It never ceases to amaze me how tiny the world has become. From my little apartment in San Francisco, I have an idea. I sit down at my desk and pound out my thoughts onto my computer. Because of the nature of the internet today, my viewpoints and impressions are broadcast instantaneously across an ocean where a man sitting at his computer in Italy happens to run across my article, Orvieto, Italy: A Land Where Time Stands Still. Something moves him to send me a short note – he says he likes what I wrote about his hometown.
Just a few short months later, I find myself sitting across the dinner table from a lovely couple to whom I’d been introduced that evening. Halfway through the supper conversation we discover the link: “So, you’re that Toni DeBella”, the husband declares to our astonishment. You could have knocked me over with a feather!
In these crazy moments, the once unthinkable becomes
imaginable. Here we all sit together in a restaurant in Orvieto, experiencing firsthand the growing obsolescence of continents and landmasses with hard-drawn borders. Can’t you just picture it – the entire human race clustered in one big archipelago – chained loosely and floating alongside one another, just waiting to collide? And do you know the most amazing part? My story is becoming more and more common and every day. Il mondo e’ piccolo (it’s a small world), and it’s getting smaller all the time.
Read another “small world” story by Lisa Chiodo at Renovating Italy here.
Orvieto or Bust: 