FIFTY SHADES OF BLUE

Just a warning, this post is going to be about sex, or, as we call it in Italy: food.
But not just that.
It's also going to be about love, and betrayal; conquer and lust.
What better reason to come to this place over and over?
Imagine a village and imagine it timeless.
The very axis around which the world turns. Perched atop the centuries, unbound by time and space.
Imagine Cornice, Liguria.
Number of residents: twenty three, all of them related, one way or another, to me.

Cornice

The best thing about Cornice is that nothing ever changes. The worst thing about Cornice is that nothing ever changes.
Take its people for instance. They were old when I was young, and they still look the same now.
They grow their own food, they make their own wine ( which, by the way, tastes a lot like Kombucha). These people don't have much to say, but their sparse words can cut through bullshit and spare you nothing.
In this land, where the mountains dive directly into the sea like they can't help it, opposites like pain and delight are the two faces of the same coin.
I come here for the rocks on the beach, for the way they feel under my feet, for the way my feet recognize their hurt like it were pleasure. And the encounter with the water is ever much sweeter.
For the same reason you will find the best restaurants in improbable sites, not so easy to reach. You will course three times and throw up twice before you can sit in front of a plate of fish ravioli.
The duresse will enhance the experience.
I don't know if my people invented S&M, but they sure practice it.
Nothing comes easy, and if it does, you don't want it.
This is a place where even things like colors are not the way you expect them:

the blue of the trees, the deep green of the sea, the coral hues the houses are painted with. Somehow though, they make sense.

Manarola

 (A group of Canadians I met on a boat ride kept asking me if the color of the water was real, and how was it possible that the sea was at times emerald, at time cobalt, and at times topaz.)

I come here for the looks I get in the alleys, by the fishermen mending their nets. And as I walk by I can feel every knot cutting a little deeper into my skin.
Liguria in the summer smells like sex (a mix of mint and basil and fermented grapes), tastes like sex (you just need to order a plate of "gnocchi al pesto" to climax) and it is rough, and at the same time gentle, like the best of lovers.
Just add the heat of a July afternoon, the soundtrack of an orchestras of cicadas, a glass of chilled bianco " I Piani" and you have the perfect love potion.