The coolest thing: praise for “The Quiet Exhilaration of Learning Italian”

An academic in Italy read the essay I wrote for The Millions about learning to speak Italian and reposted it to LinkedIn with the most amazing comments!

She actually called it "un bellissimo articolo" -- a beautiful article!

I believe this is one of the few times I've read something in Italian that's commenting on my writing (outside of graduate school!):

Chi ama parlare, ma soprattutto vivere, una lingua riconoscerà subito questa sensazione: non è (solo) comunicare, ma anche acquisire una nuova identità e scoprire un altro modo di stare al mondo.

Translation: "Anyone who loves speaking but especially living another language will immediately recognize this sensation: it's not only communicating but also acquiring a new identity and discovering another way of being in the world."

How truly wonderful this is! Thank you, Gaia. Molto gentile!

Here's Gaia's post:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7358807293552971776/

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My favorite photo of Florence?

I took this photo one morning over the summer as I walked the streets of "my city." Firenze. Florence. The City of Dante. Also: The city of Jeanne. I'd finally made it across the river to revisit my old neighborhood and check on Piazza Santo Spirito, my old stomping grounds.

The morning that I took this photo, I stopped at Caffe Ricchi by Santo Spirito for a cappuccino and as I wrote in an earlier post about the trip, when I asked the barman there about a sign listing soy milk cappuccino, he said it tastes like cardboard. Old-school Italy remaining old-school Italy -- yay. The piazza was largely empty, I guess because it was all of 7:30a but how delightful.

On the way back the apartment, I passed a throwback record store and peering into the window, I saw a Beatles album whose cover read in Italian, "Aiuto." Aiuto = Help. That's the famous “Help” album – translated for the Italian edition. LOVE IT!

Anyway, this might be my favorite photo of Florence from this trip. It remains such a beautiful city -- especially if you're able to step away from the areas that are heavily populated with tourists.

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'The age I lost everyone and everything' (my lecture at Otterbein)

Thanks to the amazing English department at Otterbein University in Ohio, I'll be giving a talk about my translation on Thursday.

The title of the talk -- "'The Age I Had Been When I Lost Everyone and Everything': The Life and Works of Edith Bruck" -- is inspired by a line from one of the stories in my translation, This Darkness Will Never End.

I'll also have the distinct privilege of sitting in on a Holocaust literature course that includes the translation as a required text!

Pinch me, pinch me -- the students will be discussing stories with me that I translated!

I plan to discuss what women writers can tell us about the Holocaust, and also various aspects of Edith Bruck's life, including outtakes from our conversation in July when I visited her again at her apartment in Rome.

What a partnership literary translation can be. I feel as though I am one of many 'emissaries' promoting the work of Edith Bruck. There are emissaries in France, emissaries in Spain, even emissaries in Germany. And I'm one of her American emissaries.

Thanks again to Otterbein!

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What I never say (Liz)

I was thinking recently about my Edith Bruck translation and all of the public readings I’d completed when suddenly I realized I'd only once said aloud something I'm constantly thinking, albeit in such a subtle, subliminal kind of way that it almost transforms thinking into unthinking:

I wish Liz were alive to hear about the translation and the readings.

It’s obvious and with people we know well, we never have to say the obvious. Everyone I know is aware she died two years ago on Sept. 6, 2023, at the age of 54, after a lifetime of illness.

But as wonderful as all of the readings have been and as meaningful as it’s been to meet friends and family throughout this mini book-tour, there’s still no denying that my librarian sister who lived for words and loved books even more than I do would have enjoyed the publication of my first book-length translation and the attendant promotional activities. And I would have enjoyed any pleasure she might have felt over the book (Where ‘enjoyed’ sounds so trite compared to how truly kaleidoscopically awesome it would have been for me to share this moment with her).

She would have asked me 1,000 questions by phone and text and in person -- the deadlines, the reviews, the details about the readings I'd scheduled, the questions posed by the audience. She would have fangirled it up when I told her Elena Ferrante’s translator (Ann Goldstein) attended the reading in New York.

She would have read the translation closely -- far closer than it would seem humanly possible (a reflection of HER dedication to literature, her intense curiosity about the written word -- not the merit of the translation). I like to think she would have appreciated, somewhat grimly, the title that I chose for the translation, which deviates from the original Italian: This Darkness Will Never End.

But wait, there’s more!

