There are people in my life who believe I am starving in Africa. My ex-husband, bless his heart, even found the hotel where my double resides and tried to wire cash for the $1550 I owed for the nights I’d been staying there working for a program he believed in and believed me involved with: “Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education.” My daughter was filming in Baltimore and had not checked her voice mail, but when she checked it she said his voice was poignantly concerned. “Your mother is starving in Africa, wouldn’t you know it? And it would happen this month, my having just paid tuition at both your siblings’ colleges.”
I am wondering about those people who, like my ex-husband, do indeed believe I am starving in Africa. I suppose it’s not such a stretch to imagine, if I am capable of running out of money in Spoleto, I am likewise capable of running out of money in Africa and of being in Africa given the world looks awfully small when one spins a globe and sees the continent of North America looking so familiarly there, trailing South America, and then trace across the dotted line of latitude toward Europe and the landmass of Africa below and surmise from proximity and my own tendency to wander that I could practically step over the Strait of Gibraltar—at its narrowest point only eight miles wide. Even my father started getting phone calls: “Is Cindy in Africa?” These friends who did not have my alternative gmail address would call him to inquire and my sister claimed he was not the least concerned: “Well, I thought she was in Italy, but one never knows.”
I am trying to figure out which friends are the truest friends: Those who believe I am in Africa or those who read the message from my evil twin and knew right away that she was not I, either because they were already familiar with the scam or because they deduced from the voice of the message that the person writing could not possibly be me nor ethically could be me because I am not the sort to beg for even small sums of money, even from an ex-husband, even when desperate. Of course my closest friends had my gmail address and my phone number and wrote or called immediately to confirm, still there are gaps in communication always and I may never know how many now lost friends will persist through their lives believing I am starving, or even dead, in Africa.
For a moment, my truest friends seemed the very ones who do not know me, who simply heard my cry for help and did not even stop to think whether the message made sense or whether I was writing out of voice or character. Their generous response of wanting to send money regardless, wanting to ensure my well-being regardless of my state or whereabouts, seemed so genuinely loving that I fell into new philosophical quandary: Is it better to be loved or to be known? Or is the discrepancy entirely arbitrary? Isn’t love what helps us to be known and those souls so willing to save me from my erstwhile crisis in Africa possibly those who in the end truly know me, know at least what seeds of possibility lie not only within me but in the dark nights of all us who venture toward the edges of ourselves.
I suppose I should feel mostly rage over the violation: that some terrorist hacker has stolen my identity and perhaps the friendships of those whose only tether to my life was an address on my Yahoo contact list. I must say I am sad for the years’ worth of saved correspondence now lost in cyberspace; I doubt my evil twin has much use for old love letters. Even so, I woke up this morning deeply challenged in the right ways to recreate myself, as though the ablutions of the day before had been timely and meaningful, a sorting out of the chaff from the grain, the seeds from the lentils, a way of cleaning the slate and making fresh commitments. Shaman journeys come to mind: something about me is working for good in Africa. I step over some Strait of Gibraltar within myself and chase after her.
giovedì 31 gennaio 2008
martedì 29 gennaio 2008
Winter Picnic
It seemed a fluke that the sun rose to our occasion. The text message had arrived from Michelle early in the week when leaden clouds hung desperately close to us, blocking out all hope of sudden rays or even warmth enough for brisk giri of the Rocca. She was going to put together one of her picnics for Saturday. Who said picnics could only happen when the fields were bristling wildflowers? Maybe we could drive up to the field at the top of Monteluco and spread out blankets and feast under a winter sky.
Umbrians call the last three days of January i giorni dei merli, Blackbird Days, days legend claims to be so cold that white doves turn black to just to hide from cold. And indeed, the way things have been going for most of us, I have kept in mind that these are traditionally the worst days of the year, the bleakest, the most isolated, the time when dogs like Sosso die, and friendships go crazy, and Seasonal Affective Disorder reaches peak, and vitamin D levels fall to make everyone cranky and miserable and not sure life is really worth living, after all, or if worth living, not the way one is currently living it—where and with whom, doing what seems suddenly not worth doing at all. Think of last January, I tried to reassure Michelle on the phone, all the things that went wrong, the people we were not speaking to. Remember the day just before the 1st of February—yes, one of i giorni dei merli—when I almost gave up on life here and moved back to the States. Yes, I told Michelle, it would be a fine thing to get together and even eat together, but why not at Ferretti by the huge open fireplace with the grill upon which the waiters toss the Umbrian sausages and porkchops and steaks to sizzle and pop right on the flames while they keep refilling our glasses with wine from Montefalco. I had no desire to be out in the cold. “We’ll talk on Saturday,” Michelle dismissed me, as though trusting the power of her intention—and the feast she would prepare—to sway the weather.
Saturday came around and it seemed disorienting: to wake up—late for me—at eight in my dark shuttered room and see just beyond the crack of the door a lemon yellow light that seemed unnatural as though something surreal were going on outside—something unname-able and too close to dreams to make sense, lemon water maybe, lemon jello, the world gone yellow from the birth of a new sun. I tip-toed into the hall, somewhat disbelieving, reticent, but sure enough it was only ordinary sunlight streaming in from an extraordinary sky so blue it did not belong to winter and certainly not to i giorni dei merli, not that Saturday was a bona fide giorno dei merli given it was only the 26th, three days short.
I am told it is a sure sign of insanity to believe one’s wishes can control the weather. That is what madmen do: wave their fists at the sky and demand Spring when it is Winter. Pink sky at night, sailors delight; pink sky at morning, sailor take warning—we must humble ourselves before the elements, beneath the neutral, uncaring sky. But how the day seemed made for us, as we spread out quilts and pillows in the field and began to unpack a feast that would put Babbette to shame: potato/farro soup with chili croutons; wild green salad; baked ricotto with black cabbage on a bed of rucola garnished with cherry tomato halves and pickles wrapped in procuitto. Prosecco fizzed in our fluted glasses, an orange and almond cake twinkled with honey and sugar garnishing…and the steady, caring light made us all feel gifted by a miracle.
Today is a bona fide giorno dei merli, and yet the sunshine and warmth persist like a promise, enough of a promise that Daniela and I did 12 giri della Rocca this morning, tirelessly, commenting over and over how much we needed this time, this clearing of the weather, this light, this joy, this evidence of another time and place and season beyond the winter we will surely endure.
