Massa Marittima, July 2026.
A string of prayer flags outside a shuttered workshop in Città Vecchia, the old heart of the town — hung there by a local artisan I know.
I stopped and photographed them because they reminded me of Nepal.
I was thousands of miles from those mountains and two years on from when I was last there, and still a line of weather-worn cloth against a Tuscan wall put me right back.
Lung ta — "wind horse" — blue, white, red, green, yellow: sky, air, fire, water, earth, strung so the wind carries their blessings out to everyone who passes beneath.
I've been thinking about Nepal this week — the valleys, and the people living through what came down them.
I have nothing useful to add to the news, so I'll leave this here: a string of prayer flags in Italy that had already, weeks before any of this, quietly turned my mind east.
