It must be said that the leaning tower of Pisa is particularly impressive. It is difficult to imagine how much this tower is tilted. You really have to go to see the tower of Pisa in the place to really do it.
Logically, the tower attracts crowds and the experience in the place can be ruined: many people, waiting endless, ... In this post dedicated to the symbol of the city of Pisa, I give you all the useful information to visit the Pisa tower in Italy , I share my comments to help you prepare for your visit to the Tower of Pisa. For example, I tell you how to book your ticket online to avoid waiting in the place!
His mind settled on the protracted and more complex exchanges he’d shared with three women, exchanges where love had superseded lust in the actions of shared touch, where the stimulation of certain nerve endings was routed through the convoluted and ill-understood circuitry of trust, commitment, and responsibility. How could something as seemingly simple as contiguous flesh evolve into something as complex, as rewarding and risky, as love? What transformation happened there between touch and love’s tangle? Could someone, anyone document the instant of transition—as the millisecond when the sperm cell’s persistent bumping of the egg cell’s resistant membrane finally and ultimately results in the breach of that membrane and the consequent conception of a totally new entity. Was touch transformed to love like that— an instant’s change? Josh could smile at the apt metaphor. He wondered if it were original or if he’d encountered it in some long forgotten poem or story.
But his mind quickly drifted past such idle speculation and settled on the hands and faces and hearts of the three sexual partners he’d truly loved—Laura, Vicki, and his partner in adultery, Joan. And as much as he would’ve wished to focus on the nearby Laura (and the product of their love, the nearby Devon) or the wronged and dearly departed Vicki (and the living product of their love, the long absent and longed for Angie), Josh could at that moment only picture Joan. She had, for him at least, an effervescence that was simply intoxicating—place her in a room with him, and all his senses became instantly more acute: the light grew brighter, sounds clearer, taste and smell heightened, and touch, oh, touch! If she were sitting across from him at a desk, his fingertips on the wood of the desktop knew every twist of grain, every finish-filled pore. Set her next to him at a dining table, and his fingers knew every swirl of filigree on the stainless, every drop of condensation on the water glass, every weave of linen on the tablecloth. His life in her presence became a new life—or, perhaps more accurately, became again the old life of his earliest childhood memories, when every sensation was unprecedented, every moment and action sparklingly intense. Poor Joan—caught up in a vortex not of her own making (but of his?), swirled around and around and around, dazzling dance, dancing dervish, then dropped. She didn’t deserve any of it. She’d loved Angie first, completely and without reservation, gladly becoming the big sister Angie’d longed for. Then she’d loved Vicki—half daughter, half confidant: she’d given Vicki something she’d needed and lacked for years. And finally, almost as an afterthought, she’d loved him.
As was her way, she’d led with her heart and let her body follow with no apparent thought to cost or consequences. He’d seen that vulnerability, knew its risks, was too weak to resist. It seemed a well-worn tragic tale, all unfolding as prescribed down through the ages. All that was left was to place blame, and its place of residence had been clear and irrefutable since the moment of discovery—an instant of the undoing of love at least as explosive and irreversible as the doing of love in its transformation from simple touch: the withdrawal of sperm cell from egg, repair of the breach in the membrane, total rejection now of the sperm cell’s hapless tamping, the cell’s gradual slowing, shriveling, dying.
So why, in the wake of that life-changing loss, could Josh taste Joan’s breath in his mouth just now, feel the textured brush of her tongue against his slick gums, sense the trickle of her saliva trickling down his throat? Where was the loss in the face of such powerful life? Where was the tragedy in the face of such persistent love? Those questions faded fast as they’d surfaced. It was enough to taste Joan in his mouth, smell her in his nostrils, feel the pulse of her life through his core. It was answer enough. Devon sat beside her unconscious—again—father. Both Sherri and Doctor Joe thought this episode more or less normal resting unconscious and not something more ominous, though they both acknowledged that they (and, more to the point, Josh’s body) were dealing with a lot of unknowns—unknown synergies and side-effects of powerful medications, unknown imbalances within Josh’s body (the bloodwork they’d sent out yesterday still hadn’t come back), and, most dangerous, the possibility of an unknown infection within one or more major organ systems.
So while hardly reassuring, Devon thanked them for their honesty and attempt at full disclosure and chose to trust their combined best intuition and assumed that Josh was sleeping peacefully and comfortably behind his closed eyelids. After a beautiful spring morning, the sky had steadily clouded over and now in the late afternoon storm clouds threatened beyond the broad bedroom window. The room grew suddenly dim, unnaturally dark for the hour of the day, and gusts of wind pushed clouds of pine pollen in a yellow haze past the window as thunder rumbled in the distance.
The weather conditions quickly eroded Devon’s thin confidence in the doctor’s guarded assessment of Josh’s condition and a small but persistent sense of foreboding took root in the pit of her stomach. She stood and leaned over Josh, putting the side of her face less than an inch above his mouth and nose. She felt his breath brush her cheek and heard his slow but easy inhalation and exhalation. While conscious, Josh had asked Sherri to remove the monitor’s sensors and leads—they were annoying and making him feel like he was in a hospital. But now Devon wished they’d left them connected—there was a certain comfort to be found in the steady patterned scroll of those colored lines on the monitor, a reassurance that he was alive despite his unresponsive body. Instead, the monitor’s screen was a blank gray, dark as the day. Reassurance would have to be found elsewhere, if it were to be found.
