Author: dallanz

I got weepy today. The causes were various. Sometimes, I found myself sobbing at a story (heard on a podcast) of remarkable courage. Other times, I sobbed from the sheer magnitude of sadness we are experiencing as a species. There was more weeping in response to joy or inspiration than to gloom, so that it wouldn’t stop all morning was not intolerable, but so many things set me off that it must somehow be connected with grief. We’ve lost so much in these past two months, not the least of which is our ability to pretend that “we can go on as we have done, just let us get past a certain marker,” with anything.

Every now and then my mother would suddenly say, “Why do things have to change? Why can’t everything just stay the same?” I preferred to accept the absurdity of the wish to letting it disturb me. Nothing exists apart from time, and human time is measured by change. But lately, I have come to recognize where that complaint came from. It’s a deeply human place, no matter that it lacks logic. Change may be the most pervasive aspect of living, but when there is too much, it’s natural to feel around for the brakes – even when we know there are none.

I, on the other hand, am wired to seek change, to like it. That’s one reason I was so drawn to theatre, where everything is in a constant state of fascinating flux. Rehearsals are a process that the artist may, at best, be able to guide, but the end result is always a surprise to me, even when I pretend it’s exactly what I was aiming for. I remember in my twenties hearing another young director complain rather cynically that if you achieved ten percent of your vision for a play, you were lucky. My reaction – and I don’t recall if it was ever expressed – was “Ten percent would be awesome! I never see anything turn out the way I expect. And that’s why I do this!”

The challenge I have always faced is how to take that same creative freedom and apply it to other aspects of life.

If you’re expecting me to answer that, you have a long wait ahead of you. 

The first year or two that I lived in Orvieto, personal change was exhilarating. There was the language, the culture, there was not getting lost. And there was plenty to brag about to folks back home. No snow to speak of, a walking city that is also affordable, a vivid cultural life. And while all of that is still true, the suspension we now find it in is strikingly similar in feel to the week during rehearsal when the staging has been worked out, interpretation is beginning to reveal itself, and now it’s time for the actors to go off book – that is, to begin to work with lines memorized. Those four or five rehearsals are full of surprises, too, but most of them are terrifying.

I wish I could draw a more exact parallel between being in lockdown and those getting off book rehearsals, but there probably isn’t one. However, because I’m a director, I will try, anyway.

Both are about striving for what, at the time, seems an unknowable outcome.

Up to the point of the actor’s leaving the script in a backpack and going onstage without the happy crutch of the written word, marvelous work has been done. There are moments of transcendence, perfection, and astonishing emotional courage. There are seeds of camaraderie and ensemble effort that send the spine into flourishes of ecstasy and melt the heart. There is great promise and hope. Then for the next twenty or so rehearsal hours, almost all of that disappears while everyone tries to be patient with an unpleasant mechanical process. 

Until recently, I thought that with prudence, we would slowly make life safer during the lockdown until a tipping point is reached when all the pieces begin to find their places, and we rapidly move towards a new equilibrium. Right now, today, I’m not so sure. It seems impossible that this experiment we are a part of will ever resolve at all, let alone favorably.

And that is when my theatrical experience proves useful, because that’s exactly the way I usually feel after a first run-thru off book; hopeless, while still trying my best to put on a favorable face for my dear actors, for without hope they will never get through technical rehearsals when once again everything will fall apart – only more severely than before.

But in the end, live theatre has the best on-time record of any human effort. Come what may (and with notable exceptions) the show always opens as announced. Of course, it is wrong to suggest that a pandemic can be explained away by a metaphor, especially a theatrical one, and all successful openings are backed up by months of careful planning, wise casting, solid staffing, deep analysis, and selfless teamwork. (Creative freedom is wonderful, but it doesn’t come cheap.) But if we relinquish the notion of a logical march towards a foreseeable resolution, what happens might just be, as so many plays end up being, far better than anything we anticipated.

Early this afternoon, I sent a WhatsApp message to my friends Todd and Beth who live outside of New Orleans. That area was a hotspot at some point recently, so I check in whenever I think of it. If things are bad, there’s not much I can do from Orvieto, but knowing they’re okay is a comfort, and we need all the comforts we can get.

Todd wrote back immediately, even though it was quite early in their part of the world; “Doing okay. Staying Grateful. How you?”

I was washing hands, scrubbing something down, or other such that would have qualified as obsessive behavior two months ago and which is now hyper normal, so it took me awhile to answer. 

“Glad to hear. I’m missing gelato. Specifically, chocolate rum.”

During the gap, perhaps they fell back to sleep, or perhaps my repost struck a chord and they were gorging ice cream, but I haven’t heard from them again; no offers to ship gelato, no sympathy, empathy, or entropy. But I began to think, and it’s true. I do miss gelato. Though to be honest, any flavor would do, so long as I can order at a counter, carry it to my favorite eating-gelato bench, and savor it while kids (and an occasional adult) play on the wooden horses the Michelangeli family provides the public. Truly good gelato (or ice cream) is as much about context as anything. 

