Apostrophe: Dear Italia, a Two(Three)-Part Invention

My dear Italy -

It has been a week since last I saw you, and you still pervade my thoughts. I cannot forget the way you look, feel, taste, smell. I miss you every day, every day wish I were there instead of here, every day remember one more thing that I can only find with you. It's odd how jet-lag has morphed into simply more normal sleep-patterns. I think my body's mostly adjusted, but not back to what it used to be. It's strange, but refreshing, to find myself falling asleep at 10 instead of after midnight.

I've been talking about your art all week. Sometimes people ask, sometimes they don't; either way, it just pours out of me. Not that I liked it all equally, but the overwhelming memory is one of stunned amazement. So much beauty. So many glorious forms. So much intricate detail. So much meaning. I could spend years getting to know one building's fullness. Why do people expect me to answer the question: so, how was it? When most of what I experienced was visual, how am I to put it in words? Of course it was good. Of course I'm glad I went - how could I not be? But to explain it... Or even to tell what my favorite part was... that just is too hard. Too complicated. Now that I'm back in New England, I have to think about shoveling snow, bundling up so my extremities don't freeze, finding work, paying bills, finishing moving all my stuff into this new house. I have to deal with the daily details of life, and every time you ask - trust me, I DO want to tell - it distracts me terribly. It's so easy to think about you, talk about you, if I can get around the words. At the very least, the smile bursts my face when someone brings you up. When the sun pokes its fingers in my face early in the morning, I want to turn over and remember the dark blue mist wrapping the train in stillness. When I step out the front door and snow crunches, my feet recall your cobbles and marble, and ache for their coolness. When I watch the moon rise, waning, I think of the daily joy of its growth, and the extravagant giddiness when I looked at the stars. Of course some of those things are here, too. And I love here: I love my people, the sea, the snow-trimmed trees. Much as I love the conversations there, I love the ones here, too. This place is safer - these people are safer. Not because they let me sink into dull repetition, but precisely because they always expect more. They help keep me safe as I grow, they keep pressing me towards further understanding of my identity, of this world, of what community is and means. They are good to me. In their lovingkindness is my safety. In my lovingkindess is freedom. My dear, Italy, your people did not embrace me. They did not understand me. Perhaps they would have if our words had been the same. I desire to know your language, but do you desire to know mine? Can I dwell in a land in peace and joy if the people and I are not unite? Really, my connection is people. It's true, what they say, that WHERE you live matters less than WHO you live with. I still ache for my other home, the one out West, but if I were there, without these people, it would be a sad and grey place. If you were anywhere without Me, all places would be sad and grey.

Yet my concerns over finding community in you simply fade when I remember you, yourself. Your hills, your colours, your buildings, your art, your food. The feeling that stirred in me as the train rhythmed its way through your belly. I would never go back alone, but I WILL go back. I believe I will, because this feeling is so strong. Across time and space, you call to me. I hear your voice, and I echo it back as best as I can, offering "grazie" and "scusi" in place of English. No, it's not only that my first trip to Europe has shell-shocked me. I am not easily unsettled, not often this impacted. Yes, I expected to enjoy it. No, I did not expect re-entry here to be so painful. Nor is it painful because here is inherently painful; it is painful in comparison, because the exit was so difficult, because I long to be there. It's not negative towards Boston, but such a strong positive towards Roma that the lights dim in the rest of the world. Your desire for Me yet eclipses all others, and if that were not so, all others would leave you empty.

My dear Italia, I will see you again. I will be in you. I will dwell in Roma's seven hills. I will get to know your heartbeat, and will love you for it, and my love will ask you to change, to heal. I will spend enough time with you to know your faults, your longings, your wounds, and I will love you all the more for knowing them. I have faith in your life. I am back in normal life for now. Although life is less often normal these days, and more often seemingly randomly unexpected. I will yet be here for a couple more years, in all likelihood. Who knows after? I certainly don't. But I don't mind. I have never known past even the next 6 months, so why should I now know past 2 years? My two childhood dreams have now been fulfilled: learn Latin, visit Europe. Now to dream more dreams for future fulfillment. I have dreams for you, glorious dreams. Rest with Me, and I will slip them into your heart.

You, I love.

Ciao, Italia. Hello, New England.

Thanne longen folke to goon on pilgrimages...

My pilgrimage to Italy is done. A nine-hour flight from Rome dropped me right into the middle of New England snow and cold. Now it's "wintry mix"-ing, and much colder than the 60 degrees we had Sunday in Rome. I no longer have wonderful, fresh meals deposited in front of me when I sit down at lunch and dinner. No more fresh mozzarella, fresh olio, local vino rosso, cianghale, agnello, and all the other goodness I ate. Italian food senza pasta is still awfully good! Where can I find wild boar here? Or buffalo mozzarella? Or go to a restaurant and have olive oil that they made? Oh, golly, is the olive oil there amazing! My new favorite salad dressing is olive oil and balsamic vinegar. That's all you need! And gelato... oh, the gelato...

