Double dip

how to float in familiar waters

This is just a little something extra for my paying customers. A letter which asks, what if the tip you left was given back to you, but this time as a gift?

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On returning, why I come back and how it feels when I do

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And I could compare it to returning to a lover, to break the ice, to soften the blow as I prepare to renounce what I have said so many times before - something something no backslides. Yes, I have come back to the melting pot, stirred the coals and hoped it might once more boil to a simmering stock. Some pots, brought to heat once more, take on an entirely richer flavour - you’d rather meet a bolognese on its second round. When taking backsies, returning once more, I find I never regret the attempt entirely - sometimes a pleasure, never a chore. 

Genoa? Ge-yes-Oa. Ge-Nice to see you again-Oa.

May the strong arm of Catholicism pull me in. The young mothers and their toned biceps, the towering masses of marble that claim to just be church steps. The elder ladies who lunch and lurk are not the uptight, devastatingly chic sciure of Milan. They are that but with shells on; wafty linens, clogs and/or laceless Skechers, trinkets which tinkle as they climb the stairs with dogs. 

Why return to a place already visited, when all the world waits to be seen? Well why wear a pair of shoes more than once, use a mug beyond a single cup of coffee. Places, like vessels, are to be treasured again and again; valued for the composite parts which comprise them, and the labour of those involved in making it so. Genoa, the city with two faces, which in flat dimension is the size of my patience for substacks with titles like ‘how I live now’, which are lists masquerading as thought pieces; reams of affiliate-linked homeware brands forcing writing into a corner where AI seems like a better option.