Back to the Backpack

So I picked up a few cactus fruits with my bare hands yesterday, which was not the smartest thing I've ever done. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. They looked as though all of their needles had fallen off or been removed, but there were plenty of very small ones--so many and so small that I didn't bother picking them out of my hands; by this morning, I think most all of them had fallen out.

Monica left yesterday, and I may go up to Milan to visit her, but her father is sickand the situation may be too strained for a visit. Otherwise, I'm off to Florence and Rome for theten days between this Wednesday, when I leave Elba, and the first of October, when I'm set to begin working the olive harvest in Abruzzo. Yesterday also marked the arrival of Chris, a WOOFer from Scotland. We spoke in Italian for most of the night, which was comical, but significant insofar as weboth wanted to work through the language--simpler communication, but more saturated with the gesture and the choice of what to pursue communicating and what to leave be. He's 34, very open and sincere, very approachable. As a general rule, I'm often intimidated by new people; and so I couldn't tell if it was him or changes in myself or our common struggle with the language or some combination of these which put me at ease with him immediately. Later we talked in English, and I found myself gushing out thoughts to Chris; being able to express myself in English to someone so immediately present must have opened a valve. Take this blog and condense it into two or three conversations, and that is what Chris got, more or less. I apologized later for the bombardment, but he seemed to appreciate talking, or at least me talking at him. I asked him about ways he has travelled on a budget and on his own, and he said "find good people who are willing to help you," and I think this is good.

My head has been very practical lately, with the arrangements for Florence, Rome, the next two farms, and thinking on the next big leg of the trip. I've decided not to go to Tunisia, and to spend the whole six month North Africa chunk before summer 2007 in Morocco. I though harder about why I wanted to go to Tunisia, and it was pretty much because I wanted to live in a troglodyte home in the desert for a couple of months. As Sarah said to me later, "you can dig a hole anywhereand live in it."

Also, I designed a new label for the wine here, which Vittorio totally digs, and if everything works out, it'll be on shelves by the next vintage.

PS- Yay Sarah for the Story Corps gig!