When I was a kid in Sunnyvale, California, once a week or so my mother would declare that she hadn’t felt like cooking and why doesn’t my father drive his 1935 Ford pickup down to Foster Freeze and pick up burgers and fries, maybe a couple of milkshakes (none for her, she was trying to lose a few pounds). I would have been happy if she’d tired of cooking almost every night of the week. At Foster Freeze you could buy a deluxe cheeseburger for twenty cents more than a regular and get tomato, lettuce, and pickle relish in addition to the standard ketchup and mustard. Dad and I would order three bags of fries, start eating them while we waited for the burgers, put them between us on the front seat, and have polished them off by the time we drifted into the driveway. Mom wanted to lose weight, right? We were doing her a favor.

But if it were a Sunday when my mother declared herself tired of cooking, it was even better because we’d all go down together, sit at a blue painted picnic table, and everyone got fries and milkshakes. Then, if I played my cards right, I could also get a softy ice cream on a cone, maybe dipped in chocolate. Dad was always okay with that because that meant he could have one too. Mom was trying to lose a few pounds.

But the soft-swirled cone out of a machine paled to the real thing, and the real thing was the handmade ice cream of Clint’s Creamery in Los Altos. Every so often Dad would come home early from his auto garage and announce that we were going to Clint’s. Mom liked that, too, because Clint’s was somehow outside of the diet zone.

The creamery was at the junction of First and Lyell, and above their corner entrance – so it was clear that “creamery” didn’t mean just milk and cheese – was a giant concrete ice cream cone. Okay, it was a cone of grey vanilla that looked like it had been licked on for at least ten minutes by a giant child, but everyone who frequented the place knew the difference between the cone above the door and what they could get inside.

Dad always ordered peppermint chocolate chip, double dip, then for good measure a hand-packed half-gallon to take home. Mom tended towards strawberry. I worked my way through the menu — though I never had the heart to try the bubble gum or black licorice.

The day my father heard that Clint’s had closed was among the saddest of his life. Among the saddest of all our lives. We gave the Baskin-Robbins that opened up in some shopping center or the other a try, but it didn’t inspire any of us to return. Mom brought home mint chocolate chip from Lucky’s supermarket, but that it had obviously been poured into its box left my father cold. I don’t remember ever regularly going for ice cream again, not after Clint’s.

In 1975, I spent several months in Firenze. Early on, my American friend took me to Vivoli near Piazza Santa Croce. I ordered a cup of apricot gelato and was transported. I returned as often as I could, thereafter, and worked my way through their menu. I tried to describe the place to my father, but he was still grieving, and his enthusiasm for my distant discovery was forced.

There are several gelaterie in Orvieto, and my favorite is Officina del Gelato. The recipes are Neapolitan, they use less sugar, the portions are smaller, and I can get a child’s cup at about the size I always asked for at Vivoli for a euro. Tomasso rotates in new flavors periodically, the last I recall being fig. It’s true, I do love the chocolate rum, but I’m equally fond of walnut, hazelnut, wild cherry, pine nut – and whatever else they happen to be serving. 

Alas, their mint chocolate chip is tart in a way that Dad would not have appreciated. I’ve offered a taste to him across the Great Divide, but his enthusiasm for it was also forced. Once a memory of perfection is etched in the soul, there’s no displacing it.

It’s a drizzly day during a lockdown. Oh, my.

Last October, I wanted a light, hooded windbreaker just for this sort of weather. I am a terrible shopper, so ended up with a waterproof, synthetic-fill, hooded jacket, ideal for a more-than-usually-severe Swedish winter.

Two months ago I developed a crush on a sweater in a window. It was a thigh-length cable-knit cardigan, reminiscent of one I’d recently seen in Vienna, and was only thirty-nine euro. It still took me two weeks and the purchase of three turtlenecks to work up the courage to ask about it. What didn’t show in the window was its zipper and hood, neither of which I really wanted. But I bought it anyway – because I’m a terrible shopper.

Today, I really, really needed a walk. I toughed it through the morning and napped after lunch, but by 16:30 was uncomfortable enough that I had to either do something about it, or scream myself crazy. I don’t mind carrying an umbrella if I’m actually going somewhere, but hefting one while walking in circles around the neighborhood, however large they might be, I find burdensome. So, I stepped outside to assess weather conditions more fully than “it seems to be raining out” and to see what solution may be arrived at.

It was colder than it looked. So, I dug through my jackets and pulled out the waterproof with the hood, donned a mask, and slipped through the gate onto our lovely lane, made lovelier still by the rain.

