It continues to rain and the sun remains an iffy prospect, but there have finally been signs of spring. On the passeggiata there are buds and leaves where before there were none. It would be curmudgeonly not to feel hopeful that our last days here will be warm and sunny.
I’m still collecting love graffiti, and one of them, written on a bench along the passeggiata, finally exposes the mark of gender: “The first time I saw you, the first time I truly fell in love”…innamorata―the woman in love…and further to the right, after the declaration, “to follow”….Stay tuned.
On an excursion to another village along the coast, I spotted this classic at the bottom of a staircase: I Love You and the date. I couldn’t help wondering if the love made it to the second anniversary, which had just passed. That’s the thing about graffiti, you just can’t know whether the sentiment remains, whether to feel warm and fuzzy or sad.
And adjacent to this classic, a more playful one:
Love climbs every staircase—“sale” rhymes with “scale” in Italian….
Finally, in the town of Bogliasco, there’s a more lasting tribute to love and the winds of time inscribed on a kind of wall sculpture.
Here is emended version of the poem:
More than the Grecale
little lines
short scratches
time proceeds with you
discreetly
More than the Grecale
that reinforces
and wears away cement and ornament
uncovering the stone
the white skeleton
of the wall
Grecale is the wind from the northeast. Here are the four winds in a mosaic compass by the sea..
Poetic as all that is, the question of dog poop is never far behind.
The colorful poster clearly explains what dog owners should do, but the evidence on the ground suggests that the locals do not read the writing on the wall.
