I woke up this morning to the sound of sledgehammers against stone and the sensation of a moving wall behind my head. The stone building that my apartment in is not falling apart at the edges (although I am convinced that it's rotting from the inside-out from the moisture inside the stone from the "great flood"). It turns out that a lot of apartments in Firenze are being re-done. I learned that the two downstairs from our place are being reconstructed a few weeks ago, when I woke up one morning to the sound of a pile hitting the door downstairs. We thought that we were getting raided. It turns out that wasn't the case, but the construction starts at 7 am every morning and judging by the pile of rubble that covers the floors of both apartments, they're carving the apartments instead of building them. A few of my studio-mates have the same thing happening below their apartments. It's officially renovation season here in Firenze.

I was a bit foggy when I left my place, but carried on to feel like things were happening in slow-motion all around me. Matteo had the day off today and the woman who was working as his replacement seemed to move slowly, and even articulated slowly. Delivery trucks (that are only allowed in the mostly pedestrianized core before 9am) were collecting their free morning papers from people at the corners from their cab windows like they were running a delivery marathon. The last and the best site of the morning was noticing an older gentleman standing with his back up against the wall of a building with this incredibly happy look on his face like he was entranced by a glowing light, a treasure perhaps. He had his portfolio clenched to his chest and looked like he was aglow. He was staring at the house that Mozart lived in during his stay in Firenze. He's the biggest fan that I've seen here. I kept walking, and turned around a few blocks later to notice him still standing there. I was struck at how much he seemed to enjoy the building (there isn't much to it, either... it's a simple stone structure with chain retail stores operating at the street level and apartments or offices upstairs from that) more than the majority of people stop and look at the duomo. It brings me back to thinking about labeling tourists as gawkers or snappers. This man won the prize for the best gawking I've witnessed since I landed in Europe. I'm impressed at how legacy can have such a strong impact on people.

I've been noticing these things more and more as time keeps passing. I'm in this mode where I'm trying to get to know as much about the details about Firenze as a city as I can. At the same time, I'm trying to be as diligent as I can about keeping up with painting. I've been distracted, but thankfully focus is starting to come back. Progress gets fuelled with energy and then you've got me running around on a natural high that doesn't want to leave. Let's just say that I'm jumping for opportunities to run off for coffee whenever they pop up. The fact that it's visitor season at the studio doesn't help matters much. So far, four from Canada have passed through the studio visiting friends and family over the course of the past three days, and we apparently have ten extra heads joining our excursion to Rome next weekend.

To keep up with this theme, though, I'm thankful that the next week and a half will be full of opportunities to run off for coffee. Tomorrow, I'm going on a full-day field trip to Ravenna to visit some of (what I'm told are) the most beautiful mosaics in Italy. According to my instructor, Peter, it will be so beautiful that "once again your presence is mandatory". On Sunday, Firenze is hosting carnaval. On Monday I'm going to use my friend Mark's visit en route to his move to Glasgow as an excuse to run around Pisa for a day. Later in the week I'll be going to Rome for a long weekend -slash rockstararttour of the city. I'll be playing with my camera a fair bit over this time, and I'm hoping to use the mobility as an excuse to do some field drawing to spice things up a bit.

Things are likely to pick up the foggy-minded pace over the course of the next while. This semester is going a bit differently from last on account of not having any concrete deadlines and just being able to work and I think that's probably throwing the pace off a notch. It's reading week in Toronto from what I understand, which technically means that we're at mid-term, which also means that I'm not longer counting into being here and have starting counting on to the next major steps... really slowly.