I must stop with talk of my cold ... forgive me. I just haven’t had one like that in a very long time.
And it was probably complicated by that sense of being lost that I have when something goes a bit wrong and I’m wandering without the language of the countries I visit or live in.
In Istanbul, I remember a friend dragging me into a pharmacy one snowy day because she was worried about my hacking cough. I knew it was pharyngitis, I get it as part two of a cold sometimes. I left the shop at speed when the pharmacist pulled out the paraphernalia to give me an injection of antibiotics. Since those days, I’ve developed odd allergies to surprising things. One of the popular ingredients in medication that dries up phlegm and etc, isn’t a friend of mine and so I try to avoid medicine unless utterly necessary.
However, this time I think I may have had the cold longer than was necessary and yes ... talked of it more than I should have. In good news, I’ve slept through the night these last two nights. Tis bliss.
Yesterday was a lovely day and it’s my quiet belief that lovely days should be celebrated with the purchase of a book from La Feltrinelli, here in Genova. I love that bookshop, intensely. I looked at everything, wandering for more than an hour, oftentimes wishing I would just sit down and study Italian so I could buy some of those books. But their English section has a good selection too.
And I found treasure ... Roberto Saviano’s book, Beauty and the Inferno. It turns out he has published a series of essays in a book titled, Beauty and the Inferno. In it he reflects on his new life as a fugitive writer and the experiences of others in the same position. “He makes common cause with others, like Salman Rushdie or Anna Politkovskaya, who have also been persecuted for their writing; in the latter’s case, fatally. The book is at its best when Saviano describes the strange half-world that he now inhabits. Of a meeting with Rushdie in Stockholm, he writes: “The difference between Rushdie and me is that he was condemned by a regime that does not tolerate expressions that run counter to its ideology. In my country, where censorship does not exist, oversight and indifference take its place.”“ Extracted from Duncan Campbell’s review in the Guardian.
My day ended at a pizzeria with two lovely women. It was the perfect way to end a good day. Grazie.
I’m off an adventure this afternoon. I’ll let you know how it goes.