Let me get this off my chest; I Hate Wearing a Mask! Okay, I understand the necessity (even though the rationale has changed a half dozen times in as many weeks), and whether it is for my own safety or the safety of others is of equal weight as far as I’m concerned. And it won’t be forever. But my nose drips when I walk (or sit, or eat, or… you get the idea), and behind a mask, it drips more frequently. The masks I have are very well-designed, they fit the face – a good thing in a mask. But that creates a micro-climate between chin and bridge-of-nose, one that tends towards the tropical. And breathing in my own warm air makes me flushed. Add to that, that I was dressed for midnight in Antarctica, and after a single circuit of streets and alleys, I was more soaked than had I gone into the rain in regular house clothes.

So, I nixed the hooded jacket, and tried the hooded sweater. Now, instead of growing moist from the inside out, it was from both directions at once. Rain penetrated the sweater, which acted like a sponge, and yet it was heavy enough to spread my flushing face all the way to mid-thigh. That lasted two circuits. At this point, I could have surrendered, but the walking made such a difference in how I felt! I understood that if I didn’t find a way to walk in this weather, the rest of the day – and all days like it – would be wasted.

So, I went back to the armadio, mask still in place, pulled out my white cotton blazer and my black, wide-brimmed felt hat, adjusted it at a rakish angle, and tried again. That worked… at least for about twenty minutes until everything was damp enough to begin to be clammy against the skin. But I got my walk, and the day again felt like it could have purpose. I’d surmounted the challenge of an afternoon pioggerellina (as Maria called a similar meteorological event of a couple of weeks ago) during a lockdown. 

(Pioggerellina is a word I want always to remember because it captures what it describes so perfectly. Say it out loud, you’ll see what I mean.)

As I passed my mailbox at the end of the final loop, I noticed something blue inside. There were two masks, not structured like the one I was wearing, but of a good quality. I went up and down the lane, each mailbox contained them. As with almost everything of late, I have no idea where they’re from: the comune, the region, national health, a concerned not-for-profit. But thank you, and if anyone needs mine, let me know, I already had several.

Just before I decided my hat was sufficiently wet and my muscles sufficiently exercised, the lovely brown boxer came onto the lane with her mistress. I waved, she jumped up on her hind legs, the woman holding the leash restrained her and seemed justifiably annoyed at me for provoking her dog. They went on towards the Vicolo, the dog looking back in my direction every three paces. I waved each time. I want her to know that despite my not returning her enthusiastic greetings, I think of her as a friend, and that we will resume normal play when this is over. She seems to understand. I’ll try to explain it to her owners some day, too. My Dog tends to be stronger than my Italian.

Water is heavy.

Typically my shopping bag contains a couple liters of juice and a liter of milk, plus other non-liquid items. Trying to heft all that plus a liter of water onto my shoulder is a challenge. So a couple of weeks ago, I chose a water delivery option. Right around noon, one of the guys from the supermarket drove up in their little Ape (three-wheeled pickup) and handed me a six-liter pack that lasted until this morning. On my last shopping day, I ordered another to arrive today.

I’ve been trying to get out for a walk earlier than has been my habit. Today I moved the needle up a notch and was out by 10:15. I went to the little piazza with the trees for a photo, circled around to Via delle Pertiche No. 2 on Via Angelo da Orvieto, and from there straight towards the sky-bridge so I could get of shot of that as well. On the way, I passed Gabriele from Metà in his Ape. We waved.

My first memory of Gabriele probably dates to two or three weeks after I moved here. I was in need of a light bulb. American training suggested the supermarket, so that’s where I went. I couldn’t find one. It was almost closing time and three of the guys were hanging out behind the counter. As I needed only a lightbulb at the moment, I felt I should announce that I wasn’t able to find what I was looking for so they didn’t think I was trying to sneak something.

“Well, what are you looking for?” asked Gabriele.

I told him.

“Oh, no, we don’t have those. But there’s a store on Piazza della Repubblica…”

I knew which one he meant. The – duh – light bulb store.

“I know where you mean! You think they’re open?”

“Until eight, so if you hurry!”

“Great! The light bulb store!”

“Obviously!” 

And that was it. But somehow he’d made me feel welcome here in a way that I hadn’t yet experienced. And in doing that, he involved his two workmates in welcoming me, too. From then on, I always thought of him as the spiritual head of the supermarket.

At the time, the people associated with Metà optionally wore red smocks over their street clothes. He always wore one, striding around town taking orders, delivering small parcels, bowing to people he knew. He reminded me of a princely figure from a renaissance fresco. And in the store, he kept his co-workers in good spirits. Over the next few months, I grew enormously fond of the whole lot of them, to the point of rationing my visits the way you might sips from a bottle of rare liqueur. The products they offered were – and still are – standard supermarket fare, but the atmosphere they maintained was, to this old man of the theatre, like walking into a really high-spirited rehearsal. It became a kind of emotional home.

