It all seems different now. Not smaller exactly, but contained in a way, like a lego set you have nearly completed. The number of parts is exactly the same (hopefully) as when you tore open the package and dumped them on the floor, but the way they fit together now takes up less space, at least in your head. In this case though, you have not been working to assemble it. Not consciously. You have been drifting in and out of this giant room, leaving pieces here and there, qui e li (quee a lee). You have felt frustrated at times, wondering if this giant mess in your mind would ever come together. You’ve wandered off countless times and somehow made it even messier.

And then you wandered again, slower this time, and without purpose. Alone. You lingered and circled and stared at things you knew you had seen weeks, if not months before. But still you stared. You never touched your phone. Not once. And magically, this day, it all came together, from on high, a place you would have never suspected and nearly missed.

But you didn’t. You didn’t miss it. You didn’t listen to that little voice in your head that was saying it wasn’t even ancient. That it was just a tourist attraction. That you had things to do. You have learned this about yourself, finally. The little voice, the one that criticizes and judges and urges onward at times, is not actually you. And it often is the thing keeping you from finding the answer you need.

I am sitting at Caffe Greco, on Via Condotti, near the Spanish Steps, which I see towering above me from my table on the street. But those are not actually the steps! The towering parts are the dual bell towers of the Trinità dei Monti, the Church of the Most Holy Trinity on the Mounts. But when you say the Spanish Steps, I bet most people think of the beautiful towers at the top of the steps. Or maybe it is just me.

I am the first to sit outside today and have the little street patio of Caffe Greco all to myself. It is the oldest bar in Rome, by which I mean a place for coffee, or a cafe. It opened in 1760 and its patrons have included dozens of noteworthy intellectuals and writers including Keats, Byron, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and especially Ibsen, my favorite of the “ancients.” But even Mann and Joyce and Twain were here. And it is not hard to see why. It is a beautiful cafe and exactly my color scheme too—red walls, red upholstery and just the right amount of dark wood accents throughout. And it is curious inside too. Little passages and nooks and some larger rooms too. Something for everyone.

I tried to find a place inside—it was a bit chilly outside—but today nothing seemed right to me. I’m grateful that I persisted in my search and wandered back outside. Sometimes in Rome, a mere ten minutes can seem to have a temperature change of nearly the same amount. And when I looked up towards the steps and saw the bright blue sky without a cloud to be seen, I put my piccolo piquadro bag down and gazed at the tips of the bell towers, which seemed almost ablaze in the sun.

When a waiter finally emerged from inside, I had already done my homework for my order. I pointed to my phone and the picture I had taken moments before and said “Come si chiama?” “Fagottino,” he said and then waited for me to respond. “Crema? Ricotta?” I asked. “Ricotta, si, un something something, raisin, caramel,” he said. Two kinds. I of course asked for un caffe and the something, something, raisin, caramel. He nodded and was off and I took out my blue book, the one that is nearly full now, and started scribbling, which is an accurate description of my handwriting on a cool morning.

When I crossed the Tiber earlier, I remembered this street. I remembered too seeing the huge Lego store and the Ferrari store further back. And much further back, near what I now call the Piazza Cavour—and then called the Supreme Court building—I happened by the French bistro that my friend Walid had pointed out my first or second week here some two months ago now. That I had not even seen it since then tells you much about human beings and their tendencies towards tighter and tighter rings, especially if you knew how close it actually is to the CEA center where I go several days a week. It all seemed so disconnected then and so vast. A clear idea of things seemed it might never emerge.

But it did, yesterday. I had planned to go to the Baths of Caracalla with Jason in the early afternoon, but when he cancelled to get some grading done, I thought I would enjoy wandering back there anyway. The last time I was there was over thirty years ago and I do recall being impressed then with the intricate tile work and the enormity of it all. If there is one thing you need to give the early Romans credit for, it is thinking big. But as I took the first few steps out of my apartment, I found myself veering towards the Piazza di Popolo and Via del Corso, and the idea of the baths seemed to just drift away. I do not know exactly what drives me at times, but I know it is not ruins or antiquity. It is something much more alive.

I love Via del Corso. It is such a modern experience in so many ways. So many shops. So many people wandering the streets. It reminds me of the Minnesota State Fair streets, packed with people, seemingly purposeless—out for a stroll and some window shopping. But after being in Pompei and the areas around the Forum, I wonder if it hasn’t always been this way. People always seem to be drawn to other people, and of course a little food and maybe a little something nice.

Via del Corso also draws a straight line from Piazza di Popolo all the way to the Victor Emmanuel Monument, also known as Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland). It is impossible to miss from almost anywhere along the street. The enormity of it and the enormous winged equestrian sculptures flanking the ends soar over the city below. As I looked back over my shoulder toward the Piazza di Popolo and its central obeslisk, I was reminded of Jan’s Roman history class and his comments about the public spaces in ancient Rome and how they were often positioned to visually connect and align with other prestigious spaces and places to increase the status and prestige of the new monument. (And especially the new monument’s honoree). It was ever thus.

That feeling became much more pronounced when I decided traverse all of Via del Corso and to climb the stairs at the Victor Emmanuel. I had been by it before on the way to the Forum, and on the way home from the Colossium, and other times too. Yet I had never climbed the stairs. It had seemed kind of ridiculous then, vaguely like watching the Yankees on your phone while you are sitting in the stadium. That isn’t exactly right, I know, but it seemed like a cheap distraction then, a decidedly tourist thing to do. But I had nothing better to do, I had seen all this before I said to myself, and I did want to see what the Piazza di Popola looked like from way up there. So up I went.

