Shadow and Sun of Mantua

 Mantua pics weeks later. Sorry for the formatting. Enjoy!

Random

Abandoning any hope of composition in this chaos . . .

For those of you that have been keeping up, I really enjoyed my Aquarian Brezsnyscope this week. And yes, I totally agree with him about reality. And I thought it oddly true of yesterday and today.

This morning I had to get up much earlier for the lovely procrastination of the students furiously typing up bibliography pages 5 minutes before deadline. This allowed me to see BLUE. Like really nice after dawn yesterday rain washed complimenting cathedral peak BLUE. Agreeing with most of the world, the spirit behind blue is worth the lack of sleep. Water and sky and all the mirroring therein. Blue.

And since pigeons didn’t manage to wake me, I was reminded by my radio that I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Thankfully, because imagine the gaping hole of nothingness inherent in satiation — beyond the feeling of accomplishment. What would I do with myself without the constant quest and struggle for meaning? Sleep more . . . and hope for a dream? 

Oh, and the parents are coming. And spring break is next week. That means I may dissappear for awhile but I’ll be back. And I’ll be here tomorrow, so . . . ciao.

discombobulated

Maybe I need sleep, or to stop reading Kierkegaard at night, but I’ve entered this extra strange state.

This week is mid-term week, for those of you not familiar with working in academic libraries, this is the equivalent of accountants on April 14th. I’ve extended the hours at the library and still need a cattle prod to get the students out at night. All of this is not really my way of eliciting sympathy, every working stiff has their moments, but just as an explanation for my current state of mind.

Life is completely surreal and mundane. I can’t explain the contradiction but I think it has something to do with living a normal life in a strange land. I’m doing all of the stuff I normally do . . . go to work, answer questions, find a book, deal with faculty . . . then I take lunch and try to escape the Duomo’s presence. You can’t in some parts of town. Everywhere you look, there it is. And the language, I hear everything lately and way too much English. Tourists are beginning to get in my way with their picture taking and ahhing and then I look at what they are enthralled with and am blown away. Of course they are standing there taking pictures. I feel like the idiot that is slowly forgetting to keep my eyes open. Now I’m wondering everything I missed in my life at home. Habit breeds blindness.

I want it to stop.

Man-to-man, woman-to-woman

Don’t get too excited  . . . I’m really just talking friendship. Men in Italy think nothing of walking down the road, arm in arm with each other. The other day walking down Albizi, I actually saw a man on a bike with his friend walking next to him with arms locked. No, it really isn’t what you are thinking (stop it Will). That is just the way they are here. Old friends link arms; I do occasionally see it with women, but not as often. The really old friends, grey heads and wrinkled smiles, are my favorite. It appears as if they are leaning into each other for support. Appropriate behavior once you’ve spent a lifetime together, don’t you think?

Several things make me sad about this. First, when did American men become so uptight about showing compassion towards each other? There is assumption and often (unfortunately) stigma if two men express companionship with each other. It seems wrong in a world that needs more humanity that we can’t touch the ones we care about without misinterpretation. On the flip side, revealing another reality, is that here—based on observation and chats with Italians—women rarely have true honest soul searching friendships with each other. Female friendships revolve around talking about husbands and children. One Italian told me she wanted to move back to the US mainly because her friends there meant more to her than the ones here. Italy, for all of its love of the Madonna, the mother, the lover and the feminine seems to lack a community between women. For someone who is incredibly fortunate to have female friends that give guidance, strength, memory, (therapy!) and love that void would be too much.

And on a completely unrelated, related note, read this poem.

Kitchen Window—Morning

Usually, before the alarm, the cooing of pigeons wakes me. I appreciate their soft murmur prodding me into consciousness. By the time I shower, and make coffee the day feels almost complete in its beginning, but my final act, cup in hand is to open the kitchen window. I tell myself it is to check the weather, but really it is just a way to let the outside world mend its way to me before the door.

So today my window tells me it is raining. The moss growing on the red tile looks greener. The square, rectangle, and arch of the neighboring windows look honestly irregular in their random patchwork. Rain means it is warmer — those clouds holding heat in. Funny how it cools in the summer—it does so much. What the window does not say, but I should have known, is what else the day would bring — news of death, news of life — and from this distance, all I can do is write. A reaction of words only. And so I do. The large cycle continues and a small day starts.

To the composer celebrating another year lived, relish whatever this day brings. Make it honest and yours. And to friends in grief and joy, all my love.

 

Ruins

Damage done to many of the ruins, castles, and palaces for the most part was not weather or even war related (this is especially true in southern Tuscany). Towns would get abandoned by the plague, poor crops, better commerce elsewhere and those that came later would need building materials for their homes. Imagine the wealth of stone and marble left behind. The thought of a former ruler’s bedroom wall now being used for a farmer or fishmonger’s home seems to bring balance into the equation. Not justice, just balance. I feel that, though they were on some level bringing about a blank spot in a future architectural historian’s mind, their act of pillage and plunder for survival is as significant to history as the Medici’s. Repopulating a place of lonely stone with flesh, voice, food, life.