Umbrians call the last three days of January i giorni dei merli, Blackbird Days, days legend claims to be so cold that white doves turn black to just to hide from cold. And indeed, the way things have been going for most of us, I have kept in mind that these are traditionally the worst days of the year, the bleakest, the most isolated, the time when dogs like Sosso die, and friendships go crazy, and Seasonal Affective Disorder reaches peak, and vitamin D levels fall to make everyone cranky and miserable and not sure life is really worth living, after all, or if worth living, not the way one is currently living it—where and with whom, doing what seems suddenly not worth doing at all. Think of last January, I tried to reassure Michelle on the phone, all the things that went wrong, the people we were not speaking to. Remember the day just before the 1st of February—yes, one of i giorni dei merli—when I almost gave up on life here and moved back to the States. Yes, I told Michelle, it would be a fine thing to get together and even eat together, but why not at Ferretti by the huge open fireplace with the grill upon which the waiters toss the Umbrian sausages and porkchops and steaks to sizzle and pop right on the flames while they keep refilling our glasses with wine from Montefalco. I had no desire to be out in the cold. “We’ll talk on Saturday,” Michelle dismissed me, as though trusting the power of her intention—and the feast she would prepare—to sway the weather.
Saturday came around and it seemed disorienting: to wake up—late for me—at eight in my dark shuttered room and see just beyond the crack of the door a lemon yellow light that seemed unnatural as though something surreal were going on outside—something unname-able and too close to dreams to make sense, lemon water maybe, lemon jello, the world gone yellow from the birth of a new sun. I tip-toed into the hall, somewhat disbelieving, reticent, but sure enough it was only ordinary sunlight streaming in from an extraordinary sky so blue it did not belong to winter and certainly not to i giorni dei merli, not that Saturday was a bona fide giorno dei merli given it was only the 26th, three days short.
I am told it is a sure sign of insanity to believe one’s wishes can control the weather. That is what madmen do: wave their fists at the sky and demand Spring when it is Winter. Pink sky at night, sailors delight; pink sky at morning, sailor take warning—we must humble ourselves before the elements, beneath the neutral, uncaring sky. But how the day seemed made for us, as we spread out quilts and pillows in the field and began to unpack a feast that would put Babbette to shame: potato/farro soup with chili croutons; wild green salad; baked ricotto with black cabbage on a bed of rucola garnished with cherry tomato halves and pickles wrapped in procuitto. Prosecco fizzed in our fluted glasses, an orange and almond cake twinkled with honey and sugar garnishing…and the steady, caring light made us all feel gifted by a miracle.
Today is a bona fide giorno dei merli, and yet the sunshine and warmth persist like a promise, enough of a promise that Daniela and I did 12 giri della Rocca this morning, tirelessly, commenting over and over how much we needed this time, this clearing of the weather, this light, this joy, this evidence of another time and place and season beyond the winter we will surely endure.
venerdì 18 gennaio 2008
A Taste for Trains
I almost convinced Daniela to take the train with me to Perugia this morning, but as usually happens when I almost convince her to do anything, she changed her mind. “What’s wrong with trains? Why won’t you ever take a train?” I insisted she think about it. “It’s the way they taste,” she explained, grimacing, making a tsking sound with her tongue as though her palette were suddenly producing the taste for her to spit at me. “I don’t know what it is, diesel fuel, iron…ecco…trains taste like iron. When I ride on a train, for the rest of the day my mouth tastes like train. I can’t stand it.”
I take the train from Spoleto to Perugia and then back again from Perugia to Spoleto at least twice a week, usually three or four times a week, and have been doing so for months and I can honestly say that they have never left a bad taste in my mouth, not even during a sciopero or strike, when I’ve had to readjust my entire schedule to board the only train-of-the-day serving commuters. Not even when the Eurostar sat on the track ninety minutes with all the commuters sealed up inside it, with me thinking it would suddenly buck into ferocious, lightening speed action…any minute now, any minute, the minute refusing to come. How delightful it was to text-message my boss that there was a “guasto nella linea elettronica” realizing I did not even quite know how to translated “guasto” into English…some kind of problem in the electric line that would keep me sealed in Carozza 9 for god knew how long intent on whatever thoughts I was thinking at the time and I assure you I was not thinking of the taste or even the smell of the train.
Not even when I once took a train from Ravenna through Bologna to Naples or thought I was taking a train from Bologna to Naples until I reached Florence and was told that I’d boarded the wrong train and was actually heading toward Milan but could get off in Florence and take another train to Naples and so wound up spending half a life time on the train, this time in First Class, because no other seats had been available, with a little pull-out tray holding the only thing I remember tasting-- an endless Dixie cup of espresso and little cookies shaped like crescent moons dipped in chocolate.
If I had a better head for arithmetic I’d start calculating how many hours of my life I’ve spent on trains and am sure I would come up with a staggering figure comparable to those arrived at when one discovers that humans spend a third of their lives sleeping. I am never bored on trains, never anxious for them to reach their destinations. There are days I read or grade papers or even pull out my laptop to write a letter or a story or stream ideas for a book; there are other days I press my head against the cool window glass and read over and over, a zillion times perhaps, “Non gettate alcun oggetto dal finestrino”—don’t throw things out the window—read the words as though they were haiku conveying something metaphysical. There are days I do watch the landscape, pretending the train is what’s stationary, all Umbria is flashing by, like celluloid, like what Keats must have meant when he said the world is “a vale of soul making.” It’s the vale that glides by, outside the window, making my soul—creating it!—while I sit idly on the idle train tasting nothing in my mouth but my own spit.
There are days I strike up conversations with random fellow-travelers, surprisingly rare days, given how much I travel and how many eyes I meet, rare enough that, when someone does break through the forcefield of my aura, he or she seems mysteriously important, a ghost from time past or time future, a guardian of thresholds, an angel bearing messages I will need for whatever turn my life is taking around the next bend, on the outside of the tunnel the train enters when all cell-reception is lost and the lights go dim and there you are with a stranger who is never really strange, no matter how foreign, his or her words hanging heavily in the air between us.
There are days I think I live in Italy simply so I can ride the trains and feel myself hurtling from here to there, houses, family, lovers, jobs, friends fleeting scenery in something wilder going on, my entire life suddenly a trajectory of train trips, AMTRAK from Georgia to Washington, Baltimore to New York, derailing for the tranatlantic crossing that will restore me to the carozza in which I find myself today, where it seems I have always been, stowing away for the adventure, the only stench I do recall that which comes from the toilet, but a mere gust of air will dispell it, if one opens the window.
The train is all its metaphors, is the phallus, eros, kundalini, is time and force and industry, is life itself hurtling through history, careening toward inevitable death. I much prefer being a part of the central nerve, fire in the lightning, than waiting on the platform, watching it whiz past. I know only exhileration and the wonder of hills, trees, stations platforms, familiar faces appearing for a moment in the fog and then receding. I find Daniela herself at the crossing where road meets track, sealed up in her jeep, the windshield wiper's whacking at the glass, heading where I'm headed but so alone in the getting there her propensity for road rage doesn't surprise me, nor do her sudden about-face u-turns toward the safety of home. I've offered her chewing gum, Mentos, sacchettini of salty travel snacks, but how naive I can be, offering antidotes when I don't know the poison, suggesting cure when I've yet to determine if there's any illness at all to be cured in either one of us.