Two years later, I ran into Gabriele in Piazza Ranieri and we had our only real conversation to date. He had just turned 29, was from Calabria – as at the time were several of his workers – he lived in Allerona Alta, a beautiful medieval village about twenty minutes out of town. I tend to make celebrities of people I admire, so the encounter sealed itself in my mind; I was now owner of special information.

This morning when I passed Gabriele in his Ape, it never occurred to me that he might be out on a water delivery. Someone else had delivered water last time, and I’d been told to expect it closer to noon. So, I continued looping around the via’s and vicolo’s. A few minutes later, as I turned onto my street, the Ape was sputtering along at the far end, about to turn onto Corso Cavour.

Right! That was probably my water delivery! He had my last name and address, but I doubt he knows my first name, much less my last. I began practicing excuses in Italian, and resigned myself to having to carry the pack of bottles home myself. 

I always leave the gate a little ajar when I go for a walk. First, there’s no real reason to lock it. Second, I like returning to push the gate open without using a key, it puts me in a pleasant mood (I have a life-long history of hating locked doors, but perhaps that’s for another time). As I approached, I saw clearly that the fact of the gate’s being ajar would escape anyone not expecting it, so again I rehearsed the phrases of apology. I pushed the gate. The paper recycling bin waited where I’d put it, and no, there was no sign of water.

I picked up the bin, shut the gate, and went towards the front door. There, on the bottom step of the exterior stairs was the six-pack of water. It displayed an unmistakable air of patient waiting.

There are several people I would choose to have as children, if such a thing were possible. One of them lives in Allerona.

Feeling particularly adventurous yesterday during my daylight stroll, I branched off of Via delle Pertiche No. 2 onto Vicolo delle Pertiche B, and went the thirty meters or so towards what I for years have called “the little piazza with the trees,” properly known as Piazza Angelo da Orvieto. There, before entering, I stopped. Everything suspended. The square is primarily a parking lot, but the central portion is a park, and in this park there are a dozen beautiful trees. To the right is a private garden with wisteria in rampant bloom.

While the green leaves and purple blossoms are enough to justify the side jaunt and the pause, there is something more about this piazza. It’s where I meet Roy to be taken to medical appointments in his golden Fiat. I meet Erika there to go down to Ciconia where our hearing aides are serviced. Claudia picks me up in that piazza when we have our joint visits with the remarkable Dottoressa Christel Fritz. Piazza Angelo da Orvieto, is for me, a point of departure, a portal to the world, the way train stations are, the way airports are. For a suspended moment gazing at the little grove of trees, I forget that the majority of meetings associated with it are medically related. The company going and coming is rich and enjoyable and memorable. Like the leaves and the blossoms.

I went to gaze at the piazza again this morning, this time in the rain. The colors were especially vivid, the suspension of time, particularly profound. I noticed how few cars there were. That may have been the case yesterday, too, I didn’t make a point of noticing. The lot is, in normal times, almost always filled with vehicles parked wherever a space can be imagined, legal or not.

Later today, I went shopping. That was somewhat of a cheat, as my last shopping day was the day before yesterday. But this morning, I surveyed my bounty and discovered that I had shopped myself into a week of frulatti (smoothies) and cheese sandwiches without mayonnaise, so some bending of my own rules was called for.

It seems odd these days to say that the rain keeps people in, but the streets were even quieter than usual. Proprietors in the open shops stood serenely at their counters like the paintings of a Flemish Master – luminous glow, gentle shadow, singular, alone. I saw few people at all, and no one I knew. It was as if our collective experience of solitude has caused us to hold our breath, so that grey skies encourage what is now our natural inclination to bunker at home. Life in suspension.

Today, I’ve been thinking about a fellow I met four years ago, a friend of Claudia’s. I’ve seen him infrequently and can never remember his name, so nod, say hello, smile, but make no effort at sociality. In the first and only conversation we had – not far from the little piazza with the trees – I remember enjoying his sly sense of humor. He expounded on the effects of radon. In the intervening years, every now and then I would ask Claudia his name, but as it was usually months before we’d cross paths again, I’d forget. And because I felt I should remember, when we did meet, I was too shy to say more than hello.

The day before lockdown, I ran into him on my way to lunch at Montanucci. He started talking, and we walked together. We began in Italian, then moved a few sentences to English, then he continued in English while I returned to Italian.

“Excuse me for this,” I finally said, “but I don’t remember your name.”

“Emilio.”

“Good, thank you. When I see you by chance, I’m always so embarrassed that I don’t know what to call you that…”

“And yours?”

“David,” and I handed him a card.

“We will now be together and speak English for me and Italian for you, and call one another by name.”

“Great idea.”

“Do you remember when we met?”

“Sure. You were on your bike. Claudia and I were going to her car that was parked in Piazza Angelo da Orvieto, and she introduced us. You talked for several minutes about how radon makes people here crazy.”

“Yes! And I am the living proof! Good! I have to meet my daughters or I’d invite myself for lunch, but soon! Yes?”