During the 10 days we were in Italy, they had remarkable weather. It didn't rain on us as we bolted our way to as many sites as possible. The sun shone while we took a siesta by the river. Mist slowly faded as we rode the train every morning. Every day, we commented on how wonderful it was, and every day, it stayed wonderful.

We visited many chiesas (churches). We saw statues, paintings, windows, wood inlays, mosaics, altars, reliquaries, and tombs. Our last day in Roma, we climbed to the Piazzale Guiseppe Garibaldi, overlooking the entire city: duomos, ruins, river, and all.

It is both good and sad to be home. I shall miss so much about Italy, my companions, the trip itself. But if I had stayed, I would have missed so much about here, my friends, my church community, the ocean... Ten days was a good length of time. Long enough to start picking up pieces of the language, and to feel at home, but not long enough to get bored or really to miss people back home. We were busy enough, and there was enough to take in, that no capacity was left, mentally or emotionally, to even think about where I'd come from. It was overwhelming, especially in some of the Baroque extravaganzas. What down time we had was spent drinking the air, sorting through the glitter and colours and shapes and impressions, and stretching tired legs. When I heard that a blizzard threatened Boston, it was a distant news, bearing not at all on my reality, and only a glancing thought held it. I'm sorry, but not actually sorry, that I didn't think about people while I was there - except for the thoughts of: oh, so-and-so would LOVE to see this!

But now I'm back. Again, I must think about food, work, money, reading, and all these wonderful people that I love knowing but really didn't think about while I was gone. Oh yeah, I live on the North Shore. I don't live in Italy (yet). What did I want to do this year? What do I need to get done this week? All these things, details, demands, some annoying, some very good. Even though I tell myself I could just pack up tomorrow and move to Roma, I really couldn't. I've got a wonderfully supportive and challenging community here, and suddenly being alone again would break me. Not to mention that I don't know Italian (yet). There are so many beautiful things here. Maybe by the end of tomorrow it will have settled in more. I'm still in a muddle, half there, half here, stretched and dim by the stretching. Jet lag? Partly, I'm sure. Physical exhaustion catching up after the adrenaline fades? Probably. Do I need more time to process what I saw (and heard)? Yup. The worries of this life threaten to choke. The weight of the cold tries to stifle and drain. It will help to talk about it, to show pictures, tell stories, reflect my friends' excitement with my own, and just sit down and write.

I feel like I've been given a mosaic - but it's not put together yet, so I need to sit down, sort by colour, and close my eyes to find the faint outline, then put the colours where they belong until the pattern takes shape. It's a daunting, exciting task. Very exciting.

"Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
cannot bear very much reality."

Firenze

I just sat in a park in the sun for an hour. I took off my shoes and socks, and soaked. In the ides of January, what wonderful weather!

Thursday and Friday we visited Florence, known here as Firenze. Since the train ride there is nearly twice as long as the ride to Rome, we had less time in the city itself. I still can't figure what I think of Firenze. I didn't like it at first. It was colder than we expected that first day, and dreary, and I didn't like the crowds, or the preponderance of shops. And I didn't like the feel of the place. I did like the churches we went to. The buildings in Florence are beautiful. The white, green, and pink colour scheme is elegant. The second day we visited the Uffizi Museums, and they are incredible! Especially since I took art history, I kept going, "wait, I recognize that!" Also on Friday, a group of us climbed the hill, hoping to see the view of Firenze, but when we got up to the fort, it was closed. My guess is that it's only open seasonally. But we wanted the view! So three of us climbed a rock wall, and looked through the trees, and saw all of the other side of Firenze laid out before us. It was breath-taking, and not because was sat perched on an old wall that dropped down to barbed wire and a steep hill below us. It was also a grand adventure.

I still have mixed feelings about Firenze. We were told that, in many ways, it's the founder of secular modernism in Italy. Just in terms of its history, it's very different than Rome. All of the land belongs to the city, so all the old churches are run by the government. They charge cover fees just to enter the buildings. I found myself wondering how many of the churches are still ever used for services. They feel more like museums or mausoleums than churches. Which is sad, because they are beautiful, and if their atmosphere were different, I would absolutely love them. We also visited the San Marco Monastery yesterday - it's the one with the famous Fra Angelico 'Annunciation' right at the top of the stairs, and different paintings in the the monk's cells. That, I liked. We ate lunch in the piazza in front of the monastery, and that was the first place and time that I found myself relaxing in Firenze, and thinking, maybe I could like this place.