And I don’t just mean the profound sadness I feel over her death. I don’t even mean the gaping hole she left – my partner-in-crime for all things literary (and also wicked thoughts you shouldn't say aloud and anything that reflects the ongoing conversation siblings, if they're lucky, share over the course of their lives).

What I mean when I say there's more: if I, who write often and blog regularly and admit that I more or less still openly grieve the loss of my personal Holy Trinity (Mommy, Daddy, Liz) – if I do not say how much I miss my sister in this instance, how many other people are going around this world with a similar ache that's rarely revealed?

It’s like I'm taking a walk or having a conversation with a bee buzzing about my face. 

This bee’s persistent buzzing could be translated as, ‘I wish Liz were here,’ or, ‘I wish I could talk to Liz.' 

OR, ‘I wish Liz could have heard the question the man at Newtonville Books asked.’

Surely everyone is like this!

If love (or actually hope) is the thing with feathers, grief is the one with talons.

And it's no one's fault. We stay silent often because it's more convenient -- for us. There was a lot to say when I gave the readings in the Spring -- why say more?

Yet it’s like a song that gets lodged in your head after you hear it on the radio one day.

Visually it would be quite obvious: in a movie, they would show the character’s face, maybe close up, then there would be a closeup of the thought visualized. Maybe in my case, an image of Liz as she was attached to all the beeping buzzing bleating monitors in the hospital on Long Island before she died. Then my face again, outwardly impassive. Then another shot of Liz, pale, jaundiced, with a temperature of 93, days before the end. Then a shot, maybe, of my sisters and me surrounding Liz on her deathbed after the doctor said, “There’s no hope.” (This was after he’d let us hope in vain, but I digress).

As I write this, I am perfectly calm.

So’s everyone you know who carries around an ache of this kind (or another kind).

The guy I call a jerk during a traffic jam. The annoying father on the sidelines at a soccer game. The local official who makes a decision I disagree with (I don’t mean anyone specifically).

The inner landscape of each of these people could be exactly like my own.

Now I stand at the podium of the conference room at my public library.

Now I begin to say how wonderful it is to read at a library.

Now I say my sister was a librarian.

Now I say how much she would have enjoyed this talk with a smile on my face.

Now I continue with my remarks about the translation and appear perfectly happy to read from it because I am, despite being stuck on a channel of grief (because really and truly, how is it possible this translation was published only after its biggest supporter had died?)

Now I walk out of the library and talk with friends.

Now I go home and eat dinner.

And unless I am an aberration, everyone we know older than, say, 30 years of age, is the same way.

(The percentage of those older than 50 who might feel this way? 500 percent.)

The United States of Grief. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization of the Bereaved. The United Nations of Sorrow.

Or simply what I never say.

And maybe also what YOU never say. All of our dead, all of our regrets, all that's gone. Weighing on us like a millstone and all you can hear is silence.

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Liz Bonner, Feb. 16, 1969 - Sept. 6, 2023

Eulogy for Liz. Sept. 9, 2023.

I’d like to first of all thank you for coming – by coming, you tell me that you cared about Liz, and I’d like to thank you for that, too.

I am speaking today on behalf of my mother, who is unfortunately not well enough to be here, and my sisters, Trish and Denise, and their families. I also speak, in a way, on behalf of my father who left us just shy of two years ago and who never lost hope for Liz.

We are heartbroken by this loss but soothed at least a bit knowing she is no longer suffering – after so many trying years.

I am the youngest in my family so growing up, Liz was very much my big sister. But at some point, any authority she lorded over me morphed into a friendship that was one of the deepest bonds I’ve had the privilege of knowing.

It was a bond marked by shared interests, including a love of books. Now we’re a family of big readers – beginning with my parents to my sister, Trish, and down to the rest of us, but I think she loved books the most. Good thing she was a librarian! A job she loved, and a job she excelled at. And even after she could no longer work at the library, she continued to practice library science with me and I suspect anyone she knew, recommending books and fiendishly listening to books on tape.

And I will also let you in on a secret I’ve been harboring. While she often said she found writing quite difficult and simply couldn’t do it, I think she would have been the better writer and it’s one of many facets of what could have been, had the hand dealt to Liz been a little different – or if the society she was born into had been a little different. One that wasn’t so punitive toward those with mental struggles.

As she put it to me one day, “I really wish I could write; then my eccentricities would be more acceptable.”

But about those books and other shared interests – like public radio and music and the New Yorker magazine – we corresponded about all of these things continuously for the past 25 years via emails, letters, phone calls and eventually text messages.

