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.
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.