The Origin of the Wheel:

In 1975, I lived in Firenze for a little over three months. It was a different city forty-one years ago, if not in form, very much so in tone. Always a destination, in those days it also seemed provincial, intimate, local. Gelateria Vivoli was a unadorned counter open to the street where a small cup of ice cream cost 350 lire (something like 35 cents.) I dined almost every day at Casalinga (1)Trattoria La Casalinga for about two dollars in its single high-ceilinged room, Paolo amazing me by his dexterous way with dishes and good-humored dealings with customers. I waited for friends on Ponte Vecchio while watching Italians of my age, arms linking them into human chains, tease and flirt and rebuff. I learned to identify the provenance of tourists crossing the bridge by the manner of their gait. The open air markets near San Lorenzo offered more than leather. Blood oranges, the preferred citrus, were exotic and luxurious.

All those particulars have changed. Tastes, styles, customs, and economies do that. That it was special for me in those special weeks of four decades ago, means nothing to the enormity of time. I alone am responsible for casing those memories in amber so I can look at them now and again and relive the warmth of their distant sun.

Towards the end of that Florentine spring, my Italo-American friendDuomo Firenze (1) suggested that with the challenges of life and money and time ahead of us, it was likely neither he nor I would return for at least ten years. To a twenty-five year old man ready for adventure, the idea was terrifying and absurd.

For years afterward, I only visited Firenze in a dream. I’d arrive by train, the towers and domes of the town visible in the distance.  I’d run from the station into the streets, tears streaming as I neared Piazza delle Signorie, then before the copy of Michelangelo’s David would fall to my knees to kiss the ground. There is probably enough Jungian symbolism in that dream to fill a dissertation. The nocturnal opera played in repertory for two decades.

Casalini1 In 1995, I finally returned to the city while awake. Seven of us lived in a restored 15th century farmhouse set among olive groves and vineyards. To the forty-five year old man still ready for adventure, being there was more relief than thrill, and strangely, a little bit sad. Firenze had become more prosperous.  I felt stuck in time.

Two years later, another group of us visited Lazio; we lived in a 16th centuryLa Cena (1) farmhouse set among olives and vines. The nearest town, Roccalvecce, though not geographically remote, was remote in other ways – suspended, not of any particular era. We cooked, feasted, hunted scorpion, toured neighboring towns, and sat on the terrace at nights, debriefing our days while we gazed at a floodlit Palazzo Costaguti, the moon courting its ramparts.

Commedia 98bA dozen more visits — Lazio, then Orvieto, then both with Firenze tucked in whenever possible — spread over another rapidly flowing twenty years. Though I grew older, my friends here never did; a pleasant and somehow necessary illusion. I worked hard to know Italy, to understand its culture, to learn the language, to be a part. As I am a man of the theatre, I cultivated a faith in confidence, that it could outstrip actual knowledge.  Another level down I feared that real knowledge was out of reach, that pretense would always have to suffice.

When I visited Orvieto and Firenze with my friend Barbara last May it was, in part, to see if I liked it enough to allow weeks to turn into months, even years.  By the end of the first day here, it had become clear that were these flirtations with Italy ever to turn serious, they had better turn soon. My knees already depended on glucosamine for flexibility, other inflexibilities would soon follow.  To delay was to be foolish with time.

Touring gorgeous countryside, dining at superb restaurants where prices are lower thaCappella (1)n at mediocre ones at home, meeting kind people who praise my rudimentary Italian; I could like that, but it didn’t convince me I belong. Then one afternoon while driving alone (after failing to rouse friends in Monterubiaglio by ringing a doorbell I later found did not work) I passed through an industrial zone on a rough road and heard myself say over and over “I really love it here.”

I scooped up the life maps I’d been peering at, and tossed them away. The new map was a list of things official and logistical that needed doing: deadlines, timelines, underlines, airlines, passport lines, train lines, credit lines. Such things frighten me. The actor’s confidence has never extended to believing I can find my way through the complications human society throws in front of all forward motion. However, I had heard myself say how much I loved being in Italy while driving on a back road that offered only the autostrada and an industrial installation as scenery.  It was no longer a matter of choice.