There are hundreds of suspended conversations just in Orvieto – billions world wide – journeys to be taken, adventures to depart upon, appointments to be met. For me, many began, and will begin again, in the little piazza with the trees. So, when I find myself on its edge, I have to wait a moment for the conversations to resume. So far, silence. But someday, when all is ready, we the fortunate will breathe deeply, rise out of suspension, and find our ways forward into conversations we cannot as yet imagine.

While I was hanging wash, Patrizia came onto her balcony to take the air, drinking a cloudy solution from a large glass.

“You did laundry on Sunday.”

“Yeah, sun is predicted today, and rain tomorrow. I may be a Monday washer, but even I am not so stupid as to skip a good drying day in deference to habit.” Okay, that’s what I wanted to say. In Italian it was more like, “Today there’s sun, tomorrow rain, so I wash today. Smart?”

“Very smart.”

“How are you?”

“I have a bad headache. That’s why I’m drinking this medicine,” she brandished the glass. “Too much sleep.”

“Really? That’s possible, these days?”

“I’m not accustomed to it, so I wake at a normal time, can’t think of why I have to get up, turn over, and an hour or two later I have a headache that won’t go away.”

“So now even sleep is dangerous!”

“What a long list of dangerous things we have.”

Apropos of that, I confess to touching my face during the night. I wonder if I should, but what have I touched since washing and sanitizing my hands fourteen times in the half hour before I retire? If bedclothes are covered with the virus, we’re all doomed anyway.

Back to the balcony. Renzo joined the conversation.

“You gonna take a real walk today?”

“Like on the street?”

“Stay within two hundred meters from home, you have a note from your doctor, it will make you feel so much better than walking down there in circles.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

And just as if he were a theatre director, he repeated the list of reasons for biding his advice, all over again. 

I turned my attention to laundry. From their balcony, my neighbors started a conversation with the fellow whose yard is sort of behind my house, talking back and forth over my roof. It didn’t seem possible, but they kept it up for quite awhile. Renzo then introduced us, and my newly revealed neighbor made himself visible up a level or two from my garden, and over the narrow fence that spans the gap between my house and Giancarlo and Annalisa’s next door. Renzo said something about Montalcino, but I didn’t catch whether that was the man’s name or where he was from. I waved with a soggy pant leg, he smiled and asked if everything was okay (“Tutto a posto?”), and I returned the same. He seems nice. 

An hour or so later, much in need of a walk, I took Renzo’s direction, donned a mask, put in my aides, pocketed the by now rather limp doctor’s note, and opened the gate to the wider world of Via delle Pertiche Prima. Renzo was at the Corso end of the street watering the flowers he hangs in pots the full length of the lane. Pestilence or not, beauty must be attended.

Via delle Pertiche No. 1 runs for one “block” between Corso Cavour and where Via delle Pertiche No. 2 crosses. If you continue straight, it turns into Vicolo delle Pertiche A, which curves left after about ten meters and goes on to join Via Angelo d’Orvieto. The Vicolo is quite lovely; narrow, passes gardens (one of them with statuettes of the seven dwarves, in living color), very characteristic of the quarter. Close as it is, I’ve not walked there in maybe a year, but today I did. Several times.

My first pass on the Vicolo encountered a masked man carrying a white box. I made room, and as we approached each other I recognized the friendly fellow who owns Enoteca del Duomo. He smiled dazzlingly beneath his mask and waved with his free hand. He was looking for my street. As I looped around I saw him give the white box to a neighbor. I just checked their website hoping for a reminder as to his name, but found instead a delivery menu available seven days a week from ten in the morning to midnight! I just today have become a bit weary of cooking, so that is tempting indeed.

Renzo (and my own good sense) was right. A real walk, in daylight, even if also in circles (they were at least larger) did me a world of good.

The weather cooled. Rain is now forecast by 21:00. I moved the laundry, still damp except for socks, indoors. Weather forecasts, just like pandemic models of probability, are dependent on data, and as the data changes, so does probability. So if it rains early, my laundry is unaffected. If the rain comes late, I’ll get in another real walk. The forecast may not be as neat and certain as we would like, but it is useful in knowing how to time things; like bringing in the clothes off the line. And other much more complex events, too.

Forty days. How biblical. Forty days in the desert. Forty days of rain.

I set out for the Metà on Corso mid-afternoon – sunny and warm. By the time I reached the end of the street, it was obvious that an afternoon walk offers infinitely more pleasure than one in the dark. My late-night skulks are usually accompanied by a puritanical attitude; this is exercise, not pleasure, walk quickly, walk hard, the stones are black, so is my coat, so is the sky (even so, now and then I catch a glimpse of the moon). By contrast, my trip to the store was so inviting I kept going past where I usually turn, right into Piazza Vivaria. It was a daring incursion into foreign territory.

