Seeing Firenze

Too soon, my perceptions had narrowed again to an everyday, spotlight view, “corners” now dimmed as the narrow focus on everyday concerns obscures all the rest. Looking again at the blog’s text during revisions, I found something of that original lantern view still reflected there. I have attempted to preserve this freshness within the covers of this book.

I wrote this book on one continent and edited it on another. “Seeing Firenze” started as a blog: Reflections on Living in the City of Michelangelo’s “David” for a Month in 2009. “Seeing Firenze” is printed in Centaur, adapted from the fonts of the Italian master, Nicholas Jensen, on Epson Enhanced Matte paper, and sewn in Florentine Longstitch. The cover boards are bound in fabric from T & T Firenze, with end papers from Il Papiro, also in Firenze.

Each day I would see something that triggered a response and the blog would pretty much write itself. Revising the text later in Tucson, I realized I had recorded something of the lantern vision that comes with immersion in a new and as yet strange world: the fresh vision that penetrates into many corners like light from a single lantern.