Yesterday morning’s high-speed journey along the A8 from Nice to Genova was brutal and tense and, by the end of the day, exhausting. 130, 140 kilometers per hour within three narrow lanes with no wiggle room or shoulders to speak of, and dozens of tight curves. I was Paul Newman at Lime Rock. The drive demanded every last ounce of focus and concentration and then some. I felt okay while it was happening (water off a duck’s ass), but our lives were on the line every second. Things ease up when you turn north at Genova and start heading toward Milano, Salo (location of the famous Pasolini debauch of ’76), Lombardy (the regional setting of Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name**) and finally Mestre, the little town outside Venice where savvy travellers park their cars. But between the A8 Red Bull anxiety drive and lugging 80 or 90 pounds of luggage over eight or nine Venice bridges in the mid afternoon, I was whipped by nightfall. I crashed early-ish (10:30 pm) and just didn’t have time to write anything.

** The town where Call Me By Your Name unfolds, or where Timothy Chalamet‘s (i.e., Elio’s) summer home is located, is called Crema.