I passed Ubaldini, the housewares store. Their door was open, but the lights were out. Federica was inside. So was Katrin, the marvelous physiotherapist. They were just hanging out.

“You’re open?”

“No. Only in the morning.”

“It’s afternoon.”

“I know, so we’re not open. Only the door is open. Don’t ask me for anything. We are only open mornings. I guess because the virus is a late riser.”

I meandered more, and eventually convinced myself to shop groceries. The blue-eyed checker was the only fellow in the store. I asked him how he was.

“Normal, you know. After six weeks, none of this seems strange anymore.”

“How much longer do you think this will last?”

“Well, they say May 3, but some shops are already opening. Not restaurants and bars…”

And we said more or less simultaneously, “…of course it’s a little difficult eating and drinking while wearing a mask.”

“Eh,” he concluded.

As I was checking out, Gabriele came in.

“You got a haircut!”

“All of it. Right down to the bone.”

“Where?”

“At home, where else, eh?”

After taking my purchases back to the house to run under hot water and soap, I went back out for Metà on Via Signorelli. I crossed paths with Corrado, one of the partners, on the way.

“Free for the day, and tomorrow! I don’t know if I can handle the time off!”

I saw him at the store a few minutes later, shopping for himself. Some of that free time will be spent cooking.

Between getting bread and juice, I passed condiments, and there was a normal size bottle of soy sauce. Kikkoman, no less! I got two.

There were people I know on the street. This morning I had fretted that having spoken so little Italian for a week that I would sputter helplessly all afternoon, but the joy of seeing friends overcame all that. There was the moment at Metà Corso when I was told how much I owe (€20.71) and I could not make sense of “71” despite repeated attempts, so short changed him by fifty centessimi (he took it anyway, I’ll explain next time) but otherwise the only really awkward moment came when I had trouble switching to English when I met a fellow expat. 

On my next pass home, I ran into Renzo.

“Pizza tonight.”

“Pizza! Oh, boy!”

“You don’t like it? Maybe you can give it to someone.”

I normally avoid expressing opinions about pizza, especially to expats who are far more particular about what constitutes good pizza than most Italians I know. But I believe my fixation with pizza as the ultimate indication that we are teasing the edges of normality lies in the fact that my last meal out was at Al Cordone where I had perhaps the most delicious pizza of my life, or at least a serious contender. The crust was thin and crispy, and stayed crispy through to the end. The toppings (for a caprese, that is, mozzarella, fresh tomato, arugula – because basil was not yet in season) were luscious. And they always pre-slice it for me so I don’t spend the whole meal sawing ineptly away only to take so long cutting that the pizza is stone cold halfway through. Upon exiting the pizzeria that evening, I swore to myself I’d be back once a week for their excellent product. That was forty-three days ago.

As I was coming down just now, Patrizia was on the balcony and repeated the promise of pizza.

“What flavors this week?”

“Mozzarella. Zucchini. Maybe a potato pizza. And I think I’ll do a pizza bianca, you know, plain with just rosemary.”

On the forty-first day He came out of the desert. On the forty-first day, there was land. At the end of the fortieth day, there is pizza. Close enough. Works for me. 

Thanks to Erika Bizzarri for the photo; neighbors on Piazza Ranieri.

I listened to a conversation Krista Tippett had with Ellen Davis today that was recorded in 2010. The phrase that stood out was Ms. Davis saying “…and that slows us down, and in our times, anything to slow us down must be viewed as a good thing.” The quote is a little loose because I don’t want to listen to the whole episode again right away, but it is in essence correct.

Were she speaking today, she may have changed a word so as not to imply that the virus is a good thing, but it spoke volumes to me about the lockdown.

I sit in the middle of my circus minimus on a fresh spring evening while typing this. Somewhere there is the persistent pounding of a hammer, this in a town where little besides furniture and doors is made of wood. Any piece of stone hammered like that would be dust by now. This is not the first day I’ve heard this, and I don’t remember when the first day was, but it sparks my curiosity rather furiously. The hammerer just dropped what from this distance sounded like a wood plank. The mystery grows. Now the hammer strokes are short and leaden. Now a little desperate, and as if the hammerer were pounding away at the plank – no nails.

Renzo stepped into the yard on a soup delivery yesterday, or perhaps the day before. He looked at my weedy garden and gave it a thumbs up. I had a quip in English jump to the front of my tongue, but nothing in Italian. Then he touched a particularly hearty weed and suggested it would best be eliminated. I saw then his kindness in wanting to point out the worst of the weeds without insulting my gardener’s skills.

“I just am not up to it, these days. I want to weed, but I can’t.”

“You’re not feeling well?”

“The lack of real walking is taking its toll.”

And we discussed a few options that might solve that.

Today, at times I felt like I could weed, and considered giving the beds a good soak so that weeding later in the day or tomorrow would be more efficacious, but checked the forecast first. Rain Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, then warm weather. Perfect. I’ll wait until Wednesday. Maybe by then I’ll have conquered a few inscrutables and will feel up to the job.

