In the summertime everything is sticky.

I wear tank tops and high-waisted linen trousers, and my annual Birkenstock tan is striped across the tops of my feet. I go to the supermarket and buy a whole watermelon, especially when they’re on sale, but also when they’re not. Seven euros for a whole watermelon is a bargain nowadays, considering the wedges go for anywhere between three to five euros.

The ants meander around my kitchen counter, especially as I excavate the watermelon innards from their tough shell and deposit some into my mouth and some into a container. Half of the watermelon gets covered in cling film and awaits its turn in the fridge for either mouth or container—though usually a bit of both.

I’ve poisoned the ants, and I hate that I have, but there was nothing else I could do. They walked in single file all over my kitchen, crawling over chopping boards and searching for honey. I allowed this for a few days until I was sick of seeing their tiny, trespassing bodies. I said Enough is enough. Adesso basta. I went to the supermarket and I spent seven euros, not on watermelon but on a can of insect poison. I didn’t bother looking at the ingredients. I got home and shook the can and pointed its pointy red nozzle at all the kitchen creases. Where wall meets floor, where wall meets wall, where things meet things is where I pointed the poison and administered it.

In the summertime I wipe the sweat off of my upper lip. I drive with the windows open I check to see if the figs have ripened I hydrate. I put sunscreen on my face and my tattoos. I take naps in the pool of light soaking through the big window (early-summer activity only). I go for long walks and I enjoy the feeling of having legs and I think about falling in love.

My parents are in Perugia.

So, too, is my sister Arianna. This summer is different to last because I have more things going on. I am working, I am busy, I need the car, I must go. So the time spent with them is dotted in between the things, but it has been pleasurable, the bouncing from one thing to another. It is fun, to bounce, to complete one thing over here and to then go over there and start another thing.

I was finishing up some work in the studio the other day, attaching handles for a collaboration I’ve been working on over the last month and a bit, when I received a text from my little sister, When are you coming back?, then a phone call. What time will you be done? Ari asks me. We’re thinking of going somewhere for dinner tonight.

Twenty minutes later, a call from my mother. Isa? A che ora finisci? Che vogliamo uscire a cena.

Five minutes later, two texts from my dad:

Isa, puoi comprare l’acqua minerale on the way back?

Noi l’abbiamo finita e ieri abbiamo già preso 2 delle tue bottiglie

I finish up my work + lock up the studio, get into my toasty car and head home, stopping by the supermarket on the way to get the water my dad asked for. We head to Corciano that evening, stopping at Il Convento for dinner. The Convent. It used to be a convent. We order an antipasto to share, then Arianna and I decide to go halvses on the raviolini estivi with fiori di zucca, guanciale umbro and scaglie di ricotta stagionata, and the tagliata al sangue con tartufo nero.

When our mains arrive, I alternate between bites of raviolini with bites of tagliata. Ari tells me I must add a pinch of salt to the tagliata for it will be better, so I let her crush some salt onto the strip of truffle-coated meat that my fork has already gotten acquainted with.

After dinner we walk to the piazzetta and I wrote these words down in my mini-sketchbook:

I am sitting with my parents + sister at Piazza dei Caduti in Corciano. We are sitting on the steps, in front of a gelateria called L’arte del gelato. The gelateria has placed a TV by its entrance, the game is being shown. The sports game. Interestingly, this year I have not watched a single Euro Cup game. I cared about this in the past, and I may care about it in the future, but currently I care not. England scored and my little sister turned to look at me, mouthing the words Oh my god.

Oh my god indeed.

The Englishmen are playing the game and they are playing it well. Arianna has long blonde hair that I’m jealous of and she’s currently wearing men’s boxer shorts as part of an outfit. I’ll give it to her, she looks cool. I’m also jealous of the fact that she shows her legs, though I’m not sure if I even want to show my legs, yet a part of me is still jealous. She sits by the men of the paese and they all look at the sports, some of the men say O! O! But Ari sits still, and snapchats, and takes her BeReal photos right on time. I think about how I would love to smoke a spliff right now, though I wouldn’t in front of my parents nor in front of the people of the piazza. But I can hear the fountain splashing and the sports narrating and my parents murmuring and chuckling and a young girl speaking to someone on the phone and there are important trees to our left and I love sitting on the scalette. I wonder if I want the spliff or what the spliff offers me: Deeper awareness of my inner body, deep breaths, openness, relaxation. Ha una qualità enorme questo ragazzo, says a sports man on the telly. Ottima posizione, says the same man.

