Viaggio a Firenze

The Empress and her consort are about to travel to Florence, the Beloved Jeweled Clasp on the Laces of the Boot of Italy, for a few months, with the simple goal to revolutionize several moribund artistic industries, including Drama, Music and Painting, whose terminal decline has long been discussed. Our headquarters is situated on the via dei Pandolfini, a stone's throw from where another such revolution was launched under our forebear, the late Count Giovanni de' Bardi. Here, together, we shall guide, with a firm but gentle hand on the reins, the way forward into a successful and prosperous future for all, at least for all those who agree to be led by us to this artist's paradise. The others, those too foolish or ignorant, those poor who disagree, who refuse to give us dominion, will be ignored or, if need be, exterminated.

Although bringing shape to the above-mentioned revolution is our prime objective, it is very thirsty work - as we used to say in the heady days of the OSS. After all, we are only human, and humans, like all living beings, from the lowly computer virus to the All-Encompassing Universal Gaia-Form of All Creation, do have human needs: to consume, to consummate, to respire, to eliminate, to reproduce, to float in the air, to achieve congress, which, as I think of Italy, brings to mind those calendars full of cute and kind of homoerotic priest photos they sell down the road from the Vatican, or that very attractive woman who made me a hot chocolate and who laughed and looked into my eyes and who, happening to run into me in the luggage store just a few minutes later, helped me so very very much in buying a new strap, the perfect strap, one that is tight and just long enough and from which it would be very difficult to escape.