(italiano)
This is a story about this really beautiful girl with blonde hair that was almost whilte, and these absolutely bright blue eyes that some people thought were the sky, and others thought were the sea.
Anyway, she was 20-something, and living in perpetual torment.
Why?
Well, because she’d been through this kind of crisis quite recently in her life which was making her feel tangled and mixed up and generally upside-down. Imagine a bit of seaweed at the bottom of the deep, dark sea, when an octopus gets caught up in it. You’re not sure which are tentacles and which are those slimy, bobbly leafy things. Like that.
Anyway this girl had been living in Italy for the past year, doing things and saying things and meeting people and seeing places which no-one back home had ever done or said or met or seen.
For example, once she’d go to the sea at 4am for a swim, and then watched the sun rise in a pink sky from a small cafè over a bowl of nutella ice-cream, while her mascara ran and her salty clothes stuck to her salty skin.
(She likes thinking about this but feels, normally, a sense of loss when she does.)
So, now she’s back home and everything’s, like, the same. You know, the towns haven’t changed and everyone still lives in their little houses, and all the trees still probably have the same number of leaves on them.
Well, in fact, the crisis came about not so much from this but from a general apathetic attitude from most people she used to be able to talk to.
One in particular.
When she went to his flat she found his music didn’t speak to her like it used to, that the pictures on his walls weren’t so provocative, and, in fact, there was a strange feeling in the air. This feeling rose to the sky and made clouds which made rain.
It worried her and she couldn’t sleep.
But, like I said before, all this was actually inside her and, to look at her – well no, you wouldn’t even know. So no-one asked her how her insides were. Which felt sad.
After few weeks something happened.
I think she refers to it as some kind of calming influence rather than a true companion, which, despite Mark Cohn’s splendid efforts, still sounds naff to her (something to be avoided).
Well this something happens to be a person and, although shes’ s still treading water a little, not sure exactly which tide to turn, she’s not so bad.
Now she’s snuggling herself amongs cushions on her own white bed at home, and she’s feeling a bit better.
The other day she thought back to the italian sea, and smiled. This morning when she looked up at the sky it was clear.
Just like her eyes in fact.