And it was lovely. I decided to climb to the upper terrace level, above the sculpture of Victorious Victor on his high horse. It wasn’t much of a climb but I was surprised at my latent resistance to follow the excited crowds. So I did it anyway. Sometimes you just have to take total control of yourself. And that view was amazing too. The Piazza di Popolo obelisk is very faint from here, not nearly as visible as Victor from there, which says something I think, about “the people” versus “the one,” who always seems to be higher and more visible no matter what the circumstances nor the era.

I thought right then that this day, which earlier seemed the epitome of a broken play, with the misfire and the change of plans, and then the other change of plans—the randomness of it all combined with the unexpected—had suddenly become almost the pinnacle of the trip. The place where the pieces finally came together into a more coherent whole, all while doing nothing to force it. It reminded me of the article Abe Flexner once wrote about the usefulness of useless information. Sometimes, maybe most times, the real breakthroughs come when your mind is elsewhere and you are simply a creature in the world.

But even creatures will need to find an exit from the top of the Victor’s High Horse. In the post-Covid era, the idea of an exit as something different from a reverse entrance has taken firm hold. I tried to go back down the same stairs I ascended but was stopped and redirected. And then found another set and asked the police officer where the exit was—uscita? I must’ve said it just right because she launched into full blown high-speed Italian, gestures included, and all I could do was say “Si, Si, Si—grazie,” and move away, still confused but more like a local than a foreigner. I followed a stream of people into a small stairway, and then a passageway, and emerged back into the open air with what seemed the same scenic views. But they were not.

I walked up to the edge and looked out and immediately saw the Colosseum. And tracing a line back from there, went right over the Forum and all those places within that space that we had stopped and listened to Jan wax not exactly poetic, but perhaps emphatic, about anything and everything in that place. Suddenly, almost shockingly, all of Rome—my Rome—snapped into place. Piazza di Popola to Vittorio Emmanuel to the Colosseum to the Forum and even the Spanish Steps. I stepped back for a few minutes and then took it all in again. It is all of a piece now. Interconnected. Linked. I finally have a sense of what I’ve been walking through and around for nearly three months.

With the newfound enthusiasm of a model almost complete, I simply had to backtrack to the Pantheon and the Piazza Navonna on my way home and snap them into place too. They are very familiar pieces and I could almost put them on blind-folded, but I did it anyway and then went back to the Piazza di Popola just to make a full circle. Because my circle is almost complete too. I head home in less than two weeks and now I feel like I can carry all of this back with me. Finally.

(By the way, that pastry above, the fagottino—most delicious thing I’ve had in Rome.)

No. It didn’t just drop from the heavens into my unsuspecting lap. Though I wasn’t expecting it. And it did in fact drop.

What they didn’t see is also what most people don’t see. The impact of time on a thing. We talk about the time value of money, the compounding effect, and it is accepted wisdom by now. Put your money into a savings or investment account and it will grow. Just don’t watch too closely. Because it grows more clearly over a decade or more. But we don’t talk enough about the time value of more important things, like skills or careers or relationships. They too grow over time. And they too resist easy measurement over short periods. But over a decade or more, they can grow so much that it almost seems that something fell out of the sky.

Things do fall out of the sky. All the time in fact. But just like someone said about investing in new companies and technologies, it isn’t what you spill, it’s what you catch. They key is to catch the things falling out of the sky. They can be very hard to predict, and even harder to catch. The key is to have a good basket at the ready. You will start with a simple frame, an idea. And slowly you will pull one reed through, then another. And another. Some of them you will do for fun. Some you will do for free. Some you will do even when you don’t really want to. Most actually. Some will seem like they were never part of the basket, but they were. The way you tell is when you catch that thing falling out of the sky. Because it won’t actually land in your lap. We don’t have laps like that. It will land in your basket, the thing you began weaving ten years ago, when it was a vague idea and nothing close to a basket. You probably barely remember, but perhaps I can help.

It started when you looked up an old professor eight or ten years ago, on a kind of lark, to get some ideas about writing, this thing that had been in the back of your mind for as long as you could remember. He invited you up for lunch, an hour and a half away, on a day that was actually kind of busy, that he would have understood if you couldn’t make it. But you made it happen. You went. You had no expectation of anything coming of it and you were right, for a while. (We are always right for a while). Then you met someone while you were there, another professor whom you never had met. They were nice and everything but no real connection. But they then introduced you to someone else, via email, who seemed kind of interesting to you. You had no obligation at all to reply—they hadn’t responded either at that point (many people don’t), but you did. Next thing you know you’re volunteering to mentor students and help her with her vision to expand the center she runs, a thing you had never heard of. And then you’re the volunteer of the year at the center and the following year her first executive in residence, an idea you had that she decided to run with.

This was all interesting and good of course, but you had an idea too, one to create a new kind of class, not a four credit class like other classes, but something different, a kind of experience maybe. Something you would do because you wanted to, not because you had to. It would perhaps be like a J-term class, the ones that you loved when you were in college. But no one seemed to like that idea much. Most people don’t like resurrecting old ideas or anything recently deceased. It perhaps needed a bit more time. So you kept working on the writing thing, the thing that you had started with all those years ago with the old professor.

The writing thing chugged along for a year or two more and was making good progress, but it kept being interrupted by this class idea, and soon you were writing more about that than anything else. And then one day, out of the blue, the class idea had a little spark. Someone asked you, on the phone, somewhat on a lark again, if you could have the class ready by the fall. It was already the summer. They agreed it was very short notice. You didn’t even think. You said yes. It seemed a bit hasty to reply so quickly. And it seemed doubtful that you could quickly create a good version of your class—the one you put away two or three years ago but had been noodling with on the page recently. But you decided it would have to start somewhere and now seemed to be when it needed to start. So you did. It didn’t go as you had hoped of course, and you rebuilt it and tried it again. Now it was working. You did it again and again. It seemed that this was what you were destined to create.

