It's been hot and so I've been spending my time outside, biking around the city, reading in the park, eating gelato. Today I stopped at Garibaldi in Brera for a cono piccolo di pistacchio e stracciatella and sat outside on their wooden bench. As I began to eat, a well-dressed sciura milanese across the street called out, "Come on, what are you doing?" A signora beside me with one foot in the gelateria replied, "I'm getting a gelato! Come get one too!" "I don't want one!" the first woman replied. "Well, I'm getting one." "It's not even that warm today! Come on, you're wasting time." "Who cares about the diet, I've earned it!" the golosona said. "I'm going to get a bel yoghurt!" The first woman, her cell-phone clutched in her hand, crossed the street and joined the woman with the sweet-tooth, and as they entered the gelateria I heard her ask the second woman what she was getting. After a few minutes I finished my cone and stood up to go, just as the two women were exiting the shop. The first woman had a two-flavor cone in one hand and her cell phone in the other, and she said, "Silvia? Ciao, I'm here in Corso Garibaldi with an amazing soy gelato. Now, as I was saying..."
When you cross the ponte Farini on your bike--probably on the red-painted sidewalk on the left side, against traffic, so that you can avoid the frightening intersection with the trams and easily slip onto your street, and probably on your boyfriend's graziella because your bike has a flat tire from a piece of glass picked up on that same street--you can see the Cimetero Monumentale down below. It'll be to the left, beside the train tracks that the bridge lifts you above, and even after the cemetery is closed the tombs will be lit up with yellow lightbulbs that are meant to imitate candles and from this distance do indeed seem like little flames.
Maybe if you come at the right time, early twilight, like I did tonight, you'll pass a straight-backed old man with large glasses and a crumpled-up expression on his face. He'll be kissing his fingers at the cemetery and he'll be whispering something inaudible. Maybe you'll wonder who he's kissing, and who he's whispering to, like I did.
Everything seems quieter when it rolls in, muffled as when it snows. I'm on my bike returning from a dinner. A boy there, one of my students actually, was worried at first about me biking in the fog, but when I told him I lived near the school he said, "Ok va bene, al meno non è dall'altra parte della città." As long as you're not on the other side of the city.
But I didn't really realize just how dense it had become. The city emerges bit by bit, people, cars, buildings becoming distinct and then dissolving behind me as I pass. There's a strange smell too, humidifier damp muddled with a strange musk. F says that we in centro don't even understand fog like those who live in peripheria. There, he says, is the real fog. But tonight maybe I do. It's so thick I can't see down my own street, when I look up at a lamp I see the tendrils of mist moving through the weak light.
And the people seem uglier, weirder. I see prostitutes for the first time on the corner of Viale Gioia, dancing from foot to foot to keep warm. A little man by Alcatraz is hiding behind one of the big show trucks because he is selling beer illegally, and when he sees me looking he says, "Vai a casa, vai a casa," and he keeps yelling it after me even as I pedal away. Go home go home.
(as told to author last night over impromptù cena, paraphrased/translated/butchered here)
Ahh, che bella Roma, I remember going to Rome with my aunts and my mother when I was young, and we were near Piazza di Spagna, in the street with all the beautiful shops like Via della Spiga in Milan. Everything costs less there, you know, less than in Milan. Anyways I was already cicciotella, a little chubby with glasses and brufoli, it couldn't get any worse. And my aunts bought me this white coat. But you don't understand, in Rome the white coat looks beautiful, everyone goes around in white or camel or some other light color, but the minute you take it back to Milan it turns gray and brown and disgusting with the smog. And the smog back then wasn't the like the smog now, there weren't all these controls. You went outside and the air was yellow, and after a moment your white coat was no longer white. So ridiculous, a white coat. And I looked ridiculous, wearing this thing, already chubby and this white coat with a belt not helping. After two weeks it was a disaster. And I tried to get it dirty. I would rub up against buses, just to ruin the thing once and for all. Che roba, un cappotto bianco. Ahh, but Rome is beautiful.
I'm back in Milan after a Christmas vacation spent running around the southeast of the U.S. and then around central Italy...
F and I decided to go to Rome for the befana, Italy's way of celebrating the Epiphany, during which an old shriveled witch brings presents for the boys and girls. I wanted to get in a couple of adventures before returning to work, and I really wanted to catch some warm weather and sunshine.
We wandered the city for four days and three nights, and I have to say, Rome made us milanesi both envious. Okay, so the public transport is totally incasinato and maybe, yes, it's full of tourists, and of course, other Italians do say that SPQR stands for "Sono pazzi questi romani! These Romans are crazy!" But nonostante tutto questo, Rome is truly a beautiful city. Some examples of why we were jealous:
First, there were trees lining the streets, orange trees. With oranges. Then there was a library with many comfortable nooks to read and study and a courtyard filled with...more orange trees! Plus an exhibit on street culture and graffiti. The libreriacafè: Rome seems to enjoy stopping for a coffee and a book, unlike Milan, where when I asked my friend if there was a book bar like La Citè in Florence he said "Hmm, yes, I think there was, but it closed because no one wanted to sit around." The clouds. In Milan, a cloudy day is a drizzly, miserable commitment, you're in for the gray, long haul. In Rome, clouds were a morning affair, a pause in an afternoon of sunshine, and evening shower. And the shades of gray even varied. Trastevere, a wonderful neighborhood on the other side of the Tiber with winding streets and a beautiful central piazza. The food. We ate out at two different osterie where we slurped up delicious cacio e pepe and munched fried carciofi and gnocchi with wine and amari. Street musicians! A Dixieland jazz band in the middle of Villa Borghese! A trio of middle-aged Italians playing la tarantella in Piazza Spagna with tamburri and accordion just for the hell of it!
