I was listening to an Italian friend of mine talk about a very heated conversation she had had with her boss early last week.

Everyone shades a conversation gesturally. Even on the phone, it's impossible not to sketch in the air. So don't be lazy and pin a stereotype to my forehead at this point, or throw that Latin passion gibe at me, but as my friend got to describing an especially fierce and storm-ridden region their argument had reached, she instinctively sat bolt upright, swept both hands up from her stomach, and said that at that point, she could feel the fire within begin to burn, then erupt.

But, it was n't only the action, the rising up, that defiant intake of new energy, and how she described it, that bewitched me, it was the Italian phrase she used as well.

This was, she said, the moment of flusso di coscienza; the point for her, when the free association door popped open, and the emotions and feelings, the strength of argument flew out like worker bees leaving the hive.

It's a great phrase: the flusso has the sibilance of passion and the rude vigour of something elemently natural in the way it's pronounced; coscienza, for it's part evokes logic, stern argument, dialectics, reason, ethics. Both words yoked together by the sturdy preposition, di.

I can't stop thinking of this Italian expression. It's perfect.