The weather forecast today predicts three straight days of hard rain, beginning this afternoon. Jonathan has gone down the hill to Pietrasanta to stock up on bread and wine and coffee before the deluge. It is the first time that we have been separated from each other in many weeks and I feel a bit lost without him nearby. I find that, despite being busy with other things, I am nevertheless also waiting for him to come back home even though he left less than an hour ago.

The "other things" I am busy with are copy edits. In the midst of this big move, this enormous life transition, the unspoken activity is a book. I am finishing a book and have spent more hours working on it these past few months than on any other single activity. But it is not very exciting to write about -- the days I have spent checking references, the long hours logging quotes, the tedium of requesting permissions. Three minutes with a lizard are much more entertaining than an hour figuring out the exact titles of long-defunct British literary journals from the 19th century (Is it the Leader or The Leader, etc., ad naus.?)

And so Jonathan is in town without me, Mimmo is working in the bosco just behind the house, and I am supposedly working on copy edits. Not very hard, admittedly.

George Clooney seems to have cleared out now that the rains are coming. Or at least we haven't spotted the helicopter recently. He did not say goodbye to us.

The persimmon tree out back dropped a couple of persimmons, even though they aren't ripe yet. The tree is full of green ones, but we have no idea how we will ever manage to get to them when they are ready. To climb a tree here is to risk death if you fall out on the wrong side and plunge a hundred meters down the mountainside. I think there is a life lesson here. Unfortunately.