LuminosityItalia

By sheer luck, Italian national day was in the first week of my residency in Milan, so we went down to the center of the city as groups gathered to strut their stuff. As near as I could tell from the the Italian posters around town, the day marks “Liberation from Fascists and Nazis” on April 25, 1945. Sounds a damned good thing to celebrate. The first fellow we encountered was a well-dressed older man handing out small slips of paper. Apparently they outline his philosophy of life, which it seems holds that sex is the most important thing there is. I give him credit: He looked well into his 60s. My colleague Mariella declined his request to give him a business card. Then there were the pro-Palestine demonstrators, the communists, the trade unions, the mainstream parties and a whole lot more. Finally we got a glimpse of the few remaining partisans who actually fought for freedom. And speaking of freedom – what a refreshing thing to witness. After eight years in the thrall...

For many  women in China, fashion is comfort – inspirational and aspirational, it gives tangible assurance that they have made it somewhere, have gained their own identity amid an ocean of similar people. Millions of Chinese have the same first and last names, even – masses with the family name Wang or Zhou or Li. There are only about five or six last names used by the true Han Chinese. And there are more than a billion of them. Those on the Mainland have no sacred spirits to worship, no everlasting icons to give them comfort in the stark awakening from a bad dream at 3 am. Along with the all-important family, it is material things and money that give them something to hold onto. So when female friends and colleagues in China heard that I was moving to Milan they were mightily impressed. I would actually gaze upon the fountainhead itself, the actual headquarters and flagship stores of global glamour giants like Prada, Gucci, Versace. Yes, I made it to the Galleria ...

For a Colorado boy born in Denver back when it was a cowtown, it's a bit hard to believe I have taken up residency in Milan – by way of Thailand and China. It wasn't a quick trip either. I spent twelve years in Chiang Mai and eight in Beijing. After such a long time in the dusty, congested and polluted capital of China, even the airport on arrival in Milan seemed embracing. Still on a human scale, it is an easily traversed entrepot, not a city within a city, allowing easy exit out into the moderate climate of northern Italy. What struck me the first days was the light – radiant on the earth tones of the buildings in my neighborhood and backed by an azure-blue sky. It has rained frequently since, but that too was a relief after the granite-hard air of Beijing. Though the internet has decimated my traditional profession of print journalism, I know it is better to embrace change than attempt the lonely battle of denial. I never thought I would do it, but I too hav...