Arrivederci Florence

It's over.  Been over for a few days, but I've been horribly ill.  No more searching for the dome in order to find my way 'home'.  No more rooms full of people intensely interested in Leonardo da Vinci.  The weeks leading up to the Leonardo institute were just as intense as I spent as much as 18 hours a day reading and preparing.  The weeks there in Florence were packed with unusual experiences.  (So was Florence packed, with tourists, so I didn't get many good pictures.)  We met and heard from a dozen of the finest scholars and saw Leonardo paintings and drawings up close and uncovered.  Now it is back to the usual grind, but I am going to try to make some permanent changes in what I do from now on.  Having read over and over reports of Leonardo's death and his supposed last words (Was anything done?), and having heard a remark by Martin Kemp on the bus back from Villa I Tatti that it is what one does with one's talent that matters, I realize with some horror that I share with Leonardo his worst trait -- I never quite finish things.  Beginning things is so interesting that it takes one away and anyway there is so much to do I stagger from one obligation or meeting to another, but that is making excuses.  I also heard once that one should never repeat anything so all my papers at conferences have been new and different from each other.  Even my prints and paintings are mostly unfinished.  So now I have over 20 years of incomplete projects.  I am going to line them up in an order taking into account some have due dates and some are further along than others, and then finish things one after the other and get them out into the world.  It may still be slow going as I tend to choose labor intensive projects. Someone (Seneca?) once said that when you die no one gives a damn what books you have read.  I take this to mean that you must do something with what you learn and give it to others.  Something more than just the day to day teaching, which is like washing dishes.  So I vow to finish things and send them out.  Let those who read this blog be witness as to whether I do this in the years to come.