Perambulating through the park, attempting to conceptualize the internal and external reality she wanted to transpose to canvas, she became distracted by Italian lovers. Strangely, for her, she looked on them in joyful awe. Unlike in America when she had wanted to roller- blade through their interlinked arms or sweep away these lovers who littered the world with their specious illusions, she now appreciated them. These Italian couples abetted her fantasies of she and Michael strolling together under one umbrella instead of the solo half being under there now. She could sense that her rule in the crumbling and further leaning tower of Gabriele was faltering, floundering, and foundering. This, while she walked, was evident by her sporadic humming of Joni Mitchell's "Michael from Mountains." Sitting on a bench in the gentle rain, she watched the heavy traffic and the shuffling array of Italians through the iron bars of one of the many walls that went around the park. It seemed to her that it all had the splendor and significance of love. She was not at ease in this rosy/fiery way of looking at all things and yet she couldn't quite see the harm in such elated perspectives. If all people were like Moonie cult members avoiding negativity wouldn't the illusion transform reality? If love were an illusion, she couldn't see how it was different from anything else. Each generation of people were passing shadows thrust out at dusk before being swept into darkness. Everything was an illusion although it seemed to her that some things were more real than others or at least less illusionary. Shadows were illusions of tangible things and perhaps these blocked rays of light or diminished forms were of something bigger. Was life just a pale version of what was really out there? She did not know. She was still waiting to get an email from God. This inchoate friendship/ relationship was releasing her from the manacles of heavy, oppressive, and dragging thoughts and so in certain moments she couldn't see any reason to oppose it. Did she care to be as dour and sour as a spinster? Such women became more acrimonious with each new birthday. Before she had time to go back to her hotel room with only a couple rough drafts to show for her efforts, they came for her in the park. Although he, like his son, preferred motion, Michael had persuaded his son to sacrifice a bit more of their time before her beloved alter of art. The taxi's meter was aggrandizing numbers for some time when they finally found her and took her away with them. He believed that his closeness to Gabriele would increase if he showed himself as someone willing to enter her hallowed institutions -- institutions he came here to see but on the fifth or sixth time these buildings were like visits to a mausoleum.