January 26
Sometime last year, my soon to be ex-boss announced that I'd be bored in Italy within a few months. That I would go crazy with nothing to do. While cleaning up from lunch today, I pondered that statement. Was I bored yet? I think he was projecting himself into the situation. Or it was pure sour grapes. Certainly, there are days when I think, "Gad, what am I going to do all day?" Something always fills the time -- reading, writing, wandering, and meeting friends. Thinking.
Sometimes I still feel guilty for not having a purpose... a project. Thinking is not really an approved project. My ex-boss would be dismissive. Then I recall that the whole year is a project. I'm a project! When spring hits, I'll be working hard in the gardens and may look back on these quiet days wistfully. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...
I just finished a rather scholarly book on solitude in which the author opines that a capacity for solitude should be a measure of mental health. Being an only child, with a large capacity for solitude, I agreed. This year, I am my own science experiment. What is my limit for alone time? At what point will I need a purpose to define my day and will that purpose have to be someone else's or can I create my own and be satisfied by it? (Or will corporate guilt about "to do"s and "pending lists" haunt me forever?)
What about fear? Facing the fear of solitude. Not straightforward fear of living alone and potential dangers... More, what fills your head when you take all the extraneous stuff of life away? When you do not have to think about work and what has to be done? When there is no television? When you are alone with only your own thoughts for company?
I'm living in an isolated situation. The houses around me are not in sight and the folks who own them don't speak English. Even if not physically isolated, I am psychologically. When does that become oppressive or alarming? (With that question, I just got up and locked the front door. It is getting dark.) Its natural to be afraid of what might be out there, might be looking, might pounce. (My age-old nemeses, vampires.) Our prehistoric lizard brain keeps those irrational fight or flight impulses right on hand. Being afraid of the dark, or what might be in the closet doesn't go away when you get older, but it often transmutes itself into "what ifs" -- what if someone is out there, what if a window is open, what if a fire starts?
I had an intruder up here recently. (A real one; not a vampire.) Nothing was taken. The houses were not broken into, but it was obvious that someone had been on the property checking doors and looking for an opportunity. Locals tell me that crime here is opportunistic. You leave the door open and someone may come in for money, documents or easily saleable items. (Around here, that means farm tools. I'm assured that my laptop is not a draw.)
My point is about our individual fears -- external and internal. For about 48 hours after I knew that someone had been on the property poking around, I was scared. Irrationally so, and I knew it. My intruder was gone. He was not going to risk coming back to double check locked doors. Nevertheless, I wrote out my call for help to the local police, reviewing the Italian with a friend. I left all, and I mean ALL, the lights on... both inside and outside. I found a bat to keep at the door. The dogs were kept out all night. I listened, on edge, to every bark and yip. (For those of you with dogs, they do bark and yip at everything, don't they?) Every noise had me up with the flashlight, dogs in tow. I finally slept about an hour before dawn. You would have thought that I had foreknowledge of a planned attack on the house. Thank god, I knew I was just reacting and that, eventually, I would calm down again, or I might have started digging trenches around the perimeter. Friends wanted me to sleep at their house. Other friends wanted to sleep up here at my house, and bring guns. Fear can really grip you. Remember what I said about crime here being opportunistic? My little intruder came, saw and found no opportunity. Odds are, he moved on to the next hill. Given that there are two sides to odds-making -- the favorite and the long-shot -- I cover both ends. I recognize he isn't coming back, but I'm taking precautions. I double-check all the locks to be sure nothing is open. The car is locked in driveway and the gates are double bolted. The dogs sleep in or out, dependant on their fancy. (They now have big beds of straw near the house to stay cozy.) I still keep the bat by the door but in an emergency, I doubt I'd remember it. I have the police programmed into my cell and I still have my speech on paper, just in case. But I'm not jumpy... every noise doesn't send me to the window to peer into the night. I can't live my life as if every noise is my prowler, back again, like some bad thriller.
Funny how external fears are more manageable than the internal type. I mobilize the guard, reason and plan to handle external threats. Internal fears are harder to dismiss. They pop up and invade quiet moments. I can escape for awhile by reading books or heading into town but those irrational "bump in the night" fears... they take a lot more work to kill off. Vampires never seem to die.
