11 June--Lucca morning

Lucca 8:54
We got up early to walk the ramparts, tall and wide walls that Napoleon’s widow turned into gardens—exquisitely grown grass, sky-stretching trees with papery bark. The whole way around is lined with trees.
The streets here change names every time they bend even a little, which is about every fifteen feet. The names are “Via Degli Angeli” and “Via Michele Rosa” and “Fiardino” and “Baptista” and the names that you read about in books with cracked spines. There are many churches. Everywhere we go we see the sign Gelateria—really, how relaxing and completely carefree to walk down the street with gelato; it reminds me of Thurber’s observations of girls and ice cream cones.
We see Mini Coopers everywhere as well; I still like the older ones best, and there were many of them in Milan. We see Puma shoes; black bags that have printed in large letters “PINK BAG;” bicycles that are ancient lady frames with baskets; red flowers in window boxes; and the beloved form of Vespas in all the colors of the cream rainbow.
The things that are most ubiquitous, however, are green shutters. Every building that has windows must have shutters, and if it has shutters they must be green. I think of what would happen if a person moved here and painted their shutters red, or bright blue. “Crazy newcomer,” locals would mutter. The house would become a landmark, something used to give driving directions: “. . . and turn right next to that garish foreigner’s house . . .” People might throw eggs at it on holidays (or whatever the Italian version is of throwing eggs) and when the person finally died I’m sure everyone would be sad, and the next person who moved in and tried to paint the shutters a proper green would be prohibited from doing so. Walking the ramparts this morning, I felt we had been given the same ability as Mary Poppins and Bert, and were now stepping into painted scenes and strolling, trying not to disrupt the rest of it. I remind myself sometimes to stop and touch the walls (when they are sort of clean, at least), or the treebark, or the doors. Things don’t seem real because I have never really been to a place like this. I have heard people tell stories, so it seems real to talk in my about seeing it. I have seen pictures of it, so it seems real to hold my camera to my face and press the shutter. I have seen cheesy smudgy paintings of it in motels and bathrooms, so it is real to sketch winding roads and the pillars of buildings. But being is not real. Remembering Japan is real, so I know when I remember Lucca it will be real and comfortable but being there was/is not. [on the train to Pisa] Even now as Lucca recedes, slipping away behind my back, it turns into something different. Why is it that the slipstream (Time) only allows you to finally appreciate in retrospect? Maybe this is why people who travel are so exhausted. I feel traveling the same way I feel when I dream—it’s exhausting, because you’re caught in a perpetual state of unreality.