Why are the two cities so different? Is it the presence of the Pope and the Vatican in Rome? Or the long-standing roots of secularism and corruption in Firenze? But what about the art? The Italian Renaissance basically started in Florence, not Rome. Is it the Firenzian interest in fashion and appearance that bothered me? Why does the strong Etruscan and Roman presence in Rome not bother me? Is it that so many of the streets stink? Yes, they're kept clean, but you'll be walking along, minding your own business, and be assailed by the smell of excrement. Even in the Uffizi, on the long, underground walk to the toilettes, it smelled awful. It's not strong enough to make you sick, just strong enough to be really annoying and unpleasant.

Roma is bigger, more spread out, a bigger mix. But I love it. Firenze is smaller, fuller, slightly more homogenous. But I don't know what to think of it. I probably shouldn't be so concerned with figuring out why I react in this way. If I pause, I realize my response to Firenze is more my normal response to cities. My response to Roma is the odd one.

But it does make me sad. So much beauty is in and has come out of Firenze. So much beauty. I want very much to love it, but I can't. There's something else there, besides the artwork, that unsettles me. Something like excrement oozing under the foundations, slowly spreading poison and stench up through the marble statues and facades. It's as if the city's foundations are rotten, and the people don't know it, and nobody can see it yet, but I can smell enough of a whiff that my stomach turns slightly. I find myself mourning for it, wanting to put on sackcloth, turn through the streets once, then leave, shaking the dust off my shoes as I do. May God have more mercy than I.

Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die illa tremenda: quando caeli movendi sunt et terra.

Roma

I love Rome.

Never, ever, has a city tugged at my heart the way this one does. Boston, I like. Roma, I love. After our first adventure, barely an hour in the city, I loved it. Now, after two very full days, I still do. I can't put my finger on why, no matter how much I want to. I can list off what it isn't, specifically, but those things are probably contributing factors. What I cannot explain is the strong, immediate, intuitive connection, this drawing, pulling, dwelling that I find in me. I want to live here. I want to pack up at the end of this summer (after studying Italian so I can communicate), and move to Roma. When was the last time I fell in love so deep and yet so quickly?

We took the early train in yesterday, so it was still dark when we left Orvieto. Dark and misty. As the train wheeled south, the dark slowly saturated with blue, then the blue lightened, and the mist gave way to day... and we pulled into Roma... but it was the wrong station. Something was wrong with the train, so it was delayed 30 minutes. So we all piled out of the train, and found our way to another train that would, hopefully, deliver us to Roma Termini. But there was nobody else on that train! And eventually our leader asked about it, and we were, lo and behold, on the wrong train. So we hunted down the subway, and all piled into the subway... but by now - after 7 o'clock - it was the height of morning rush hour. We were crammed in that subway so tightly nobody had to hold onto anything. The crush was enough to keep us upright. Very cozy. Very team-building. Very amusing. At Roma Termini, we practically fell out of the train, over-heated, glad to be in charge of our own balance, and we found our way out the labyrinth to the buses. And there, again, got on the wrong bus at first! Welcome to Roma!

We visited several churches yesterday, including the Pantheon, which, even though it technically is a church, I still think of as a temple. The Romans built it as one, so that's what it is. We saw the Coliseum, and the Arch of Constantine, and many ruins, and the Tiber River. We also wandered many, many streets, moving very, very quickly, because Tal is a surprisingly fast walker. And the whole time, I just loved it. Loved the buildings, the shops, the people, the language, the motorbikes, the little cars, the cobbles, the open-air markets...

Today we visited the Vatican places - the Museo Vaticani and St. Paul's Basilica. And that took the whole day. We did start an hour later, and this time, hitting rush hour on the train in, we had a good deal of difficulty finding a place to sit. Some people sat in the hall outside the 6-person booths. I ended up in a booth with 5 Italian strangers. 4 were friends, and young, and they looked at me just like high school girls look at an outsider. I think they tried messing with my head - pointing to things out the window and calling them recognizable names - Naples, for example! Having ridden the train in the morning before, I knew better, and just listened, enjoying the cadence of their speech, noticing how they sounded young just by how they spoke. I think one of them even took a picture of me on her cell phone... She held it up, just like you do when you're trying to be surreptitious, and I looked over, and she looked sheepish... I'll bet, if they remembered, they told their friends about the strange foreign girl with a scarf wrapped around her head, who didn't say a word, but was with all these white English-speaking people who acted clueless... And I think I get the one-up on them for amusing. They were funnier than I!