The hammering ceased, a long silence while I discoursed on weeds, then a flurry of pounding something harder than before, another rest and two staccato notes to finish. No pictures jump to mind.

The swifts have returned. I heard reports from the medieval quarter that they were darting through the skies, but just now sighted some for myself. Only a few swoop and glide within my sight; the avant guard I suppose. Just as I wrote that, as if to prove me wrong, dozens of them flew directly overhead. I love watching them, their joyous arcs and dives. They are also cleaners of the air. Any creature that eats mosquitoes is my friend.

Five bangs of the hammer, the last one of a different tone from the rest.

All the blossoms have fallen off the apricot. Now there are only tender leaves. That transformation seemed sudden. I know for a fact that day before yesterday there were still blossoms here and there because Renzo pointed them out, visions of apricots dancing before his eyes. Even with weeds, the garden looks happier with the tree starting to provide shade. And the clematis is showing buds. They will open into lush lavender colored flowers, clumps of them, cascades. 

Suddenly, the delegation of swifts is back and in force. 

The hammer started pounding again and has paused. I imagine someone stepping back from their work, satisfaction rising into their heart for a job well done. 

Dusk is here. I sit wrapped in my cardigan sweater, deep blue, cozy, having walked in circles for hours (me, not the sweater), talked to a friend on the phone, read, and listened to Mancinelli, all the while entertaining thoughts of zucchini stew over brown rice. I’m wishing I had soy sauce. When I asked Gabriele where to find soy sauce last November, he laughed. Two weeks later it appeared on their shelves. I bought one of the tiny bottles and used it up so quickly I forgot to get another.

Tomorrow is Saturday. Shopping day. What fun that will be! People, voices, texture under foot.

The sun sets, the light changes. I remember what a sunset looks like from the cliff. I also have photos. Even if it lacks drama, a sunset is also lovely from my yard.

I’ve been listening to a lot of public radio. I won’t listen to commercial radio because I cannot tolerate the vocal deliveries used for ads. I don’t listen to Italian radio – even though it would probably be a good idea – because… well, I want more content that I can understand on one pass. My threshold for virus-related news is growing thin, so I search for as yet unheard episodes of On Being, This American Life, Selected Shorts. As I walk in circles for at least two hours a day, I’m beginning to dip into archived episodes, when I can find them.

Once in awhile, I walk to music I happen to have on my phone, CD’s ripped to iTunes back when you could do that. Luigi Mancinelli, an Orvieto lad whose name the theatre bears, was a conductor of some fame in his day. He also composed a few things, and I have his Venetian Scenes, a suite that sounded thin and vague to me at first, but one I have come to love.

So anyway, radio. There are many splendid voices on radio, and a great variety. The perfect ironic whine of David Sederis, Marco Werman’s elegant rhythms, the humorous snark of Brooke Gladstone. There’s a traffic reporter for KQED in San Francisco, Joe McConnell, who has such gracefully balanced chest and head tones that I could listen all day to which interchanges are blocked because of a three-car collision. There is the slappy, snappy, midwestern ramble of Ira Glass. I love them all.

However. There is a style of speaking now fashionable on the airwaves that reminds me of a Pilates instructor. It’s pitched and modulated to rise above exercise music, and has a galloping rhythm to it, as if the speaker were tumbling down stairs. Sentences spurt, phrases end sporadically, and I, as a listener, feel as if words are being hurled at me like bean bags in a random game of catch. This has become a standard form of delivery on public radio, as if everyone is from Los Angeles. Possibly they are. I grew up in the Bay Area, so if you seem to detect a bias against Southern California culture, you’re right.

Before I spent weeks at a time in Italy, I assumed that vocal characteristics were like facial features, simply a part of who a person is. As a college-level acting teacher, I was hyper-aware of the tinny qualities American students brought to their voices, something that seemed to disappear after the age of thirty. I thought that was a physical progression, that they grew out of it, but because those tonalities are limiting for an actor (and don’t carry well on stage) I at least suggested to students techniques for relaxing and stabilizing the voice. It was usually an uphill battle.

Still, it seemed to me that Italian voices were different. I’d catch the differences, try to analyze them, but eventually decide they were products of my own romanticization of the culture. Then one evening after I moved here, I was out for a walk (not in circles – think of that!) and two men were a short distance behind me, talking. They had beautiful, resonant voices, full bass tones with lilting descants lending a delightful humanity to the flow. They were moving faster than I, so eventually overtook me – and were, at most, sixteen years old.

So voices are learned.

