travel to south italy

rolled into rome i knew it was time to visit my old favorite park and make a bed among the trees and feel the deep rolling peaceful vibrations which roll among the trees that rise tall and strong into the night air.  the next day i am picking the topmost leaves of the pathside nettles with a view to making an onion and garlic and nettle sauce with pasta over a fire up in the woods up over there when eva stops with her little white poodle dog and asks if the nettles do not sting and whatever response i give her makes her wonder if i am from spain, with my slight tendency to use spanish vocabulary.  she tells me that everybody behaves like robots and is, in fact, robots, didn't you know? aliens came and mixed their DNA with the DNA of apes, and made us. some of us have more ape DNA than others and we feel stronger the connection to the earth.  i am shirtless and shoeless and picking nettles and it reminds eva of the life in costa rica where people live freely in nature and not like the robots here who go to work clocking in at a certain hour then clocking out then going home and watching the telly or taking a beer until the next day going to work clocking in and out and so on.  They have fear of us who are free and can think for ourselves.  you know that only about 30% of us have souls?  that is what they want to steal from us - our souls.  if they ever come and ask you to come with them, say no!  just sit still and meditate.  the earth is your home.  they want to control us more and more.  soon they will implant a microchip next to people's skulls. we must remain free. just keep doing what you are doing.  ciao.   i didn't quite know what response to give to this, but now, looking back, i wished i had asked her how she knew all these things, at least to have expressed to her my doubting stance, but anyway, i thought she was right about people behaving like robots while walking through the streets of rome the next day, observing the men walking hurridly in elegantly cut suits while talking irritatedly into mobile phones.  i wondered if it was indeed inevitable destiny that intelligent ape had wanted to continue making life more and more comfortable with new technological know-how and had thus resulted in this modern civilisation with its intricate network of motorway tarmac nodes and service stations where hurried motorists stride into the shop and do not have time or sociability to listen to tall bearded man who wants to get a lift to italy.  i detected a fear in their evasive eyes.  not a real fear, but a complete unwillingness to engage with a stranger, with something unknown, it is inevitable that i shave my beard off and cleanly-shaven, meet the chilean lorry driver who is happy to give lifts as long as the person is able to speak spanish.  a good honest simple chilean lorry driver to whom i could make comments like que hermosa la luna llena grande y bianca que se alza por encima del mare, he thought europe was alright for making money but now when it comes to openness towards your neighbours, each one returning home to remain enclosed within their own house.  the piece of advise he gave to me was to find a wife sometime soonish, because travelling around like you do is okay for a while, but there is nothing worse than growing old alone.  the cyprus trees rising into the sky like powerful peaceful shooting green flames and soft pastel colours everywhere welcomed me to the mediterranean climate, the warm air, the fashionably dressed young men driving past and waving to the young women with shiny fashionably flirting long hair.
it is now the time of the olive, time to extend the nets beneath the beautiful old olive trees and comb the branches with a long little rake and make all the olives fall, both the mature black and the young green ones, they will go to the frantoio olive presser and be pressed into green fresh fragrant new olive oil to be poured over pasta with a tomato and basil paste, accompanied by a fresh new red wine, young and youthful and fresh and red and containing the joy of life.  olives, the south of italy, the warm october sun releases the thick perfume from the minty herbs, ah, the misty peaceful moon hanging recently risen over the shining silver midnight sea, finlay playing the guitar gently in the room while buon appetito ragazzi, the pasta is ready. soft and steaming and bathed in new olive oil, its tomato sauce, washed down with new young fresh wine.