Meanwhile, you had another idea. You had lunch with some students who told you about a study abroad trip to Ireland a year or two ago and how it didn’t have a professor. You found out that some programs have professors and some don’t. You also found out that some European schools need English speaking professors and that your career experience might be more useful that you thought. You considered the idea of living abroad for the first time then. Really considered it. But the Ireland opportunity didn’t really pan out. You were too distracted with running your company and other people were not supportive. You took it as a sign—that the timing was not quite right. You started meeting with other schools, in other places and turned over countless stones. You had no idea what you were looking for but you kept looking.

One day you realized that a class existed at another school that embodied a lot of the ideas that you had been recently thinking about for a new class. It was called Grand Strategy. You loved the idea, the concept of retranslating history into something more much useful and usable. You felt you had really hit on something—again. But again, no one seemed to share your enthusiasm. You read everything you could get your hands on about that class and wrote endless pages about it that went nowhere. You remembered that this happens—that it takes time for other people to jump on board. You were patient. Really patient.

Then, someone—actually a colleague of the your old professor—the one you reconnected with way at the top of the preceding pages, asked you about it. Seemed interested in it. You sent him a copy of the course syllabus and a few articles. You talked some more. Finally, he agreed to help you build it. You both decided to build a pilot course in the fall for the spring term. You began to think—“this is what this has all been about.” But then he called you one day and left a voicemail. He apologized and said he just got some news and he would not be able to work on the class—he was now going to Rome to lead the study abroad program. He said he could do it in the spring instead, for next fall, or possibly do some in Rome, maybe over the phone, but that seemed less than ideal.

You suggested that you could fly over a couple times, work on the class together, in Rome, if that seemed at all possible. He was surprised that you would do that. People often don’t know what any of us is really about. You felt excited again, about the class and about the trip. A couple of flights to Rome to work on a class about strategy seemed perfect somehow. He texted you the next day: “I don’t know if you can do this or would even want to do this, but how about coming to Rome for the semester and co-directing the Rome program with me? I think we have a two bedroom apartment over a bakery.”

You typed “Yes. You had me at bakery!” You didn’t really think about it at all. Sometimes you just know what you need to do. Rome was never where you wanted to go. Never. And you hadn’t been thinking of going in this capacity. And there were suddenly many reasons floating through your head about why this wasn’t a good idea at this time. At this time. But you said yes anyway. You’ve learned to ignore negative voices. You’ve also learned to know that things rarely come in the shape and size you’ve been imagining. The universe doesn’t work like that. It’s more approximate sizing. Guesswork. Caprice. Close enough—as in about the size of a bread basket.

People asked you if you were excited to go to Rome and you found it hard to answer. You weren’t actually excited to go to Rome. You had no idea of Rome in mind, other than you had never thought ever of going to Rome, but you were excited to begin working on the class idea. But you were also well aware that this may also not be what this trip was about. I can’t really say more than that right now, but as you have probably noted, the meaning of events is not always clear. It takes time to put things in some kind of perspective.

A few days ago someone said to my daughter that I was lucky, that this ‘thing’ just fell into my lap a few months ago, and now I’m in Rome. I think they said something about a recent guitar playing gig falling into my daughter’s lap too. The same daughter who had never picked up a guitar until, oh, say, eight years ago and is now quite accomplished at it, enough in fact to have things fall into her lap too.

Some things do fall into our laps. Lottery tickets come to mind. But most everything else falls either onto the floor and is wasted, or into a basket that some person has been working on, slowly, almost imperceptibly, for years and years. So long in fact that they probably had forgotten that they were ever hoping to catch something at all. That is when baskets and basket weaving works best I think—when you are weaving the basket because that’s simply what you do. And the basket is catching things because that’s what baskets do too. And if you don’t understand any of this, well, you’re just a basket case, and I bet you don’t even have a basket.

Two of my favorites. And both deal with the same issue.

You belong, among the wildflowers—

You belong on a boat out at sea.

Sail away, kill off the hours—

You belong somewhere you feel free.

The song Wildflowers is playing in my ears right now as I “sail” across the sea for Rome. The only clouds on my horizon now are literally on my horizon. And they are bright fluffy ones with peculiar and interesting shapes—like ancient ruins from another place and time.

This is my time now. Time for me to do again what I started so many years ago—go away to hear myself. Listen to what is and has been coursing through my veins. Rome seems a different kind of quiet to me—perhaps even paradoxical. But cities have always been that way for me. They are a bit like the noise-cancelling head phones I’m wearing as I write this—they produce a counter wave to quiet the bothersome one.

An image of a butterfly drifted into my mind while I was listening. (Perhaps it was the wildflowers?) It angled and banked like butterflies do, so sensitive to the slightest currents. There were flowers and grasses, like our farm, and the butterfly was moving so lightly it appeared to be dancing around them. Let me go, I thought. Let me be my butterfly self. Do not worry that I’m not in one place, or in the usual places. Or that you can’t see me all the time. Let me be my butterfly self and I will always come back to this place, the one with tall grasses and wildflowers, where the breeze is gentle and soft and where beautiful things abound.

I’m not sure what I was before the symbolic butterfly—definitely not a caterpillar. But not a butterfly either. I think I was a woodpecker—a pileated woodpecker—dashing about from tree to tree with that undulating woodpecker flight—up and down and not at all level, at least not for long. Even when I was not flying I was not at rest. Looking, staring, and definitely pecking and pecking. Here, there and everywhere.

Woodpeckers have natural defenses against all that pecking and banging of their heads, a kind of cushioning for their brains. I did too I think. I felt invincible boring into anything hard. It didn’t phase me in the least. It was exhilarating, drilling into things that others couldn’t penetrate. But then my head started to hurt. Those interesting places, the hard spots, became bothersome. Tedious. Uninteresting. Painful. I don’t know how it happened exactly, this transformation, but it did.

