It’s the guitar you’ll remember, the lightly strummed chords rising above the murmuring groups. The people are patchy, not packed, a few friends here or there beneath the soft lights and stars. You sit on the travertine steps to listen and see. A church rises behind you; at the bottom of the steps ahead, water flows through the Bernini fountain. Later, you will think you heard it, though the ambient noise makes this impossible. The fountain belongs in a scene of such quiet and peace, so it must have been, and in your mind, it was.

The scene is more construction than fact, now, twenty years after I last set foot in Rome. Still, the Piazza di Spagna remains one of my favorite places.

It shocked me to learn that not everyone has an internal monologue because my own surges so relentlessly. My brain seeks or churns, swirls or spreads, but it’s only the shape of the movement that changes and not the motion itself. I think.

I lean into this aspect of myself. I seek fresh materials that can alter the texture my mind flows over, or I pursue new channels of thought. I cannot relax by deadening thought; watching bad TV calms my wife, but for me, grinding through something mindless will elicit only a mental scream. I unwind best by following a course someone else has dug and charting it for myself. My wife and daughter don't understand how intellectual challenge can calm me, but it does. I cannot enforce internal quiet. It can only happen, and my mind quiets very, very rarely.

The Piazza di Spagna quieted it. Everything was at once peaceful and alive, unified. And it was beautiful.

It was a small mobile home, elevated to resist the seasonal floods. It sat along the banks of that river that ran to the sea; land stolen from the Yuchi and held dear by a single family until it was divided into lots and sold piecemeal in the sixties.

A round amber glass ashtray sat on a stand next to the the screen window closest to the couch, and this was her chosen seat. "More" brand cigarette butts lie crushed and spent among the ashes that seemed to dance in the reflections and refractions of the early morning sun; a breeze made the poplar and pine swing and sway, adding shadow to the lights at play in that ashtray. A porch had been added in 84. It ran the whole length of the right side of the trailer; a shingled roof, screened in sides and bottom, an old chest freezer, and a single bed bought from an army surplus store populated the timber addition. A vinyl couch that folded down into a bed, kind of like a futon, sat along the wall of the trailer closest to the river, to capitalize on the view. Resting on the arm of that couch was an old Coca-Cola glass that looked like stained glass, filled with sweet tea. A paper towel wrapped around those stained deep greens and reds, obscuring the iconic logo, so that no beads of sweat would mar the furniture. Extra dining tables and a spare refrigerator completed the furnishings of the porch, with a couple of rocking chairs scattered about.

In that window seat, a woman in her mid-fifties sat. Bespectacled, wearing mostly black hair with a touch of gray in a somewhat bobbed style, and a plaid button up shirt of light cotton; alternating pattern of blue, white, red; not quite a standard plaid, but a busy one filled with pencil thin lines and little squares of color. Blue jean capris, no socks, dark blue canvas slip-ons with a red stripe running around the top of the white soles, and one leg crossed over the other. Large framed glasses, bifocals, glanced out to that river running by, just yards away.

In her hand was one of those dark brown cigarettes, recently lit.

It was going to be a hot day, but it hadn’t yet gotten there. There would be swimming in that river, probably right after lunch, (but she called "lunch" "dinner," and "dinner," "supper,") before the afternoon thunderstorms.

The door to the trailer stood open, propped by a cloth-covered brick. Green shag carpet peeked out of the living room, just to the right, a brown cloth LaZBoy recliner and a wooden end table with a brass lamp sat; another amber ashtray rested there, this one beveled and carved. A case was next to that ashtray, red leather, with a clasp; within, that cardboard box with those iconic near-black smokes; a cheap Bic lighter rested atop that box inside that case.

The brown leather couch could be seen sitting along the far wall, with that steel-and-real-wood tv table. A single post ran from round table top to four steel legs, like the legs of a hat rack. It looked industrial, or maybe even office-furniturish. Resting atop that table, a Sears Color TeleVision; the remote control perched next to the brass lamp over by the LaZBoy. The television was on Press Your Luck, and stretched out on that couch was a boy of around 7. His head rested on the armrest closest to the TV; it was, of course, too loud, but he didn’t mind.

A smaller, more plush brown fabric recliner set to the left of that open door. A mirror image of the end table sat next to it, but no ashtray rested atop it. Instead, out on the floor next to one of those rocking chairs on the porch (the short-backed gray one) there was a small brass bowl. Inside that brass bowl, there were telltale ashes. Those ashes belonged to a dark brown wood pipe, now resting in the chest pocket of a man in his sixties. Next to that pipe, in that same pocket, was a brown leather pouch containing Carter Hall tobacco. The man who owned that pipe was out in the yard, between the steps of the porch and the steps of his silver aluminum outbuilding. Like the trailer, the outbuilding was elevated to resist the seasonal floods. The cinderblocks used to achieve this elevation made convenient hiding places for his Old Milwaukee’s. He drank them hot, because he couldn’t keep them inside; this man used to be a friend of Bill, but now he was friends with damned few people. He was still avoiding Jack, Jim, and Jose, but that would change within the next ten years.

