Dear reader,
Enjoy with me if you will the humor of this, from my notes on the writing of The Split-Second Forever:
Soon after I began living in this little town in Tuscany, I told everyone I was writing a book about it—about Le Santucce, about the history, about medieval building techniques, about Tuscan convents, about this beautiful place the Alfeo Tanganelli built from the bombed-out ruin of a convent, about the circumstances under which it was bombed in World War II, about its history and the fire of 1707 that destroyed the records I could otherwise have consulted, about the nun, Dominica Franceschini, who died in that fire in 1707, about the crops that were grown to sustain the convent, about the farming techniques, about Napoleon’s suppression of the convent, about Garibaldi’s visit to the town in 1849, about the chance meeting of Mirella Demichelis and Carlo Raffaelli on a train from Orvieto to Milan in May 1952 that led to their marriage and the birth of Miranda Raffaelli which led to her marriage with Alfeo Tanganelli which led to his eventual rebuilding of the convent Le Santucce into the gorgeous residence Le Santucce which is the reason I’m living now in Tuscany.
You see what I mean? I think you will see from this excerpt in my notes–one of many beginnings I have drafted in an attempt to hold in my arms this too-unwieldy armful of things purchased in the store of dreams and observation (firewood, fruits, gadgets, impulsive purchases) … it is comically clear to me now, in just this one paragraph, how far afield I have gone in seeking to know everything about this story, and in that way, last the thread, the theme, what an agent of my acquaintance called “the payoff,” as in, “This is beautiful, but what’s the payoff?”
It will be obvious to discerning readers what the technical problem is. I know this because I know myself. I know my tendency to become lost in the research and lose my bearings, like a child in the forest joyfully wandering off the path, deaf to the shouts of the adults.
Welcome my joyful bewilderment.
Cary T.
