Perfection

The past days of our visit to Florence have added the finishing touches to what I would likely call a maximum saturation point. We have spent nearly a month viewing thousands of years old art and ruins, digesting all forms of pasta and its accoutrement, climbed to the top of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican (which deserves a whole Blog to itself, such a journey it was), drifted through oceans of tourists through ancient cobbled streets, taken almost 1,000 pictures, wet our feet in the Mediterranean, ridden water taxis through Venice, baked in the Tuscan Sun, and on it goes. There is nothing more that I can see or do that can impress me more than I have been impressed.
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This morning's visit to the Galleria dell'Accademia actually revealed to me that there was one thing that could actually blow my mind after all the grandiose visions of our journey. As we slowly trickled into the museum with the thickening morning crowd, there stood glowing at the end of the gallery Michelangelo's much revered statue of David, towering over us flesh-and-blood mortals in all its majesty and perfection. Predictably, most of the visitors stood at his feet, mouth agape with expressions of total awe. As I drew nearer to this 15 foot wonder, I joined them with slack jaw and wide, wandering eyes. Looking upon Michelangelo's masterpiece, I was entranced by artistic perfection. I had never before viewed anything man-made that gave me as much wonder. Every single part of the body was so incredibly alive. Each muscle defined, no vein or tendon overlooked. It was as if this god among us was breathing and about to walk off at any moment through the hushed crowd. I looked from every angle, watching his features change with each soft sweep of morning light. To think that human hands had crafted this out of stone, out of a discarded piece of marble that no one wanted. I now understand transcendence through art.

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With one evening ahead of us before our journey tapers to a close through Venice and Paris, we will likely do a little more wandering through some of Forence's piazzas, perhaps grabbing a cappuccino and watching the varied assortment of tourists bumble and meander along, trying to drink it all in, leaving nothing untasted or spared by the camera lense. Likely we will go back to a favored trattoria we found a couple days ago that serves excellent antipasti and pasta dishes, as well as some tasty wild boar. The trattoria where, after prancing in front of the Duomo's majestic cathedral in my new high-falutin Tuscan fashions for the camera, I was momentarily blinded by a stray crumb in the midst of devouring some brushetta. It was perfect.