merrily i blog along, blog along, blog along,

over my morning coffee, i often stop to read the blogs of friends...those both near to me here in Italy and many of those farther afield, like Steve or Jim or Andi....who i miss so much it hurts and who's blog entries of how she is adjusting in Canada help to keep me in a perpetual state of denial about where she actually lives and where i would prefer she still did.

i also read blogs from a few complete strangers....those that i haven't had the pleasure of meeting, but in who's words or personalities i sense something unique, someone who's words or images tap me on my shoulder and say...wow! i really would like to know that person.

I remember the first time I read "Fussy" where the blogger there said:

"A blog can be like a mirror.......to see a reflection of a person I still recognized there after all the changes I'd been through".

for me this thought captures completely the essence of why i started blogging...even if my original focus has shifted and changed it truly was, and continues to be about seeing if Lynda was still here....or if she had disappeared completely (notice use of capital letter here).

when i stumbled across Angelo's blog one year ago ( 11 August 2005) i felt a shock of electricity that nearly made my knees buckle. it was like finding someone you knew several lifetimes ago but that up until that moment, hadn't been able to find in this one. i opened every one of his blog entries, scanning photo after photo, reading each entry as if, in doing so, i could somehow catch up on a lifetime of missed memories in one single sitting.

afterwards, i wanted to write a reply, to say...."Ah there you are my friend, my how i have missed you!" .....but in the end words failed me. i felt shy and stupid. i mean really! how do you tell a complete stranger "gee! i think we probably knew one another back when Nero was still fiddling" without sounding like some deranged psycho web stalker from hell?!!!!!

in the end i merely burbled something banal and stupid like: "stumbled here quite by accident, your stories make me smile. safe passage traveling king"~Sparrow....

then a few months later he wrote back....reaching out, and offering to help with a problem i was having with the Italian Questura and my work visa and his words were comforting like warm cinnamon tea on a cold winter's night. i don't think either of us knew what to expect a short while later when we finally got up the courage to meet face to face. it was not very long after i had moved out of Pooh's house and i still assuredly looked like some half starved kitten in need of affection. but after a few minutes of initial embarrassment i felt that same feeling i had when i first stumbled across his words and photos and i knew undoubtedly that i was sitting across from someone remarkably very special.

Angelo has a way about him that is different from most folk i know.....he can be playful and stern and silly and cute all in a span of about five seconds. he can curse like a sailor when driving and find parking in Rome in the most unexpected of places. but these aren't the traits that draw me to him, even if they leave me smiling. the hook for me was, and always will be, how he treats people and how his positive energy in the face of many many difficulties, reminds me to look inside myself for the answers to my own problems, and to find my courage, because if he has faith in my moxy, then maybe perhaps i actually do have some.

it is hard to say why a person enters (or re-enters) your life at a particular point of time. some would say it is nothing more than random coincidence and that we were just very very lucky.
me, i have my own thoughts....and a ear to ear smile that i haven't had in several lifetimes.

welcome home friend, glad you are here and damn i missed you.