I want to take a lesson from these foragers. Find some brilliant structure of my past and refashion it to my present day self. Lost love becomes poetry. Forgotten fears become strength. Dreams I have not dared to touch somehow reach back out and tug, pull, force my hand again. Wouldn’t it be nice to stumble on our rough stone, look out to see it jutting into our psyche’s landscape and grasp the potential?

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Back-up Tango Rose

There was a sudden realization Saturday night of Florence being a city that beckons one to have a back-up tango rose. Now, I realize most of us do not have a tango rose to begin with, and to be perfectly honest, I normally do not either. But there is a little cafe I go into where occasionally an aging dottore (doc) likes to have an impromptu tango. I can’t really tango, but you know how I love to dance, so I try to oblige. But I am humbled by the best performances involving the rotund cafe owner and the dottore in a passionate, if not awkward, tango. The two men give the look, music plays, and hilarity follows. 

Late nights can be like that, thus the back-up tango rose. 

My rose, a lovely pink, was purchased for me by some friendly natives at Angie’s Irish Pub. I’m sending a virtual one to Mark F. who I believe is celebrating a birthday today. And to the rest of you, go out and find your back-up tango rose and dance with abandon (even if it is just in spirit).

Virgil was here

I visited Mantua yesterday. Stone cold Mantua, as I’ll now think of it. Before I begin, for anyone considering taking a bus through the mountain regions of Italy, consider valium before the trip. And I heard a horrible story about people going to assist accident victims on the other side of the bridge not realizing there was a gap that plummets to the bottom of the mountain, falling several 100 feet to their death. For those of you who can, imagine the impression that made on me.

Mantua, in spite of the cold, is lovely. Driving on a bridge with it back lit in the fog and afternoon rays, it looked like a ghost town. Surrounded by lakes, I’m certain I would visit again in the summer. Really lovely. We toured the Palazzo del Te, a mannerist masterpiece by Giulio Romano, which houses the famous painting on the ceiling that shows Apollo’s, umm, underside as he is riding the chariot. Very up close and in person, I couldn’t help but be struck by the sense of humor by Romano.

After that was the Ducal Palace, or as I now think of it, the coldest place on the planet (never wish to live in a palace, or you could end up here on a February day). However, incredible art in here. The room of giants, where Zeus crushes them by blowing up stone with his thunderbolts, uses the entire room as the canvas. No surface is left untouched. The tapestries, how? Anyway, I can’t explain it all because at some point my brain began to frost over. Oh, but the family that built it thought it would be a great idea if their horses could take them to their rooms, so ramps wound up into their bed chamber. Part of me, of the never ending stairs, relates.

However, the best and warmest thing about Mantua, once again involves food — the local dish. Pumpkin stuffed ravioli in butter and cheese. Mmmmm. Just thinking about it brings the moment my tastebuds rejoiced dancing back into my mind. Perhaps not as tasty as the pear and cheese ravioli I will insist all of my visitors try when they come, but very close.

I had my camera for this trip, but haven’t developed the film yet. Will post when I can.

we need more words

Campanilismo — a word expressing allegiance, attachment, and pride in your town. Roughly it translates into love for your bell tower.

I learned this yesterday while sitting in on an Italian 1 class and the instructor, Luca (I love that name), asked if Americans have a similar word. Someone said patriotism (but that is for country); we tried to explain that the concept is there to a certain extent in regions (Texans are proud of that fact; Southerners and Northerners go out of their way to differentiate from each other; there is a west coast, east coast sensibility; etc.) but we lack a word that expresses that. Unless you can think of one?

The discussion re-awakened my belief in the limits of language. Last summer, I was struck by the lacking specificity of the word “love”. We use the same word for loving cats, friends, family, lovers, husbands, wives. Just love. The same is true of the word lonely. You can be lonely in a crowd, lonely alone, and the worst kind of lonely—lonely in love.

It is exquisite frustration so much meaning depends on context. Writing rewards when it overcomes the maddening ambiguities. I’ll keep trying to get it right here; my first public viewing of my words. It may not always be creative, or reasonable, but I’ll keep trying. And I love everyone’s feedback — public or not.

Limoncello: a haiku

My throat and mind meet

Yellow sour liquid sweet 

Inhibition flies away . . . 

OK, so it’s bad haiku. And for what it is worth, I was warned about the dangerous effects of Limoncello. I even followed the advice to some extent; I only had one (!) admittedly after several (no several) glasses of wine. Wow, or, as the nice coffee shop man who later got to hear portions of my life story and teach me much needed Italian profanity, would say “Ai, yiy, yiy, yiy”. I can still hear the laughter of our merry troop as we jumbled, bumbled down the street.   

Beware small glasses 

of after-dinner golden 

free aperitifs . . .    I’ll stop torturing you now.