I take the train from Spoleto to Perugia and then back again from Perugia to Spoleto at least twice a week, usually three or four times a week, and have been doing so for months and I can honestly say that they have never left a bad taste in my mouth, not even during a sciopero or strike, when I’ve had to readjust my entire schedule to board the only train-of-the-day serving commuters. Not even when the Eurostar sat on the track ninety minutes with all the commuters sealed up inside it, with me thinking it would suddenly buck into ferocious, lightening speed action…any minute now, any minute, the minute refusing to come. How delightful it was to text-message my boss that there was a “guasto nella linea elettronica” realizing I did not even quite know how to translated “guasto” into English…some kind of problem in the electric line that would keep me sealed in Carozza 9 for god knew how long intent on whatever thoughts I was thinking at the time and I assure you I was not thinking of the taste or even the smell of the train.
Not even when I once took a train from Ravenna through Bologna to Naples or thought I was taking a train from Bologna to Naples until I reached Florence and was told that I’d boarded the wrong train and was actually heading toward Milan but could get off in Florence and take another train to Naples and so wound up spending half a life time on the train, this time in First Class, because no other seats had been available, with a little pull-out tray holding the only thing I remember tasting-- an endless Dixie cup of espresso and little cookies shaped like crescent moons dipped in chocolate.
If I had a better head for arithmetic I’d start calculating how many hours of my life I’ve spent on trains and am sure I would come up with a staggering figure comparable to those arrived at when one discovers that humans spend a third of their lives sleeping. I am never bored on trains, never anxious for them to reach their destinations. There are days I read or grade papers or even pull out my laptop to write a letter or a story or stream ideas for a book; there are other days I press my head against the cool window glass and read over and over, a zillion times perhaps, “Non gettate alcun oggetto dal finestrino”—don’t throw things out the window—read the words as though they were haiku conveying something metaphysical. There are days I do watch the landscape, pretending the train is what’s stationary, all Umbria is flashing by, like celluloid, like what Keats must have meant when he said the world is “a vale of soul making.” It’s the vale that glides by, outside the window, making my soul—creating it!—while I sit idly on the idle train tasting nothing in my mouth but my own spit.
There are days I strike up conversations with random fellow-travelers, surprisingly rare days, given how much I travel and how many eyes I meet, rare enough that, when someone does break through the forcefield of my aura, he or she seems mysteriously important, a ghost from time past or time future, a guardian of thresholds, an angel bearing messages I will need for whatever turn my life is taking around the next bend, on the outside of the tunnel the train enters when all cell-reception is lost and the lights go dim and there you are with a stranger who is never really strange, no matter how foreign, his or her words hanging heavily in the air between us.
There are days I think I live in Italy simply so I can ride the trains and feel myself hurtling from here to there, houses, family, lovers, jobs, friends fleeting scenery in something wilder going on, my entire life suddenly a trajectory of train trips, AMTRAK from Georgia to Washington, Baltimore to New York, derailing for the tranatlantic crossing that will restore me to the carozza in which I find myself today, where it seems I have always been, stowing away for the adventure, the only stench I do recall that which comes from the toilet, but a mere gust of air will dispell it, if one opens the window.
The train is all its metaphors, is the phallus, eros, kundalini, is time and force and industry, is life itself hurtling through history, careening toward inevitable death. I much prefer being a part of the central nerve, fire in the lightning, than waiting on the platform, watching it whiz past. I know only exhileration and the wonder of hills, trees, stations platforms, familiar faces appearing for a moment in the fog and then receding. I find Daniela herself at the crossing where road meets track, sealed up in her jeep, the windshield wiper's whacking at the glass, heading where I'm headed but so alone in the getting there her propensity for road rage doesn't surprise me, nor do her sudden about-face u-turns toward the safety of home. I've offered her chewing gum, Mentos, sacchettini of salty travel snacks, but how naive I can be, offering antidotes when I don't know the poison, suggesting cure when I've yet to determine if there's any illness at all to be cured in either one of us.
domenica 13 gennaio 2008
The Benediction
She said she’d dreamed of horses all night long, huge horses, galloping through her head, staring at her with bulging, ogly eyes that were still staring at her as she spoke, making her head throb, a head-ache I could not imagine, mal di testa so ferocious she had vomited. Could I explain to her the horses in her head, why they had done this to her?
I was trying to grade papers on the morning train, desperate to grade papers that I needed to hand back to my students almost as soon as I arrived in Perugia. I was, furthermore, plugged into an iPod, tuning out the world, taking advantage of the uninterrupted time I count on while commuting an hour each morning, just enough time to grade a thin stack of papers or write the emails that must go out to insure my morning progresses in the clockwork way that makes me feel one with the operations of the universe, all my gears and cogs lined up, the flow streaming through me in a way that makes all life feel like dancing. Could she not see that I was busy and that perhaps a dozen others in this carozza were not busy ? Why ever would this stranger choose me to confide in—not only choose me, but sit directly across from me, her feet tangled in mine even though there were two other seats available, the one next to me or across from the empty one next to me she could have chosen , and certainly dozens more in this carozza alone, not to mention the perhaps 20 other carozze on this long commuter train from Rome to Perugia that is never overcrowded at such a late hour of morning?
She looked far too ordinary to have horses in her head and far too ordinary to be the kind of woman who would prey on strangers, seemed in fact a little prim in her pink cardigan and buttoned-up cotton shirt, wisps of bangs brushed carefully to one side and stylish bug-eyed glasses precisely the model that my friend Orieta wears, but one of the lenses spotted with something white that made me want to rub my own eyes or offer her a handkerchief to help her see a little better even if it seemed she saw just fine and sat unblinking behind those lenses looking into my face as though I were not at all strange to her but clearly the woman she knew could explain to her about the horses.
I was hopeless before her and before the stack of papers I soon realized I would never get done and felt a kind of tingle at the nape of my neck that always signals a divine appointment and the need to surrender to it. Could it possibly be, I suggested, that the headache came first and the headache felt like horses running through her head and so she’d dreamed of the horses? “Puo darsi!” she’d shrugged, a polite “could be” though I could see her seeing that I just didn’t get it.
Soon we were at the station in Assisi and she pointed out to me the gru (yes, even in Italy they name cranes after the birds) and how the gru was pulling up the train tracks to lay down new ones—work that had to be done now and then; Lord knows it had to be done and it was high time, though such a frightful enterprise; just imagine where our lives would be if someone slipped up. She crossed herself, then kissed the fingers that had been doing the crossing and sprinkled some kind of blessing through the window to the men operating the gru. The train pulled out.