I have now seen many, many Greek and Roman marble statues, seen the heads and/or bodies of Roman Caesars - Tiberius, Domition, Titus, Adrian, etc - seen marble animals mauling each other, seen beautiful mosaic floors, seen paintings and more paintings, including the School of Athens, and, of course, the Sistine Chapel. I have been within the arms of the Mother Church, taken pictures of the obelisk, and entered and explored the Basilica of St. Paul. And I have walked at full speed through the streets of Rome.

It has been a long, full past two days. My feet are sore, although not too much so, all things considered. I have eaten many tomatoes. And coconut, pineapple, and chocolate hazelnut gelato. And tomato red pepper soup. And Agnello e carciofo. I have taken many pictures. Sans flash, so we shall see how they turn out. I have prayed in many churches - the touristy ones seem to usually have a side chapel dedicated for prayer, reserved for it, so you can't go in unless that's what you're going to do, no pictures. So it's quiet there, not much traffic, beautiful, and good. There's a reverence that I long for and love.

So much, so little time. I want to come back. I want to be here. I want to honeymoon in Roma. I want to take my time finding random little churches and running my hands over the marble, listening. I want to actually go wander the ruins behind the Senate - SPQR! I want to buy food at an open-air market, and spend an hour sitting at a little table outside a caffeteria, nursing a hot drink and a book or conversation. I want to walk slowly down the banks of the Tiber, as far as I can go. I want to lie in the sun on a bench by a fountain, then take myself into the cool church and sit and look and pray. I want Roma.

Roma stirs me.

Ala Italia

Now we are here. I am here. And here is Orvieto, Italy.

We flew out of Boston last night around 5.30, and arrived in Roma around 7.30 this morning. What with the 6 hour time difference, our entire group is very tired. Rather than use espresso to combat my draining mind, since there is opportunity for internet use, I have decided to write something.

Today, after a quick tour around our facilities, we had lunch at Locando del Lupo, a restaurant down the street. Then we walked around Orvieto, down straight-ish streets, alleys, winding ways, rock-walled vistaes, all cobbled, all narrow, almost all occasioned by speeding little cars. The cars here are small, and despite the size of the lanes, they drive quickly. We, as pedestrians, must always be on the hear-out and step to the side when we hear engines echoing off the stone walls lining our path. The sun came out while we walked, and it got warm enough most of us removed our gloves and coats. As the sun disappeared behing the hills, the wind picked up a chilly edge, and now we are cosily back inside, tongues gelato-sated, for a time of rest and reading before dinner.

So far, this place isn't terribly strange. Or, it's not as overwhelmingly strange as I expected. My speculation is that I have spent the entire day in the company of a group of English speakers. I have heard Italian, as we walked the streets, but have not yet experienced the frustration of trying to communicate with insufficient means head-on. So Italy is beautiful, not overwhelming.

When we exited the airport in Rome, the first thing I thought was: this feels like Southern California! And looks like it! As we drove north to Orvieto, this thought rebounded in my head. Yes, it reminds me, in the hills and some of the vegetation, and the air, of Southern California. And yet. It is completely different. The other big thought the bounced in and remained was: now I know where those painters got their colours from! I remember seeing Renaissance paintings from Italy, and finding the colours of the vegetation unbelievable, fantastic, other-worldly. The combinations of kinds and shapes of trees were strange, fanciful... But it's all real. It's all here. Those colours in the paintings? I'm seeing them. Those oddly-shaped trees? Seeing those, too. Strange to find my faith in the painters' ability to reproduce nature increasing through a simple one-hour van ride.

We will spend tomorrow in Orvieto, too. I already begin to be able to retrace my steps, or know where I am in directional comparison to where I was and where I want to be. I shall look at the map, and that will help, too, but I feel well on my way to not easily getting lost in this small cliff-bound city of twists and turns and secrets. If I only knew the language, I feel like I could navigate just fine. But of course, I can't. Not really. Not without someone else to help me communicate my desire or intention. I can certainly walk, and not speak but keep my hands in my pockets and my eyes up. The locals know all the same that I'm not from around here. Locals in all small towns - especially ones with tourist attractions, can tell at a glance if someone's a visitor. I know because I could do it growing up. It's odd to be on the other end, and to hope that they don't mind my presence as much as I often minded those summer visitors.

These ten days are just beginning. I should probably go read, too, so that I'm prepared for our conversations. If I prepare a mug of tea for my hands, I think I can keep awake. As long as we can stay up until bedtime tonight, we are told, our jet-lag worries will be gone. One good night's sleep will set us on the right track. So that's what I'm hoping for. Wonderful sleep. Just not yet.

For now, finish Dante and prudence.