January 24
Living here is like living in a subtitled film. Last weekend I was invited to a first birthday party. Melchiorre called unexpectedly to ask me to his nephew Matteo's first birthday, with the family. I tried to find an excuse not to go. I was tired and cranky, and dreaded being alone where no one speaks English. Creativity did not cooperate. I found no good reason to demur. Tired and cranky aren't good excuses. Besides, I don't know the Italian for cranky. Therefore, I went.Once I was in the midst, I realized that I knew just enough of the language to build my own subtitles to the party. The festa was at the baby's house on the outskirts of Perugia. Dad and Mom, Sebastiano and Stefania, live with her parents... lovely folks, very welcoming. If they were confused as to who I was and why I was there, they graciously never let on. Stefania, who had wrenched her back, kept passing her x-ray around, groaning and wincing. Matteo sat in his stroller, beaming, being pushed from one end of the kitchen to another by different relatives. Stefania's mother handled the kitchen honors, and her Dad kept opening bottles of wine. Melchiorre made ravioli. I was offered 3 servings of pasta. Each time I assured them that I could eat no more, "Piena. Piena, mi dispiace." and every time mama ladled 4 more ravioli on my plate, dismissing any rebellion. Then came the chicken, roasted in tomato sauce and peperoncini... and the vegetables.. and more wine, and champagne... and cookies... and the cake made in the shape of a huge frosted one. (Will I come home 10 pounds heavier?)
Matteo is a plump baby with deep brown eyes and a slow smile. His uncle Guiseppe made sure to get his little fists right into the frosting for his birthday picture. We had frosting all over Matteo and anyone near him. His sister, Francesca, is an 8-year-old Sophia Loren... charming and voluble, with a full vocabulary of hand gestures. She flirting with her uncles, chatted me up, wound her grandfather deftly round her finger (receiving 5 Euro for visiting the dentist), and pouted subtly when the conversation drifted from her for too long. Francesca takes an hour of English a week, so we compared notes... the English and Italian for fruits, animals, balloons, snails, parts of the body the... We both did well, surprising each other with our 1st grade vocabularies. She made me laugh with that little pout and her gesturing, one eye always on her audience.
When in a house where no one other than the 8 year-old can communicate with you directly, you listen a lot. The communication you get is non-verbal. How people say things to each other and the dynamic between them. I wonder how much more we'd glean from conversation in the states if we listened more to the how and a little less to the what.
January 13
Yesterday I began working in my journal again, tackling the exercises in my "creativity books." I have been reading like a fiend all week five books in 6 days. Thomas lent me When Nietzsche Cried, an interesting story raising ideas about how we approach life conforming or finding our own path. I followed with Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone (the NY food writer's engaging memories of how she found her calling) and Iris Origo's War in Val D'Orcia (a Tuscan WWII diary). Then in the last 24 hours, I blew through a biography of Caravaggio, and Borderliners, a novel by Peter Høeg.
Now I shall get terribly philosophical. I enjoy Peter Høeg. He wrote Smilla's Sense of Snow, a novel I reread periodically that makes you think about being an outsider. (The movie and the book are two different animals altogether). Borderliners is about time, how we perceive it and how it affects our connection to the world around us. Høeg often taps into issues of being different -- looking at things from the outside. His characters are well drawn and his stories have an element of suspense that engages your mind more on why things happen than "who done it". Presently, this resonates with me... the why of moving overseas. He has this great line "How has time become like barbed wire?" Something that holds us down
Ponder that. This flirts around some of the reasons I left my job and SF. Our obsession with linear time this scheduling of days until there is little room for the spontaneity of life. Booking time to see friends... sometimes taking weeks to agree on a convenient slot to meet. Planning children's schedules as if they were little executives with parental secretaries. Mapping our own days, in half hour increments, until the only way to rationalize the insanity of it is to reassure ourselves that what we do has importance.
We have embraced the idea that time is a line that moves forward, ever forward, while forgetting that time is also a circle -- ritual, cycles, seasons, celebrations. We have bought into the up or out vision you either progress or you fall by the wayside. You win or you lose. We measure progress in steps up the ladder, leaving a backyard full of life we miss every day. It's the application of business rules to everyday life. It flip flops work to life into live to work.
I've been thinking a lot about this. Why was I so restless in SF? Why did I so dislike my job? Why do I need to move to another country to sort this out? It took me two months to figure out why I spent Monday through Friday, out here in the country, feeling ill at ease and uncomfortable. Just Monday through Friday. After 18 years of working, I no longer had an approved purpose during the week. Reading, thinking, writing, painting, etc. was non-productive time... wasted time. Once I put my finger on it, the restlessness went away. Now, I create the day as I see fit or let it evolve on its own.
