on romance and leisure

I wake up slowly, often spending hours turning from one side of my body to the other—reading, watching, listening—before I get out of bed, put on socks, and brush my teeth slowly. I write at my desk, I move back to my bed, I journal and I rest. I lay for what feels like hours until my stomach is warm and I have to feed myself. I walk through the leather market and am dazed by the movement and chaos. I let my body be taken by the flow of the crowd and feel my still limbs become loose and malleable. I tilt my head all the way back, letting my head get heavy, and watch the birds fly in masses, twirling and spinning. I eat outside or in a corner of a cafe, I speak my broken Italian sheepishly, and I watch as the true Italians scream and yell.

In Copenhagen I am alone, I chat with strangers at cafes and bars, with girls in the changing room; I try on beautiful gowns and refined dark-wash jeans; I pick up delicate colorful glassware and imagine a future home of mine is filled with the most beautiful things; I go to a karaoke bar to watch people let go; I feed myself my favorite foods and eat them slowly, taste them for the first time in a long time.

Recently I have been thinking about the romance in slowness, in taking your time, and in leisure. When I think about some of the romance I have felt in my life: kissing in the rain, crying at the sight of his eyes, handwritten letters with dried teardrops and bleeding ink. I think what feels so romantic about these memories is the comfort and leisure that we were able to surrender to. The leisure in writing; the comfort in knowing it is safe to kiss in the rain or to cry. This kind of comfort is something I have never been able to surrender to by myself before. Never permitted with no other body to surrender with me.

But now that I’m just a few days away from coming home I’m thinking about my time here and how slow it has felt, how slow I have moved, and though normally this would make me feel as though I have not spent my time here doing enough, instead I feel quite romantic about it. I am quite proud of the romance I have brewed, the leisure I have permitted for myself, and the freedom that comes from those two things.

I am not ashamed to say I came to Florence with one single goal: to fall in love. I imagined falling deeply and all at once, heartbroken when the semester came to an end, heartbroken each and every time we thought about our limited time together, but too furiously in love to stop seeing one another. I imagined riding on the back of a vespa, sharing gelato on ponte vecchio, and recreating the pasta scene from The Lady and The Tramp. All of this, unsurprisingly, did not come to fruition.

But my life here has slowed and settled, calmed into some kind of still water that I wade through. And as I walk through cobblestone streets, often alone, it feels, in a way, strangely familiar to when I was in love. This is not to be confused with the feeling of falling in love, which are feelings that are often too big for the body, that change your entire being and frontal lobe. But the feeling of having been in love for quite some time; when flurries have settled and silence brews love, when the very stillness of the relationship feels to be the crescendo, and when you notice that with them you taste your food again for the first time in a long time.

During my time here, I am occasionally reminded of the coast of Italy, of reefed beaches in Oahu, of certain late September days in Malibu. The kind of water that is only still once a year, where the salt water lifts your body and floating becomes second nature. And then I am reminded that wading, floating, and letting water in my ear demands a body that is both at the center of attention and is unimportant. Floating requires deep breaths and awareness of the body until you remember how small you are in comparison to the ocean, the ecology that lives underneath, and the weather that shifts above. My life in Florence is similar, it has demanded that I sink into myself rather than busyness or sex or love affairs.

Without anxieties that are dressed as distractions, I listen to my own breath, I notice when the space between my steps are too big or too small, and I feel as though it would be cruel to rob myself of my favorite foods. But it has also meant four months of a body that follows rather than leads. I go to the bar without makeup or showing my legs. I wear my glasses and I feel ugly and invisible and that I am not leading with my best impression—my body, my looks, my sex appeal. And yet, it seems to be the first time I am not persistently on sale.

Again, it is the feeling of having been in love for quite some time. The romance in forgetting your body, not shaving your legs, gaining happy weight. It is the romance in your body having permission to be second to your life and be minor, unimportant. The romance in leisurely strolling from one activity to the next—school to dinner to drinks—without time to go home and change, without a care that you did not.

I call my friends on the bus in Florence, on the train in Amsterdam, in the airport in Paris, and I tell them that this is uncomfortable—that sinking into my body is deeply uncomfortable—but it is the most content I have been since high school, since my life was riddled with romance and leisure and freedom. But this time, there is no other body that permitted me to romance. Perhaps that other body was Florence, or perhaps my body and I have been in love for long enough that the flurries are just beginning to settle and we are just entering the exciting part of our relationship.