I have a habit – one likely shared with almost every human being on the planet – of needing to justify… well, almost everything I do. Multiply that by a factor of six hundred when that thing I’m doing is outside the life I believe I am supposed to lead. The life I believe I am supposed to lead should a) make me lots of money, b) get me lots of renown, c) gain me lots of security in all the ways in which that word can possibly be interpreted. Obviously, I’ve been a long time straying from the life I believe I am supposed to lead.

Take a breath.  Ah yes, that internal river.  There’s a storm on the horizon.  Looks like a big one.  Here it comes!  The river crests powerfully, the mill wheel catches, turns.  That’s better.

Bits of emotional detritus fly into space. Desires float away. Needs are ground into powder. That showers should not fluctuate in temperature, that everyone must be kind or charming or at least comprehensible, that efficiency will be the meter by which we judge our days; all washed downstream. The people around Signora 2me – the beautiful, the fascinating, the crooked, the old, the toddling, the dour, the sweet, the desperate – they all deserve a good hug, and when thatSignora cannot happen physically without causing a stir, there’s always a mental alternative. Is it Italy that does this? Is it the flood?  What is that flood made of, anyway?  What is Italy?

Italy is a place made fascinating by a difficult past, a challenging present, and traditions that treat such obstacles as unworthy excuses for neglecting enjoyment of good food, good company, and the good experience of seasonal rotation; each season special, each brimming with potential for a delicious and festive sagra.  Enter a Californian who views his past as a placid pond and with only a vague memory of what a season is, but who has nevertheless found ways to suffer dearth in the midst of plenty.  Bang the two together.  What do you get?

I’m talking too much. Pass the polenta, would you please?  Now then, what was it we were discussing?

A Requisite Balance:

I’ve not been very clear about this, but I’m in Orvieto during these months for more than Italian language and culture. It is also a kind of self-styled writer’s retreat. This fact remained hidden even to me until I described my days to a friend and he clarified by giving them a name.

I spend three to seven hours a day writing, how much depending on I know not what. Initially it was all on plays. I resisted beginning this blog because I didn’t want to steal writing time from theatrical projects, but have found instead that these essays support the plays. I’ve learned much about narrative structure writing this blog, and all learning slops around like beer in a barrel on a bouncing ship; the pressure builds up and eventually it foams over everything.

At first, I cleaned up older projects that I’d never had time, perspective, or inspiration to finish. There were a number of them. I had had a play read by actors in Washington DC just before I left for Italy, and was feeling empowered as a writer. So, I began with revisions on that project, and kept right on going through the list. In late November, I picked up the single, very vague, opening scene for a play I thought I might begin work on last spring but never did, and in a single week a remarkably taut first draft flowed from it. I was so excited I went out for dinner. Of course, first drafts are tricky animals because while writing them I see connections in the story that barely exist on the page. I have to quickly return so as not to forget all the brilliance that is not actually there, and even then much of it escapes into the ether.

But this play (called Risotto) was different. It’s based on real people and events, even though the setting and circumstances of the play are invented, and I have a strong personal connection to the material. So, subsequent drafts rolled out as easily as the first throughout the month of December. On the last day of 2015, I felt good enough about the play to submit to a festival in upstate New York.

But there are spiders in the attic that don’t hatch for weeks. Here’s an example.

I wrote a short play three years ago for a festival in New York City. It was a rush job, I never really got it to submittable fit, and it predictably went nowhere. But I liked the story and characters and the overall shape. I last took it out in November, just before I began Risotto, and spend a few days on it — cut five or six pages and clarified the storyline. I was so pleased with myself, I submitted that one, too, in early December.

Then I continued to write everyday for a half-dozen hours for two and a half months.

Last Friday was the deadline for a short play festival. The script I had worked on (The Loyalist) was the only short play I had that seemed to qualify, so I planned to submit it, confident that November’s revisions had brought it up to snuff. On Tuesday night I decided to glory in my own fine work and read it through before submitting the play a few days early.

Good god. I was horrified! Horrified, I tell you! It was in no shape whatsoever to submit as anything other than an example of a meandering, formless, over-written early draft.