Life is a wonderful, complicated and mysterious thing. At no point do we get tips on how to live it. We are however, taught about time as if it were life. We're taught to manage it, control it, manipulate it, and wrestle it to the ground. Every day we miss a little more of life because we are so caught up in linear timetables. The train comes at 10 so I need to leave the house by 9:15, which means breakfast at 8:30, shower at 7:30. Life is whittled away in half hour entries.
Høeg talks about our need, as a culture, to erase doubt. To have answers for everything so that doubt is kept at bay. Linear time so precise, so measurable, so incontrovertible is a perfect way to do that. Have a project, account for your time and you leave no room for doubt, questions, fear Unfortunately, life is a stew of all those things -- doubt, questions, fear and more. To erase them or deny them is to avoid engaging life. There is an old quote, and I am paraphrasing from memory, "an unexamined life is a life not worth living." Høeg adds to that, "An unlived life is not worth examining."
Others have made this point far better than I have. We each create our own reality. There is no single, freestanding reality. No one Truth. (Though we seem to seek one.) We each shape our own, filtered through our individual hopes, doubts and fears. People have told me they envy my decision to move here... are jealous of the time I have to think, to read, to ponder. You don't have to move to Italy, or Germany, or an ashram in Oregon, to have time for those things. What you must have is the awareness of what it is that you want... what you desire time for. Then take it. Make the space in a day, in a week, to do just that thing you wish you could do. To read... to stare out the window and let your thoughts drift... to make soup. Don't feel you have to shoot for the moon and make time to sail the Caribbean in a small ship you built in the basement. Maybe just taking the time to dream about sailing the Caribbean is enough... at least to begin.
Time is not a thing. It's more like everything, all around us like growing grass and tiny birds... the shift of seasons, the moon rising, the leaves changing, the bus pulling away, your first grey hair. I agree with Høeg that it is not all about forward motion. Sometimes time stands still. It's not just a linear creature that drags you along with it. "An illusion. Verbal flim-flammery," corporate friends will scoff. Perhaps. On the other hand, maybe our lives (or jobs and the meaning we attach to them) are the illusions. Carefully constructed illusions that allow us to go on scheduling our days in ½ hour intervals, until the days careen by at breakneck speed. Maybe it is up to us to choose what is real. Remember when you were a kid and the stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas was an eternity? Its because your head wasn't so full of silly things... there was space in the day. Maybe that is Einstein's theory of relativity. There is a great quote, attributed to Einstein explaining his theory "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."
I contemplate these things in Italy. You thought I was here to buy shoes.
January 12
Thomas and I had a good visit... lots of those deep conversations half way into a bottle of wine late at night. It was low key by choice. We did not try to see every charming hill town in Umbria. We visited Umbertide to experience the market, coffee bars and the local color. (One evening, we checked out guys over our hot chocolates.) We drove to Deruta for lunch and a look-see at the ceramiche shops. Thomas experienced traditional Umbrian cooking at Nonna Gelsa's. (They make a mouth-watering salsicce and mozzarella tortelloni in walnut sauce.)
On Jan 5, we had the Festa dei Thomas... which was also a Befana-fest. Befana is the Italian Santa Claus. Our jolly gift guy is a recent addition. Italy traditionally had the Befana, a witch who flies on a broom (looking just like a Halloween decoration) bringing gifts to the good and coal to the wicked. Befana strikes on Epiphany (Jan 6). For the party, we skipped the gift giving and stuck with food and conversation. There were 11 or so of the usual suspects from Thanksgiving -- Melchiorre, Elisabetta and Mark, Stefano and Paola, Marisa, Dorothy, Martha. Mark and Elisabetta brought a friend of theirs... an Austrian gentleman named Rudolfo who looked smart in a fedora and a white scarf. Rudolfo was a psychiatrist or a professor (or both) in his former life... now he is an artist and gentleman about town. Quite a sweet man. He autographed a book of his poems (in German and Italian) for Thomas and I. It was a good little party... roasted vegetables, sausages and lasagna. For dessert, Elisabetta made an applesauce cake. For Thomas's farewell the next evening, after checking out guys at Bar Coletti, we met up with Elisabetta, Mark and Rudolfo for pizza. Over delicious wood-fired pizzas, we whiled away the time playing some of Rudolfo's psych games (name 3 animals you like and the qualities you admire about them) and listening to his "analysis" of our psyches. An entertaining evening. Bright and early, we arose to trundle down to Terontola station to get Thomas on a train and back on his way home to Hamburg, Wolfgang and the 18 cats.