Maybe I was a different kind of butterfly all along—one with a woodpecker stage in place of the caterpillar. Perhaps it was another of nature’s little errors or accidents. But maybe it was a kind of adaptation too. There seemed to be nowhere safe for an immobile caterpillar back then. And there wasn’t a stalk of grass anywhere to be found. Growth required wings and tenacity and a certain kind of attitude—like a pileated woodpecker’s perhaps—“catch me if you can!”

It seems so fitting now, funny too. Almost absurd. All the little things around me are so much more interesting now. Tiny invisible things especially. Things that aren’t even things. Things that are elusive and soft and have little to grab on to. Things that must be approached quietly and carefully and rarely directly. Things that disappear in an instant if you stare straight at them.

But they are exciting now, these small things! And they seem somehow all connected, like a great big web or an infinite and invisible thread. I just know that I must keep circling and floating and move lightly now, and not do what I did for all those early years. I must be more careful now too. I can’t handle the big winds nor the hardness of things. I can’t travel great distances—between things—in a day. At least not often. Now is the time of the butterfly.

I hope you can find the beauty and wonder in this new stage with me. And I hope you can appreciate the nature of this emergence in me too. I’m still here. I’m just smaller now, lighter, and so much more fragile than I used to be.

When I lived in Rome, I went to Cantiani’s every morning and sat at a small metal table along the street. I had an espresso lungo and a cornetto marmalade most mornings, though occasionally I would try other things. Many mornings, especially lately, I would say “uno altro,” one more, and have a second little espresso.

This routine and especially this place brought me peace. Or perhaps it was successful in not disturbing the peace I had when I arrived, usually at 7:30 or so. The staff, whose names I still do not know, are friendly with me—they smile, praise my attempts at learning their language, and go to great lengths sometimes to pronounce things for me. They know that I will order at the bar with the regulars, move out to a table with my notebook, write for a while, and will then be back domani.

They will not be intrusive, especially in the morning. Maybe they sense my ways, my purpose, my desire for quiet. Perhaps they simply have no interest in me at all and are grateful that I am not so demanding or fussy or trying to say too much. Regardless of all these musings, I am peaceful here. The emotional waves of the unsettled people in my life are not here. I cannot feel or sense them at all.

I look down the long street, Via Cola di Rienzo, lined with grand storefronts and dotted with little trees not much taller than apple or cherry trees, and it seems to stretch forever, though I know it runs into the Tiber. It flows. The river flows. The flow is what I love about this place.

When I lived in Rome, in the fall of 2022, I began writing again. No longer was I distracted with CMR or David. No longer was I devoting or diverting my flow to repairing and sustaining the spillages of others. Even when it was over, it wasn’t over for me. Not for a long time. Those diversions—the habits and expectations—were deeply grooved in my banks. They were anticipated and expected so frequently that even when they did not come, it was if they had. The energy had already been expended.

But when I lived in Rome, those things were overwhelmed by the newness of this place and the totality of its grip. A new language. A new apartment. A new neighborhood. A new job too, even if only a small one. And new friends. Together—and with a quarter-turn of the earth—those old habits gave way. The deep grooves which had been carved into me over the previous decade were smoothed quickly, like a freshly groomed run at Keystone, now untouched, waiting for me to carve something new.

When I lived in Rome, I was able to use the American Academy in Rome, a place I had never know before but was instantly drawn to. It is idyllic, an intellectual and physical oasis of sorts, a place for thinking and considering and pondering things amongst wonderful old books and shockingly soft pines. On my first day, I sat at a table dedicated to one if its past presidents, who was also a professor where I studied as an undergraduate. That linkage was a total surprise to me and also felt like a kind of providence, a continuation of a humble beginning that is still flowing.

When I was in Rome, I became even more fascinated with the importance of imagination, not just in the arts, but in the art of life itself. I thought deeply about origin stories and myths and put as much of me as I could into those ideas.

When I was in Rome, I felt the flow return and began carving deep grooves again, but this time they were my own.

Come back with me to the bakery and to recipes again. Remember that post, many, many days ago, about following recipes and having to make adjustments to them? I had something to add that I had not yet posted and it has been very much on my mind. How do you know if you are following a feeling, something unexplainable, or if you just think you are following a feeling—your inner compass—but have actually been bamboozled by your brain and have accidentally perhaps, let it take back control of your kitchen and you?

I have no perfect solution to this, no infallible test. But I have something nearly as good—evidence. In talking with others, which is something I do quite a lot of (another little fugitive!) I have found there is a certain residue of this brain intrusion that is like a chalk line at a crime scene. The hard evidence is gone, but the outlines of it have been drawn, and in this case take the form of reasons or rationalizations. Reasons, like chalk lines, can be visible and seemingly “there,” but also like chalk, of little real substance.

When you are crossing a road and decide to stop—or go faster—you do not have a reason, at least in the moment. Afterwards of course, if pressed, you will effortlessly come up with one as a kind of justification to support or explain what you have already done or decided. We do this all the time. All of us. Our species should really be renamed something like Homo-fictitious for our excellent and unparalleled story-creation capabilities. (Sapien is certainly more aspirational, but wiseness is hardly characteristic of most humans).

I do not mean to imply that fictions are a bad thing. In fact, they can be a very good thing, especially since we crave stories, share via stories and remember and learn most important things with stories. If you’ve ever heard two people tell their version of the same event, you know that while both are fictions of some sort, they are also both very true in another. I perhaps should clarify that by fiction I do not mean “not at all true,” which I fear has become a pseudo definition these days. I mean something more like great literature or film—not specifically true in various details but capital-T true in terms of essence and representation.

