Camaiore | I Could Get Old Here

Where life is simple, slow, and happy.

I watched eight old men stand up at once, and something in me quietly rearranged itself.

They had been sitting at Caffè Celero on Piazza San Bernardino for most of an hour, maybe longer, doing what men over sixty do on an Italian piazza, which is nothing, but nothing done carefully and particularly.

Espresso cups empty. Newspapers folded, actual paper newspapers, because here everyone still reads one. The conversation had the rhythm of a conversation that has been going on since 1974 and does not need to be finished today. Across a stretch of stone ten meters wide, their wives were at Pasticceria Del Dotto, working on a second coffee and a small plate of biscotti, same age bracket, same posture, different café, more sweets and cakes. This division is not negotiable, and nobody has ever questioned it.

The church bell went at 12:30. The women had already drifted home fifteen or twenty minutes earlier, in a staggered exit I hadn’t registered until their chairs were empty. They were lightin…