my face of true happiness
Me, myself and I—-taly………. Oh no – here she goes again………..
Incredible remnants of humanity at their best and worst and, living on into this very day, assembled within the confines of one little country:
Yes, I have a number of feeds on my facebook about Italy. I have just about all I can find. Everyday, I am invited, enamored, bombarded, and adhered to countless photos and information about places – famous, infamous and rarely known, about a Country I attempt, with urgent amore, to attach to and call my own.
I find myself spending a lot of time considering how people feel when they travel to various places. I have traveled relatively little in my time here on this earth. There are so many amazing places to go and I haven’t been to very many of them. Some people are very interested in travel within the U.S. Some love the mountains, the cold and snowy areas in Winter, some flock to Florida, some love the desert, some love the battlefields of the Civil War. I have been to a few places in the U.S., mostly along the two coasts. My interest doesn’t draw me to places within most of the land-locked states here in America. Why? I can not say, really. And, while I can appreciate the beauty of the snowy climes, my interest is held there for about a minute or two.
I didn’t go across the pond until 1993. Still today I can’t believe this. I was very (relatively) old when this first happened. Of course, this was for numerous reasons, one concerning money and being otherwise occupied, but another concerning – I knew not what I missed. I had long developed a love for old things in this Country – mostly old houses, old furniture, old paintings. These, of course are “old” in the context of America. Old means something else in Europe, yet I have found it means something new, and always breathtaking, but also curiously, it means home.
Our first visit to Italy came in 2007 when Ryan went to sing in various venues ending in Rome. This coincided with Christin’s high school graduation and we spent one glorious week in Rome, residing at the top of the Spanish Steps. The highlight of this particular trip was Ryan’s group singing at Father’s Day Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. This is an event we will never forget for many reasons. Their next venue was the ancient Church at Piazza del Popolo. But, what I remember most vividly and fondly, is Ryan walking along the streets with many in his group, in and around the Piazza de Spagna, happily, comfortably and amusedly, not yet 15 years of age, and looking like he was “at home”. I totally identified with this feeling and subsequently, spent a part of each mid-afternoon, while George and Christin took a short nap, walking down by myself, amid the teeming crowds, to seek the vendor at the end of Via Borgognona for a fresh peach and a bag of roasted almonds. When I first did this, I felt like I could do this each and every day for the rest of my life. I could stroll and peer behind the massive doors of villas and imagine life in Rome. And, in fact, when we returned there this past May, I sought out this same vendor and I was disappointed not to find him. Although, the chestnut vendor was at the base of the steps day and night.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore London and Paris, I do. I could easily live in either in spite of the dastardly weather. But, in Italy, I feel like I am at home and I eagerly and obsessively wander around trying to absorb each and every square inch of the place, deep into my bones.
While historical sites in the U.S. are interesting to me in the sense of saying, I see, I learn and I tick them off the list, I don’t have an emotional reaction. I have an entirely different feeling about Italy – it is as though I try to steal it and stuff it into my bag, to try to ever possess the place, my heart feels open and excited and I feel a moving sense of comfort, familiarity and belonging. I can not explain why this is, it just is. I look at every statue, fountain and stone which is the street in wonder. And, when I am forced to embark upon the plane to return to the U.S. I have a profound feeling of dread and disappointment. Why? It just is.
I have spent the months since my return home to NJ in May in devious plotting for reasons to return to Europe. No one in my immediate family is dying there, calling upon me to go to be with them before they pass on. But, the calling, as in “come hither’ remains. I began following The Florentine, an English-speaking online newspaper a few months back. My immediate reaction to this was to yearn to work for them. Perfect, said I.
In 2010 I visited Milan, Venice and Florence with the kids for 10 days. Christin did a brilliant job of packing as much as possible into this very short time, selecting lovely hotels, coordinating all of our transportation and picking all the top venues to visit. My disease spread like wildfire.
Who says that Milan is an industrial city with nothing of interest, I demanded of myself as we tread along to the Teatra alla Scala and from Piazza to Piazza, and tried and failed due to demand, to get reservations to see The Last Supper? Who says these things, really? Among the memories most vivid and powerful are those of Ryan, strolling along and unconsciously lifting the camera from my hands and walking and capturing – the images which caught in his soul, at that particular moment in this place:
Venice? Even though it was July and the heat was tough, I found the vibrancy and each and every alleyway to be enchanting in a mysterious almost haunting sort of way. We stopped often to share a bottle of San Pellegrino and admire the numerous and gorgeous clothing shops, many from Napoli and buy George a beautiful tie. The amazing masks and marionettes sent me back to childhood – I yearned to live here during Carnevale. The souvenir shops didn’t offend me, I found their offerings curiously unique to the venetian sensibility. Our trip to Murano was amazing as well, the fulfillment of a longtime dream – to see the glassblowers in their ancient home – even though it is basically contrived now and very touristy – and I brought back a few horrifiyingly expensive treasures. Boatloads of Asian visitors from the cruise ships, parasols in hand, bumped and jostled us, the heat dogged the kids, yet I was pulled on like someone was leading me to my untold destiny. Harry’s Bar, while a tourist spot basically consumed by Americans is still a fun place to stop, somehow didn’t feel like a “check-off” at all – the Bellinis offering their soft, white peach nectar, which was fresh and lovely, and the bar, a cosmopolitan enchantment and a subtle allure all its own. Somehow I didn’t feel American there. And, now with its very existence threatened, I am glad I can say I was there at least once. This is what it feels like in Venice. Every nook and cranny grabs you and tries to steal your heart, to marry you to the place, to rob you of your passport, like a pickpocket – you don’t know until a little later.