Listening to Selected Shorts today I kept remembering Isaiah Sheffer, who was until his death in 2012, the host and sometimes a special reader for that show. Hearing him speak was like listening to a Bach cello suite. The woman I just heard as host, today, is certainly intelligent, asked good questions in the author’s interview, and has a solid command of language, but was totally Pilates. And I hear those same vocal characteristics everywhere. I used to accept them as being “real”, refreshingly not-radio standard. Since those two young men passed me on that evening walk, I can’t do that anymore. Maybe a steady diet of perfect modulation is boring after awhile, but at least it sounds professional. Like a choice was made as to how to speak for a medium that is all about speech. The fellow being interviewed lifted the ends of sentences like a question? Many times in a row? And while their conversation was interesting and informative, when I found out they were both at least twenty years out of high school, I was a little surprised.

I am, I admit, being a snob. 

I have heard that Italians are given significant training at school in rhetoric and public address. The results are mixed, to be sure. I’ll go to a concert with uncomfortable chairs, and squirm through a series of speeches that precede the music that seems to last longer than the performance. But I am amazed at how open, confident, and in command of the language most of the speakers are. And the voices are often magnificent.

Excuse me if I have obsessed, but hearing a voice in a natural setting, broadcast only by the speaker’s breath, would be transportive, right now. Even a Pilates instructor from San Fernando Valley would sound glorious – in person. Or maybe I’ll overcome my prejudices in a Mancinelli moment. It, like, totally could happen?

Yes, you’re right, the photo has nothing to do with the subject of this post. But can you find the cat?

In January, 1996, I auditioned a play I was directing for the still quite young Metropolitan Playhouse of New York. When the creative team went into the theatre the weather was chill, skies were clear, and there was some snow in the forecast. When we came out four hours later, there was two feet of fluffy white spread out across the city, and it was still falling. The weekend that followed was among the most memorable I’ve spent.

All but essential traffic was banned. New Yorkers were cross country skiing up and down the avenues and were walking right down the middle of the streets. Central Park was filled with people until the wee hours, building snowmen, sledding on the hills, tramping the meadows in snow shoes. Everyone I came in contact with was smiling, said hello, enthused about the utter transformation the City had so suddenly undergone.

The overriding factor for us all was the stunning absence of cars. Oh, they were still there, but buried under several feet of snow, and even were they to be dug out, they weren’t allowed to go anywhere. The cityscape was for people, first of all and rightly so. New York is one of the great walking cities of the world. That weekend it felt like we’d finally gotten it right.

Sunday came. An idea swept through town like a wind. This is great! Why don’t we just close Manhattan to traffic every Sunday? Or at least Midtown. In the moment, it seemed so possible.

Then the snow melted, traffic congestion returned, and we settled down with our memories of the quiet, happy city we had just relinquished, as if nothing had happened, to the automobile. But no one I know ever stopped talking about that glimpse of city life that reflected the nearly eighty-percent of residents who do not own a motor vehicle. I doubt that the conversation was limited to me and my circle of friends.

Surely it wasn’t, because year by year more parts of the city are closed to traffic and made pleasant for pedestrians. If the city of snow was an inspiration on any level, development of the vision took awhile to gestate, but it has clearly taken hold. And while I doubt there is any way to definitively trace this evolution in city planning to that snowstorm of 1996, I have no doubt that it had an effect.

There are stories now abounding about how heavily polluted air in cities across the world has become clean after only a few weeks suspension of human activity; about how wildlife is showing up in places where it has not been seen in years. I’m eager to hear more about this. I want to remember. And I want these phenomena to be a compelling subject of conversation for the next several decades. The Earth can heal if we stop wounding it. Humanity can organize to meet a threat if we can overcome, or even just suspend, our addictive distractions. We are living through a period that shows our virtues and faults in high relief.

I want to remember.

And I want the conversation that follows to be artistic, academic, and philosophical as well as scientific and political. In fact, on a certain level, I want this conversation about what we experienced to dominate our all our discourse for the next quarter of a century, at least. We need to do it. The problems we face are vast, difficult, and unprecedented, but so is the current crisis. An extended conversation about what we remember of it will fuel insight, connect dots, make the possible concrete.

By “conversation” I don’t mean that those New Yorkers who were part of the magical snowbound weekend did nothing but yammer on for twenty years about skiers on Amsterdam Avenue. But those memories informed how many of us, if not most of us, viewed the City from that weekend on. And sufficient numbers later found ourselves in positions to do something about making that vision real, that the snowy weekend did have its impact.

That’s what I want to have happen to our view of the planet and the crisis it faces; that notions are fundamentally altered by these several months we’re living through. We don’t need to have ready solutions for everything (though we may, in fact, already have them), but we do need to go forth from this spring awakening with a memory of more than the horrifying statistics, ill-informed political posturing, and woeful lack of pizza. This is a major public health emergency, that much is obvious. It is also a major universal health opportunity. Let’s allow that opening to flourish well beyond the emergency, and let’s help assure it does by chronicling our experiences, whatever they are, in whatever way we can.

So we remember.

These pages are my two cents. Got change?