Into the Work of Travel - Prologue
A Life Worth Living Without Knowing - Milan
How to Overcome Fear - Venice
Bologna Hospitality - Bologna
Jealousy is my strength - Florence
The Weight of Greed - Siena
Temple of All Gods - Rome
Beauty - Alberobello, Matera
Neapolitans - Naples
Now, here - Positano, Pompeii
My Climax - Palermo
Our Myth - Catania
The Road Not Taken - Taormina
Fermata, Meeting Myself - Ragusa
A Glory of Scars - Syracuse
An Unexpected Gift - Spell
The Road Through Fog - Assisi
Canal Night - Milan
Time Irrevocable - Epilogue
Author's Note

'In the spring of my fifty-eighth year, we left as if writing our first sentence.'

This author's first essay has been published.
This is a travelogue of my trip to Italy two years ago, before the COVID-19 outbreak began.
My close friends and I have had a bucket list for a long time to 'go on a long trip before turning 60.'
No matter how much you hear the saying, 'Life begins at 60,' '60th birthday' is still a special event.
And I also wanted to give myself something like a 'reward' for the time I lived as someone's wife and mother.

When I was young, I couldn't have imagined that I would be in my 50s.
… People often say that as you get older, the speed at which time passes gets faster and faster, such as 30 kilometers per hour in your 30s and 40 kilometers per hour in your 40s.
I was feeling that way too, so I was already starting to feel depressed about the fact that my sixties were approaching faster than before.

Excluding friends whose schedules didn't match, I ended up traveling alone with Jin, my friend of over 40 years.
From famous tourist destinations that come to mind when you think of 'Italy' to ordinary villages that you might easily pass by if you don't pay attention.
It is full of stories of the scenery and people of every corner of Italy, discovered while traveling with friends or alone for a month.


Time that cannot be retracted
Travel is a microcosm of life

A month is a short time if it's short, but a long time if it's long.
Even though they've been friends for 40 years, it's hard to believe that they'd spend a month together.
I heard countless concerns from people around me before I left, and those concerns became reality at my travel destination.

No matter how well you plan your trip, life is unpredictable.
The two travelers in their late 50s face various trials and tribulations, such as things going wrong as planned and encountering unexpected difficulties.
The way he overcomes problems with wisdom and solves them with a relaxed attitude each time makes me feel his experience.

Someone once said that when something is exposed to sunlight, it becomes history, and when it is bathed in moonlight, it becomes a myth.
Jin and I's daily lives in Italy were becoming our own legend, bathed in the moonlight that rose every night.

Even before the trip, I had planned the itinerary loosely enough to decide that the theme of this trip would be 'rest', but people don't change easily.
And what I think of as 'loose' and what the other person thinks of as 'loose' are bound to be different.
The interesting points of this essay are the personality differences experienced by author Lee Geum-i, who believes that since you're going, you should see it properly and enjoy it, and her friend Jin, who enjoys leisure and romance, over the course of a month, the resulting conflicts, and the process of reconciliation.

This writer said that the moment he plans a trip is like preparing a long novel.
The process of planning and conceiving before starting is like that, and both novels and travel have a beginning, development, climax, and conclusion.
Conversely, a novel can be rewritten, but a journey that has flowed by time cannot be fixed or undone.
So, traveling is like life in miniature.
It's similar to a life where you only live once.
Perhaps the reason people love to travel is because they can use the lessons and experiences they gain from their travels to better live the rest of their lives.
In a time that cannot be forgotten, travel provides a chance to live better through rehearsal.

Slowly and leisurely with Fermata

The word 'fermata' is an Italian word that means 'to pause' and also 'to lengthen'.
The time spent leisurely in Italy by Lee Geum, who was about to experience a special moment in her life, as if playing a fermata, became a special comma where she could pause from her daily life and enjoy the moments between the lines of life.


The word fermata seems to capture the essence of travel.
Pause for a moment and think leisurely about things you usually put off because you're busy.
In fact, these are things we should enjoy and live with in our daily lives.

As daily life seems paralyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, if we spend this time leisurely with the mind of a fermata, we will be able to naturally connect and begin again when we return to our normal lives.