But we have to be careful with this too. Sometimes we make stories that are molto fictitious and incorrecto too—blasphemies of actual events. But even these stories can serve a purpose—they soothe our weary minds and allow us to reconstruct or edit particular situations and relabel the stresses of life—risk, chance, randomness, caprice—into stories with intention and meaning and heroes and villains. It’s often easier this way. We don’t like having to stare in the face of unknowingness all the time. It’s more palatable to ascribe intention and purpose to things and events afterwards, even when there is none.

But do strongly resist the urge to explain what you are doing beforehand or as you are doing it. Some things do not have “explanations.” They just are. Love is one of these I think. Or perhaps the taste of an ungarresi or saccottino at a cafe in Rome. It is squisito (or delizioso?)—delicious—yes, but why? I do not know for sure. But I know this—the longer I consider it, the more magic I take away. And what is left is not what is real behind the magic. It was not shrouded or hidden. It was magic through and through. But the more we try and deconstruct it, the less remains. We kill to understand someone once said. But that was too generous an interpretation. We kill and hope to understand. We take apart and hope to understand…some of it. But what is left after the killing is not the same as before. We may possibly understand what is left, but not what has been lost in the process.

Let me try another way. Everything worth doing is worth at least a second try. If we get a scientist to analyze the ungarresi, she might say it is butter and flour and sugar and perhaps an egg or two. And she might also say that the reason (!) I find it squisito is that the sugar and carbohydrates cause a release of something here, something there—questo quello—and that is actually why I am finding it so pleasing. It is simply science she might say.

But is it? Does its beautiful shape not please me too? And the lovely sprinkles of powdered sugar like a freshly fallen snow? What about the fact that I’m in Rome—a place I’m falling in love with—writing at my favorite cafe? Nothing? What if the whole scene is pleasing in a Proustian kind of way—a remembrance of things past, like a trip to a very lovely bakery with my mom in Salzburg so many years ago? And what about the sounds? Surely we cannot ignore the clink and clank of the Cantiani’s crew, a noise that is so oddly comforting to me, or the metal chairs scraping across the stone storefront as customers shuffle in their seats, or the scooters and cars whizzing by with a beep-beep here and there—nice little “ciao!” kinds of honks. Might this be part of the whole too?

I can go on and on as most people know. I think it is clear that our scientist friend with her PhD can only analyze what she knows, which is molto limited at best, not because she is so impaired, but because it is all so vast. l I think Jerome Bruner said it best in his book “On Knowing”—“Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little.” I wonder if we fully realize how often this happens to us throughout our lives. We ask a question, and that question will yield an answer, but like some kind of imposter, it is only an answer to a much smaller part of our question and not the entirety of what we intended. It is molto piccolo because we know molto piccolo too.

Perhaps they really are magical, these delicious moments. Perhaps we should not peek too much. Not only because there is nothing—or little—to be gained, but also because there is so much to be lost too. The wonder. The feeling. The sense that something amazing happened to us in those moments. Amazing things are precious and easily scared away by too much inquiry. They are like little magicians dancing around us. The less you stare, the less you demand, the more they revel. And reveal. Molto bene. Molto, molto bene.

Why do we tell the stories that we tell? I think it is not really so complicated. We tell stories that we think say something important about us, perhaps for others to hear, perhaps too because we need to hear them ourselves—a kind of reinforcement for who we think we are and who we want to be. They can help keep us on a certain path and give us some rubric or direction for how we will live our lives.

We discussed the origin stories of Rome yesterday in our seminar—Romulus and Remus and their she-wolf guardian. You’ve probably heard some aspect of the story or seen statues representing it—AC Roma’s football logo has it front and center. It’s about as far-fetched a story as you could have, but that is not the interesting part. What is interesting to me is why you would choose such a story at all. It’s like Oscar Wilde once said about some masquerade party—who is behind the mask is not curious at all; what is interesting is why they chose the mask they chose. Or something like that.

To choose such an unlikely story, one most certainly not true, says something about early Romans and even Romans not so ancient. They believe in destiny—that things were meant to be this way. Romulus and Remus were supposed to be drowned in the Tiber, but they survived somehow, and not by ordinary means. It was partly due to the unpredictability of a overflowing river and partly due to the help of a most unlikely character—a wolf. Later, much later, the siblings fought and only Romulus remained. End of foundation story. Of course we can’t know why this story was chosen, or who chose it, but it is a story of survival and destiny and violence and aggression. To me it says,—this is who we are. We are destined to rule this part of the world. We will not be deterred. We may suffer great losses, but we will prevail. It is what must be.

Years ago, I realized that I had several origin stories of my own. My oldest recounts how I am from everywhere and nowhere. I had lived in six states and attended even more schools, mostly around the Midwest. It’s the story of an outsider, a kind of apology—an explanation—for why no one place is home for me unlike most people I seemed to encounter. I had others too, about how I ended up at St. John’s in Minnesota and how I chose Stanford for grad school, an MBA actually, something I now refer to as “Must’ve Been an Accident.” I have another to describe my wife and I, and how we ended up living on a farm in Minnesota.

My career stories have a similar theme to the first “itinerant” story. I am not of one place, or one kind of expertise, or one anything. But why this is so has perhaps become the most important part of the story to me, and one of my latest refinements. My moves were not just random like my childhood or in pursuit of some goal or plan like most people want to infer. They were serendipitous—unexpected—a surprise at the time, even to me. I never thought I’d end up in consulting—in fact I walked out of my first consulting interview. I was never going to go back to consulting either—whoops. I told almost everyone I would never be interested in investment banking, though I knew nothing about it. And never oh never would I have ever believed that I would run a healthcare company! And certainly not a second! How did this all happen?

