The hills rise around like breaths and innumerable perfections bounce at the fall of sunset. That is why St. Francis could survive on so little - on the simple things he would come to carve out from this place and then turn it into policy for countless followers for centuries.

Assisi sits high above the sunflowers fields that surround, although not to far away are countless larger places like the amazing Perugia. This is the countryside of Umbria and in the short time I had to explore it, I fell in love with the way it did not pretend to be so much more than it was.

I am standing in front of churches that don’t boast large ornate stonework, but embrace simple rises to heaven. The alleys are delicately balanced. I spend a couple hours roaming here, peaking into the chambers that people live in, housed only by books and thin blankets.

There are times I see simple as a level of suffering and then when contrasted by the excesses of Rome or American life, you understand the retreat - but the question always haunted me about balance. The gardens here are extraordinary, even in the fall. A gate hangs open and welcomes. Bells drop their heads, staircases to overlooks are hidden but treasure you for finding them.

As night descends, I am taking picture after picture of the alleys and the ways that light seems to unleash as it leaves. Andre and I never tour the great church of the town - and to be honest, after all the churches we had been entering and exiting, I wanted to stay outside where the sky had become dark with cloudcover intermingling with breaks.

Like the many tourists that parade through during the warm months, St. Francis was an icon that represented the lynch pin between the Ghandis and the Popes, presenting the space of peace as a perfect simplicity from which to honor a deity. As an agnostic, my ears tune out the institutional devotions in favor of a conceptual clarity - a goblet and plate, a belief in the absence of excess. All my life has been excess (continues to be) and it becomes increasingly complicated to replace them with absences.

At dinners, we are offered the wine and as I have done my whole life, I have declined. In recent discussions, my chosen sobriety has begun to ring louder. To some, I appear like a recovering alcoholic. Perhaps, others see me as deeply moralistic about alcohol. In the end, to discover I have never taken up alcohol or drugs not the moral arguments that pervade the sober majority places me in an odd brotherhood involving the choices away from social norm. Simply put, think how different your experiences and life might be with the absence of alcohol completely - not just in a newfound sobriety, but the first drink as a teenager (or before?), the events that rallied around beer (keggers, Super Bowl Parties), etc. Recovering alcoholics know what I mean simply because temptation is a vocal bitch in heat in American society (gay society has built its institutions around it), but in the act of removing the drink and then the hangover, social forays, common discussions, cultures encircling wine and beer and scotch - you find a new perception of simplicity.

Not that I have ever been simple. I bought two pieces of ceramic, a picture frame, a box for pictures, and more while in this little town. All hand-made. And the streets were so empty that I had all the time in the world to talk shop with shopkeepers and learn about their work.

What I came to find joy in was how far I have to go to balance out the extreme absence of objects and their takeover of my life. We all have this fight, no? But in a place like this, you can see why it was easier to sacrifice the pleasures of things when you could dump them and run through fields or climb down the hill…or just look up and feel so much closer to the heavens - a luxury far more difficult to possess.