Day before yesterday, I cooked the zucchini and gorgonzola soup. It was easy to make and is (still) delicious to eat.
Nothing’s happened today, so far. I took a midday walk, didn’t see a soul. I went shopping for the first time since Saturday. Gabriele and (I’ve got to ask his name) blue-eyed checker were organizing vast delivery orders. It was the slow time, and I was the only customer in the store. Fewer than ten minutes there, and my company-deprived self felt like I had spent a weekend away with my favorite cousins.
An old friend from my San Francisco, Fabulous Theatre Co., days writes that he and his wife are in the Sierra foothills. As I read that, I could smell the crackling air, feel its special flavors, remember the bright slant of the morning sun. The noisy silence of nature. He’s teaching stagecraft online. I have no idea how you do that.
Another friend from the same gang teaches English as a second language, and is adapting to online classes via Zoom. Suddenly, Zoom is everywhere.
A third member of the company has a sprawling property near Mendocino. She normally gives massage. Her quarantine is to stop massage for a month. She’s remote enough, that’s about all that’s necessary.
The fourth member describes days not dissimilar to mine; more urban, dog-walking, house-staying.
A long-ago Santa Cruz, Parsifal’s Players friend who lives in Cambridge, MA chimes in on that score. Her days have become about organizing drawers.
My friends from New York City, Metropolitan Playhouse days, I worry about almost without ceasing. When the worries do cease, it is because they have been crowded out by shining memories.
My friend here, Maria who weaves beautiful scarves on Via dei Magoni, lives outside of Gabelletta in a cottage on a plot of land with fruit trees. She takes long walks in the woods and watches from afar the silent city brooding in the sunlight, hatching her future. Another country-dwelling chum, Giancarlo, is biding his time with his dog, Black, and tending to his garden. Both are living the lives they have wanted to live since we met, free of their shops and schedules.
Jimmy and Laura, and their puppets, near Acquapendente live in sunset-splattered meadow surrounded by trees and described by a river. They write that they hardly notice the quarantine. The puppets are content.
People here on the Rock have disappeared into their caves, or so it seems. Antonny and Romina, Pina, Franca, the various Cristiano’s and Massimo’s, even neighbors Stefano, Gianni, Maria, Annalisa, Giancarlo, and Davide. I do see Renzo, Patrizia, and the smoker with the gentle air. I wonder after Paula of the eternal smile, the bewilderingly perfect twins Nadia and Natasha, newly-arrives from the States, Joan and daughter Angela, elegant Luisa, brilliant Giorgio, jovial Kamal – they are all minutes away by foot, but have vanished! Dear friends, Erika, Michael, Andrea, Natsuko, Riccardo, Marina, Roy, Lucianna, Rosella… and so many more. In normal times I see them rarely or see them regularly, but in these times, we visit only in our minds. A trip to Piazza Ranieri or Via Malabranca seems like it would require crossing an ocean. Our personal worlds shrink precipitously.
How blithely we accepted that snack slice of Margherita pizza, a lunch picked out from Montanucci’s jeweled buffet, the true flavors of Tomasso’s walnut gelato. How used we became to being dazzled by Riccardo at the piano, demonstrating thematic variation for his class of old folk on Tuesday morning. How I came to expect Michele would be here next week for another shiatsu, that we (any of us) would walk together in the rain, arms linked and memories warm from a meal well-shared, that a knot huddled over martinis would wave me in to join them even though I don’t really drink. How long ago was all that? Seventeen days?
With devoted effort at isolation, we will be all that again, and – I hope – with newly (and devoutly) appreciative eyes.
Everything changes. So must we.
While we wait, cook zucchini soup!
- One large yellow onion
- Two tablespoons of olive oil
- Two tablespoons butter
- One shallot
- Five or six medium zucchini
- Two cans chicken stock
- One cube chicken bullion
- Half cup dry white vermouth
- One tablespoon dried oregano (or fresh sage)
- About three ounces gorgonzola & dolcetta cheese (or six ounces – or one pack – of a combo called Duetto)
- Salt
- Pepper
- Nutmeg
- Rough chop the onion and shallot
- Combine in oil and butter, sauté until tender (covered)
- Rough chop zucchini, stir into onion/shallot mixture
- Add oregano/sage, stir well, continue to cook for about five minutes on low heat
- Add chicken stock, vermouth, and bullion, bring to boil, simmer for about ten minutes
- Blend with stick blender until smooth
- Add cheese gradually while blending
- Add salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste, stir well.
- Allow to sit for at least an hour before reheating (or chilling) and serve.