I believe she was able to tell me her entire life story in the few minutes it took us to get to Punto San Giovanni, one stop before my own in Perugia. She was from Foligno and had never owned a car, but rode a bike everywhere except for places she needed to reach by train--even up and down the hills and mountains, she rode her bike. That explained why she didn’t look old enough to have four sons in their 50s, the one married to a Cuban, though he hadn’t followed her to Cuba when she’d tired of Italy—could I imagine anyone tiring of Italy? No, I told her, I could not imagine, nor did I think I ever could or would tire of Italy or even Umbria; I hoped to stay here forever, for all my life, but how did one know such things. “Oh,” she assured me, “you have the mark of one who will stay here.” She smiled and she nodded and looked at me intently as though indeed she could find my future in my eyes. As she gathered herself to get off at her stop, she kissed her finger tips as she had for the boys in the gru and sprinkled her blessing on me. The horses were gone, she assured me, they’d run off into the hills. She wished me “tante belle cose”—many beautiful things—and I thought what a lovely salutation.
As I stepped off the train in Perugia, Time had taken on an interesting shimmy: My bus was waiting for me, a friend was waiting for me with a free seat beside her, some one else offered me a rose and almost all my fellow passengers seemed to have twinkles in their eyes--secrets to share with me had only I the courage or stamina to confront them one by one, moving up and down the aisle, "What are you thinking right now?" Once at school, moments that had once seemed too short began to swell with a kind of magnitude that allowed me to grade three papers in the time it usually takes me to grade one, allowed me to grade all my papers, the last note in the margins of the last paper appearing in green ink at just the moment the first student stepped into the room. The moment kept opening for me: an email from a friend I thought long gone—fourteen years since I’d heard from her—arrived this very day after uttering to a friend—“I wonder what became of the woman Rebecca from Boulder?” I suddenly got a chill, considering how a kiss delivered to the ethers can change so many things.
I was trying to grade papers on the morning train, desperate to grade papers that I needed to hand back to my students almost as soon as I arrived in Perugia. I was, furthermore, plugged into an iPod, tuning out the world, taking advantage of the uninterrupted time I count on while commuting an hour each morning, just enough time to grade a thin stack of papers or write the emails that must go out to insure my morning progresses in the clockwork way that makes me feel one with the operations of the universe, all my gears and cogs lined up, the flow streaming through me in a way that makes all life feel like dancing. Could she not see that I was busy and that perhaps a dozen others in this carozza were not busy ? Why ever would this stranger choose me to confide in—not only choose me, but sit directly across from me, her feet tangled in mine even though there were two other seats available, the one next to me or across from the empty one next to me she could have chosen , and certainly dozens more in this carozza alone, not to mention the perhaps 20 other carozze on this long commuter train from Rome to Perugia that is never overcrowded at such a late hour of morning?
She looked far too ordinary to have horses in her head and far too ordinary to be the kind of woman who would prey on strangers, seemed in fact a little prim in her pink cardigan and buttoned-up cotton shirt, wisps of bangs brushed carefully to one side and stylish bug-eyed glasses precisely the model that my friend Orieta wears, but one of the lenses spotted with something white that made me want to rub my own eyes or offer her a handkerchief to help her see a little better even if it seemed she saw just fine and sat unblinking behind those lenses looking into my face as though I were not at all strange to her but clearly the woman she knew could explain to her about the horses.
I was hopeless before her and before the stack of papers I soon realized I would never get done and felt a kind of tingle at the nape of my neck that always signals a divine appointment and the need to surrender to it. Could it possibly be, I suggested, that the headache came first and the headache felt like horses running through her head and so she’d dreamed of the horses? “Puo darsi!” she’d shrugged, a polite “could be” though I could see her seeing that I just didn’t get it.
Soon we were at the station in Assisi and she pointed out to me the gru (yes, even in Italy they name cranes after the birds) and how the gru was pulling up the train tracks to lay down new ones—work that had to be done now and then; Lord knows it had to be done and it was high time, though such a frightful enterprise; just imagine where our lives would be if someone slipped up. She crossed herself, then kissed the fingers that had been doing the crossing and sprinkled some kind of blessing through the window to the men operating the gru. The train pulled out.
I believe she was able to tell me her entire life story in the few minutes it took us to get to Punto San Giovanni, one stop before my own in Perugia. She was from Foligno and had never owned a car, but rode a bike everywhere except for places she needed to reach by train--even up and down the hills and mountains, she rode her bike. That explained why she didn’t look old enough to have four sons in their 50s, the one married to a Cuban, though he hadn’t followed her to Cuba when she’d tired of Italy—could I imagine anyone tiring of Italy? No, I told her, I could not imagine, nor did I think I ever could or would tire of Italy or even Umbria; I hoped to stay here forever, for all my life, but how did one know such things. “Oh,” she assured me, “you have the mark of one who will stay here.” She smiled and she nodded and looked at me intently as though indeed she could find my future in my eyes. As she gathered herself to get off at her stop, she kissed her finger tips as she had for the boys in the gru and sprinkled her blessing on me. The horses were gone, she assured me, they’d run off into the hills. She wished me “tante belle cose”—many beautiful things—and I thought what a lovely salutation.
As I stepped off the train in Perugia, Time had taken on an interesting shimmy: My bus was waiting for me, a friend was waiting for me with a free seat beside her, some one else offered me a rose and almost all my fellow passengers seemed to have twinkles in their eyes--secrets to share with me had only I the courage or stamina to confront them one by one, moving up and down the aisle, "What are you thinking right now?" Once at school, moments that had once seemed too short began to swell with a kind of magnitude that allowed me to grade three papers in the time it usually takes me to grade one, allowed me to grade all my papers, the last note in the margins of the last paper appearing in green ink at just the moment the first student stepped into the room. The moment kept opening for me: an email from a friend I thought long gone—fourteen years since I’d heard from her—arrived this very day after uttering to a friend—“I wonder what became of the woman Rebecca from Boulder?” I suddenly got a chill, considering how a kiss delivered to the ethers can change so many things.
venerdì 11 gennaio 2008
Teodelapio, Duke of Spoleto
Tourists are hard-pressed to name it or identify what it is—the monster-creature that takes up the entire parking lot in front of the train station. Taxis, even buses, are said to drive under it, through its legs, for they are surely legs—at least that part of the anatomy is clear. “It’s a Calder,” one might offer off-handedly to the uninitiated and, depending on the newcomer’s orientation to art, delight, bewilderment, indifference might arise. Here? Calder? What’s Calder doing in Spoleto?
“Teodelapio,” as the sculpture is called, was commissioned by Alexander Calder for the annual Festival dei due Mondi in 1962—the largest of his “stabile” or land creatures, which he began constructing after working for 30 years on “air” sculpture or mobiles. This particular work is made entirely of iron, all 59 feet of him, all 30 tons; cranes had to be brought in from Genoa’s shipyards to erect him, at first at a strategic intersection in the town centro. Now Teodelapio is to Spoleto what the Griffin is to Perugia—is its emblem and trademark, the stamp on all sugar packets.
