Introductions Are In Order

Greetings and welcome to my blog, Living Life: The Road Less Traveled.  Since we found out that we would be moving to Sicily last fall, I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a blog or vlog to detail our experiences here.  Even if no one reads it, I thought it would be at worst a good form of preservation for our youngest daughter Naomi to look back on to see all the things she did from the age of 2 until we left.  But what I have been stuck on was how to tell the story of our adventures in an interesting or entertaining way. 

That’s when it hit me, this afternoon on my walk with Penny and Naomi, Jaimie Johnson’s song “In Color” popped into my head.  It’s an older song released back in 2008 but I interpret the song as being about the story behind the pictures.  The outro to the song sums up the feeling I’ve had about the pictures I’ve taken and shared,

…Yeah, a picture’s worth a thousand words

But you can’t see what those shades of gray

Keep covered

You should’ve seen it in color.

 You can look at the pictures like the ones of us climbing to the top of Cefalu Rock, see the sweat stains and surmise that it was either hot that day, or me carrying Naomi added a little extra weight to the climb, making it harder.  However, from the pictures, what you can’t tell is everyone’s eagerness to make the climb to the top, the times we stopped to give me a break from carrying Naomi and second guessing our decision, or the sheer incline in a short distance.

I’ve always enjoyed listening to musical artist tell the stories behind their songs they write and how a particular song came into being.  I have posted several photos of our mini trips around the island such as Catania, Taormina, Cefalu, Ortigia, etc. But I have failed to convey some of the stories behind those photos.  Hopefully, through this blog the story will be told, and the reader will have some sense of what it was like to be there through my description.  I’m going to leave you with a quote from one of my favorite movies, Good Will Hunting.  It’s the scene where Robin Williams character, Sean, is talking to Matt Damon bout the difference between reading about the Sistine Chapel and being there.

Sean: So, if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written.  Michelangelo, you know a lot about him.  Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.  You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling…