We are in our house now, perched all topsy-turvy on the vertiginous side of the mountain with the ground dropping away hundreds of feet below us into the blue Ligurian Sea where Percy Shelley met his death.

The chestnuts and green persimmons clustered in the trees all around us are simultaneously very close and very far away. I could almost reach out and touch them from where I sit on the porch, but could never climb so high up into the tree. There are old stone steps everywhere with geraniums in pots and lizards sunning themselves and outbuildings scattered haphazardly at different levels and rosemary in profusion and olive trees and grapes called "strawberry grapes" and the sound of church bells in the distance throughout the day. The stairways seem to have been designed by M.C. Escher to maximize the feeling of being in a dream.

On Monday we arrived here with all of our luggage to be greeted by the Signora and her daughter and the rental agent, all of whom showed us everything around the place and explained how everything works and with whom we signed many forms. They spoke very quickly and very simultaneously and although Jonathan says that he got almost all of it, I only really understood that if we leave the gas on and blow up the house, we will be in trouble. Which seems fair.

The Signora's daughter asked Jonathan about our house in Colorado and he told her it was built in 1895. "Yes," she said. "I had heard that all the buildings there are very new." (This is not the usual response that we get. Perspectives shift.) She had seen a documentary about tornados in the US and wondered if that might explain why there is nothing really old in the States. Could be.

Then we went down to the town to open up a local bank account. Again, it was a long process involving much rapid speech with technical banking terms of which I understood only that I should not use my birthday as my PIN and that at some point I would be asked three security questions. I have not been asked them yet, although that was now three days ago. Or if I have, it happened in such rapid Italian that I did not notice. As the afternoons wear on, I have a tendency to simply start saying "si, si, si" to everything and smiling a lot. So far, so good.

Then we went to do a big shopping at the HyperMarket out on the road to the beach while we still had the rental car to carry things home. It turns out that the organizational grouping of groceries is highly culturally specific so that whereas, say, flour and salt and sugar all all grouped together in American grocery stores, they are not in Italian ones. Also, it turns out to be harder to tell the difference between dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, shower gel, dish soap, toilet cleaner, and shampoo just by reading the labels than you would think. There are possibilities here for making mistakes that you really do not want to make. We were so confused that we ended up with pre-packaged octopus salad and screw-top 3-Euro wine and called it a day. We will live on love. And, I guess, octopus.

Tuesday, we drove to the airport at Pisa to return the rental car and took the train back to Pietrasanta. Then we took a taxi 95 percent of the way back up the mountain and walked the rest because the taxi driver was worried that if she took us all the way to our house, she would never be able to get back. So we are marooned here in paradise now as if we have fallen off the edge of the world.

Emily Dickinson wrote, "what indeed is Earth but a Nest from whose rim we are all falling?"