The sun was a dollop of soft, yellow paint that colored the sky with strokes of peach. There must’ve been some other color on the canvas first, or else how could the yellow have made orange. I don’t understand how art is created – I’ve never known how to draw or paint, – but for that, I can appreciate art even more. It’s not just beauty, it’s mystery.
The mystery of this work of art, this summer’s sunset over the beach in Corona Del Mar, shut out all else in the world. I watched the sun paint closely, leaving more and more for the eye to see before receding behind her stage’s curtains to reveal only her finished work. My roommates next to me ceased to exist. Until one of them tapped my shoulder and asked, “Ready to go?” It didn’t upset me because I actually was, though I got the feeling that she didn’t see the same show that I did.
I got up, thanking the sun before turning my back to her already-weathered masterpiece. On the car ride home, I wrote a poem for the first time in a while. It’d been a long time since I’d been inspired, and I missed it. The poem I wrote later helped me come to terms with something about myself I’d been struggling with for a while. The experience truly connected me to myself. I felt aligned. Grounded. Whole.
—
I thought that feeling would last longer.
But since that sunset in July, I’ve spent a difficult couple of months with myself. When looking at the alignment between my body and myself, I feel like a moving photograph taken at a slow shutter speed; a body laying down on the ground, slightly off from the tape of its outline. And I don’t know how to move closer, to fill the outline. When I was at home, I thought that Florence itself would be my answer. Specifically, I planned to find meaning at the top of the Duomo.
It was the beginning of our trip, and I was antsy with anticipation. The Duomo felt like the perfect place to recreate my experience at Corona Del Mar. My classmates and I even booked our tickets to the top for sunset. I opened a new note on my phone, ready to be inevitably inspired. Ready to connect with myself again.
I don’t remember being tired. I actually don’t remember a lot about the over 400-stair climb, other than the fact that my classmates were in both the front and the back of me, and I thought to myself that if they weren’t there, I would’ve taken more breaks.
The view from the top of the Duomo could not disappoint. The city looked orange, I think. But maybe, I’m just remembering the view from pictures that I took, which were tinted orange by the setting sun. Or maybe, that was the filter I used.
I don’t remember much, except for the fact that there were pictures to take, people I barely knew to socialize with, and the voice of my classmate saying, “I think we’re done up here. Want to go down?”
This time, I wasn’t ready to go. I let my classmates climb down before me as I hurriedly looked out at the city of Florence, desperate for my “Corona Del Mar moment.” Time was running out. The sun was bright, and I couldn’t look right at it. The buildings looked pretty. I begged my mind to wander, to wonder, but it wouldn’t. There was no mystery. It wasn’t art. And then my last classmate began her descent. Time ran out, and my moment didn’t come. Begrudgingly, I followed her down.
—
When you’re at home – stuck in a rut, quarantining for fear of Covid, wholly disconnected from any version of yourself you’d recognize or want to be, – it’s easy to idealize what you’ll be like in Italy. I thought Florence would bring me back to the feeling that I had in Corona Del Mar and maybe even make it last. Yet, there were multiple points along the trip when I found myself wondering, When did this trip become not about me?
Climbing to the top of the Duomo was the first time I questioned this. So, near the end of our stay – at 8:00 a.m. on January 25th, to be exact, – I decided, in a last ditch effort to accomplish my almost-unbearably cheesy goal of ‘finding myself in Italy,’ to do it again. This time, by myself. For myself.
It was the morning after my roommate and close friend’s birthday, and I woke up – if that’s even the correct phrasing because I’m not sure I ever quite went to sleep – very hungover. With the help of the fact that all of the lights in our room were left on from the night before, I forced myself to sit up. My head throbbed with pressure. My pillow tempted me to lay back down.
But motivated by the fact that I pre-paid twenty euro a few days before, I gathered my clothes and put them on as quietly as I could in the bathroom. Evidently, I wasn’t quiet enough, and she woke up before I was able to slink out the door. I told her that I was going on a run and left her to go back to sleep.
It was about thirty degrees, and immediately upon walking outside, I was uncomfortable. I was also early, so I circled the Duomo twice before the side door opened for the first time that day and I was allowed in. I was the only one there.
The 463-stair climb to the top was tough on my own. After the first ten flights, my legs started to burn. After the first twenty, my lungs followed suit. At one point, I checked my heart rate, and it was 189. I stopped multiple times to catch my breath – there were more stairs than I remembered.
Throughout the walk, all I could think about was release. Release of the tension building up in my legs, from the burning of lactic acid. Release of the air in my lungs without quickly gasping for its return. Release of the pressure that I had put on myself to become self-actualized – to grow completely, to heal, to become whole – in a mere three-week period. Why the hell did I put the weight of this goal on myself in the first place?
The final stretch of stairs was the steepest, and it scared me. I climbed them quickly. My entire body burned, but as long as the sky was visible from the stairwell, I couldn’t stop. On the last step, I took off my hat, a matter of both courtesy to my favorite artist and protection from the wind’s thieving fingers. I finally returned to her show.
The air was crisper at the top than it was on my walk there, but somehow, it wasn’t as harsh; it was cold, but it didn’t hurt me. One of two people up there – a security guard and myself, – I let my mask down to breathe it in deep. The rising sun illuminated the morning’s fog and veiled the scene in translucent white. Smoke drifted upward from terracotta roofs, and I heard dogs barking in the distance, though from where, I couldn’t tell; it was a mystery.
I first took time to circle the dome and note all of the places I’d been on the trip thus far – the Uffizi Gallery, the Basilica di Santa Croce, the Medici Chapel, the Boboli Gardens. I couldn’t see the Arno River, but I decided where it must be and traced the Medici family’s tunnel from their second house back to the Palazzo Vecchio. From there, I was able to figure out where the Ponte Vecchio was hiding.
The view was picturesque, but this time, I didn’t pull out my phone. I didn’t want to cheapen it. Instead, I sat on every bench lining the dome to capture it for myself. Well, all but the one lit by the sun. The security guard and his book, which he read out loud quietly under his breath, occupied that bench themselves. It sounded like he was studying something, and I wondered what it could be. He was lucky – as the sun rose higher, the blanket of her warmth grew, wrapping his bench tighter and tighter. I wondered how he didn’t get tired from studying while laying in bed.
I couldn’t help but think that I was lucky too. Lucky to have gotten such a beautiful morning. Lucky to have been the only one up there – to have had the chance for such a personal moment. Lucky to have truly seen the sun’s display of talent once more.
When I decided to descend the Duomo, it was because I was okay with leaving. I said my personal goodbyes to Florence – I had a suspicion that this would be the last time I could be alone with her. I paced my walk down, not allowing myself to get too tired and taking in what slivers of the view I still could from the small windows carved into the stairway’s walls. When I reached the bottom, the chill of the morning air hit me again. I pulled my hat over my head and checked my phone for any messages from home before starting back to our hotel. I walked straight up to my room and into my bed. I slept until 11:00 a.m.
—
I didn’t rush to write a poem or have a life-changing epiphany at the top of the Duomo. And I’m okay with that. When I climbed the Duomo on January 25th, it was because I felt like I was running out of time to find myself. But it was crazy of me to put a time limit on that goal in the first place.
I thought that “Corona Del Mar moments” could be planned, that they were formulaic. They aren’t. Sometimes, you see something beautiful that isn’t art. And sometimes, you see art and it doesn’t make you feel how you expected it to make you feel. But maybe there’s beauty in the mystery of what will impact you and of when you will find yourself in moments of growth. I don’t understand how art is created and I don’t know how exactly to connect with myself, but for that, I can appreciate those surprising moments when I do even more.