Room With a View

I promised a photo and here it is—the view out our hotel window in Positano, Italy. What more can one say? To open the shutters and be greeted with a sight like this— well, who could ever complain about anything when the world in all its splendor daily bids you good morning? How could one not feel like Robert Browning; "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world." (Was he here when he wrote that?)

Would that it would be so easy. While it’s stunning to look out at such beauty, it also demands something from us— an attentive eye and ear and the good sense to sit out on our little deck and drink it all in. And because of habituation, the way even splendid things lose a little of their shine through repetition (think of the courting phase of your romance next to a too-familiar argument being repeated 30 years later in your marriage), I imagine it would start to fade a bit. And if I lived here, I’d have to do laundry and take out garbage and such and like the couple who does live here, might scold my crying child in spite of the view out the window.

But for now, it is a balm for the spirit and instead of writing more about it, I’m going out to my little terrace again. All my life I’ve been waiting for my ship to come in and now I think I see it!