My “new” story is more about why this happened, and it all has to do with something much more basic and relatable than specific industries or skillsets. It is about being needed and feeling wanted too. It is about people—Ed and Jodi and Brian and Paul and Steve and Edward and Abir and Kyle and David. Especially David. It is a story with multiple chapters and a cast of characters who at one point or another asked me to help them with some problem that they felt—and said—I was uniquely suited to solve (even when I told them that I didn’t think they knew what the problem really was). This is a story I needed to remind myself of, more than anything, and not just because it is true. Because it helped me understand myself and how I got here. It reminded me that the purpose of my life has been helping other people solve very challenging problems. And that this is the theme of my life thus far.

But like the origin stories of Rome, there are things even about this story that are, let’s just say “glossed over.” It covers up some vulnerabilities of a younger me, and turns some part of that into a strength. But I really don’t need that anymore. And it says nothing about other strengths at all. It says nothing about what a few people have called my superpower, my ability to ask what one person called “a beautiful question” (or a hundred:) Or to say “I don’t know” more than anyone they know—and seem to enjoy saying it. So while this story explains part of the past, it really says nothing about the future. It says nothing about the problem I really want to solve.

The new story—that is what I’m working on in Rome I think. The story may start something like this….

I bought a painting once, when I was in my twenties. It was a print of five men, all in black suits with white shirts and red ties, and all but one standing in line, holding briefcases, facing to the left. The fifth man had put down his brief case—dropped it perhaps—and was exiting the frame to the right. He literally has one foot out of view—out the door so to speak. I saw myself as this man long before I was him. It was a sign to me of things to come when I needed to know that the time would come. And the time came.

I bought my second painting the summer before Rome. It is a completely different kind of painting, a landscape—a riverscape actually—of the Brule River in Wisconsin, a place I have never been. There are swirls on the water called gogebics—an Ojibwa name for “where the trout swirl beneath the surface.” The sun is lighting the water’s surface with a beautiful hue of red and gold, and the red leaves on the trees overhanging the bank reflect on the water’s surface. The current is slight but visible as it meanders along before vanishing to the left before a forest of green. It is not clear where it is going, nor what is up around the bend. Even the depths are unknown. What is clear are the stirrings just beneath the calm and glassy surface. There is more to this painting than meets the eye. Something deeper. Something imaginative perhaps too. I was surprised when I bought it. I didn’t even know the price. It is not the kind of painting I would have normally been drawn to. Perhaps that is a part of my origin story that will always remain—the unexpected. The surprise. And now there is a river.

I can hear a new line being added to this story…when I was in Rome….

When I was in Rome, I went to Cantiani’s, a little cafe, for espresso and a pastry every morning. I wrote there most mornings, mostly about things that were on my mind as I awoke. I took classes in Italian and Roman History and walked miles around the city, crossing the Tiber untold times. I never dreamed of living here, a quarter turn of the earth from where I spent most of my life. That quarter turn has made all the difference. Things that were just out of reach before were suddenly reachable. When I was in Rome, I felt a stirring, just beneath the surface, and it changed everything.

I believe this pastry, the pretzel shaped one above with the powdered sugar, is called something like Ungarrio—as if from Hungary perhaps. Or maybe the waiter who was responding to my question—Come si questo?—was saying I looked hungry, as he leaned toward me and spoke very very slowly. Or maybe that I always look ungarrio! I cannot be certain. Earlier this morning, I decided to try a different pastry, what we call a pain au chocolat back home. That is the French name of course, and some people who know nothing of pastry call it a chocolate croissant. But here it is called something even more lovely—un saccotino al cioccolato—literally a sackful of chocolate. The woman who pronounced it for me simply said “sack-o-TEEN-o.” I said it back to her, also slowly, and she smiled at me like I was a toddler. It was squisito! Molto squisito!

That description—me as a toddler—reminded me of something I had written a few days ago. I had been thinking about a phone call I just had with Charlie, my broker, for lack of a better word. The call was not totally unexpected but I found myself initially reluctant to answer. I just stared at the phone and that little red circle. It was a warning signal to my brain. Beware. Do not touch this. But it wasn’t any reluctance to answer this particular call, it was my reluctance to speak at all, to anyone not here, literally, where I am now. This is not the first time this has happened. Though the other time, when I was two—and perhaps all the way to three—I recall only the concept or the feeling that once I started this talking thing I might never be allowed to be quiet again. Once you speak, you are expected to continue speaking and to always respond when spoken to.

Everyone in my family—my sisters and all of my mom’s sisters for sure—know I was the one who didn’t speak until 3 or thereabouts. I remember feeling overwhelmed at this expectation as a child, and certainly the unwanted attention that “finally” speaking would generate. I recall sitting on the floor, away from everyone in the kitchen at my grandma’s house—where we lived then—and listening to all my aunts chatter away about anything and everything and sometimes about me and my silence (as if I also couldn’t hear, which was amusing). I just watched and listened. My mom told them all to stop worrying…and no, he is not deaf. “I’m sure he will speak when he has something to say,” she said. At least that’s what she told me she said.

Some version of this seems to have resurfaced here. Not in Rome with the people in Rome, but in Rome with the people not in Rome. I was wary, I think, of those same expectations—that I would be expected to continue talking and be available to talk. But I’m also wary that I may accidentally import some of the things that I left behind—things so small and elusive that they cannot even be seen but whose weight grows over time and can alter an orbit.

One of the great gifts and pleasures of this excursion into the unknown is breaking those old, unseen, unnameable attachments. Maybe they are like cookies, the other kind of cookies, the technology kind, or the cache in your browser. They are there, you know they are there, and people tell you to clear them once in a while or your machine will grind to a halt. But we are on the Tiber now. Perhaps they are like mooring lines to a dock or pier. Or smaller, like barnacles on a hull, slowing things unintentionally but certainly and rarely seen until the boat is out of the water.

