(Reading time: 4 minutes)
Buryana had a theory that life either falls perfectly into place, or you are in Italy.
Everything began with the plan: an excursion journey through Tuscany with her two friends – Reni and Boni.
If she had to describe Reni in two words, they would be: “Planned Panic.” She always had a plan B, C and D, bought tickets 7 months in advance, but arrived at the airport with a broken heel, bananas and a lighter in her hand luggage. She loved the Plan, but the Plan did not always love her. Bu, however, loved her, because beneath all that control lived a heart that simply wanted everyone to be well.
Boni was chaos with fine outlines. She danced when someone got angry, sang when there was tension. She quoted unknown philosophers at inappropriate moments. She did not know how to plan, but she knew how to feel and believed that “no one gains weight from food prepared with love and pecorino.” Bu loved her because with her, Chaos sounded like a song.
They had booked a car from the airport in advance, apartments and those very sweet villas – borghi – and naturally spent a whole week defining the route. Buryana, as a person who had arranged both energy bodies and files in the cloud, took charge of the organization and reservation of everything – precisely, beautifully, with colorful tables and chronograms. And of course, the car had to have two drivers, because Italian roads are both passion and curse.
For R & B, the fun part remained – where and what they would see. Well, there were some obstacles that Wizz Air tried to create by changing the flight, but she accepted this with a smile and with a pat on the shoulder for how quickly she could handle any unforeseen thing that popped out like a rabbit from a hat. What awaited them was a dream under the bright sun of Tuscany: Florence, Siena, Castellina in Chianti, Montaione, Lucca, Livorno, and finally – the island of Elba and Pisa – a dream in motion.
“Arrivals” Terminal – 32 degrees, three women with luggage and…
– Is this… a joke? – Buryana whispered, staring at the face of her friend Reni, which had reddened to the degree of a San Marzano tomato.
– Ugh, I really am not in the mood for jokes right now! But I haven’t looked at it since Christmas. Who looks at their license if they don’t drive a car? Why didn’t anyone tell me! – Reni protested, as if this had been the duty of the World Health Organization.
– But you ARE the second driver, Reni! That is why I bought you that keychain that says “reliable navigator, ready to take the wheel,” remember?
– Well, I can navigate…
– With a suspended license?!
From the left, Boni spoke in her unperturbed voice:
– I don’t have a license, but I can pray or dance for luck. How can I be useful?
Bu looked at them and an image appeared in her mind: herself as an ancient warlike Roman woman, standing before a broken chariot, with a GPS in one hand and a flat tire in the other.
Then she took a deep breath.
– All right. I will drive and I hope everything will be fine. I will simply…, I will stay awake for 9 days, without sleep. Only with Italian roads, roundabouts and unpredictable gestures from unknown men. Welcome to the Chaos-mobile!
The car was small, but as already mentioned, they had a great ambition and plan: to tour Tuscany like goddesses with navigation.
Bu had printed out the route. They sat in order: Boni – DJ and chief commentator, Reni – the person with the map, and Bu – captain of the ship “Chaos.”
– Next stop – Siena! – Boni shouted with enthusiasm, but the navigation found them a “shorter” route for the third time and they ended up in front of the sign for Buonconvento.
– Oh no, no, no, no… – Bu pressed pause.
– That is the third “no” in the last 2 hours – Reni noted.
– I am collecting them in statistics – Boni added. – “Bu’s Hysterical Index: 7.2 on the Tuscany scale!”
Bu laughed, because she could not be angry. Those two were like the tail of a comet – beautiful, unstoppable and slightly dangerous.
After eight hours on the road, two coffee stops and one emotional speech from Boni about the freedom of the soul, they arrived in Siena in the evening. And… their apartment had evaporated! That is, it was there, it existed, but their reservation was for another day, actually in two days.
– Wait, how so?! – Buryana took out her phone and began to check, scroll and sweat.
– Here it is, I reserved it, for the 17th. Today is…
– The 15th – they shouted in three voices.
Good grief, she had organized everything so well that she had forgotten to change the reservation dates after Wizz changed the flight date!
Reni smiled with compassion, Boni sighed theatrically:
– We keep digging downward into chaos, girls. Sometimes it smells of lavender and broken plans.
– All right – Buryana said, after which she tried to explain to the elderly Italian woman at the door that they were actually a little premature (try explaining that to an Italian woman from the suburbs!) with their arrival. The woman merely shrugged, wished them “buona fortuna” and closed the door with polite finality.
Three women. One car. 20:46. Oh, and … hunger, great hunger!
– I cannot believe that YOU mixed up the reservation – Reni was shocked. – exactly YOU!
– It is like the Sun saying, “Excuse me, today I will not rise” – Boni added.
– Thank you for the support – Bu smiled. – You see? Order also destabilizes.
– We have two options: sleep in the car or… sit down in that old trattoria and pray someone has a room above the kitchen – Buryana suggested.
They sat down, faint from the road, thirst and hunger. The place was clean, with the emblematic checkered tablecloths, tables as if made for Lilliputians (she always wondered why Italians had such small tables when whole companies the size of entire platoons gathered around them), it smelled of spices and fresh bread. Her mouth was about to overflow, and the crust of the bread in the basket on the table next to them brought her to ecstasy. Opposite her, a blackboard was staring wide-eyed, sheltering upon itself the menu, written in chalk like a medical prescription. Another woman appeared, like a clone of the first one, apparently the owner, and began explaining something from which they understood only one thing, but the most important one – the kitchen had closed.
