I saw Ötzi today. There was something about looking at a mummy, someone who lived 5,000 years ago, and had these super functional items: footwear, an axe, a backpack of sorts. Flints. A bow. Arrows. Artisan stitched quiver. Maple leaves to wrap glowing embers to get a fire going. Down the road from the museum was a ZARA, and chain shoe stores (I looked because I am sans walking boots at the moment). And I thought how LAZY we have become in the last 5,000 years. This guy’s fashion was about SURVIVAL. OK, I know we’ve had various innovations since the copper axe. Trains have been invented (and I do love catching the train in this part of the world) and the iPhone (Quite a leap, there, I know!!)… But what I mean is— where did it go awry? Why can’t we get back to basics? The necessities. None of this superfluous stuff to complicate our existence and fuel some kind of unhappy with the flints of fashion.

Says me, heating up my hot cocoa on a stove I snubbed when I first got here, after a 5x burner gas stove in Milano. And streaming catch up episodes of Downton Abbey. Heck, even writing this sketch. Do I really want to revert to the way we were living in this region (South Tyrol) 5,000 years ago? No! I like the security of walls and doors, airplane travel to get ‘home’ … and I prefer Caesar salad to ibex for a meal. Still, I question it all. And I’m grateful for the ice, which enabled the freeze-dry process of this man — who, I discovered, could even have been a shaman. A mysterious birch object with healing properties among his possessions leads to this claim. Brad Pitt has him tattooed (though this wasn’t noted in the museum). Ötzi, too, had several non-decorative tattoos, supposedly for pain relief. And he is still teaching us stuff, some 5,000 (and 20+/-) years on.