Since then, I have been trying to get myself back into the rhythm of life to reacclimatize to being alone and contemplative. The house seems much smaller and quieter with Thomas gone. For the first time ever, I had a kind of a post-partum holiday let down. I gave myself the week to be glum, get errands done and get back into the swing. It is such a big year for me... throwing everything up in the air, putting so much on hold... having no answers as to what the next year will bring. Sometimes it's overwhelming.
January 1
Our New Year's Eve began auspiciously. While chatting over breakfast, snow started falling fast. We had a few invitations for the day... lunch at Melchiorre's, an evening with Elisabetta and some friends, a wild party with Melchiorre's friend Wolfgang and the Tedeschi (Germans) and a trip to Perugia for the fireworks. All seemed unlikely at noon. The hills were white and it was still coming down. Mark Wholey called at one to say that they were going to Melchiorre's -- that the valley and the roads were clear. This area surprises me continually. Here we were in blizzard mode, yet at the bottom of the hill everything was clear. Not wanting to deprive Thomas of an Italian New Year's Eve, we set out for lunch. Mark was right. It was easy driving and we lunched on the famed saffron ravioli, insalata siciliana and homemade salami. Once again, the food and the hospitality at Melchiorre's did not disappoint. We waddled home for a siesta before regrouping for the evening. Time did not allow us to visit the Tedeschi, but we had a lovely meal with Elisabetta and some friends before taking off for Perugia. Veronica brought a selection of preserved vegetables from her garden, Elisabetta made a wonderful gnocchi alla romagna, Dorothy brought her lenticche (lentils are traditional for New Years), Jill made roasted potatoes and other delights. We came empty-handed because we were slugs and had no food in the house. Hopefully no one minded.
Around 10ish, Mark Wholey, Thomas and I set out for Perugia, parking outside the city walls and walking to the arch that leads into the historic center. The main street and piazzas were full of people carrying champagne bottles, listening to live bands, laughing and waiting for the fireworks. We had heard that New Year's Eve in Perugia could be frightening -- a tinderbox of crowds, alcohol and fireworks. I suppose that I had my American filter on. I pictured the Philadelphia Flyers' fans after the Stanley Cup. Perugia was not thronged and there was none of that pregnant tension when drinking mobs gather... none of that "Jeepers, this place could blow at any moment, Sal." It was more a sweet, high-spirited revelry. Perugia is a university town, so there was alcohol in abundance, and earsplitting fireworks. The band in the main square was pumping out euro pop everyone knew by heart. Groups of fashionable students (lots of denim and fur combo jackets, heeled boots, and mop top heads) were singing, dancing, and hugging each other. We saw one cluster looking rather like European dandies out of the 19th century in high starched collars with bowlers and walking sticks... just out for a stroll before hitting the absinthe.
To be in position for the official fireworks, we made our way to the end of town that overlooks the plains. Perugia spent much of its medieval history warring with neighboring towns. They had the perfect vantage point to keep watch on arch-enemy Assisi, perched on the hill with sweeping views of the Tiber Valley. From those walls, we saw fireworks across the valley... silent puffs of color that sprouted up and faded off (juxtaposed with the earsplitting M80s going off all around us). There was not a coordinated fireworks display, like a US 4th of July. It was more a block party that gradually got bigger as more and more families joined in from the rooftops. The Italians love fireworks (thank Marco Polo) and all around us -- above, below and in the port-a-johns behind -- were Roman candles, sparklers, M80s, cherry bombs. From almost every rooftop, someone was having their own personal light show. Even the midnight finale wasn't a finale. There was no crescendo of explosions or cascades of color culminating in a big Mickey Mouse head or a 2002 banner lighting up the sky. Just a steady stream of color and noise, sometimes under your feet, that did not peter out until much later in the week. At midnight, I suddenly understood the sea of people, each clutching a personal bottle of bubbly. It was not to drink (for the most part). It was liquid confetti -- sprayed liberally over all. Like I said, high-spirited revelry. As we made our way back through the piazza, the street was heavy with that yeasty champagne smell, and the sound of champagne bottles crunching and clanking underfoot. (No way would I want to be the cleanup team.) The kids were drunker and blearier... hugging strangers and singing out of tune. In the main piazza, the band broke into Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall. All the kids knew it and sang it. However, it seemed like they sang it phonetically, without ever translating the words... like ABBA in the early days. Such an unlikely Auld Lang Syne. As we were leaving, a conga line started up, splitting into a many-headed beast circling the piazza and the few silly drivers who did not foresee parking in city center as a problem. Oddly, it reminded me of Chinese New Year in SF... but the dragon wore denim and fur.
2002
