Lugano

I have been waiting for many years to see where my mother lived as a teenager.  Yesterday and today I was able to follow through on this when I visited her home in Lugano Switzerland.  I am left speechless, for what I didn't expect was to find another piece of myself in a land I'd never seen.  As I walked around the mountainous landscape it felt as though I had done so before.  I saw where she slept, studied, made friends and found love for the first time.  She spent the better part of her adolescent years speaking italian and living away from home at TASIS(the american school in Switzerland).  So much of my history was there.  From here I could see how she loved Telluride so much.  The two places are very similar.  During my look around her school I had a once in a lifetime encounter...  A miracle really!  I met one of her teachers.  He taught her photography.  For the next few hours we traded stories about life and art.  He just kept telling me how beautiful my mother was, how elegant she was.  I couldn't help but cry a little bit.  As I looked around I saw my mother everywhere.  Something about the way people walked, how they were forced to move according to the way the mountains wanted them to move.  It was as if I could see the knife that carved my mother into the woman she would become.  The grind stone that would sharpen her into the explorer she fashioned herself.  I could see her face in those  I passed and the warmth of her hands in those I met.  My mother was very human, she was flawed, and she was beautiful.  She was Lugano, and she was Telluride.  She was an explorer and a mountaineer.  What's left of Fran Distefano Arsentiev will live on in me.  I am now back in Zurich.  Tomorrow I will return to the stage with my colleagues to begin the rest of our performances in Switzerland.  This experience will provide me with a strength I thought died long ago, while my family, and Telluride will keep me humble in my craft as I take new steps as a man.
With love always
Paul Distefano