What a strange totem for a city to adopt! A “docile dinosaur” it is often called, because of the size and certainly the prehistoric name, Teo-having something to do with god and the --delapio something perhaps to do with legs, all forged together into something that, like the name, seems dinosauric. Here the pre-historic meets the ultra-modern in the angular, abstract way that senza dubbio suggests the eternal sixties, the Dolce Vita decade and Spoleto’s special place in it, when Menotti’s Festival, four years up and running, was in its world-inspiring hay-day, attracting everybody who was anybody, Pavorotti, promenades of suave Marcello Mastroianni look-alikes, glamour divas in their bouffants and bug-eyed sunglasses. One steps off a train from anywhere, walks through the station into the light of day and finds Teodelapio waiting. Forget the Romans, the Lombards and the Borgias; Spoleto is not as medieval as it seems, brandishing its cross and fortified Rocca way up on yonder hill. It’s a trend-setting modern town, in gamba. It’s home of the festival. Calder came here. Calder left his mark.
In the Museo di Arte Moderne on Piazza Collico there is an entire room devoted to Calder, several of the images framed on walls lampooning the train station sculpture, which—if one blinks twice, looks closely (and one should!) is actually an erect penis: what seems the animal haunches is indeed the testes; the giraffe-like head’s the proud phallus with its distinctive, albeit pointy, functional head. The caricatures always depict it spouting…a kind of central fountain, bacchanalian, the jouissance of a creativity gone wild, perfect muse for a town dedicated to the arts, even if in recent years things seem a little “petered out.” Teodelapio reminds us there’s always hope of a comeback.
“Teodelapio,” as the sculpture is called, was commissioned by Alexander Calder for the annual Festival dei due Mondi in 1962—the largest of his “stabile” or land creatures, which he began constructing after working for 30 years on “air” sculpture or mobiles. This particular work is made entirely of iron, all 59 feet of him, all 30 tons; cranes had to be brought in from Genoa’s shipyards to erect him, at first at a strategic intersection in the town centro. Now Teodelapio is to Spoleto what the Griffin is to Perugia—is its emblem and trademark, the stamp on all sugar packets.
What a strange totem for a city to adopt! A “docile dinosaur” it is often called, because of the size and certainly the prehistoric name, Teo-having something to do with god and the --delapio something perhaps to do with legs, all forged together into something that, like the name, seems dinosauric. Here the pre-historic meets the ultra-modern in the angular, abstract way that senza dubbio suggests the eternal sixties, the Dolce Vita decade and Spoleto’s special place in it, when Menotti’s Festival, four years up and running, was in its world-inspiring hay-day, attracting everybody who was anybody, Pavorotti, promenades of suave Marcello Mastroianni look-alikes, glamour divas in their bouffants and bug-eyed sunglasses. One steps off a train from anywhere, walks through the station into the light of day and finds Teodelapio waiting. Forget the Romans, the Lombards and the Borgias; Spoleto is not as medieval as it seems, brandishing its cross and fortified Rocca way up on yonder hill. It’s a trend-setting modern town, in gamba. It’s home of the festival. Calder came here. Calder left his mark.
In the Museo di Arte Moderne on Piazza Collico there is an entire room devoted to Calder, several of the images framed on walls lampooning the train station sculpture, which—if one blinks twice, looks closely (and one should!) is actually an erect penis: what seems the animal haunches is indeed the testes; the giraffe-like head’s the proud phallus with its distinctive, albeit pointy, functional head. The caricatures always depict it spouting…a kind of central fountain, bacchanalian, the jouissance of a creativity gone wild, perfect muse for a town dedicated to the arts, even if in recent years things seem a little “petered out.” Teodelapio reminds us there’s always hope of a comeback.
lunedì 7 gennaio 2008
After Le Feste
Today all the women of Spoleto are complaining about their livers. They do their daily rounds of the Rocca, hoping to walk off yet another zillion calories from yesterday’s Feast of the Epiphany, but no one’s feeling very peppy. The weather is partly to blame: the air is heavy, the sky grey; over toward Assisi a strange darkness prevails, could be rain, could be nebbia or fog, could be some atmospheric beast with an underbelly so dark it is dragging across the horizon and coming after us. “Did you feel una goccia di acqua—a rain drop?” The women don’t know what to wish for: They really should do six, seven, eight kilometers to make up for the giri they did not do yesterday, but how nice it would be to have an excuse to go home. "My liver is proprio crazy.” “Mine, too!” the women confide, clutching their sides, relishing the opportunity to complain and compare symptoms.
It has always amazed me, how in touch Italian women are with their inner-organs. They seem to know exactly where yesterday’s pranzo has wound up, stuck, fermenting, agitating or simply refusing to behave. They complain about the taste of gastric juices, making little tsking sounds with their tongues or sticking them out to prove they are coated. They probe around under their ribs, trying to jab a lazy gall-bladder into functioning, trying to massage up fresher bile. “That pizza I ate last night, non mi va…didn’t go well…is still right here,” a friend will point, as though I can see straight through her parka, her skin, her abdominal wall, to the exact spot in her intestine where the wad of bread and cheese is stubbornly sulking. And it is sulking, behaving like a recalcitrant child, defying every effort one has made to stay “leggera”—light, unencumbered by the internal heft of over-eating.
Italian women do not follow the same health fads that American women do. Theories concerning anti-oxidants or Vitamin A or fiber or eating vegetables everyday are intellectually interesting and certainly worth reading about in the magazines while waiting for the hairdresser or a train, but ideas about nutrition are not nearly as important as how one feels after eating. Most women are not convinced it’s important to take vitamins. Water makes the belly bloat and, besides, who wants to be running to the bathroom to pee all the time—they’re not convinced drinking all that water is necessary. What is crucial is a kind of inner-hum of efficient digestive functioning. Women drink aloe vera, believe in aloe vera, said to heal the digestive track and keep it slippery. Intestinal flora is also something that makes perfect sense to them. The dairy section of the grocery store is over-stocked with a variety of yogurt products, mostly drinkable in little vials guaranteeing a certain proficiency of pro-biotics. Little pictures of transparent torsos show the probiotics at work: Golden stars of vivaciousness move happily from throat to colon, guaranteeing regularity and a tingling inner-freshness and leggerezza. The women trust the picture—viscerally it makes sense.
They want to be thin and generally are thin. When one eats too much one day, one fasts the next—simple. One can drink tea, perhaps a little fruit juice, if desperate. But then, if the liver is really agitated, one can always resort to artichoke soup—curried artichoke soup, which is the perfect antidote for cantankerous livers. The artichokes contain a chemical called “cinerina”—which works as a diuretic and also stimulates the bile—and the curry also stirs up gastric juices. After le feste, even if one is careful, even if one eats small portions, the variety of foods will make the liver sluggish. A few days of artichokes may well be the answer. This is a known remedy—one can feel oneself deflate and the organs start to tingle.
I do not think I over-ate yesterday. My liver seems just fine, though I’d be hard pressed to know precisely where it is in my abdomen, nor would I know how to poke my gall-bladder. Lord knows, I could lose several pounds, but I haven’t eaten breakfast and after eight rounds of the Rocca, eight kilometers of talk about digestion, food, stomachs, livers, hunger, I am ready for pranzo, something, perhaps just a drink at the bar.