Umbra2I experience an odd phenomenon of feeling embarrassed by unfinished writing even when no one else has read it. I shift into furious editing mode, slashing away, humiliated by what I previously thought good. Of course, it’s just me humiliating myself, but I often forget that’s the case. With The Loyalist, however, others had read it; or at least, I’d sent it out quite confident that those who did read would find it mighty and irresistible. The more public nature of that humiliation spurred immediate revisions late Tuesday night, as if I could take back the sloppy, meaningless, and pretentious dialog — that I had, in some distant way, forced on others — by wasting no time in changing it.

Wednesday and Thursday flew by in a flash. Seven and eight hours a day. Each morning I opened the file to read, and was horrified all over again at what I had thought was fine work the night before. By Friday, either the play had become stronger, though as yet unready, or I was growing accustomed to being horrified, and horror downgraded to despair. Despair being a more passive mood than horror, I had to work at keeping myself going on Friday, but I did, for another eight hours or so. When I put it and myself to bed that night, I felt like the piece had finally seen the beginnings of being a possible candidate for something someone might actually call a play, someday, maybe.

Blest by time zones, the Friday midnight deadline didn’t happen here until six the next morning, so I was able to rise early and take a final swipe at the script before sending it off. I’ve not read it again since. I’m a bit frightened . There is nothing can be done to improve its chances as a festival entry; and if it’s still bad, I don’t want to know until March.

In the meantime, I’ve discovered that Ristotto has a sequel, and that the sequel is a prequel to what will someday be the third in the series based on a script begun in 2014. The new, middle, play is called Fried Prawns. All three are pretty conventional in form, but seem to have potential for being otherwise pleasantly quirky. I would really rather love to end my self-styled writer’s retreat with a trilogy, or at least the bones for one. Lots of hours between now and then, but divided up by days, it is surely doable.

How does one ever declare a script (or a blogpost) finished? That is, I suppose, the next great lesson, and like all lessons so far in this hall of mirrors, one that will shape itself for me and me alone — just as it does for all of us who plunge into the night hoping to discover candles.

La Scarzuola:

IMG_1900Today, thanks to my friends Andrea and Natsuko, I left the confines of the rock upon which rests Orvieto. I actually climbed into an automobile. Emelio the anthropologist drove. We went north on the autostrada to the Fabro exit, then took back roads to Montegabbione.

Emelio is thirty-three and an Orvietano from birth. Andrea has lived in Orvieto since the nineties, and had worked here before that. That’s the setup.

“What’s that town over there?” I ask. Um. Silence. Um. Andrea? I don’t know. Maybe Monterubiaglio? No too large. Fabro? No, we went through Fabro already. Maybe it’s… silence. Panicale? No, that’s much further north. Well, everyone, we’re going to be really early if we go straight to La Scarzuola from here, how about we stop at a bar for a bite to eat? All agree that is a good idea. What about Montegiove, do they have a good bar? I don’t know. Okay, let’s try. Where is it? The sign says left. (We arrive.) Nothing here at all.  How about Montegabbione?  (Back in the car.) Hey, I don’t see anything. I’ll get out and ask. Okay. (Andrea returns.) The only bar in town is over there. It’s Eva’s Bar. (Eva is charming, sweet, and very slow.) Do we have time? Probably not. Okay, let’s go on to La Scarzuola. I brought bananas. “Thank god! I’m hungry.”

IMG_1967Wending our way towards La Scarzuola was familiar and comfortable. Like traveling here with anyone else I’ve ever traveled with here – normally Americans, all of us perpetually lost. I’m about as savvy with the countryside in Northeastern Pennsylvania, so I don’t complain. We ate fruit. We found our destination. And we arrived on time. Very important according to Emilio. The guy who runs the place is a little weird – two minutes late, you don’t get in.