Devon sat back in the chair, opened her laptop, and began a long e-mail to Jocelyn: Bunkie, why aren’t you here? Sorry, Dearest, I just had to say the words. I know why you’re not here and that you’d be here on the next flight if I asked. It’s just that I’m feeling lonely and blue sitting here beside Josh’s bed while he’s asleep— at least we hope he’s asleep and not something worse. The doctor and nurse seem to think it’s normal resting, but who knows? Not me, that’s for sure. Josh woke up earlier today—YAY! I actually got to meet and talk with my birth father! Funny thing is, it was like we’d known each other forever. It wasn’t awkward or emotional or confusing—just two people talking, more like old friends than father and daughter.
That was a good thing, since I don’t think I could’ve handled the father-daughter dynamic. I mean, I already have a father, right? How can someone have two fathers? I mean, I know lots of people have a father and a step-father and manage just fine, but I’m not ready for two fathers. So we just talked and I told him a little about myself and I told him all about you and our life in Austin and how we want to have a baby. He didn’t flinch a bit when I told him about you, just took it in stride (well, in bed flat on his back) and smiled and nodded. He seemed especially interested in our plans to have a baby and told me to take all the blood I needed for DNA testing. So he was glad to meet me, and I was glad to meet him. But now he’s unconscious and there’s a storm brewing outside and it makes me fear the worst. Just nerves, I guess. We always want more, don’t we? I wanted to meet my birth mom. Once I met her, I wanted to get to know her better. Once I got to know her better, I wanted to see my birth father.
Once I got to see him, I wanted to talk to him. Once I got to talk to him, now I want to talk to him some more. I want him to live. I want him to get out of the bed and walk with me through his woods or in a park. I want him to bounce his grandson on his knee, see that he has his eyes, that funny lopsided grin. Odd how a quest to begin a life should put me beside a bed where a life is ending. It makes me all the more certain that I want to have a child, and that the baby should be from my egg, with my DNA. Josh may never know the baby but I’ll know him and see Josh in him every day. Why should I care so much about this, Bunkie? But I do. Two days ago, I didn’t know Josh existed; now I’d move heaven and earth to perpetuate his legacy. If Josh’s doctor could take me down the hall and plant that fertilized embryo with Josh’s DNA in my uterus right this minute, I’d do it. I’d do it.
You’re O.K. with that, aren’t you? I know it was always you pushing to have a kid and me dragging my feet and dreaming up all sorts of excuses. But now I want it, Bunkie, want it for all sorts of reasons I didn’t know existed before but now that I know them they seem all that matters. I know that these feelings may pass or certainly fade some. I know that Marty-shrink will have plenty to say about it and lots of questions and advice. I’m O.K. with that. We need that input. But I’m going to have this baby. Is that O.K., Dearest? You’ll still love me, right? With a new mother and a new father and a new need to have a baby with their DNA that is my DNA —you’re O.K. with that, right? It’s all O.K., right? I need you to tell me these new developments won’t make you stop loving me. It’s all still me. Just more. Dev Devon paused just a fraction of a second, then hit send, then looked up at the sleeping Josh. The tears she’d shed a few minutes earlier had dried on the back of her hands. She felt a surprising new resolve, the resolve of guardianship. It was strength enough to endure the violent storm that broke outside the window, and the shafts of tentative late sunlight that extended themselves like golden fingers in the storm’s sudden wind-whipped aftermath. For Josh it was like falling through a cloud of white feathers—that soft and slow and blinding.
One minute he was tasting Joan in his mouth, feeling her clutch of his revived penis; the next minute he was descending through this infinitely gentle, intimately proximate world of white, a white so bright with diffuse homogenized brilliant light that it should’ve been blinding but wasn’t, a light so powerful in its diffusion that Josh wondered if its source would be bearable, should he ever find it. But neither searching nor intention was available to him now. Gravity still worked, as he was falling downward, but gravity scaled back, like maybe the gravity on the moon (vividly recalled through the film of the Apollo astronauts bounding like slowmotion fluffy sheep across the lunarscape)—muted, more humane gravity.
And breathing seemed to work also—his released exhalations and slow inhalations the only sound, no hint of panic from the falling, no sign of fear at the close press of brilliant white. Then Josh knew that this was a script written by someone else, something else, a script in which he was both willing participant and coerced conscript, where he went along willingly in a proceeding that would’ve claimed him, volunteer or not. Josh saw it too as an age-old, eons-old proceeding in a place and a process that knew no time—no ages, or eons, or epochs; no future, no past: just one permanent blur of blinding white.
Tour of Pisa: the famous leaning tower of Italy
The tower of Pisa, called Torre di Pisa in Italian, is actually the bell tower of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption of Pisa. This cathedral is more commonly known as the Duomo of Pisa.Torre di Pisa and the rest of the religious complex are listed as World Heritage by UNESCO.
Beyond its popularity due to the fact that the tower leans, it is also one of the most beautiful works of Tuscan Romanesque art. The tower was built with marble.
Before talking about the visit to the Tower of Pisa and sharing my advice to make the most of your visit, let's quickly talk about the history and the figures ...
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