“Let’s go out to lunch today,” I suggest to Daniela as we near the end of our last lap. She thinks I am kidding, making a joke. Food? Food? Who can think of food after un giorno di festa? I suggest a Campari Soda instead and again she’s incredulous: “Like alcohol and sugar are any better for us!” It’s one thing to drink at a café when the sun is shining, we try to convince each other, but quite another thing to stop with all our dogs in the rain.
“Perche’ no?” I insist as we approach the few tables the barista leaves out during the winter season.
Suddenly her face is transfigured by an insight. She almost squeals, recalling that Cynar is a bitter aperitivo made from artichokes! We can drink Cynar! It does indeed stimulate the gastric juices. It might not hurt us after all…it may indeed cure us...to stop for a drink.
And of course the pistachios and potato chips and spicy rice-crackers Mira brings with our drinks do not count. They are cosini, “little things,” and can hardly be considered food.
It has always amazed me, how in touch Italian women are with their inner-organs. They seem to know exactly where yesterday’s pranzo has wound up, stuck, fermenting, agitating or simply refusing to behave. They complain about the taste of gastric juices, making little tsking sounds with their tongues or sticking them out to prove they are coated. They probe around under their ribs, trying to jab a lazy gall-bladder into functioning, trying to massage up fresher bile. “That pizza I ate last night, non mi va…didn’t go well…is still right here,” a friend will point, as though I can see straight through her parka, her skin, her abdominal wall, to the exact spot in her intestine where the wad of bread and cheese is stubbornly sulking. And it is sulking, behaving like a recalcitrant child, defying every effort one has made to stay “leggera”—light, unencumbered by the internal heft of over-eating.
Italian women do not follow the same health fads that American women do. Theories concerning anti-oxidants or Vitamin A or fiber or eating vegetables everyday are intellectually interesting and certainly worth reading about in the magazines while waiting for the hairdresser or a train, but ideas about nutrition are not nearly as important as how one feels after eating. Most women are not convinced it’s important to take vitamins. Water makes the belly bloat and, besides, who wants to be running to the bathroom to pee all the time—they’re not convinced drinking all that water is necessary. What is crucial is a kind of inner-hum of efficient digestive functioning. Women drink aloe vera, believe in aloe vera, said to heal the digestive track and keep it slippery. Intestinal flora is also something that makes perfect sense to them. The dairy section of the grocery store is over-stocked with a variety of yogurt products, mostly drinkable in little vials guaranteeing a certain proficiency of pro-biotics. Little pictures of transparent torsos show the probiotics at work: Golden stars of vivaciousness move happily from throat to colon, guaranteeing regularity and a tingling inner-freshness and leggerezza. The women trust the picture—viscerally it makes sense.
They want to be thin and generally are thin. When one eats too much one day, one fasts the next—simple. One can drink tea, perhaps a little fruit juice, if desperate. But then, if the liver is really agitated, one can always resort to artichoke soup—curried artichoke soup, which is the perfect antidote for cantankerous livers. The artichokes contain a chemical called “cinerina”—which works as a diuretic and also stimulates the bile—and the curry also stirs up gastric juices. After le feste, even if one is careful, even if one eats small portions, the variety of foods will make the liver sluggish. A few days of artichokes may well be the answer. This is a known remedy—one can feel oneself deflate and the organs start to tingle.
I do not think I over-ate yesterday. My liver seems just fine, though I’d be hard pressed to know precisely where it is in my abdomen, nor would I know how to poke my gall-bladder. Lord knows, I could lose several pounds, but I haven’t eaten breakfast and after eight rounds of the Rocca, eight kilometers of talk about digestion, food, stomachs, livers, hunger, I am ready for pranzo, something, perhaps just a drink at the bar.
“Let’s go out to lunch today,” I suggest to Daniela as we near the end of our last lap. She thinks I am kidding, making a joke. Food? Food? Who can think of food after un giorno di festa? I suggest a Campari Soda instead and again she’s incredulous: “Like alcohol and sugar are any better for us!” It’s one thing to drink at a café when the sun is shining, we try to convince each other, but quite another thing to stop with all our dogs in the rain.
“Perche’ no?” I insist as we approach the few tables the barista leaves out during the winter season.
Suddenly her face is transfigured by an insight. She almost squeals, recalling that Cynar is a bitter aperitivo made from artichokes! We can drink Cynar! It does indeed stimulate the gastric juices. It might not hurt us after all…it may indeed cure us...to stop for a drink.
And of course the pistachios and potato chips and spicy rice-crackers Mira brings with our drinks do not count. They are cosini, “little things,” and can hardly be considered food.
sabato 5 gennaio 2008
Epiphany: Embracing the Befana
In U.S. religious practice, Epiphany is at best a Sunday sermon on the Wise Men. It was on the Epiphany (twelve days after Christ’s birth) that the Wise Men finally arrived with their gifts at the manger. Most sermons explore what this meant for the dissemination of Christianity in the world: Melchiorre, Baldassaree, Gaspare were of different races, hailing from different countries—they were the first non-Jews to know of Christ and take news of his presence into the great beyond. Who were these Magi? Theologians inquire. Were they really astrologers? Was there really a star? Was it a comet? Was it the rare conjunction of Mercury and Venus which happens every 480 years to light up the sky and can indeed be traced to 6 B.C., perhaps the time of the birth of Christ? Certainly there is enough intrigue in the brief Biblical verses devoted to the Wise Men to keep protestant preachers sermonizing year after year, but they are a little wary of pushing the astrology theme or letting the Wise Men upstage the little Christ child, lying there so meekly. Epiphany—as revelation of Christ—is certainly important, but by the time January 6th rolls around who needs more parties, more gifts to buy, more Christmas. Our superstition has it that Christmas decorations must be down and ordinary life restored by New Year’s Day. Epiphany warrants only a nod.
In Italy, however, decorations and holy observances persist through January 6th and, traditionally, the feast of Epiphany was the season’s grand finale, the day when children were showered with gifts—and not by the jolly fat Babbo Natale, or Santa Clause (who is in fact a recent “laughing servant of consumerism” imported from the states) but by the broken shoed, raggedy old-lady, Befana, the precursor of all stocking-stuffers, a witch-fairy scoping the heavens on her broom.
Legend links the Befana to the Wise Men. There are two versions concerning how she met them: one is that she ran into them by chance as they were following the star to find the Christ Child; the other is that the Wise Men stopped by her hut (while she was sweeping, hence the broom) to ask for directions. In either scenario, she was asked by the Wise Men to accompany them, but refused, only to have second thoughts and take off after them. She never found them, nor the Christ child either. That's why, on the anniversary of the Wise Men's visit, she scours the heavens, giving away the gifts she would have given the baby Jesus to all the children in her path (save, it would seem, the American children who are already back in school and doing homework when she passes).