Every time I go to my nonni’s house,

after I greet my nonni and give them a kiss on each cheek, my nonno will summon me a few moments later. Vieni con me che ti voglio fare vedere qualcosa, he says. I walk behind him, knowing where we are going. My nonno is always summoning me and I am certain this is something that will not end. I certainly hope that it doesn’t, even though there is a part of me that resists the summoning. There is a part of me that is not so open to being a loving thing. He walks in front of me, slowly, and we walk in silence up the stairs. I smooth my fingers over the wooden railing, I look at the mirror at the top of the stairs, the one that’s ever-so-slightly distorted, the one I remember spending so much time looking into when I would spend my summers here as a teenager. I would look into this mirror and see if I was beautiful. What is the percentage of beauty today? Anyway, we walk up the stairs and it occurs to me that I don’t even look into the mirror. I’m too focused on my nonno, on the details of this home, on being here and opening my heart instead of feeling annoyed that my nonno walks slowly, on being annoyed by the summoning. I know in my heart that I will miss this when he is gone. I will be in this home and my heart will break by the lack of summoning, by the lack of a slow walk up the stairs. I’ll miss being led to whatever it is that he desires showing me.

We walk through the corridor and into the kitchen, slow as ever, but this gives me the time to soak into this room, to look around at the details, to see if something has changed since my last visit, to notice how comfortable we are in this silent, slow walk together. He slides open the veranda and shows me a new masterpiece.

A few months ago I took my nonno to the studio with me. He made a little sculpture of a wrinkly old woman wearing ragged clothes, holding a cane in one hand and asking for money in the other. He was so fond of this sculpture and asked me about it every time he saw me, so eagerly awaiting its first firing, its second firing, and its arrival into their home.

Since then, he has been hungry to make more. So I bought him some air-drying clay, simply because I could tell that the process of waiting for firings was too frustrating for him, and also because I couldn’t bring him to the studio as often as perhaps he would like to be creating. So I bought him some air-drying clay and, every time I see him, he shows me a new creation. Or an old one, if he has not made anything new as of late (which is rare). Yesterday he showed me a new figure, a man with a long beard and a pointy nose. He likes to draw onto his creations with a marker, sometimes in black, sometimes in red, sometimes in both black and red. The pieces are alive, and I am certain that this making is contributing to his own sense of aliveness.

Vieste

An eagle soars beyond the largest gathering of figs I’ve ever seen, it’s not an eagle, it’s a fig, no it’s a pigeon, a pigeon rises from the figs with the energy of an eagle, it didn’t come from within the figs, or did it, I can’t remember, I was too busy wiping the sweat off my upper lip. I was busy watching, the people? The fig leaves, the winged ones. I can smell the fish, freshly grilled or fried, I can feel my inner thighs rubbing together. Mothers hold hands with their daughters during evening strolls, my parents hold hands whilst my little sister captures them, I write about it all, my words braising with the smell of fish all around us, delicious fish, fresh fish. The breeze is generous and not too warm. A foreigner says It’s a bit drippy, probably referring to gelato. I turn my brightness down and am surrounded by the southern dialect, the slower cadence, how some syllables drag and others disappear.

One must people-watch. A girl runs her fingers through her hair. Hips get stroked. Fake flowers and foliage drape over and swing from the terracotta quarter-moon pots that adhere to the wall. A woman wearing a khaki dress lays down on the ledge with her hand on her forehead. Selfies. The moon, orange, a-few-days-ago-full. A child wearing red flashing shoes gets ignored and his father mocks his crying; it hurts to watch but is also fascinating.

I am looking at everyone’s body and I am looking at my own, often, too often.

I press my feet against soft sand and immerse myself in the cold water—the cold stream that runs into the sea, that houses little fish and other beings, the stream I have immersed myself in each summer, the immersion now a tradition, an antipasto to what follows: running, jiggling body and all, into the sea.

The seawater is warm-like-butter after you lay and breathe in the cold stream. To stay in the cold until it no longer feels cold is what heaven feels like to me. To sit in the stream, hands on my thighs, letting everything within me be processed / recycled / cleared as I watch God unfold through water and fish and light.

I stare at people from behind my sunglasses, I read my book.
I look at my body, often, too often.