IMG_1960Saint Francis lived here here in 1218. He built a hut out of a brush called scarza, so the site became known as La Scarzuola. He also planted a rose bush that opened up a miraculous spring. Thereafter the Counts of Marsciano erected a church and founded a convent on the site. Then in December 1956 the complex was purchased by Tomaso Buzzi from Milan, a famous architect. He restored the convent and church, and drew up plans for what he called The Ideal City — la Città Ideale. It is neo-mannerist in form, scenographic, deliberately theatrical, a stylistic composite of classical, medieval, renaissance, baroque, and a touch of 1950’s surrealism mixed in with inspirational guidance from Prince Orsini’s Sacro Bosco in Bomarzo. Construction continued from 1958 to 1978. Buzzi died in 1981, the project incomplete.IMG_1837

The only member of his family who had an interest in the property, or perhaps who had nothing else to do, was Buzzi’s nephew, Marco Solari. He finished realizing his uncle’s dream. Not himself personally, mind you, the family has money, but he oversaw the completion of the project. What resulted is not easily described. That is why pictures were invented.

The nephew still owns the property. He lives there with his boyfriend. It’s their home. One imagines that living on such a property might create some strange habits of mind. One only has to listen to Marco Solari for a few minutes to realize it has done exactly that. The man is funny. He is quirky. He guides the tour, speaking easily in a trumpet voice that could carry over a pitched battle. He poses a question, hovers a moment, answers it himself, then laughs a laugh that could be described as a gay, Italian, male version of Phyllis Diller. Then he holds forth and repeats the cycle. I don’t imagine he would be an easy person to have dinner with.IMG_1872  IMG_1964  IMG_1890

His partner was speaking with guests on our way out. They asked if tours were given in English. Yes, he said, I do them. They are nothing like that, he said, pointing towards Marco.

IMG_1956This is all correct and as it should be. Two men with opposite styles. One of them, at least, generously quirky. No one more suited could possibly be associated with the place, to live there, lead guests through the property, or to have completed Buzzi’s work. Some day they will turn it over to a foundation or a comune. The experience may then become more conventional, but it won’t be as rich, as flavorful, or as much of a piece.

IMG_1937Buzzi described the project as his inner life in stone. To paraphrase; I’m conventional in my business. I design buildings people like. I do my job. But inside, another spirit stirs. The Ideal City is an expression of my true personality, the one that is hidden, secret, unknown in my other work.

The Ideal City seems at first glance to be an architectural installation with no purpose but to be beautiful, bizarre, and evocative. Not quite true. The literature says there are seven theatres on the property. Counting smaller, non-traditional spaces, I found five of them. Andrea and I went around staging Shakespeare’s plays in those spaces we could identify. Almost any classic or epic play could have a happy home somewhere among the sculptural tangle. Rumor is that concerts are offered at La Scarzuola from time to time, but because the website is either under construction or will never be complete, that’s difficult to verify.  It would be grand to hear music in these environs.

IMG_1921IMG_1852Our group filters out after about two hours, and we hop back into the car to wind our way home.  A beautiful town appears on the hill ahead of us.  “What’s that town?” Silence. Time. We pass a blue-arrowed sign pointing up the hill. The sign says, Carnaiola. That’s Carnaiola, Emilio tells me. “Thank you.”

IMG_1961  IMG_1943

IMG_1955

Shops and Shiatsu:

There are good language days, and there are bad language days. Today was one of the latter. I twisted my tongue around Italian words I’ve known for decades – simple stuff – all the way through my lesson this morning. Mariella, as always, was patient and encouraging, virtues I am only just learning to cultivate regards myself.

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I slept well last night, a welcome change after a few weeks of fitful rest. I may be able to attribute the change to having eliminated espresso from my morning routine. However much I miss the buzz, the sacrifice is an outsized trade for a full night’s sleep. So, this morning was without jolt, and I severely felt the lack. Unwilling to forego the ceremony of the cup, I have been allowing myself a single decaf cappuccino or macchiato before noon. Thus, a perfect decaf cappuccino appeared in front me at Bar Sant’Andrea, site of today’s lesson. As was expected, it had little to no effect on composition of mouth or brain.

A few things needed purchasing after the lesson. A two-week supply of hypertension and cholesterol medications that together run at least 30% more in the States even with insurance, are available here without prescription. Bread, pastry, pasta, odds and ends.

Getting close to one, now, so my step quickens as I rush towards the bakery. They don’t always reopen in the evening, I’ve not figured why, and no hours are posted. I make it on time and am happy to discover my favorites behind the counter: the young Filipino who is kind and plays with his words until they are music, and the Italian lady with a gracious demeanor. I order and ask how to call a pastry item I’d not noticed before. “Sigaretti.” A good name for a short tube filled with chocolate. For the first time in my life I buy cigarettes. They are delicious.