Florence makes your heart sing, plays you like a fiddle, and envelops you in its staggering abundance of artwork . I confess I have never been to such an enchanting place. Early in the mornings I sat outside our hotel in the small cafe and drank tea and read the English newspaper. Then I anxiously walked the streets, again and again to live among the shopkeepers sweeping their stoops and beginning their days, wondering all along how the kids could possibly be in bed, yet at the same time relishing my moment to absorb it all alone. It is drug-like. All along the streets I found myself imbedding myself, “I could be a biscotti vendor here, yes I could”. Now, my poor husband has to listen to me yammer on with this phrase over and over again like a broken record. What is this power? There is an indelible cable connecting me to this place, unbreakable. To live with David, to stroll, again and again thru the Ufizzi. http://www.polomuseale.firenze.it/
The advertisement by The Florentine about a week ago, for a features editor made my heart race. Would they take me? Am I qualified? Could I go? Would I go? Would George come, too? Is this some cruel trick on me? I anxiously read the job qualifications – have to have lived in Florence for at least 3 months – No, have to speak fluent Italian – No, experience in the business, well, except for blogging, No. Should I apply anyway? Should I beg and grovel?
This past Spring I happily strode up the steps of my AlItalia flight to Rome to meet Ryan. Did I once look back? No. I was giddy. Bye bye! We strode along for two days until George met us on the middle of the third, Ryan and I, like old chums who hadn’t seen each other for awhile but totally at home – in the sunshine and happily peaking into each and every crook and cranny and dirty, grimy graffiti-strewn ally along the Via Veneto and downtown. Lost? Definitely not. Found is more like it!
Each and every day there is etched in my mind – the poppies at the Colusseum. Trastavere and Villa Margherita, where I commune with the spirit of my dear Mom and believe that they have named this place after her, the approach to the Vatican, every shop and stall at Campo di Fiori, the mold covered prosciuttos, the black truffles….. What could possibly be more addictive, yet totally satiating, than living here?
feet firmly planted among the beauty of Positano
How can you want to stay and leave a place such as Rome at the same time? Only leave if you are going on – on with your journey of love – to Positano and later, Taormina. I begin to understand where fantasies and fairy tales originated. I could have, in the past, believed that beauty and enchantment of this caliber was only available therein. Are there really places as beautiful as this in the world, I asked myself each and every moment? Pinch, pinch. Is it possible I have never been here before? Is it possible that I have to leave here? Is this some cruel trick someone is playing on me – that I can come to visit and yet have to leave as I feel my feet being sewn into the cobblestones – and pass the musicians playing along the streets – and watch the cheese vendor arrange and rearrange his wares? As I sit and sip a cocktail from the terrace of Grand Hotel Timeo and commune with Mt. Etna? Am I really here? Was I really there? I am there as I write this.
And, to think that my feet have only tread upon a tiny fraction of this country. Can I go there now? today? this minute? To see the north, where I have never been, along the borders of France, Switzerland and Austria? To the lakes and the olive groves, the almond groves and make oil and wine, to search for caperberries on Pantelleria? To photograph and to see and to taste and to wonder what it is like to be so lucky as to live here? This is what I feel when I visit Italy. It’s not Gettysburg or even DC. It’s not Napa when it’s 100F, though it’s distantly related.
This is untold rapture, beauty born of centuries of some of the most brilliant and creative people on the earth – perhaps not the most brilliant and creative, yet they have made and given and collected the most seductive hectares and villages and provinces and cities and forms and paintings and arias within operas and piazzas and yes, of course, religious and pagan artifacts and monuments and basilicas and duomos and columns, aqueducts and arches and vistas and in one little tiny place. This is life, this is living, this is the most perfect microcosm of all that life on this planet has to offer in one place – magically accumulated within its borders in the most random of ways yet in the most determined of ways………..
How can you not go? How can I not live here, breathe here, work here, photograph upon my feeble and unquenched brain cells this place? Wonders of the World? They are all here for me and I humbly ask all the powers that be to let me tread each and every square inch of this place and to deliver unto my self, a memory in my mind’s eye of such before I am taken away. I am like a beggar with a tattered and torn sack, attempting to stuff every morsel of life here into my bag to steal away and yet leave for every other person on the planet to see as well.
I know today that I am a novice traveler when it comes to Italy. I have barely gotten my feet wet. And so, I will roam along my facebook pages and catalog all the places I have yet to go and where I will go again and again. I am deeply suspicious of the people who dismiss the impact of the major cities and I am enamored and envious of those who know the backroads and the unique personalities and offerings of each and every province.
I will sigh deeply and yearn deeply.
Go there, I beg you. You will never be the same. I will never be the same. (just a tad bit of irrational (um, not) exuberance – thank you Alan Greenspan – at 5am- I forgot the time changed!)
I know a secret – this is my happy face:)
Amazing story!
thanks, Sharon:)