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How to live a life
Or, when to jump ship
I am driving myself crazy.
On the one hand, I’m this person: A crazy, crazed, restless, excited romantic hell-bent on renting my house and moving to Italy. Where? Who knows? Rome, or somewhere in Abruzzo. These things are fairly arbitrary. Rome because that’s where Jhumpa Lahiri moved, learned Italian, and wrote her latest novel. Because I read a New Yorker article about how much she loved her neighborhood Travestere. Or is it Trastevere? I forget. Looks like the latter.
On the other, I’m this person: Good God, woman. Shut the fuck up. Calm the fuck down. Calm your tits! (Is that really an expression? I think somewhere I heard it.) You have a great life, and you know it. You listen to KCSM, your favorite jazz station every night. You make great food and eat by the light of candles. Your beautiful old dog is always at your feet. You hike in the nearby hills. You have a great job. You love the view of said hills. You love the way the breeze from the bay blows through your house every afternoon.
In other words, I’m at war with myself, and I don’t know which is the true me, and I don’t know where intuition fits into any of this. All I know is that I’ve possessed an EU passport since my 20s, since I got my Irish citizenship through my grandparents, and I’ve always wanted to live in Europe as an EU…