I eat the best grapes I’ve ever had in my life, standing up by my parent’s ombrellone. My dad is fast asleep and my mother reads a book. I eat the grapes and look into her sunglasses to see if she is reading or spying on me. It appears she was reading. I grab a peach and eat it standing up, in the sunshine, because my body told me in its bodily whispers Eat it whilst standing up in the sunshine, and in experiencing it I can confirm this was a deeply pleasurable thing to do.

I spend the first part of my morning anxious, terribly conscious of my body and all its flaws. Nothing the cold stream can’t fix. I sit down and then move into a horizontal position, the water covering everything except for my head and asscheeks, which stay present outside of the water, keeping watch.

The cold stream reminds me of what is true. So too does anything that invites me deeply into presence. Moments later I am running towards the water and diving into the salt, laughter joins me and I remember that none of it matters, my worries, the reasons not to enjoy this moment, the ways in which I think I need to be in order to not be perceived negatively. An impossible thing. A waste of time.

I have a body, it does so much for me, I am learning how not to hate it. I am learning to give it things it enjoys, like the breeze on my legs, and like powerful strides in the water, and like bathing in the cold. I am learning to eat the peach standing up when that is what is requested.

I didn’t eat until 14:30ish—the grapes, the peach, the focaccia that followed. I wasn’t hungry at all, and listening to my body felt so pleasurable, to let myself rest and enjoy the space from eating, without force nor control, but simply through listening.

I’m a light sleeper. I awoke early, lilac light entering my room, the fan loud. I wore nothing but my black lace underwear, the only one I own of the like, and as I write these words I’m interrupted No I’m greeted by a seagull. Even at 06:03 I can feel the heat of the sun start to wake up on my skin. I considered not getting up earlier because of I’m tired and because of I don’t feel like it. But I was awake, being summoned outside by lilac light.

The first words I uttered were to the garbage collector.

Buongiorno, I said to him, Che meraviglia.

And a meraviglia it is, to be up early, to have a body that is designed for the happenings at this hour. More and more as of late, I am being acquainted with living through and from the energy of my heart. Our hearts receive guidance from Life and guide us, through our inner body awareness, into living in a way that gives more Life to ourselves and others. This is our primary source of energy. I notice it, that I can thrive off of less sleep for a time, if needed, if I am expending my energy in satisfying and life-giving ways, if I am being intuitively guided and if I am listening to this guidance and showing up to where it calls me (06:08 on Piazzetta Petrone, feeling the first whispers of warmth and watching the colours change before me), then I naturally receive energy in abundance from this primary source.

I am experiencing in real time the need to be flexible within the realms of routine, for my consistent and at times rigid routine had made its way and settled far too cozily into the realm of my comfort zone. There is routine and structure and then there is rigidity. My routine became a reason to avoid social outings, new experiences, fun. My nine o’clock bed time because I need enough sleep was paradoxically making me feel more tired. Because we will lack energy when we don’t live from our heart, and we confuse our intuition because of our own perceptions of good and bad, of right and wrong, because of our understandable obsession with control. We need a part of us, perhaps quite a large part of us, to stay open to being adaptable, flexible and spontaneous, because we will be called upon in various instances, whether from within or without, to show up outside of our otherwise scheduled office hours. It’s important to note, to emphasise, that we will be called upon to deviate if and when necessary. That embracing fluidity doesn’t mean abandoning our needs or ditching an efficient system or moving in ways that don’t honour our hearts or our life-force. Fluidity only exists within some form or structure, otherwise it falls flat. Water needs a vessel.

I didn’t bring my laptop to Vieste, nor my yoga mat, because I wanted a) to pack light and b) to switch up my usual life routine. But I did bring the books that I’ve been getting through too slowly. I’m currently making my way through Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, which I am enjoying, if not just for the beautifully descriptive language, particularly how she describes colour and flowers and feeling, but also for the way she divulges her inner world, her learning gleaned from this human experience.

I feel frustrated when I take little breaks from writing things down, because everything accumulates, Writing is a cold stream in itself, a means of separating, sorting, clearing, creating. Though being present in our lives is naturally a means for that process to unfold. But through presence I’m guided to write, not always but often, and when I don’t do so I feel cluttered inside.

The beach is such a good concept of something, my little sister says. Isn’t it?

La spiaggia? My mother asks.

Isn’t it? She insists.

Yeah.

