Pendulum

The last big Italian lunch I went to was for my own birthday; so I was really looking forward to the one this afternoon. May has been surprisingly still and calm and warm and every morning when I’ve hopped out the door and run down the 38923892 stairs to the street I’ve looked out the bay in wonderment, like where are the waves? Why am I not wearing fifteen jumpers right now? The rain and the wind came on down today though, right in time for us all to crowd into Raffaele’s new house and take our shoes off and sit at the table and pass around the pasta al forno.

Mostly everyone speaks Italian, as you’d expect, with some asides in English from me when I feel the need to contribute anything more complicated than swooning over the food. We ate and drank and talked and talked and talked: about Brazil and about motocross and about the connections between wolves and dogs and about going to brunch next weekend. We had coffee and tea and cookies and chocolate after lunch and spread out on the couches and the floor, chatting and getting up and grabbing the milk and looking at pictures online and laughing and punching each other. We thought about watching a movie but decided we were too tired and lazy from the pasta and the rain falling down so everyone kissed and hugged and said goodbye, went home through the dark.

The pendulum swings back and forth, in every direction, with my various friend groups. I’ll spend six weeks with one passel of buddies, going to parties and telling secrets and meeting for many hot chocolates, and all of a sudden it’ll switch over, I’ll get caught up on an entirely different type of gossip, in entirely other houses. The conversation will change but I’ll tell the same stories, but it’s new to these people because I haven’t seen them for so long and they don’t know what I’ve been up to, they haven’t even seen my new skirt. We’ll all get caught up, though, together, and then it will be another couple of months and we’ll all do it all over again, each time, each friend.

I have lots of loves, now. I have a lot of homes. I float along the streets and houses and cafes of this city, bumping and eddying, washing up in various corners for a while, giving and keeping my heart in equal proportion.