I remember taking a pee in an outdoor urinal while looking up to a statue by Donatello in the square. That about summed up Florence, magical, historical, cold, unhealthy in the winter, inspiring, ravishingly beautiful, and poetry to be found at the turn of every corner. And when love as the sea invades the obscure flesh, and coils around those stones from where you once towered over the heart, you now lay shipwrecked in the bottom of your ecstasy, as alone and nameless as seaweed on the sand. After one of those classic shipboard romances, hot, scandalous, passionate with hickeys all over our necks to the aghast looks of our fellow Cuban passengers, somehow I made it to New York alive where I was to live for the next five years until 1968. To grasp the essence of all creatures is to leave the secrets of nature untouched.
Fish are most joyous in deepest waters.
Birds love the refuge of their hidden jungles. I am content being old, ill and poor. Wealth and fame cannot bring one peace within. So long as the clear autumn air lets me stand and walk, I will be grateful to eat the simplest herbs in solitude. These were the fabulous sixties, and me, the classical nut, was falling in love with the Beatles and with Bob Dylan.