Out into the Water off Sardinia

“Is there not the massive brilliant, out-flinging recklessness in the male soul, summed up in the sudden word: Andiamo! Andiamo! Let us go on. Andiamo!—let us go hell knows where, but let us go on. The splendid recklessness and passion that knows no precept and no school-teacher, whose very molten spontaneity is its own guide” 

― D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia

We spent the most wondrous day on the water on Friday.  So, we decided to do it again on Saturday, making our way to Palau to explore the little islands north, splashing in the water, talking about Gramsci, Dante, and Italian history.  The little one drove the boat for a bit. But Matteo, dressed in blouse, led our tour. The day before we visited the national park and island of Caprera where Garibaldi retired.  Saturday, we kept on exploring, swimming wherever we saw fit, trying to make it across a straight here, to a beach there.  From 1230 to 7 PM we boated around on a majestic day. The little one dove off the boat, Matteo and Fatima looked at flowers, exploring.  And we darted about through some of the most exquisite clear blue waters I have ever seen in my life.

Looking at a boy on a rock in an island in the distance Matteo pointed out, “that was Matteo in 1978.”  I met him eight years later.  Thirty – two years later, here we are vacationing with our families.

We’re moving into the interior today, to keep on exploring the island.

D.H. Lawrence wrote of the calling:

Where then? Spain or Sardinia. Spain or Sardinia. Sardinia, which is like nowhere. Sardinia, which has no history, no date, no race, no offering. Let it be Sardinia. They say neither Romans nor Phoenicians, Greeks nor Arabs ever subdued Sardinia. It lies outside; outside the circuit of civilisation. Like the Basque lands. Sure enough, it is Italian now, with its railways and its motor-omnibuses. But there is an uncaptured Sardinia still. It lies within the net of this European civilisation, but it isn't landed yet. And the net is getting old and tattered. A good many fish are slipping through the net of the old European civilisation. Like that great whale of Russia. And probably even Sardinia. Sardinia then. Let it be Sardinia.