Nature is healing (my brain is mush)

Pleased to note here that we've officially hit that point in my summerlong travels when my brain fully becomes deranged! 

Usually this is down to a little bit of travel fatigue: I have very strong homebody and wanderlust instincts, and much like my introvert/extrovert split, I never quite know which one needs to be fed until it flares up. In 2017, by the time August rolled around, I had begun ordering (new) English-tailored pajamas off of eBay to ship to my friends Kate and Stuart (my final stop before my trip back to America) and only after I'd done the same with a pair of travel slippers did I pause and think: what's going on here. The answer, clearly, was that my brain was frantically engaging in retail as a way to The Secret a home into existence: if I owned pajamas and slippers, then surely that autumn in Chicago I'd be padding about in them on a Saturday morning, listening to LPs and drinking coffee. (That this did come true doesn't necessarily mean the one manifested the other. Probably.)

Anyway, this summer, thanks to homebody-deprivation and not seeing friends for two months straight (a drought mercifully ended last week by my friend Jenny's arrival to Milan) the great brain melt is back! A few markers of its return:

These photos aren't really illustrations of my mental derangement (crucial to note I did not patronize the establishments that appear later) but they feel like a nice jazzy countermelody of the world in which my brain is breaking. Honk honk!

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Walking home from an afternoon of work in Bologna, I was seized by a craving for Domino's pizza. Correct: nearly two months into life in Italy, a matter of weeks after eating best-of-life Neapolitan pizza in Naples, I craved Domino's. (What's Going On Here: a salt deficiency, I assume, the same way that when I go a few days without eating produce I suddenly start craving apples.)

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I spent about a week straight texting my various UK friends inquiring as to whether they wanted to smoke cigars or pipes during my visit next month. Useful context is that I do not smoke, apart from about two front-stoop cigarettes in Chicago and one rainy cigarette in Paris, both over a decade ago? (What's Going On Here: aforementioned cigarettes were all autumnal; I assume my brain, sweating profusely, figured tobacco plans could The Secret cooler weather into existing.) My friends know me well enough to have ignored this mania, and all is Better Now.

Oh, so you're gonna look down your nose at the Lasagna Factory in Milan? Is there some OTHER lasagna factory you think is going to be better? You rube.

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A conversation in passing on a Swiss trail:

Me: Guten Morgen! (Holding a gate open)

Her: Merci!

Me: De nada!

(What's Going On Here: honestly who knows, this followed several days of me starting conversations in German but panic-leaping back to Italian for apologies and "excuse me" exchanges. [In my defense, there is an Italian-speaking corner of Switzerland, just as there are German/French/Romansch corners.] Spanish is probably my fourth or fifth-strongest language, so I assume my brain was just lying down and giving up.)

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I spent a solid week threatening my friends with my intention to get takeaway from a Bolognese restaurant called Burrito Zone. I barely avoided this fate, in that when I walked to the place, it looked so deserted - in a city with such a healthy dining scene that you literally never get waved down by a laminated-menu-carrying server, a rarity in Italy these days - that it felt haunted.  I powerwalked right past the window. And ordered a burrito at another Bolognese Mexican restaurant instead. It was... fine. Sometimes you have to do something you know is a bad idea just to remind yourself that we are fallen from grace. (What's Going On Here: actually this one's defensible, it's insane to try to go a whole summer without burritos, and in my further defense, this was significantly better than the nachos I ordered in Vienna in 2017, which I do not at this time wish to discuss.)

It's already a deranged name for a shop/bar when you think about it, but stumbling across this spot in Ravenna, Italy? CHEF'S KISS.

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I have not, at present, ordered new English-tailored pajamas (sorry, pyjamas) off of eBay, but after once again losing weight on the Italy leg of this trip, I did get mildly deranged in a moderately obsessive hunt for trousers. (What's Going On Here: you know what, a fella wanted to wear some dang pants that fit, this post is over, why don't you go find somebody else to pick on for a change.)