He was a meticulous groundskeeper. The grass was kept in check with regularity one could set a clock by; edging, weedeating, mowing was all done with precision born of years spent in the care of the United States Army (Luzon, ’45), the Fire Department, and finally the docks as union stevedore.

The steel stairwell down to the water’s edge was new, as was the erosion wall he’d had installed. A floating dock was moored just in front of that wall; a green john boat was tied fast. These items he maintained with regularity one would associate with a sailor instead of a soldier; coats of paint or water seal were applied annually.

His pair of outbuildings were kept compulsively organized; army footlockers, old metal Planters, Fisher’s Peanuts, and Folgers cans organized his collection of nuts, bolts, nails and tools. Between these outbuildings sat a shelter, built on a concrete slab. Under this roof was a sink, a few chairs, and some steel lockers. Nothing subject to damage by that river was kept here, it was all likely to be bathed in those waters. Such was the danger of living on those old Indian lands.

His brother used to live next door. His widow sold the place; strangers stayed there now, but they were only periodic visitors. Some weekends, they’d come down with grandkids, but most of the time they didn’t play with his grandson. His grandson, lying on the couch inside just now, was mostly content with the company of his grandparents, particularly his grandmother. She doted on him, fed him meals he requested, played games with him (Monopoly was a favorite) and role-played lifeguard to him when he decided to go swimming.

On a commercial break, the child stepped outside to the porch. He saw his grandmother looking out that window, and he saw the sunlight glinting off that slow-moving water on its journey to the sea. The river resembled very closely that glass of tea she sipped in between puffs of that cigarette; it was light brown from tannins and a sandy bottom.

He had no way of realizing this moment of peace wouldn’t last forever. His young mind couldn’t grasp the significance of the beauty he saw before him. The quiet stillness of the air, the gentle flow of that river so much like the flow of time just steps away, were lost to his whim. His grandmother, sitting quietly, in a rare moment where she felt no pain, was enjoying a respite from the blaring television and the oft-loud grandchild now quietly watching her.

He went to her and lie down on that aqua blue vinyl, and rested his head on her lap. With her left hand, she continued to slowly smoke, and with her right, she ran her hand through his thick light brown hair. He looked up at her, and she down at him, and they didn’t speak. Together, they just sat on that porch before the heat ran them inside the house or inside the banks of that slow-moving river so near by.

Even then, she knew there would not be many more days like this.

She barely saw him turn ten, and he never saw her turn gray.

In terms of ideal places to cry, the women's restroom on the ground floor of the psychology building was truly unparalleled.

Now, it's not that the restroom was particularly nice. One of the stalls was always out of order, the paper towel dispensers often got stuck, the doors creaked, the walls were a disconcerting off-white, and the building itself resembled a poorly-kept hospital. If you wanted a more beautiful place to cry, you'd try the gardens. If you wanted a more secluded place to cry, you'd try your room. If you wanted a quieter place to cry, you'd try the upper floors of the library. You won't find beauty or perfection in the women's restroom on the ground floor of the psychology building.

But that's what I liked. The imperfection matched my emotion, the ugliness mirrored the feelings inside. The women's restroom offered a refuge for me to relate to the building, for me to release my emotions before they suffocated me. I cannot count the number of times I sat in that restroom, biting down on my fist while silently sobbing, expelling tears of frustration, stress, anxiety, sadness, and despair. I sought respite between the dull green walls of the restroom stalls, I shattered my porcelain heart and glued it back together before opening the door and pretending to be okay. There was a certain comfort in knowing the restroom would be there for me, in knowing there was a place where I could cry without judgment.

There were moments of happiness and peace within that restroom, but I rarely visited the women's restroom on the ground floor of the psychology building if I was feeling good. It was when I was sad, when the floor was giving out from under me, when a dark tidal wave was crashing down on me, when shadows were obscuring my senses and I was sinking into the quicksand of despair, when my throat was wrapped with barbed wire and my stomach was full of writhing snakes, when I felt the beginnings of a torrential outpouring of emotion in the form of salty-sweet tears, when the pull of gravity became unbearable and it took every ounce of willpower to remain standing, when I felt the call of the void—that was when I visited the women's restroom on the ground floor of the psychology building.

