decision to find out what the possibilities were financially, which included quries to the financial aid department.  Arrangements for a passport, which was surprisingly easy since the Buchanon Post Office was able to take my application and picture without an appointment and forward the paperwork that same day.  My cat, however, would be more of a challenge. At sixteen, Alley is very finicky about who she will tolerate and that does not include other animals. 

The airport traffic was a familiar sight as the bus merged into the lane marking the beginning of our last leg of the trip, a three hour drive up the mountains to our destination: Spoleto, Italy.

Stepping onto the bus, bone weary and dog tired, I passed bodies huddled and clinging together, regressing to neonatal forms.  Other heads with eyes staring and not seeing the fresh foreign landscape fought for control of an uncontrollable situation.  Drooping heads with exhaustion written on their faces were lost behind melting facades threatening obliteration.  Question marks mingled with the sour bitters decorating those facades that were inadequate to hide that state of melancholy that permeates the body after being herded from one continent to another.  Sheeple following the shepherd of aviation lack the ability to care one way or another where they are going, but only hope for an end that is rich with pasture. 

 

There’s solution in the air.