A day of tension today at the beach. There is always tension before connection. The salad at lunch was exactly what my body desired: crunchy and crispy lettuce, cucumber (peeled), and beautiful tomatoes. Salt, white wine vinegar, olive oil. Tomatoes are beautiful in Italy no matter what. My sister and I shared the salad, along with a frittura mista and troccoli allo scoglio. I think the tension was within me today, perhaps it was the internal clutter I was feeling. I had less patience for the constant reapplication of sunscreen, so I didn’t take part, and my reddish shoulders have something to say for it.

I think today is the day for me to wear the fancy-ish dress I bought before we made our journey southward to Vieste. It’s beautiful. Cream-coloured and zebra striped, the shape perfect for my tall and curvy figure. I consider asking my family what they’re wearing but, I’m just going to dress how I want to dress, and they can do the same. It’s Saturday night, I feel tired and yet I desire waking early to enjoy the sunrise. Though I will say I haven’t been setting any alarms and have been enjoying that. I know my system. It wakes me when I need to be awake for something. Even if I’ve had little sleep. It knows I will be energised by the beaming red sun, by a morning stroll, by exploring something or somewhere new.

I’ve been feeling the yearning for a partner as of late. It has been some time, my singledom near stretching into four years. This time has been fruitful, and whatever more time I shall spend alone will be fruitful, too. Though I feel the yearning. I trust its slow rising in my heart, I trust my slow perception of its presence. I think we often think we create things, and that is certainly true, but how much of creation is simply becoming aware of what is already there, whether within or without? I don’t think it’s possible for something not to physicalise when we become aware of its energetic root, its essence, the feeling of its presence. I shall get changed now. Into my fancy dress. And I shall try not to gawk at all the handsome men I have been gawking at since being here.

It is useful to consider a mistake you’ve made more through the lens of : I would do this differently next time. It rearranges your engagement with the thing; an experience, situation, choice, blah blah, as scientific, experimental, considered less like life or death, less painful and frustrating (though perhaps not not frustrating)—it rearranges the furniture—it rearranges your dynamic with the experience at hand. Transforming it into a variable you can control in the future, a something to keep in mind, a learning you can digest as wisdom for a future time. You can put on a lab coat if it will help. Look at the thing under a miscrocope and draft up a report. Whatever helps, whatever works in helping to shift your state of being when you’ve done something you later come to understand wasn’t something you wanted to do.

This morning there is a strange sensory braid mingling its way through my window: an a cappella choir of seagulls and schiacciata pugliese; the smell of rosemary and bread fresh out of the oven is strong, scent complimenting sound in an unprecedented way.

Having one of those days where I can sense the clarity bubbling up inside of me and I am not pleased with what it has to say. Frustration signals to me that I must move forward using my energy in more efficient and energising ways. I woke early and did not go see the sunrise. I opted for another hour of sleep. Though the feeling of gazing into the red sun and how it affects me is lacking in my experience today.

The warm breeze is pleasant. I got sick of putting sunscreen on multiple times per day and so I thought, for science, I wouldn’t put any on today. The result of this experiment is that I am sunburnt. On my nose and cheeks and the sides of my legs. Inner thighs are quite white in comparison. I will be applying and reapplying sunscreen tomorrow.

Perugia

We get back home and the house smells like we’ve been away for a week. Not in a bad way. It smells like the house has been closed and the outside world has been hot, very hot, but I repeat, not in a bad way. It smells like the house and its natural smells have been amplified. It smells like getting to know it better. It smells like when we would get back to Beijing after a month or more in Perugia and we’d be jet lagged and we’d sit on the floor; my sister and I would lay on a big floor cushion and watch Mrs Doubtfire and try to combat the drooping eyelids, the house smelled closed but perfect, like it missed us, like it is so happy we are back, to open windows and rest on sofas and cook and put on the extractor fan.

A woman takes a watering can out of the boot of her car. A man smokes a cigarette. It’s quiet in Perugia.

I am loved. Safe. I eat ravioloni at lunch followed by squid salad. My father says Ciao Isa from the upstairs balcony as I walk uphill to go to work. He offered a lift but I declined, I want the movement, I want the heat. I eat the ravioloni at lunch and I make the salad with valeriana and beef-heart tomatoes and julienned carrots, and there are no bombs where I live.

It’s strange to be editing these words almost twenty days after having written them, when the need for structure reveals itself as Life moves and I move with it. My parents and sister have left Perugia and me alone, to get on with my life and the work that needs doing.

I’m sitting in front of the fan that is doing its best at sending warm air in my general direction.

I’m sticky.

In the summertime everything is.