Below is a picture of Rapallo. Rapallo sits pretty on the Italian Riviera. I like Rapallo, despite the fact I’m not a beach person. So I was going through my pictures of Rapallo, and found one that hurt, in an odd sorta way.
I paid more than I’d pay for a bottle of wine here in Italy to send off my ballot in the vague hope someone on the other end will count it. After all, we who travel are dangerous nuts who are comfortable with the new sin of “multiculturalism” and find a little turning of the other cheek an admirable quality in a world full of arbitrary hate. Ballots from overseas have disappeared before.
So I voted anyway. Up there is why. I voted to stem the tide. I voted in the vain hope that it will change something. I voted so that little girls in pink jumpsuits could climb without fear upon the business end of one of those goddamn cannons you find all over the world. No, not just white girls, but black and brown girls and buck-teeth girls and slant-eye girls and blue-eyed girls and pudgy girls and all the rest of the little girls because they all count equally, no matter what spin the unjustifiably fearful try to put on their racist, arbitrary hate.
We travel because we like different. We are stark, raving mad.