The exuberance I had felt in May upon entering my own temporary apartment in Venice faded by early July, when the longing to simply be ‘at home’ intensified. As I suspected, and somewhat feared, marriage has interfered with my enthusiasm for being a domestic nomad. Though I enjoyed many of the people I was regularly meeting as part of my fellowship, I also craved my solitude, which, eerily enough, is a virtue I am able to savour most accessibly in my marital home. While each time I was in Venice I enjoyed my independence, I also missed being cared for, and I missed feeling accountable. It is not easy to admit any of this. For almost ten years I lived alone and loved every second of it. I rarely craved the presence of a husband, or a marital family in any form. I was good at attending to my needs. Whenever I had the urge to cook for more than one person I was happy to invite friends over, or throw a party and allow myself to inhabit the mode of the hostess. When I needed to be nurtured I would go to Mona’s house and spend the weekend there and let her pamper me.

Marriage complicates things. Especially since, over the last year, I have rooted myself here in Tramin, being away seems to encourage a strange kind of homesickness. I realised it most profoundly last week, when I had to travel from Venice to Tramin for an appointment and I was only able to find the energy to return to Venice because I knew my partner would be joining, and it was to be my birthday, and two other dear friends would be coming in from Innsbruck to spend the weekend with me. On Sunday afternoon my partner and I drove back from Venice to Feldthurns, since I was meant to do a reading there at the South Tyrol Summer School. It was the first time I would be travelling the distance between these two points by road. The movement away from the lagoon and towards the Alps seemed even more pronounced. As we gradually exited the Veneto region to enter Trentino/Südtirol I felt a sense of calm enter my body. In the dickey were all the things I was bringing back after having been simultaneously located in Venice since May. It was officially the end of my period of mentorship which had begun in March. I felt lighter, like I finally had space within my imagination to conceive of the future opportunities that were already presenting themselves to me.