I haven't been back to the psychology building for a long time, and it's been even longer since I visited the women's restroom on the ground floor. Sometimes, I wonder if they've changed it—if they fixed the toilet that was always out of order, if they repainted the walls, if they made it spotless. I hope not, and there's a certain comfort in the knowledge that fixing one of the less-used bathrooms in the psychology building is likely not at the top of anyone's priority list. It's silly, really, but I will be eternally grateful for the emotional sanctuary of the women's restroom on the ground floor of the psychology building.

lugged across the windowsills of change

same spot, sweeping seasons, slipping me strange

gripping grass tufts till my fingers become dirt and hinge

i'll watch yellow weeds turn violet in rainy mid july

i'll watch the sky swim from navy to goldfish orange

i'll watch the ripples run and die

yet you'll watch me olden and whoop and weep

finding my ever-flitting keep

let me breathe here eternal, to try

and watch time laugh loud, as it strides by

On a trip to Spain to visit ancient Roman sites (because I'm a big history geek), I stopped in the town of Caratagena. I'd traveled south from Barcelona to Tarragona, then on to Valencia, and finally Cartagena. After leaving the train station, I blundered out into the city, only to find that this city had no street signs posted anywhere. After an hour of dogged wandering and asking for directions in Spanglish, I finally found my hotel.

As you probably haven't been, Cartagena has a distinctly Muslim presence and influence to its culture and architecture, as it fell under Muslim control after the fall of Rome. Not that I felt threatened, per se; every person I met was kind and helpful. I still felt like the whitest person in the city though. One day, during siesta hour, I decided to venture out into the city so I could see it without the usual crowds, and I was rewarded with a spectacular unobstructed view. As I wandered down a wide, empty street in the hot midday sun, looking like a typical tourist, I smiled, looking around to wonder at the tall buildings on either side of the street. Then I heard it.

Someone was whistling a catcall at me. I'm gonna die.

I felt alone, vulnerable, and helpless. My eyes darted around, scanning from window to window, searching for my potential assailant, feeling my heart pounding, my stomach wrenching, my brain spinning.

I heard another catcall, low and slow.

I was nearing panic. No one was on the street, not a soul. The hot cobblestones seemed to be baking me, along with the rising fear threatening to overwhelm my senses. Then I heard a different sound altogether.

Caw-caw! went the parrot.

Earthy and damp. The weight of the air makes it difficult to breathe. Around me, mumbled chatter dissipates into the wood, muffled by wood bathed greenery. The rain will come soon, sparkling in the twilight. I'm in a hammock, strung between trees, swinging ever so gently in the water-laden breeze. Although the sky looks identical to other night skies, the sky will never look like this again. A sound. Is the fun over so soon?

The casual tourist can "do" Venice in about a day and a half. The artistic tourist can take months. One of the best-kept secrets about Venice is one of its cemeteries, the island of San Michele.

Just a boat ride away, it is a sequestered, quiet refuge from Venice, if not the rest of Europe. Automobiles, as in Venice proper, are completely absent. It has a wall, but I couldn't tell if it was to keep the living out or the dead in.

It has a church, Cappella Emiliana, built by Guglielmo de’ Grigi d’Alzano between 1528 and 1543. The interior has 37 types of colored marble. It also has a stunning collection of sculpted reliefs by Giovanni Battista Carona, in perpetual maintenance.

It is a burial place of honor, with many artists, scientists, and military heroes having tombstones there. One in particular is an Austrian mathemetician named Christian Doppler (1803–1853), who died in Venice at the age of 49 of a pulmonary illness. Christian Doppler is the very Doppler of "Doppler effect" fame.

Perhaps it's always like this, but when I visited, my small party of two were the only visitors there. We went into the church and were met by a silent monk who only watched my wife and me with suspicion. We pressed on, regardless.

What struck me was the overwhelming silence of the entire small island. You can turn around 360 degrees and see all of its shored perimeter, including its wall. You are there--just you and the dead. And the monk.

Quiet usually means the absence of noise. It is a negative. On San Michele, quiet is a positive experience. It is a thing. It is part of the island as much as the dew or breezes or the saltwater olfactory ambiance from the Adriatic, wafting over the walls.

It is what holy sounds like. Silence is beautiful. It is beatified.

Back to Christian Doppler: he demonstrated how an observed frequency of sound waves is affected by the relative motion of the source and the detector. Approaching sirens are higher-pitched coming and lower-pitched going, when they spread out away from you instead of bunching up on approach. For light waves, it gives astronomers their redshifts and blueshifts, distinguishing between objects moving away or toward Earth, respectively; or the speed of their moving away according to the measurement of redshift.