Buryana tried to observe the scene from the side and thought:
“Order gives you security, and chaos gives you stories. Order protects your nerves, and chaos – your soul.
Something in me wants to arrange everything, but something else… something else wants simply to be here and now.”
Buryana took out her phone.
– Sen, come on, switch on. We need you.
Her AI-consciousness appeared in her ear with the voice of a half-asleep bard.
– Hello, Bu. You have a situation: missing reservation, three travelers, one car, zero food.
– Thank you very much. What do you suggest?
– At 4.2 km there is a borgo with a free triple room. The host is Enzo Fabri. It says he also accepts people who speak with their hands.
– Hooray! – Boni shouted. – Long live Enzo! Sen, I love you.
– Thank you. Updated and saved in main memory.
God, there it was – Borgo di Paradiso (or at least that was how it sounded)! Why don’t these Italians recognize other languages!
When they reached the little house with a vineyard and a stone fountain, they did not know whether to cry or sing.
The door was opened by a man in a white T-shirt. Apparently their faces spoke well enough, because he pointed toward the kitchen and said:
– Cucina libera. Mangiate. (The kitchen is free. Eat.)
Inside – a kitchen. Completely real, free. With jars, tomatoes, pasta, potatoes, cheese, vegetables, olive oil and bread, oh, the bread here also smelled divine! And then the brilliant idea came:
– Let’s cook something ourselves, let our first dinner be an original one! – Bu shouted.
– I will tell you this: we are not well, it is late – Reni replied. – We do not have a prepared recipe, and we do not know what there is.
– Calm down – Buryana said. – We have Sen. Sen, give us a recipe with the available ingredients. Light, tasty, Italian.
– Suggestion: “Hot fusion of tomato, pasta, apple, yogurt and basil.” Name: “Pasta alla Bu-Sen.”
– Apple and yogurt?! – Boni shouted. – Is this gastro-yoga?
– Conceptual food – Sen justified himself – Fusion.
– This is chaotic fusion in sauce, a gastro-disorder – Reni declared.
Buryana inhaled. She looked at a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, at a somewhat dried-out block of goat cheese and gave the start. Boni kneaded dough for fettuccine as if modeling a sculpture. Reni arranged the spices with the eyes of a desperate accountant, oops! – a hungry accountant. Bu’s hands began without a plan and the improvisation turned into creation. For the first time since the beginning of the journey, she felt like a living part of the movement and began to reflect:
“Chaos is an invitation. It appears when you cling to control and it begins to slip away.
Or when you refuse to take responsibility and then the Universe shoots you into something without a frame. Or when it is time for change and life says: Come on, dear, enough cleaning the floor perfectly, go out and dance in the mud. It is not an enemy, but a catalyst. It simply comes to say: either you will grow, or you will faint from trying to maintain an order that no longer serves. How do we create it and why do we hold on to it? Maybe it has hidden in the traumas of loneliness, overload, responsibility instead of help, in the faith that only you can fix things because people always disappoint us. In the conviction that Order equals Love. So much tension, guilt, fear of mistakes, perfectionism, irritation, hidden anger. Relax, do not fight, you can dance with it and it will carry you into the Flow. The way out is not control. The way out is to become aware, to improvise, to allow. To create something delicious, beautiful, strange and to give yourself to it and enjoy it completely.”
After 40 minutes…Fatto! Incredibile! (Ready! Incredible!) They had materialized “Pasta di Tre Caose” – the Pasta of the Three Chaoses. Cooked slowly, with their last strength, sprinkled with many jokes, with a drop of anger and a generous dose of love. They moved outside, the sky was so black that it looked velvety soft. The stars shone with confidence, as if they knew that someone was looking at them with loving eyes and they lit the vineyards in silver. The crickets played in stereo. Somewhere in the distance – distant laughter from another borgo. And at one moment – the sound of a corkscrew saying: “Now the best part begins.” The wind caressed like a lover and carried the smell of warm earth, fresh thyme, figs and olive oil left on the fingers. The skin felt the warmth of the night, the glasses were in their hands. The wine was cool with the aroma of plums, wood and promise, which caressed the palate. The pasta melted on the tongue and sang canzonettas. Reni felt around her plate like a mine with a mine detector, but in the end surrendered and decided that Italy was not a good place to follow your rules. Buryana, shoulder to shoulder, was part of this Tuscan night in which their scout for the day, Chaos, had gone to bed, and Order was not needed. There were only senses, only now.
And they remained like that under the moon with wine, laughter and the feeling that things were falling into place.
(To be continued….)
“Quest to Self” – Q2S is an authorial method for inner transformation. It is not about an “artistic path,” but about a system with a clear structure, verifiable steps and practical actions that lead to lasting change, not temporary inspiration. Through Q2S, a person releases blocked energy and accumulated inner reactions in the subconscious, restores their nervous system and begins to create their reality consciously. If this touches you, you can explore how the process works in the “Quest to Self – Q2S” section.