Love in Italian

It is to my great distaste that time in Italy, is of no essence. Tardiness is expected and tolerated. No meal is ever rushed. Standard business hours provide for a two hour lunch. No coffee break is too excessive, no stroll too mundane. The only people see walk at a brisk pace are other Americans.

On this sunny peninsula, people do things for the mere pleasure of it. The language itself is a testament to the never ending Italian quest for beauty. In speaking, a sentence may not be grammatically wrong, but instead "non suona bene", "non e bella." A phrase that is not beautiful is not correct. So I wonder, does this quest for beauty have anything to do with the apparent affluence of love?

Perhaps it is just my own invention, but love seems to come so easily to people in this country. Love and beauty are on everyone's lips and it seems to this American, that on Italian principle, every detail of daily life lends itself only to beauty.

Haste seems not to exist. Only in matters of love do people seem to find urgency. Were American women of this age so infatuated with the idea of love? Did I just not notice? It cannot be possible. While some women are looking, seemingly endlessly for a man, others seem tirelessly committed to one after another. They are all possessed by it. I seem to be the only one not looking for love on this boot.

I'm no cynic. I look at all the men I pass in the street. I observe them as discretely as I can. I try to imagine them as the love of my life, as my destiny. Perhaps, I force, we were meant to meet here on this street, in this snow. I invent this idea, and before I know it we've passed one another and destiny seems to have taken another course. "Seems" is the wrong word here. After all it's a farce, it was never meant to be. But I imagine just for a moment that this sickness of love could infect me.

After all, everyone wants someone to hold their hand. I want someone to hold both, and then sometimes to touch neither.