I was left alone on a particularly quiet Friday in Spoleto. I walked for hours up the uneven cobblestone streets, down the slippery brick steps, holding onto the ancient walls like a child in an ice-skating rink, listening to the clack of my worn leather flip-flops echo through the hushed thoroughfares. I took routes I’d never taken before, coming upon shops and cafes and osterias covered in fragrant white jasmine. I lit a candle in the small, glowing chapel in the grand Spoleto Cathedral, the only place that’s made me question the obstruction to faith I’ve held onto since I left the Church as a child. There’s a statue of a man that sits by the Eucharist under the ever-glowing Sanctuary Lamp. The statue casts a perfectly rendered shadow on the rear wall of the Tabernacle, as if a man, completely immaterial, is also looking towards God’s presence while the candle is lit. I swear it means something.
After spending some time in the Sanctuary, I began to walk home, a bit disappointed by my day. I had yet to find an open shop, and there were only so many cappuccinos I could order before the caffeine gave my heart palpitations, so I took a far-too-narrow alley lined with burnt orange stucco buildings and yellowing wisteria with one direction in mind: down. I grazed the rough texture of the walls, let the dust coat my fingertips, until the feeling of the wall turned to cool glass. I looked to the left, and below my waist was a little shop tucked away below a large cobbled building. I squatted to look at the collection of items through the window: the dusty stacks of books strewn throughout, knick-knacks stuffed into splintering baskets, artwork of every size and medium lining the molding, highly vaulted ceilings. An antique store, I realized from the tiny paper tags tassled to this strange collection of items —a collection a stranger had curated from years of traveling and exploring. From living.
Back in America, I spend entire days perusing antique stores, estate sales, and flea markets, picking out the most invaluable of items that hold more value than anything in the world to me, items I treasure so dearly in my dusty heart and home. These items hold such a history, such a story, some of which I make up for my own silly enjoyment. I imagine the wooden frog I picked up at the estate sale in the dilapidated shack tucked away in the hot Georgian woods to be carved by the old man who lived there before. In my mind, the old man carved his creations while rocking in his wooden chair on the front porch, the chair that the newlyweds before me bought for their home down the road. It’s not sad, I don’t think, just the cycle of living, the turning of Earth, the clock’s chiming. The moment you connect with an item in these places, you connect with the person who made it, who used it, who sought it out, who found it important enough to place in their shop or homes.
As I was documenting every trinket in the little shop in my mind, a man in a small rickety car pulled beside me. A bit wary, I pretended not to see him, but once he drove into the parking spot in the alleyway beside the shop, I knew he was the man I needed to speak to. He quickly got out, muttered a few words in Italian while jangling a set of long skeleton keys, and I excitedly nodded my head. When he opened the skinny wooden door, I was accosted by the smell of dust, old leather, and worn hardcover books. He let me through to the main area, one of the only places I could stand without knocking something over, muttered something again in Italian, then left the shop for me to explore, entirely alone. There were beautiful pictures of Jesus and Mother Mary strewn throughout, yellowing lace and doilies held under stacks of books and Bibles, and lamps. So many lamps.
I found a set of baskets that held dozens of little things marked 1€ —my favorite things. I picked up a small, rounded terracotta container covered in dried flowers, a skiing gnome sculpture for my mother, a tin container that read Allenbury’s Pastilles, which held a miniature pink rosary, a cerulean terracotta vase, and a golden plate for my friend. I then moved to the artwork and was immediately struck by an intricate ink drawing of the Chiesa di Santa Chiara, my newfound favorite Saint after I heard of her devotion, her bond with Saint Francis of Assisi. I then found a dusted rose frame with a beautiful filet crochet piece of a flower.
I wandered around the shop with my items while I waited for the owner to come back, trying desperately not to fall in love with anything else I absolutely needed for fear I’d need to buy a new suitcase. After 45 minutes, I began to worry that something was amiss, so I set my items down and went looking for the owner across the street. I heard the whirring of a machine, the cutting of wood, through a large, slightly ajar door, and found him shaving away at a massive, ornately designed door. I tried for him a few times, unsuccessfully, over the loud tool, but eventually had to yell to get his attention. He turned around, almost Frankensteinian with his woodcutter, and hurriedly removed his goggles and straightened his tie to receive me in his other shop. He meticulously priced out each item on his calculator and, by some trick of fate, the total was 17 €, the number I see everywhere, the one I’ve assigned some cosmic meaning to. I like to imagine that I was meant to find that place and meet that man, and that these items will stay with me forever, until one day I, too, decide to pass them on to the next person who might appreciate them even more than I can.
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