The faces of France and Italy linger in my mind...
The musicians playing with all their hearts, some earnestly puffing until their faces are purple with effort...
And the fisherman on the coast near Rome, who rode his bicycle and then plied the water, just as Italians have done since time began.
Sellers of eggs and mushrooms, jellies and cheeses and thin-as-parchment tuiles...
I wonder who are they really? What are their hopes and joys and disappointments?
I've met them in the street and on the train, exchanged a few words and a smile. But I long to go back and know the dreams of their hearts, to share recipes for the fig bread with the baker in Provence and the glories of mixing pigment with gum arabic in the Luberon.
I muse endlessly (am I the only one who does?) about the faces of France and Italy when they were Gaul and the Roman Empire. Who modeled for the cherub on the map at the edge of the door to the Sistine Chapel? Or the nymph across the way?
Who were those faces? Were they the painters children, who grew and became parents themselves?
Do you wonder about these things, too?
