(Sorrento, video above)

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Hi. Sorry for the long wait. (Though I publish infrequently here.) Up top I wanted to mention, again, my new podcast, Sincere American Writing Podcast. I’ve now done episodes on violence, book reviews, being an American expat in Spain, travel, my experience living in East Harlem during the pandemic in 2020, and more. CLICK HERE FOR THE PODCAST. Please consider listening and reviewing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. I really appreciate that. It helps.

Also, if you’re interested in reading and/or reviewing any of my books/novels, buy them HERE, from YA punk rock to political essays to my Harlem COVID experience to prison suspense to literary fiction and more.

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Britney and I just returned a few days ago from 10 days in Sardinia and Italy. It was an “interesting” trip because 72 hours or so before we left Madrid Britney received a brutal bite on the top of her left foot (her fault; long story) from our gigantic, Mountain-Lion-like Siamese cat. We’d already planned for our three cats to be watched by sitters who were coming from a ways off, and we had paid for everything in Italy including transportation by rail, road, air and sea.

Two doctors were involved with her bite, which was on the top and side of her left foot. It became infected because of bad information by the first doctor, a “traveling doctor” who came to our apartment after the bite happened, around midnight, and said we didn’t need oral antibiotics. (We did, the second [ER] doctor informed us.)

But everything was paid for. So we went on the trip, sticking to our plans.

What followed was 10 days of fun, frustration, exhaustion and learning as we navigated twisty mountain roads by car, as I did virtually everything for us both because Britney could not walk without crutches and even then very slowly, renting wheelchairs, navigating the Italian language (I sometimes spoke Spanish which was easier than English), myself taking long solo walks around the narrow alleyways and streets of Sardinia, we the only tourists, everyone staring at us, devouring pizza and myself walking around with the beating hot sun oppressively pulsating against my skin.

Charlie Kirk was killed while we were there. We talked about it a lot. It affected us both deeply in a surprisingly personal way, even though neither of us knew much about him and I especially disagreed more than agreed with Kirk’s ideas. It felt oddly similar to when Robin Williams died in 2014. I was sober and living in the Bay Area when Williams died, and I felt a similar kind of personal-impersonal heartbreak. There was something generational going on with Kirk. He was a symbol. It involved his humanness, our political polarization, free speech, and the 31-year-old Kirk as an imperfect monument to national dialogue and civil disagreement, which is all we have left.

We drove to other little towns nearby San Vito, the main town we stayed at in Sardinia. We passed by the deep blue sea. The green, ragged mountains surrounded the town and they were brilliant and gorgeous and reminded me of my Southern California hometown of Ojai, north of Los Angeles. Even the winding, twisting, narrow mountain roads, cactus and Utah-like rock formations reminded me of Ojai’s Highway 150, which brings back rich nostalgia for me. It takes me back to my teenage years.

Britney and I were mostly very kind and sweet and forgiving with each other during all this time, which, thinking back on the stress for her of not being able to walk or do most things on her own, and myself having to do everything for us both, is nothing short of a miracle. We’ve always swam around in the soupy irony which is this fact: That we travel together (we endure movement and chaos) better than we live our regular daily lives together. Not that we have big issues all the time in our daily lives, but there’s something profound and true for both of us about being On the Road, so to speak, which somehow calms us. We each specialize: Britney is better at planning, money, organizing places to stay, scheduling trains, etc. I am better at generally taking risks and adjusting to changes in real time.

After Sardinia we took a ship 14 hours overnight (we had our own tiny room with two twin beds and a bathroom/shower) to Naples. Naples was insane. I’ve been to Italy before, in 2007 and 2016 (Naples, Florence, Venice, Sorrento) but this felt entirely new. We both loved sleeping on the ship. There was no discernible movement. It had taken forever to get a wheelchair and board the trip. This is how people get radicalized into being “activists” for certain causes. I felt like becoming a disabled person activist. Of course, Britney was only temporarily “disabled.” But, as of now, 9/21/25, about 18 days after the bite, she is just barely “walking” on her own (more like shuffling the bad foot along our slick hardwood floor.)

Naples was anarchy writ large, perhaps a symbol, a microcosm of Italy as a whole: First world but not always feeling like it; unstable governments; massive government debt; slow GDP growth; in Naples ancient, crumbling apartment buildings which reminded one more of Mexico than say Germany. People were everywhere, like yawping wild ants, scurrying to and fro, crashing into one another. The roads were insane in Naples: Pedestrians simply walked across the street at random, with no walk lights. People nearly got hit every few seconds, it seemed. Electric scooters jammed past cars left and right without checking their surroundings. Motorcycles exploded around everyone. It was madness. But fun to watch from our Air BnB balcony.

Rooftop restaurants were lovely with epic views of the city, the streets, cathedrals and Mount Vesuvius. Then a train an hour to Sorrento, which was beautiful. We stayed in a “glamping” place, in a large tent with a bed and even A/C, meeting up with my oldest friend who I’ve known for 25 years and who was traveling around Italy with her hilarious, character-wild Italian father. Deep, rich conversations. Restaurant at the top of the steep hill (Britney piggyback’d on me), and natural beauty.

Then a nice hotel downtown Sorrento on the 5th floor with no elevator. It took Britney a long while to reach the top. It was the only place we could fine that wasn’t $1,000/night. Sorrento was gorgeous but annoying culturally: It was 98% Americans and Brits. The sidewalks were narrow. Everyone stared, ogling us as I walked B in her wheelchair or she slowly moved, bad foot hovering above the ground, on crutches. With so many Americans it felt like Santa Barbara more than Europe, and not really in a good way. More like Disneyland for rich tourists. It was no Sardinia. The culture was a sort of ironic anti-culture. Like Yosemite Valley in summer, when everyone leaves trash everywhere and ruins the very place they claim to value and want to see.

Stupendous views of the deep blue sea below, roofs lower than ours all around us, green and striated gray mountains surrounding us. A big, even slightly palatial two-room apartment overlooking the sea on one side and the mountains on and the downtown streets on the other. Music. Italian being spoken. Young people laughing and yelling. We agreed we could live here for a while…if not for the damn Americans. (As if we weren’t also American tourists.)

Finally, we took a train after 48 hours or so from Sorrento back to Naples, and then a bus 2.5 hours from Naples to Rome, where we were dropped off at the airport. Our flight was late, a 9:30pm flight, but by 10:30 we were taking off. Two hours or so later we landed in Madrid. We caught a taxi the 25 minutes home and, around 2am, walked into our apartment. Home sweet home. What a journey it had been. As always, it had felt as if we’d been gone for six months. It’s always like this: We become so totally immersed in the present moment, in The Experience, that time seems to shift and become altogether something non-linear, even magical, somehow spiritual.

From one portal into another, one dimension into another, from regular life to secret life, convention to movement and change. An almost alchemical process. The arc of the soul.

Travel is rejuvenating, even when it partially feels like “work.” We’re still privileged and very lucky. We still were able to get out of our usual environment and experience new things, fresh sights and sounds and topography. I read Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America during the trip, and wrote often in my journal.

It was all worth it, if also tiring. But I was given the gift, the opportunity of caring for my wife fulltime for a couple weeks. She’d do it for me, and one day probably will have to. This is what love and marriage means.