It’s amazing to be sitting in a city this large, along a busy street like via Cola di Renza, literally a foot from the curb at a table at Cantriani’s, silverware and ceramic clamoring in the background, Iocal Italians chattering away, scooters buzzing past, horns lightly honking now and again, and to feel so alone with my thoughts as they move lightly and smoothly across my paper. Questo e` bene. Questo e` molto bene.

Doppio today. Two shots. No lungo. Biggest drink I’ve ordered so far, though at 3-4 ounces, it’s still molto piccolo compared to anything you’d see coming out of a Starbucks, especially the drive thru. I awoke this morning thinking about how I would characterize my life so far, for something I’m considering for the students at CEA, but also for myself. People love to see your “recipe”—what you’re made of, so to speak—and its tempting to think it is merely a matter of ingredients and could be recreated, even by me.

But like any good recipe you share, there are often important omissions from the card. Perhaps an ingredient, or just a specific kind of ingredient. Perhaps a step in the process, like cooling or warming to room temperature before mixing. Perhaps a particular method—a way of doing something that may not be clearly specified.

For my recipe, it is likely the latter—the way of doing, of choosing, of being—that would be uncapturable and elusive and might frustrate any attempts at recreating something remotely similar. But it is no secret that I am withholding. It is perhaps even a secret from me. Because even I am not sure how to do it again.

How does one decide anything, choose anything? How does one choose for themselves while surrounded by a sea of suggestions, clouds of opinions and especially so many warnings and admonitions? How does one go forth, maybe not boldly and confidently, but at least without trembling? If not actually excited, at least curious and hopeful, like a child on Christmas morning? When so much is made of companies and industries and prestigious career paths, how does one still hear a quiet voice—or two—your own and maybe one you may want to sing with next? What does it sound like, your harmonizers and you? What place do you have in their music or their recipe, to return, as always, to the bakery.

There are always many things baking at once. Molte. You are baking and so are many others. Some though, are not baking at all. They are just ingredients in someone else’s concoction, which is perhaps not all bad. But if you want to create something original, something of your own, you must not lose sight of this desire, even if you are simply training in the kitchen.

And there it is—one of the key but elusive steps in any good life recipe. You must know what you wish to create. You do not need to know more than this to start. You do not need to know all the details or perhaps any. And you do not need to “know” for sure that the result your are imagining now is what you will actually want when it is done. Sometimes, often, we change along the way. We started with one thing in mind and for whatever reason—questo o quello (this or that)—a new idea emerges. Maybe it is close to the first, maybe it is not. The difference is not important. What is critical is that you know what it is you want to make next, or now. Do not be a slave to your original intention. It was only an intention—a rumbling or a stirring. Appetites change. Time changes. Ingredients also change. Sometimes, you have to change your recipe simply because you cannot find what you needed and must make do with what you have.

And there is another little fugitive from my piccolo recipe card! (They always sneak up on me). How do you know when to persist, to keep looking for some ingredient perhaps—and slow the whole process down—and when you simply need to substitute one or two things for another knowing that the cake you were imagining may still be a cake, but it is now going to be an all-together different sort of cake? Or perhaps, in some cases, not a cake per se but still something tasty and good. Again, I do not know how to teach this or even to write it on a card. But it is critical if one is going to bake AND eat eventually. (We must finish something, no?)

Writers often refer to the process of abandoning their favorite sentences or paragraphs or even whole stories as “killing their darlings.” It is a most horrendous saying. But the idea is that what holds us back from the next great thing or idea is often our tight grip on our last good thing or idea. So many spectacular things have been written or created after a kind of giving-up that there are too many to count. Yet, many have also been achieved by an unrelenting tenacity and persistance over time. Leonardo took 16 years to finish the Last Supper. How is one to know? How does one know anything for sure?

Do you see that little fugitive, right there, running across the page? Knowing. There is no “knowing” for sure. I know, this perhaps is too much to consider. But know that there is always an ample supply of feeling—a sense that seems to suddenly appear. An awarenesss. A sensitivity. A desire. Perhaps it is one that has been slowly emerging from the depths, inching its way upward over layers of busy-ness and distraction. Sometimes it is much more intense and bright, like a flash of lightening.

Regardless, those sensations are not knowable per se. They have no label. They have no instructions. But you can feel them and you do all the time. Like when you are crossing Via Leone or Viale Guilio Cesare or even Via Cola di Rienzo. They tell you when to hurry and when to pause. When to change course, when to keep going. Of course there is no guarantee you will make it to the other side, and it is a very treacherous situation indeed, especially with the scooters and motorcycles. But you’ve made it so far, haven’t you? Can you imagine what would happen if you ignored these sensations and just ���decided” to cross?

It is impossible to “know” when—precisely—any of these adjustments should or should not be made. Yet we do—we adjust (or not) without thinking so much as by feeling and responding. I like to think of this as just another kind of thinking—a kind of “embodied” thinking—similar perhaps to the way Italians speak. It is not only with their heads. It is with their everything. Their’s is a conversation felt almost more than heard.

This is what you are really here to learn. Use all of you.

The stress is on the second syllable. The first is mere prelude. That concept is hard to escape here in Rome. I’m wondering this morning about “my” second syllable—the part that comes after the first. Can the second syllable be stressed if one also—perhaps mistakenly—stressed the first so many years ago, not knowing what the Italians already knew? What then? Does it change everything? Does it make the whole thing incomprehensible? Perhaps if it were simply a word I’m referring to the answer might be yes. But it is not a word I am alluding too. It is something much longer—lungo—like my espresso request this morning. It is my life.

