This one's for Brenda and Eddie (or post-Italy blues)

Driving home in a trance from JFK, some 20 hours after leaving our hotel in Rome, Mike prowled the radio dial for anything that would keep him awake while behind the wheel. Before long, the unmistakable bars of Billy Joel’s "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" came across, serenading us through our disorientation and regret as only the Piano Man can. Oh it felt right to this former Long Islander. Just as Brenda and Eddie went back to the green (even though “you can never go back there again”), we, too, had returned. To our green. Italy. 

Billy got it wrong – you can go back, but you probably can’t stay. That’s the catch. And fate will have you driving across the Whitestone Bridge, commiserating with Brenda and Eddie – who started to fight when the money got tight and just didn’t count on the tears – but it will be another grievance that you’re nursing. 

A grievance that torments inasmuch as it pulls you in two different directions at once. 

Forget time travel. I want to be here – and there. Qui ma anche lì. At the same time. And 20 years is a long time to be pulverized by this particular type of Italian torque. 

So what will it be, a bottle of red or a bottle of white?

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Lost diary entry