I arrive at the tortellini shop just after it closes, so cross the street to the “supermarket” for their offerings in the same general category – not as good as the fresh, but tasty enough for lunch.

A note about the “supermarket.” When applied to this particular store the word will always appear in quotes. The “supermarket” is the size of a medium-large bodega in Manhattan, but because it’s open through the day it earns an exalted distinction. A bunch of guys in their twenties operate it. Going in feels like a college reunion where everyone has miraculously regained their youth. I mostly come for the company.

Then a quick lunch at home, the aforementioned stuffed pasta with pesto from a jar (not the best, but remarkably good) a salad of tender lettuce from the market in Piazza del Popolo topped with artichoke hearts from the fair trade store nearby, and a dessert of dried fruit. And two sigaretti.

A few minutes on the computer and it’s time for my first-ever Shiatsu massage. Last Friday, I awoke to a neck so sore it frightened me. It had been sore on Thursday, but rationally sore. Friday’s sore was unreasonable. A friend, Katrin, has a studio di fisioterapia three minutes walk from here. Her studio partner is a Shiatsu therapist named Michele. I thought Katrin only worked on trauma, so I wrote Michele, first. I took his earliest slot for today, and called Katrin anyway. I was a little desperate. As it happens I was fussy to think she only treated accident victims. Even had that been the case, she treated my neck as a victim of catastrophic sleep. She fixed it instantly. She’s good – another one of those people for whom I’d be willing to throw myself down a flight of stairs just so she could heal me.

I appeared for this afternoon’s appointment with Michele with no pain whatsoever. It was a little embarrassing. Michele arranged me onto his contoured massage cushions and went to work. He probed and poked and rubbed and held. At times his hands became as hot as sun-baked stones. I don’t know how long it lasted. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life, certainly within the realm of massage.

I complimented Michele on his generosity. “It’s just my work.” “Well then, your work is generous,” I countered. Not to be outdone, “It’s a generous system of massage.” I’m making a regular appointment. Every muscle in my neck and shoulders relaxed. Anyone who knows me understands that for the miracle it is.

I’m on my way home when I become distracted by the valley. It’s been raining, and the fields seem to have greened up by a factor of ten since this morning. The channels between paving stones on the streets are filled with the same green. All that freshness lures me down to the Anello.

I meander at the base of the cliff. The rain intensifies the color of the rock, the vegetation, the soil. I stroll past my buddy Arlecchino – still in the same spot patiently musing – climb up through Porta Romana, then left past Blue Bar.

I seldom visit in the afternoon, but today I’m in the mood for a snack. Antonny sits behind the bar with his guitar, playing real good for free – improvised music plus a few songs of the sixties and early seventies, songs from before he was born. He strums, we sing a bit (neither of us know lyrics.) A man comes in, picks a beer from the fridge, leaves money on the counter, nods, and exits.

A young man, a regular, comes in. He’s quite reserved. He orders a coffee and water. Antonny leaves his guitar, flips the cup, tosses the saucer and spoon. He pours the water with a flourish, then flips the glass, while full, and spills nothing. (I wonder at the messes Antonny has wrought while teaching himself to perform these barcrobatics.) The young man watches tolerantly as if it were normal for a barista to behave in this way and represents something to be quietly endured. Of course, it is normal – at Blue Bar.

A few more minutes on the guitar, the ceramicist from down the street arrives for an afternoon something hot in a cup. He smiles and nods; I’m starting to become familiar. The two men admire the luxurious camellias on the counter. Antonny, flips, tosses, fills, then drops the cup he’s delivering. It spills and smashes, and scatters across the floor.

The ceramicist, without a beat, goes to the broom closet (well-hidden in a corner) sweeps up the glass, returns for a dust pan, and once the floor is clear, returns again for a mop. Antonny swabs the counter and refills the order. They talk their way through, teasing and blaming each other. In retrospect, I regret not having anticipated the dustpan. I would have liked to have been a part of the communal clean up.