The Befana certainly pre-dates Santa Clause, and is considered one of the earliest “pedagogical figures,” rewarding good children with stockings full of sweets and toys, punishing disobedient children with lumps of coal and onions. Her actual origins are unknown though the name “Befana” comes from the Greek word for epiphany, “Beffania,” and she has certainly been a vivid presence at this most popular of Italian feasts since early in the 13th century. She also does double-duty in serving as a kind of female “father time”—the old year leaves with her as she scatters gifts in her wake.
I have also read that the Befana represents the passing of the pagan era into the Christian:
The pagan goddess has grown old, withered, is passing on…but leaving gifts behind for those of the new Christian faith. Another version of the “witch” harks back to certain rites by Celtics who peopled the Pianura Padana and parts of the Alps. They would fashion wicker puppets of her and set them on fire to celebrate not only the end of the year—but all ends and new beginnings.
I rather prefer the idea of keeping the goddess alive, even if she's a bit withered. She's mindful of new seasons of religious thought, yet waiting in the wings to surprise us with her presence and whimsical gifts.
Even though Italian children, like American, now expect toys from Babbo Natale on Christmas Eve, the Befana has not deserted them. In Spoleto, stores are teeming with burlap stocking-packages of various sizes and value, each stuffed with candies and trinkets, each adorned with some kind of witch doll—stuffed, plastic, ornamental—riding her broom. Twelfth night, the eve of Epiphany, is a wild bazaar of open markets, carnivals, and women dressed up as witches tossing candy into crowds. In Perugia, there’s a carousel and a ferris wheel. The Befana walks on stilts with a huge over-sized plastic head replete with tell-tale hooked nose, reaching into her enormous burlap bag to shower Corso Vanucci with candy. Children squeal when they see her, both delighted and afraid. They go to sleep praying she will not bring them coal (and yet she does—a popular candy of the season is blackened rock candy, looks just like coal). Christmas lights still twinkle from the strings suspended across the streets. While Christmas Eve was holy, truly a reverent vigil, the celebration of Epiphany is about magic, fun, goodies, gifts…and giddiness.
In Italy, however, decorations and holy observances persist through January 6th and, traditionally, the feast of Epiphany was the season’s grand finale, the day when children were showered with gifts—and not by the jolly fat Babbo Natale, or Santa Clause (who is in fact a recent “laughing servant of consumerism” imported from the states) but by the broken shoed, raggedy old-lady, Befana, the precursor of all stocking-stuffers, a witch-fairy scoping the heavens on her broom.
Legend links the Befana to the Wise Men. There are two versions concerning how she met them: one is that she ran into them by chance as they were following the star to find the Christ Child; the other is that the Wise Men stopped by her hut (while she was sweeping, hence the broom) to ask for directions. In either scenario, she was asked by the Wise Men to accompany them, but refused, only to have second thoughts and take off after them. She never found them, nor the Christ child either. That's why, on the anniversary of the Wise Men's visit, she scours the heavens, giving away the gifts she would have given the baby Jesus to all the children in her path (save, it would seem, the American children who are already back in school and doing homework when she passes).
The Befana certainly pre-dates Santa Clause, and is considered one of the earliest “pedagogical figures,” rewarding good children with stockings full of sweets and toys, punishing disobedient children with lumps of coal and onions. Her actual origins are unknown though the name “Befana” comes from the Greek word for epiphany, “Beffania,” and she has certainly been a vivid presence at this most popular of Italian feasts since early in the 13th century. She also does double-duty in serving as a kind of female “father time”—the old year leaves with her as she scatters gifts in her wake.
I have also read that the Befana represents the passing of the pagan era into the Christian:
The pagan goddess has grown old, withered, is passing on…but leaving gifts behind for those of the new Christian faith. Another version of the “witch” harks back to certain rites by Celtics who peopled the Pianura Padana and parts of the Alps. They would fashion wicker puppets of her and set them on fire to celebrate not only the end of the year—but all ends and new beginnings.
I rather prefer the idea of keeping the goddess alive, even if she's a bit withered. She's mindful of new seasons of religious thought, yet waiting in the wings to surprise us with her presence and whimsical gifts.
Even though Italian children, like American, now expect toys from Babbo Natale on Christmas Eve, the Befana has not deserted them. In Spoleto, stores are teeming with burlap stocking-packages of various sizes and value, each stuffed with candies and trinkets, each adorned with some kind of witch doll—stuffed, plastic, ornamental—riding her broom. Twelfth night, the eve of Epiphany, is a wild bazaar of open markets, carnivals, and women dressed up as witches tossing candy into crowds. In Perugia, there’s a carousel and a ferris wheel. The Befana walks on stilts with a huge over-sized plastic head replete with tell-tale hooked nose, reaching into her enormous burlap bag to shower Corso Vanucci with candy. Children squeal when they see her, both delighted and afraid. They go to sleep praying she will not bring them coal (and yet she does—a popular candy of the season is blackened rock candy, looks just like coal). Christmas lights still twinkle from the strings suspended across the streets. While Christmas Eve was holy, truly a reverent vigil, the celebration of Epiphany is about magic, fun, goodies, gifts…and giddiness.
martedì 1 gennaio 2008
Save Me, Taxista!
Spoleto is a small enough town that all I need to do, when I see a sparkling white taxi poised by the curb outside the train station, is say “Ciao Roberto,” or “Ciao Salvati” and one of these men will know what to do with me. The history I share with them seems matrimonial; the moves they’ve helped me make, the suitcases and boxes from Spoleto to Perugia, Perugia to Spoleto, were intimate adventures into new ways of being.
Salvati carried me over the threshold of my first home on Via Pompili in Perugia’s Monte Luce, helping me find the landlady, the key, the light switch—boiling espresso for me at my first stove while a low hanging bulb shone on his bald head and I noticed how blue his eyes were and felt suddenly bashful as I stuffed cash in his hand and told him I was okay , he could leave. It was likewise Salvati who drove me, Anny and the Hindi writer Lakshmi Lal across mountain ranges to pay homage to the Hermit of Monteluco, banging the chassis of his new car as he heaved over bumps, without complaint. How patiently he waited for us outside, pacing, his hands folded behind his back, his goateed chin folded into his neck, while we held our inquisition. it was also Salvati who nearly broke my heart one night when he told me about his little cagnolino losing its tongue after a snapping turtle snapped it off, so that the poor dog could no longer eat and had to be euthanized. We parked the cab in Piazza Liberta’ and drank a bottle of wine together at Bar Canasta, both of us staring at Desiree in my lap, suddenly so vulnerable seeming and ephemeral, all of us, especially dogs—here today, gone tomorrow.