It seems so appropriate and practical—necessary perhaps—to stress the first part of life. Unlike a word, there is no certainty that more syllables will follow. Stressing the first part seems to assure you of something, in case the second part never comes, or perhaps a better foundation that the second part will benefit from. It seems the best way to play this game of life, where nothing is assured and time is both precious and unknown.

But what if this is mere illusion? What if it just feels like the first part is stressed but it is only because you do not know the word and you have not yet ‘said’ the second part yet? What if the second part is also a double consonant, like gg or cc, and you also pause or linger longer in those places—like the Italians with cappuccino—stretching the word to its limit and savoring it too? Maybe it’s more like that, more emphasis in both sound and time. More stress AND more pause. I wonder what I’m really trying to say. What word is it that I have been trying to say with my whole life? E Tu?

Posso avare spremuta d’arancia, per favore! I was at Cantiani, the cafe on the busy street that I like yet can’t seem to remember the name of. Ah. Via Cola di Rienzo. It just came to me. Bubbly and fast. At least that’s how it sounds to me. I’m trying to practice my Italian and ordered freshly squeezed orange juice at 5:30pm just because I needed the practice. I had to walk out once and refer to my notes—a common occurrence—then walk back in and order. I’m not sure I nailed it but apparently I got close enough. And close enough counts when you get a delicious orange juice brought out to you as a reward. (I did get a “bravo” when I ordered a piece of apple cake to go).

My newest most prized phrase is saying “Come si chiama” as a question while pointing at the pastry case—“What’s this called?” Or Che cosa questo? (What is that?). In a pastry shop, I never use quanto costa (how much is that?) because it’s a pastry shop. You can’t overdo it. Impossibel! But I did use it when I saw the piccolo piquadro bag yesterday—the sleek black one barely large enough for my yellow writing pad but plenty large for the little blue journal I brought to Rome and a book and umbrella. It also holds my Italian phrase book so I can have it with me everywhere. So many things to say. Still.

The stress is on the second syllable here, or maybe the third. Rarely the first. That seems to be the Italian way—slowly at first, then more quickly and with enthusiasm. Trestavare, the neighborhood where the American Academy in Rome is located, is pronounced Tres-TAV-a-ray, not TREST-a-vary as I keep wanting to say. It’s not that I’m biting off more than I can chew, so to speak, but it is indicative of something more hurried or rushed or something. They seem to be indicating that one should have a slower start here, take a little less than the full amount at first. Then, in the middle, be more emphatic. Breathe life into the word. Now give it a push, some gusto. Use your whole body, your core, your hands. Bellow it out and then relax at the end. Slow, then faster and with enthusiasm. Then slower again. Adagio, Allegro, Andante. Speaking here feels more alive and more physical. It is not simply a “head” experience like English. It is the integration of mind and body.

But Bill says...

A lot of what I have written down, especially from early on, carry the same themes over and over again. It's those things, as well as just things that I think I have picked up from working closely with you, that I realize I really do carry as a mantra in my head when I am going through the day now. 

These are the reasons that I love working with you and things that have absolutely changed the way I do my job (and the results I get) every day:

"Think bolder and louder, not longer. Act faster. Really, really, be yourself. Work where ever and whenever it's working, take more breaks when it's not. Don't start with what you have, always start with what you want. Let passion and helpfulness drive, never fear or assumptions. Have fun, but stay focused. Set bigger goals than you think you can reach, and rewards for meeting them that you can't resist. Talk to people, they will forever be helpful in ways you don't anticipate. When something excites you share it, right now. Motivate others by creating an environment that allows for and expects surprises." 

Here are some of the long versions that I actually had written down in my notes, there are many more I am just getting started, I have lots of notes still to go through:

"Tell the truth. Say what needs to be said to keep things moving. Not just what's safe or you think people want to hear."

"Spread the word, don't keep ideas to yourself, get other people talking about them. Then keep them talking about it, send reminders."

"What sounds loud in your head isn't, no one else can hear you."

"Your team can't be afraid to try new things, you have to give them permission to make mistakes. You need to reassure them that you will support them. When they try something new and it fails, praise them for it."

"Helpful is greater than perfect"

"Why not do it today?"

"Be smart not bossy. Bossy is when we tell people what they should want."

"Don't be afraid to talk to people. Ask for help, even if you think you could figure it out yourself, even if you don't know enough to know what questions to ask (be sure to tell them that). It will save you time and they know things you don't. Also reaching out to them for help creates a network that you may need later."

"Get out of the office. Go somewhere, anywhere, you can think differently. Somewhere creative, that motivates you."

"You have to observe people and interact with them to find out what it is they really want and need."

"Build something that makes it easier for people to want it. Before you start think, what do I need to know to make me want this?"

"Pull in the power of powerful people" (this was in reference to Tiffany)

"Write down all the things that bothered you today."

"(We think this is a good idea), now write down all the reasons why it won't work."

"If you think the process isn't working, turn it upside down, discourage what you don't really need."

"Hire for the future not for now. Don't be afraid to hire your replacement."

In Renaissance times, a single-minded pursuit of any goal was limiting, dull; it lacked imagination. Leonardo da Vinci was not just the painter of the Mona Lisa, he was a mathematician, a scientist, engineer, geologist, sculptor, astronomer, and cartographer. People who study a range of subjects, who indulge in the multifarious fruits of life, are called polymaths. By pursuing myriad goals we gain perspective; we become fascinating, layered creatures, full of unexpected knowledge, quirks, and skills. The trouble with spending a lifetime in pursuit of a single goal is - what happens if it doesn’t work out? And what momentous life moments do you miss along the way as you plough away, nose to the grindstone? At least one thing’s for sure: pursuing multiple interests, passions, and goals will make for a much more interesting life. And isn’t that what it’s really about?

Womankind magazine, Issue #6

“Dad sign”according to my daughter