The irony of Dr. Doppler's grave being on San Michele Island is that sound waves don't spread out there. They simply don't exist. If you speak out loud, it's as if you're shushed cosmically and immediately. It seems a violation. A desecration of the dead. Christian Doppler must have been ready to watch waves of light and sound drop to the still ground, instead of their persistent spreading out over our lives.

If you go to Isola di San Michele, you'll get it. You'll bask in the silence that comforts like sanctifying grace.

I lived in a flat in Tel-Aviv, Israel until 1968, when I was eight years old. It was on the top floor of a three-storey building, standing on pillars - typical of its time. There was enough room to park a few cars under the pillars, not that many people in the flat owned cars at the time.

There was also a small garden from which the inhabitants would pluck flowers. One afternoon, my brother and I went to pluck flowers. Two policemen saw us and one said to his mate: "Chase those kids away!" We ran like hellfire.

In 2015, my brother and I went to the area in which our old flat still stood. The "garden" was still there, but to our adult eyes, it looked like a tiny patch of greenery. The flowers were still there. We laughed at the memory of the afternoon when we ran away from the policemen, but we could no longer gain access into the block of flats. A security code had been installed.

Halfway to the small cay. We each kept one hand on the rope, our fins reaching far behind gently waving from our ankles like flags, as our well-loved sunfish floated along with us like a faithful labrador. Our space was managed by colorful reef fish, collections of grazing clown and parrot fish, swarms of angelfish, and an occasional curious, hovering barracuda. We had no sense of time or temperature, no trepidation, no thought to "reapply." We floated with purpose, searching and celebrating each discovery. We handled the revered urchins, comfortable with the way their spiky spindles moved in harmony seeking a surface to brush and escape back home to the glassy blue water. We took turns diving down, gently watching the majestic starfish move, its pace barely discernible, its feet leaving hundreds of tiny freckles in the sand on the ocean floor. The solemnity was broken occasionally by a burst of ceremonious joy when the familiar mound that hid the king or queen of the shell world was gently raised to marvel at the glow of a bright pink and orange ripply conch.

Floating face down, the afternoon would pass, with side glances through our sometimes foggy, sometimes leaky masks, to exchange a smile and shared disbelief at our playground.

It’s 1999. Cher and TLC are dancing across the Billboard Top 100 charts. A young girl in an orange corduroy dress waves goodbye to her home for a strange, new world. Goodbye to the hummingbirds that would visit her by grandma’s flowerbeds. Goodbye to the avocado trees on grandpa’s ranch. Goodbye to nearly everyone she knew and loved as her parents each hold one of her hands in their own at the airport.

Hello to people looking at her like the alien she is now. Hello to ignorance turning to hostility when assumptions are made about the legality of her existence. Hello to magazines and TV shows whispering in her ear every day that people with her hair, her figure, her name just do not belong up there on the national pedestal. Hello to a new language, a new culture, even a new landscape that would occasionally get covered with a cold blanket of ice. She needed special clothes just to go outside those days. There were no avocado trees growing here.

The girl thought she would never see home again. She believed she would have to make a home from transient houses and friends for the rest of her life. There was no longer a place she could truly come home to — at least not anymore. It’s a necessary sacrifice, but you cannot fully understand what it means until circumstances force you to make that difficult decision.

Her parents did it so that the girl and, eventually, her younger sister, could thrive away from a broken home that erases hope and any legitimate chance at prosperity. It was the best sacrifice her parents could make, even with the uncertain path that lay ahead. They did as each of their parents did the generation prior, when they packed up their families across the ocean in search of better lives in Venezuela. The cycle continues.

Over two decades later, their investment has grown and their daughters have flourished. Life throws unpredictable curveballs at them all that scatters each of them around the country, but they persevere and continue on their individual paths toward success. The girl is now a woman with a degree and a job she works hard for every day. They can finally afford to see the old worlds — all besides their own home, which continues to boil in a pot of corruption and crime. She and her father decide to visit the home that her grandfather had left in Madeira over half a century ago.

She had never been here. She is on a small island off the coast of Africa, not at the northern tip of South America. The people here speak Portuguese, not their language. The feeling is unmistakable despite nearly having forgotten it over the years: home. Nostalgia sinks in: the tropical plants, the brightly-colored houses, the astonishingly beautiful sights as they drive through the land; the positive energy of the strangers around her, the great-aunts forcing her to eat from platters full of food, the feeling of actually belonging.

She is glad that her family is too preoccupied with the map and the beautiful rock formations in the tunnels. Her emotions bubble up to the top and explode into tears streaming down her cheeks. She had been trying to make a home for so long. She had been grieving the death of her home for too long. She felt she had to learn to love again. Now, the feeling of home envelops her with each sight and smell. Perhaps the home needed to be found before it was built.