My emotional life does not run as deep with Salvati’s counterpart, Roberto, but his is the card I keep in my wallet, the number I dial when I find myself on the late train, after the buses stop running at nine. It is always, always such a desperate decision—to spend 10 euro for a ride up a hill I used to climb on principle the way people sometimes dash up stairs, to burn enough calories to justify pizza. His card seems always to surface as celestial announcement—white among colorful euro bills, the grill of his taxi in watercolor, the headlights staring eyes, and his phone-number, already programmed into my cell-phone, announcing itself like a dare. Roberto is, frankly, a gorgeous young man, a Prince Charming with flowing golden locks, deep dimples, a William Hurt moody stare and granny glasses. He doesn’t tell me stories about dogs losing their tongues or hermits buying toilet paper in the supermarket; he simply beams his mysterious presence over my comings and goings. It’s Roberto who blinks in on the ethers when I return by train after weeks or even months in the states. It’s Roberto who appears when girl friends visit and pool their resources for a 4 a.m. taxi to Rome. And never does his appearance seem incidental, but rather angelic visitation, timely intervention, as though he were a fleet footed courier responding to my silent—or not so silent—call.
Last night I got stranded in Foligno. I was late breaking away from school anyway and then discovered that my train connection in Fologino was running two hours late, meaning that I would not get home until nearly midnight. I knew I could walk up the hill and should walk up the hill—I wasn’t even lugging my computer as I usually do, and what a lovely night full of stars it was to be out in the fresh air walking. But I started worrying about Desiree, poor abandoned Desiree, sitting there so pert and trusting on the lamb-skin cushion of her imprisoning crate. Twelve hours she’d been waiting for me, her little bladder had been waiting, her little soul—and certainly she deserved any possible strategy I could come up with to expedite my return.
“Ah, Cinzia, mi dispiace, non posso,” Roberto’s voice reached me over my cell phone coming out in an almost annoyed sigh. I didn’t want to imagine what I may have interrupted.
There are other taxisti in Spoleto—maybe four in all, but for some reason the older two are never waiting for me, do not know me, cannot call me by name; in fact, I do not think that in six years I have ever taken a ride in either of their taxis. I thought perhaps that this night of nights I’d break the spell Salvati and Roberto have cast on my life; I’d find one of the others awaiting me, a groom beside his golden pumpkin of a coach, a gloved hand poised to open the door to my deliverance. But a part of me knew better than to expect any taxi to be waiting in the off-season after midnight and I steeled myself to climb a mountain.
How astonished I was, stepping off the train, to discover a town too giddy with life to belong to so late an hour—teenagers in silvery shoes, gunning their engines, a scintillating giggly essence to the air, and I so much a part of the night that penetrating it, on foot, directly, intimately was so natural as to eclipse all memory of taxis or taxisti. My only regret was that I did not have my puppy-dog prancing at my heels—but in no time we were dancing together under the moon on the terrace, thoughts of abandonment, of momentary exiles in train stations and dog crates, snuffed out as though by anesthesia.
Salvati carried me over the threshold of my first home on Via Pompili in Perugia’s Monte Luce, helping me find the landlady, the key, the light switch—boiling espresso for me at my first stove while a low hanging bulb shone on his bald head and I noticed how blue his eyes were and felt suddenly bashful as I stuffed cash in his hand and told him I was okay , he could leave. It was likewise Salvati who drove me, Anny and the Hindi writer Lakshmi Lal across mountain ranges to pay homage to the Hermit of Monteluco, banging the chassis of his new car as he heaved over bumps, without complaint. How patiently he waited for us outside, pacing, his hands folded behind his back, his goateed chin folded into his neck, while we held our inquisition. it was also Salvati who nearly broke my heart one night when he told me about his little cagnolino losing its tongue after a snapping turtle snapped it off, so that the poor dog could no longer eat and had to be euthanized. We parked the cab in Piazza Liberta’ and drank a bottle of wine together at Bar Canasta, both of us staring at Desiree in my lap, suddenly so vulnerable seeming and ephemeral, all of us, especially dogs—here today, gone tomorrow.
My emotional life does not run as deep with Salvati’s counterpart, Roberto, but his is the card I keep in my wallet, the number I dial when I find myself on the late train, after the buses stop running at nine. It is always, always such a desperate decision—to spend 10 euro for a ride up a hill I used to climb on principle the way people sometimes dash up stairs, to burn enough calories to justify pizza. His card seems always to surface as celestial announcement—white among colorful euro bills, the grill of his taxi in watercolor, the headlights staring eyes, and his phone-number, already programmed into my cell-phone, announcing itself like a dare. Roberto is, frankly, a gorgeous young man, a Prince Charming with flowing golden locks, deep dimples, a William Hurt moody stare and granny glasses. He doesn’t tell me stories about dogs losing their tongues or hermits buying toilet paper in the supermarket; he simply beams his mysterious presence over my comings and goings. It’s Roberto who blinks in on the ethers when I return by train after weeks or even months in the states. It’s Roberto who appears when girl friends visit and pool their resources for a 4 a.m. taxi to Rome. And never does his appearance seem incidental, but rather angelic visitation, timely intervention, as though he were a fleet footed courier responding to my silent—or not so silent—call.
Last night I got stranded in Foligno. I was late breaking away from school anyway and then discovered that my train connection in Fologino was running two hours late, meaning that I would not get home until nearly midnight. I knew I could walk up the hill and should walk up the hill—I wasn’t even lugging my computer as I usually do, and what a lovely night full of stars it was to be out in the fresh air walking. But I started worrying about Desiree, poor abandoned Desiree, sitting there so pert and trusting on the lamb-skin cushion of her imprisoning crate. Twelve hours she’d been waiting for me, her little bladder had been waiting, her little soul—and certainly she deserved any possible strategy I could come up with to expedite my return.
“Ah, Cinzia, mi dispiace, non posso,” Roberto’s voice reached me over my cell phone coming out in an almost annoyed sigh. I didn’t want to imagine what I may have interrupted.
There are other taxisti in Spoleto—maybe four in all, but for some reason the older two are never waiting for me, do not know me, cannot call me by name; in fact, I do not think that in six years I have ever taken a ride in either of their taxis. I thought perhaps that this night of nights I’d break the spell Salvati and Roberto have cast on my life; I’d find one of the others awaiting me, a groom beside his golden pumpkin of a coach, a gloved hand poised to open the door to my deliverance. But a part of me knew better than to expect any taxi to be waiting in the off-season after midnight and I steeled myself to climb a mountain.
How astonished I was, stepping off the train, to discover a town too giddy with life to belong to so late an hour—teenagers in silvery shoes, gunning their engines, a scintillating giggly essence to the air, and I so much a part of the night that penetrating it, on foot, directly, intimately was so natural as to eclipse all memory of taxis or taxisti. My only regret was that I did not have my puppy-dog prancing at my heels—but in no time we were dancing together under the moon on the terrace, thoughts of abandonment, of momentary exiles in train stations and dog crates, snuffed out as though by anesthesia.
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