While my late and beloved husband Renato and I lived in Turin, we made the pilgrimage up the steep climb to visit the Sacra di San Michele, also known as Saint Michael's Abbey.
This towering stone fortress is still a functioning abbey and as far back as the 11th century it has served as a strategic outpost between Italy and France. The view from the abbey is distant; a perfect valley far below stretching as far as one can see in both directions. Lofty, timeless; it stands as a celestial wonder.
The abbey's namesake, the archangel Michael is always portrayed engaged in his eternal fight with Satan and it is said most all the churches and abbeys bearing Saint Michael's name are built on hard-to- reach places. Sacra di San Michele is no exception.
Why do I ponder the great abbey San Michele today? Let me put it this way: I think anyone who has listened to my previous audio notes will fully understand why this fortress stands as my current life's metaphor.
With Renato's passing, I assumed a strategic, survival position - strengthened by my resolve for justice against those who have tortured us for years. I have never been more motivated, more pissed off and have never worked as hard as I am now.
I am now safe in my strategic outpost, my metaphorical fortress high above the death cultists' skirmishes below me. I watch as they approach and then fall away because they can not breach the fortress which in this case...I have built. And am still building.
The walls around me rise higher each time I defend myself, Renato and our books and the gates below are well guarded by my very persistence..
In essence I have spent years - more than a decade- building this fortress of truth and memory.
Stone by stone, I raised its walls — each stone laid with care, each fact about Valentino we presented, each defense we proposed. The walls grew higher, and now they shield me against the storm of lies still howling outside.
Oh how the liars circle, brandishing their torches, shouting their delusional accusations, but inside these walls, I know who I am.
High on a mountain top, like the Sacra di San Michele, I rise— a monumental effort in stone - above the din of the cultists' false tongues.
I laid each stone of this fortress with undeniable facts. Within these walls, I do not beg to be believed.
I do not kneel before the cult's fleeting opinions of the day. The truth about our fine subjects... Valentino and Rambova requires no permission.
Let them shout their deceitful falsehoods about me as they flail about on the empty fields below — my fortress of truth needs no answer.
Today by chance I caught a few seconds of a video posted online of the person I call the cult leader. When I saw this quick sighting of the man who has led the campaign to harass and ruin Renato and I for years, I had one immediate thought - one word - thief.
I was not surprised this word came to my mind because the cult leader's ambition was never to build up, but to steal — to gather the truths of others, to twist them, to erase what he could not own. For years, he cast his nets, hoping to snare my story, my book Affairs Valentino, my life, my name. But truth is not a possession. It is a force, and it built these walls protecting me now.
For one moment there he was on my computer screen... still posturing in his ceremony inside the Valentino crypt, still circling the tomb of another man's greatness — and yes, in fact the word which came to my mind was thief.
Not challenger. Not victor. Not hero. Only thief.
He is a thief of history, of memory, and of dignity. A thief who tried to rewrite the past to suit his own hollow needs. But he cannot rewrite the truth housed within these walls. He cannot steal the fortress.
He can only shout into the empty wind and hope someone, anyone, will listen. But I no longer listen. I hear only the quiet strength of the stone, the echo of the love Renato and I built, and the certainty of our truths.
I muse today from this place — this fortress of endurance, of loyalty, of righteous rage and higher purpose. Here, the air is fresh and pure, and from this windswept pinnacle, I gaze down with a clear heart.
I have risen beyond their reach.
The fortress holds.
Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum.
Arrivederci.✦
And to the light that outlived the dark.
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