Speaking of musicians and food, our last night we ate out at a restaurant in Trastevere called l'Antico Moro. The food, as I mentioned, was delicious and inexpensive, the waiters were friendly in their hurry and made delightful expressions of exasperation and playfulness. The menu said "gnocchi freschi fatti in casa ogni giovedì" so it being giovedì I ordered gnocchi. The waitress's eyes widened theatrically and she asked me to wait a moment. She trotted to the kitchen where we could hear her yell into the door, "Ehi! It's Thursday, eh! Did you make them?" She returned, exhaling, "Yes, we have the gnocchi."
Later a huge group of people ranging from teenaged to retired marched in and sat at four tables in our part of the restaurant. I thought they might be a big Roman family eating out for the befana, but we eventually found out that they were veneti and that they had arrived at the trattoria in a big tour bus. Turns out, their tour agency had also hired a typical Roman folk singer (in realtà from Abruzzo) to serenade them alla romana, and we got to benefit.
This guy entered teasing and playing with the veneti, choosing various members of the group to pick on. He quickly allied himself with a long-faced vecchietto Marco, who enthusiastically sung along to every other line (and later saluted me with an "Adios!"). He would start loud and determined and then trail off as he forgot the words and then riprendere il filo when he remembered again. The folk singer sang "Quanto sei bella Roma" and "Roma, nun fa' la stupida stasera" and even some stornelli. For each chorus of the the vulgar, playful stornelli he serenaded specific people, choosing F and I as the two innamorati and then telling F to explain the dialect and double entendres to me later. We concluded with a big singalong of "Arrivederci Roma":
...to put up commercially- sponsored Christmas lights in a Catholic country. So I thought I'd take a break from all the occupations and politics and what not and post some pretty pictures.
The Pretty and Well-Funded Lights in the Fashion Quandrangle (Via Montenapaleone, Via della Spiga)
The Sometimes Pretty/Sometimes Totally Weird Alien Pod Lights Near the Duomo:
Last night we cut through Parco Sempione on our bikes. It wasn't yet 8 but it seemed later, daylights' savings always takes some adjusting for me, the sun was long gone and the nebbia had begun to creep between the trees. The gates of the park are open until 9 but no one ever seems to go in after it gets dark, only a couple of people walking their dogs. We rode down the white muddy path under the dim lights and between the trees and heard music, a saxophone. A lone man was playing jazz beneath the loggia of the old arena, without a hat on the ground and no one to hear him but us. Sad jazz that echoed and ribombava under the Napoleonic arches. I felt I could have been anywhere. He didn't acknowledge us and we passed him by, I never know when to stop, but his music followed us all the way out the gate into the street.
Today was my last day with my lovely 5th year students (vomit aside), my last day tutoring, my last trip to Via Emilio de Marchi, the home of the family where I landed when I first arrived. But I'm not going to dwell on that, because I might be back next year... So instead, I will record a few conversations I've had recently:
In both Cremona and Zappa you need a key to use the elevator. Zappa conveniently has two custodians who wait around with their keys to call the elevator for you. They both ignored me more or less for eight months, but after my relentless "ciaos" one has started to smile at me. Yesterday she called the elevator and asked: C (gesturing to my dress): Aren't you cold? Me: No, it's very hot up on the fourth floor. C: But down here's it's cold. Me (almost sweating already): Yes, well I'm warm-blooded. C: Yes? Do you eat a lot? Me (amused): Lots.
Today one of the secretaries I had never talked to before followed me to the drink machine to get her tea. She said: S (smiling ear-to-ear): Oh hi, how are you? Me: I'm well, and you? S: Ah how sweet you are! How wonderful! Where are you from? Me: I'm american. S: Ah how sweet, how wonderful. (che dolce, che bello) But are you alone here? Me (is this an existential question?): I have friends. S: What about are you parents? Me: They're in the U.S. S: Ahh, how sweet and wonderful. Goodbye, then. Me: Goodbye. And back to the office...
Then a student (not one of mine, but one who always says hello to me) found me in the pizzeria beside the school. Boy (in English): Are you occupated? Me: Occupied? No, I'm just reading a Sherlock Holmes story for class. Boy (laughing awkwardly): Oh, occupied, yes. Oh, that's boring. I thought it was a letter from your girlfriend or something. Me (playing up the awesomeness of Everything That Is School, downplaying the strange flirting): No, but it's actually quite fun and interesting. Boy: You don't have an English accent. Me: That's because I'm from the United States. Boy (gesturing towards my plate): And what about Italian food? Do you like it? Me (following gesture to my empty plate): Um, yes. I love it. Pizza man (with pizza): Eccola! Friend (impatient): Andiamo, dai! Boy: Okay, see you. Me: Bye bye..
Maybe they're not much. They seemed sweet and wonderful at the time. And strange.
Rounding a corner on my faithful bike, Natty, on a rainy day, yellow Paddington bear hat on my head, middle-aged Italian man watches me pass and says, "Che brava!"
A student, introducing himself to me and the rest of the class: "Hello, I am sixteen years old, and I have a dream. My dream is to bring an English poodle into my house."
