train, Civitavecchia
Tuesday, Sept. 07, 2010 - 23:00

I wrote another MBJ episode last week and I've spent quite a bit of time at work reading it again and again. It's based on an entry that I may or may not have posted here - I wrote it on December 11, 2008, shortly after moving out of my little house. I saved it in my gmail drafts and either posted it here or didn't and forgot about it until a week or two ago when I went searching for mention of Civitavecchia.

Civitavecchia is a town I've never been to but I did go through it on a train once. The train stopped there and I looked out the window and saw the most beautiful place in the entire world - white buildings next to the blue Mediterranean. I wanted to get off that train right then and there despite it being contrary to our plans to go to Pisa for the afternoon and then Florence, where we would stay a couple days. I didn't get off in Civitavecchia. Instead, I stayed on that train and went to Pisa and Florence like we'd planned and then we got married and continued living according to plan and being miserable for a few years.

The brown-eyed baker went through Italy this summer. "Did you stop in Civitavechhia?" I asked him. "We drove through, why?" he said. "I went through it on a train and wanted to get out but didn't," I said. "I've thought about it ever since." He didn't say it was the most beautiful magical place in the entire world, and it probably isn't, but in my mind it is.