Anais Nin Quote « baroquesicily.com - Sicily Stories and Travel Tips from Jann Huizenga

Coupledom in Sicily

September 15, 2012

I’ve been thinking a lot about coupledom lately.

What happens when one half of a couple longs for a thing that the other half is completely indifferent to?

Let’s say the thing in question is Italy.

As in my case.

I learned late, in a halting kind of way, what Anais Nin seems to have known all along: How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.

And once I created that world, he sort of liked it. Curiousity waxed. Resistance waned.

Moral: Go out and create the world you want, Sisters!

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And the winner is….

The winning name pulled randomly from my coppola for the book EATING IN SICILY is Giulia! Congratulations Giulia, and please send me your mailing address!

Restoring a Damp House in Sicily, Part 16

November 30, 2011

I don’t know about your Big Dream, but mine was born in a flash when I laid eyes on Europe as a teen. I gotta move here, I thought.

A decade or two passed. There was always some excuse: too far, too expensive, too late, too early, too impractical, too scary, too risky, too crazy. Too, too, too. There was marriage along the way, and it was too hard to convince my husband. The dream remained nothing more than that. A fantasy moldering in a dark corner of my mind. Another decade passed: 9-11, my mother’s death, more gray hair.

You try hard to push it away. To pretend a dream is just not that important.

Then came the day “when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” (Anais Nin)

But it was a slow flowering; there were long delays and growing pains. That frequent feeling of What in hell’s name am I doing? What don’t I just go back to where I belong?

I was looking through photos the other day and found this. It caused a small feeling of horror.

My kitchen 2009-2010: