Full Circle.

I have been missing my camera that I took with me to London and all around during my European travels. But since I got to Portland and to the United States, I haven't been taking as many photos... I don't know what it is, something about how terribly familiar everything is makes the need to take photos feel a lot less. Not to say my sense of adventure is lost, but I have been relying more on my memory to store these local happenings. I have nonetheless been carrying my camera around Portland, and when moving into my new house, I realized I could not find it anywhere. I remembered feeling someone tugging on my backpack in a crowd downtown at a big event called the Flugtag, with 70,000 people in Portland just to see... and I thought maybe someone had reached into my bag? But I had no real evidence, and at the time i rationalized that "i am in portland" and people in crowds don't go around trying to steal things.

a couple of days ago i got a phone message from my brother trev saying that there was a camera with a picture of my uncle benito that was lost in sicily. i didn't respond right away, it seemed weird but i knew that i had my camera in the US so it must have been someone elses coincidence. The next morning trev called again, he said benito called him asking about my missing camera. i told him i lost my camera, but not in sicily, and trev said well... there is a number here and you should call it right now. i thought the number might be a number in italy, but it turns out it was a 503 number (portland's area code). Trev said "i don't know what the story is but call this number right away." so i called, very confused, and a nice man named Erik picked up the phone. I very vaguely referred to a missing camera asking if he knew anything about it, and he said he might know something about it. so i said my uncle in sicily called my brother and gave me your number to call about a camera i lost here in portland. and he asks, do you have brown hair? and i said yes, and he exclaims "i can't believe we found you!"

I have never been so shocked and so happy during my morning coffee before working at the spicy pickle! avery and max were there with me as i freaked out, listening to this amazing story about how this mans son works at the rose gardens... found my camera, and turned it into lost and found, after a month they returned the camera to him because no one had claimed it... and his family happened to have the same camera in their house so they charged it up and uploaded the pictures on the computer... then they decided to try to figure out who the camera belongs to! using my extensive pictures from sicily... none of them involving names or places, they pieced together all the information they could, from the time on a persons watch in the background of a photo to the placement of the sun and the sea which clued them into which part of sicily to start searching google earth for. i suddenly became so happy that my uncle had made me photograph things i wouldn't normally photograph, like the hilton hotel in porta rosa, or the giant mound of pummus stone in lipari.

i met with the family today at starbucks and they printed out a few of my pictures along with pictures they found online of certain places. it was impeccable. they guessed i was visiting my grandparents. they found the town montalbono and realized that my grandparents probably lived there, they gave me the name Silvi and were determined to return my camera to me. they wrote the city hall in montalbono, translated a letter into italian, and attached a picture of my uncle benito, asking if they could help find the person who this camera belonged to. luckily my uncle was a journalist for montalbono growing up and everyone in that town knows who he is. about 5 days after they sent the letter, I had called them up from portland coffee house... and now i have my camera back-- but more than that... i have such an inspired sense of the magic of kindness. i want to do kind things for strangers, i feel like i owe the universe something big, and i'd like the challenge of passing this wonderful gift along.

its amazing how someone found me by contacting my relatives in sicily. and how my story became part of their mystery. it's really beautiful what that incredible amount of kindness from complete strangers put back into my life. i can only hope to pass this kindness on in other forms, letting the magic continue when the right moment arises.