“Be sure you’re here for summer,” Antonny says to me a little later, “there’ll be music on the street in front. You’ll help me with my words, yes?” I agree to do that. I tell him it is my plan, or at least my hope, to be here this summer. “It’s nice in Orvieto, you know, but the people can be boring. You don’t think so?”

I recharge my phone at the tabaccaio. A woman with a shrieking voice tries to make herself understood by increasing volume. I ask the tabaccaio if he can check my phone’s credit (he can’t,) and two young men shout questions about lottery tickets. He’s a bit harried.

La Famiglia:

The other day I got the lonelies. It’s a habit. When I’m delighted by a moth who has joined me in the apartment for her remaining days, when I say hello to the primroses on the terrace without thinking it odd, when I talk to the ladybug who somehow survived a childhood in a tin full of clothespins to establish herself on the mint, why am I lonely? It’s a habit.

I learned many years ago while living in Manhattan that the lonlies want to walk. This is why I love foot-centric cities and towns. I find walks among living creatures to be a great slayer of loneliness.

The first stop is across the street. My sleek, black and white doggie friend who I greet through the gate is feeling better. He’s seemed a bit under the weather for the past week, not greeting me at all or more briefly than is his custom. I worried. He sees me approach and runs up wiggling at all joints. He perches up so I can reach his nose and head, I touch both, scratch behind the ears, he licks and nuzzles my hand, then goes about his day. If I’m insistent, I can lure him back for another greeting.  Because I’m fighting the lonelies I call him back twice, and being a compassionate soul, he obliges.

Gatto Inverso4Next, the striped cat.  She’s a frisky animal, various shades of brown and tan with a strength in the way she moves that is evident a meter or two away. After a few pets she hops onto a low stone wall that surrounds her territory and walks me a half dozen meters to a porch where she throws herself rhapsodically onto her back.  I sometimes manage to scratch her belly without triggering the tooth and claw reflex, most times I fail. I’m thinking of pocketing a glove so I can experiment until I get it right.

I decide on a long walk to the wall at San Giovenale then down to the Anello, all the way to Fortezza Albornoz, then back up the hill on via delle Donne. I begin my usual route through Quartiere Mediolvale to San Giovenale, but want more variety, so retrace my steps, take another turn, retrace again, and choose the street that after turning right at its end will lead to the back of the church.

Andreas (1)Strolling towards me are a couple — hoods up against the chill — and their boy. It’s Andreas, the younger son of friends Claudia and Enrico. He recognizes me first, and I’m delighted. Andreas is a charming, blond-headed, loud-mouthed, high-energy eight-year old, and to be other to him than the old guy who doesn’t talk that well, is marvelous. “Guarda! Ecco Davide!” Then Enrico notices, then Claudia, and soon I’ve been invited to walk to the top of the Passeggiata Confaloniera.

Andreas has a tiny toy bow.  The purpose of the walk becomes to discover, then fashion, arrows for him to shoot. His dad helps. I want to, but feel shy. I adore this family. Claudia is my friend. I’ve known her longer than Enrico has. She’s a trusty guide through the maze of the Italian language, occasionally through its bureaucracy, and is wonderful company.  Enrico, a graphic designer by trade, is a deadpan comic by destiny; he’s good at both. Their eldest son is Tobia, more reserved than Andreas, but no wallflower.  Tobia is at a birthday party for one of his friends, one that turned improvisationally into a movie party in Attigliano.

We wander.  Arrows are found, and trimmed and shot.  Andreas reveals bottomless pockets filled with inexhaustible treasures of confetti. This is the final weekend before Martedì Grasso, and as on every weekend after mid-January, is part of an extended Carnevale celebration especially for children. Streets are littered with colored, shiny, and colored and shiny circles and squares.  Day-glow spaghetti foam hangs from walls. Andreas, by nature resourceful, had packed away a kilo of confetti for private use against his family, and is taking advantage of his foresight. It’s a one-sided battle. The wind blows the stuff at and beyond us before we can collect it to return the bombardment. This is exactly to Andreas’ liking.

