In Milan I asked my mom, Doesn't this remind you a little bit of China?

These two methodologies-the persistent Italian unchanging, the hyper Chinese dream of progress-are two ways of addressing the same vacancy: the void between where we came from and how we got here. I cannot presume to know anything about Italy or the Italians. In the way of Roland Barthes, the Italy I speak of is the Italy of my mind-a place one goes to think of other places, as I've learned that every country one travels to will always be a site of mourning for one's first country. Chiaroscuro i know, viscerally, from other mountains: high desert of Santa Fe, where sun shines nigh constantly. Candle smoke's sfumato memories, in the light of Visconti's magisterial scene, my grandfather could have been a leopard. Burt Lancaster's leopard, that's how i choose to remember him. Spolia, alerting us to ways history is repurposed, that's how i remember Italy.