"love is a temporary madness" - St. Augustine

It is that stupid four letter word that sometimes just doesn't let me be! So, I guess since my dear best friend granted my birthday wish and set my blog up for me with such a fitting title that translates to... I do it for love, I might as well start with a few words about something I love.
There's this place, it's a commune (a really medieval way of saying a self-governing community or town) in northern Italy. The name of this captivating place is Siena, it's about 4 hours north of Rome and just south of Florence, in other words, it sits upon those beautiful rolling hills of vineyards and endless golden sunflower fields in the summer that, unless you've seen with your very eyes, books or movies might have introduced to you as Tuscany. I was lucky enough to take a class there with one of NYU's most unique and indescribably intelligent professors, who happens to be a kooky southern Italian! I learned a lot, that perhaps given the time I'll share, or maybe I should say, if I can remember what I learned, then given the time, I'll share, but for now I just want to talk about how I fell in love.
Our bus pulled up to an entrance of this hill town entirely surrounded by majestically impressive stone walls, and off I was on an upward hike towards our monestary turned hotel, which I would assume was less than a quarter mile up but it felt like two given my inappropriatly oversized suitcase which I've nicknamed Refrigerator Perry through the years (due to my complete disregard for airline baggage weight limits or the advice to pack light). Love never starts off how we expect it to, I guess. For the next few days we walked through churches, cathedrals, public palazzi, small museums, ate gelati and pasta, and drank lots of wine and somewhere within all those generic episodes of an American tourist in Italy... I lost myself, it's as if someone tattooed my lips into a week-long smile, my heart fluttered at the feel of the winding cobblestone streets beneath my feet, le farfalline, or butterflies, in my stomach danced around to the sound of the local melodic voices, I didn't want to sleep, and although I barely did, I was anxious for morning to take it all in again. It was like a whirlwind affair, it ended and our group was off to Florence for the remainder of our trip and I fought to enjoy the city that so many tourists and artists adore, because I had fallen in love and nothing compared to her, nothing could be better, not Ghibirti's bronze Bapistry doors or Michelangelo's David, Botticelli's Primavera came close, but it was as though my heart had abandoned me and had opted to stay flirting and laughing in Piazza del Campo while drinking prosecco! Four days later on the ride back to Rome Fiumicino, I was like a zombie, what was this wave of melancholy that enveloped me? That had me sitting lifeless in grief as I listened like an emotional wreck to my favorite Italian singer whispering in my ear... "beautiful, like a morning of crystalline waters, like a window that illuminates my pillow...", he was in my mind, that's how I felt about her, she was pure with a magical glow, and I didn't want to leave.
Emerson talked about travel in one of his essays, about how it's a temporary happiness, and as we drove away that morning, away from that place that made my soul flicker like it hadn't in a really long time, I surrendered to his words. But I couldn't let her go so easily, she draws me back and what I feel when I am there leaves me speechless, there is no happiness in existence like the joy and pleasure that I get from simply being there, and when I am away, the image of her piazza, or town square, is etched in my chest, it pumps blood through my body to keep me alive until the time comes where I can run back to her...until I can awake and sip cappuccino as I stare at the belltower, listen to the sound of tourists, and let the morning hours slip away as this crazy little stranger convinces herself that she belongs...until I can lay my back against the stones that have been there for centuries and get lost in a blackish blue sky that glistens with shimmering white stars and the certainty in my stomach tells me this is heaven.
I am madly in love with Siena, and if Emerson and St. Augustine are right, I hope this is a very very long "temporary".
btw...this is me, I am a hopeless romantic.