We arrive at the top of the Passeggiata to a playground filled with tubes and chutes and ladders, and a hedge maze perfectly scaled for children. The little piazza has an abundance of trees, so therefore, a abundance of arrows. While Claudia and I stand by the wall and chat, Enrico puts his hood up and roams the maze in a squat, pretending to terrorize Andreas who noisily obliges. It’s first-rate entertainment.

Claudia shares a photo of Tobia and his friends at their birthday party. Twelve boys with mustaches of various colors and sizes, one with a well-developed pair of schnoz glasses.  It’s the perfect opening frame for a nostalgia movie of thirty years from now. I hope I’m around to see the final cut.

Confetti exhausted, arrows slung, parents and guest thoroughly shot, the sun dimming, we stroll back to Piazza del Popolo where they’ve parked. Andreas flings himself onto the floor of the car below the rear seat. Everyone teases everyone else. They load up, and we wave and shake and kiss cheeks.

I go for a longer walk. The lonelies have been vanquished. The town is full of children and old people, and those creatures between in age who tend to us both. Everyone is family.

Arlecchino:

This morning I woke up with what my father used to call “a crick in the neck.” Is that expression still in common use? I have no idea. Part of the reason I have no idea is that I rarely get one – that is, a crick – but when I do, I go for broke. It sits exactly at the midpoint of everything. It hurts my neck to yawn, sneeze, swallow, and chew in addition to the usual special effects of neck pain. (You may send your thoughtful cards and gifts to my Italian address.)

Nothing much helps these things, whatever they’re called. In my experience they generally go away after a few days. Of course, in the meantime I do what I can in the usually vain hope that four days might become three. Walking seemed like a good idea, as it always does. So as it was a pleasant day – a bit on the chilly side mostly because of the wind, but skies were clear – walking south on the Anello made sense. Contrary to my usual habit, I took the path that seemed to make sense; I headed south on the Anello towards Porta Maggiore.

Arlecchino2A little park sits to one side of the road between Porta Maggiore and Porta Romana. The road was a project of the nineteenth century, with characteristic street lights and railings, and is lined with friendly trees. About halfway up the hill towards Porta Romana is a sweet little park with a sweet bronze statue of Arlecchino. I have never heard of a reason for his being there, but he’s good company and I’m grateful to whoever decided a park should be dedicated to a clown in a patched suit. Scattered around Arlecchino are large circular planters (barren this time of year) and park benches. In winter, the benches are perfect for taking the afternoon sun. As far as I’m concerned, that is their only purpose and it is enough.

The park can be reached by the sidewalks flanking the road, of course, but it also had an access from the escalators that descend from the high town to the parking garage at ex-Campo della Fiera. The escalators only run at certain, specific and – to an outsider’s eyes – rather peculiar hours. When they are moving, they take passengers past an entrance to the little park, which is about half-way down. At some point it was deemed unnecessary; the gate that opens onto the park has been locked, as far as I know, for years.Arlecchino Tramonto

I want to argue that. So many things here (and everywhere) are unnecessary, but continue to function anyway. Closing the gate to the park’s cliffside door saves no energy or expense that I can tell. The lights behind the gate continue to burn, the escalator continues to move (when it moves at all,) and during warm weather the exhaust fan above the gate continues to turn. My suspicious nature imagines enemies of commedia dell’arte, ironically masked, exercising their political clout – but I have no confirming evidence.

So today, I sensibly took my sore neck down to the Anello and walked towards the south, the sun, and Arlecchino. I sat on a bench unlikely to fall into shadow. Eyes alternately opening, closing, I stretched my neck ever so gently and baked it in the warmth. Somewhere deep inside my mind a thought attempted to stir. It tried to egg me into action, it chastised my inactivity, shamed my sloth, labored to divert my attention towards worry, need, yearning, and frenzy.

Poor thought. It failed. I continued to sit in that gentle light, stretching, baking, watching, breathing, for so long a time that I lost track of time. Nothing moved. Not my mind, my body, nor the pain in my neck. Arlecchino stood, I sat, both of us enjoying the sun, neither of us caring what our mental wanderings or imaginations might make of our inactivity.

ArlecchinoArlecchino has been watching the vast panorama before him day and night for I don’t know how many years. He has become still and quiet, and, as I imagine, has grown more open, alive, and receptive in the process. Arlecchino is my aspiration.