Firenze

So there I was, stood at the threshold between history and modernisation. An onlooker into a place unknown. A tourist. Florence was simply…rich. With secrets of yesterday when society was finding ways in which to define itself. With civilization comes the need for society to create its own artificial standards. Perhaps that is why socialism cannot work. They can never be true equality. Perhaps Plessy v Fergusan was right, the best that can be strived for is a status of separate but equal. But again I digress when it all started off as a brief narrative of a recent opportunity to glimpse into the secrets of Florence.

Here is the home of men who had a greater calling than worldly riches. Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Caravaggio and Botticelli but to name a few. I’m no connoisseur of art nor do I claim to be an expert to beauty but what I am is an eternal dreamer who thinks of things which many find wishful and almost irrelevant. Indulge me in my fantasy as I try to transport myself to those times when these masters were alive. Did Michelangelo realise when he sculpted that piece of marble that he was creating a lasting imprint of himself and that in centuries to come his name would be uttered by the world in awe and appreciation? Da Vinci known for his brilliance and almost arrogant manner, was he smiling in glee as he painted pictures of the Virgin and Biblical scenes when inside he was just like anyone of us….trying to find himself by hiding. Yet if I had to pick it would be Caravaggio that would have captured my heart. His work which mostly centred around Greek Mythology showed the fallacy of human nature. That I think is the most accurate face of mankind. We remember the heroes, the icons who triumph over adversity to be reborn into demigods. But those are exceptions. It is the defeats and the failures of man that is the norm. Perhaps that is why I can relate so well to his work.

I needed this, I needed to walk the winding streets, feel my step on the cobbled stones and hearing the buzz but not really catching the spoken Italian around me. Smiling unknowingly as I pass ancient buildings that have witnessed so much blood and tears but yet stood proud. Each crack seem like a battle scar and I felt that each time I trace the lines of those cracks I am linking myself to the past. Perhaps that is my problem, my love affair with the past. My unrealistic wish that I could travel in time to learn firsthand all the trials and tribulations mankind has faced. Why this obsession? To know whether after countless of mistakes and falls did we learn anything? Or is it an endless cycle?

You hear it repeated every time, Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder. Yet I challenge you to look at these paintings and not feel a twinge of emotion. Step closer and stare at each brush stroke…then step back and you’ll see the whole picture for the first time. There is something tragic in a painted face, a sadness that you see through the eyes. You leave feeling quiet, not out of deeper understanding of the subject but out of respect. There is something remarkably solemn about old art and you’re afraid if you speak, it might break that moment.

I started off wanting to write the memoirs of a tourist, of places I’ve seen and been but then I felt that they are not important. It is unlikely I will forget the grand Uffizi or the majestic Duomo. It’s the feelings I felt that if left unrecorded would be relegated to the back of mind and eventually forgotten. It is just something we humans always do. Forget emotions. So in anticipation of natural amnesia, I record these inspired moments in my fast slipping youth because when life has taken a bad turn and I begin to forget the very essence of youth which is pure wishful thinking, I can be content that at one point I was guilty of foolish thoughts.

So for those few days, I walked a little slower, I smiled a little longer and I stopped whenever possible. Sometimes life goes by much too fast that you are constantly trying to catch up that you forget to smell the flowers.