And after a while, I began squirreling away the best of these missives with a plan to write an essay about Liz. So on this day dedicated to her memory, I will draw on the correspondence to reflect a bit on Liz’s life and on her character, which was truly unparalleled, in all senses.

One of the most memorable of these communications – and perhaps my first inkling that the text message distilled her particular character to its essence – came on the morning of Nov. 9, 2016.

Do you remember that morning? I’ll give you a hint. It didn’t dawn sunny for Hillary Clinton.

Liz, who perhaps like many of us was still new to texting, sent me a two-word text in ALL CAPS:

“NOT GOOD”

Capital N, capital O, capital T, capital G, capital O, capital O, capital D

What more needed to be said?

My apologies if I am offending some in the room but anyone who knew her would know she didn’t support Trump.

It reminded me of some of the quirky things she did as a child. Like hiding her flute in the bushes because she didn’t want to practice it.

She often sent texts that I learned to recognize as quotes from the authors she loved.

Like the Somali poet Warsan Shire who wrote a poem excerpted in The New Yorker with a line Liz especially liked, and which she sent via text: “Daughter, be stronger than the loneliness this world is going to present to you.”

Through the writers and books she favored, one can trace the existential conflicts she’s always battled.

She loved the essays of David Sedaris, a humorist who nonetheless has often written about family tragedy including the suicide of his sister. Of an article about his father’s decline, Liz said:

“At first his honesty is jarring but on second thought brave and admirable in a way. It made me reflect on the darkness within my own soul. Maybe that is what good or honest writing can do: shine a light on the parts of ourselves that we keep hidden from the world and sometimes ourselves.”

She also loved music. Her bedroom in high school was plastered with posters of Prince and the Revolution. Her favorite Prince song was “Controversy,” which contains the line, “I wish there was no black and white, I wish there were no rules.” Not because Liz was rebellious – or not only -- but because the world often didn’t make ENOUGH space for someone like her.

One day a few years ago, she wrote in a text, “Just heard on the radio ‘Bring on the Night,’ so I think I have a reason to live.”

What else did Liz love?

*“The Brian Lehrer Show” on WNYC; it was often blaring in the background when I would call her. Terry Gross, too, because she unwittingly channeled Liz’s profound curiosity about other people through her questions.

*John Lennon – she always observed Dec. 8, the day he was gunned down in 1980, as if it were a national holiday….

*The British comedian Ricky Gervais, whose bold, unsentimental observations tickled her.

She also loved Steve Levinson, who was her boyfriend for many years before he succumbed to cancer.

And she was devoted to our mother, who is now in a nursing home in New Jersey. Whenever I visit her, I listen to her voicemails and there are invariably many, many voicemails from Liz, achingly intent on reaching my mother, on maintaining their connection.

She was devoted to Buddhism as well, which will be apparent today at this service honoring Liz.

I am of course mainly focusing on the positive even though I know very well her life was marked by so many negative moments, so many negative diagnoses, so many people who couldn’t help her adequately…

Which is of course tragic for many reasons but to offer one:

We in the family casually considered her the smartest of the four girls.

Unfortunately, the chemicals in her brain were forever unbalanced.

Liz spent a lot of her high school years in the hospital for treatment for anorexia nervosa and was forced to leave college to go to a psychiatric facility in New Jersey. They were unfortunately life-changing experiences that left an enduring mark.

As she wrote in an email, five years ago, “The food can only cover up a wound that refuses to heal.”

But food wasn’t her only medication – words were. And connections to people.

She never took words for granted. She wrote to me about a French novel she was reading in which, she wrote, “The narrator says that literature, of all the art forms, can most reveal a person's soul.” And she asked, “So is the writer bearing their soul because of some innate need to do it or are they operating on more altruistic motivation to touch another's soul and try to relieve their suffering through the power of connection?”

I probably don’t need to tell you that she herself was READING the work of writers in the hopes someone would touch her soul through words and relieve her suffering…

I’m not going to lie: there is no consolation in this death.

We sisters never lost currency with Liz, and she bombarded us with questions.

In addition, she was eternally interested in all of her nieces and nephews and always sought a closer bond with them. She was also curious to the point of noseyness arguably about her brothers-in-law, who, coming from other families with different traditions, struck her as particularly interesting and she longed to know them better.

The hole she leaves is immense. We worried about her health for 40 years but I, for one, did not actually prepare for this moment because it is truly unthinkable.

But I’d like to offer a palliative to our collective grief.

I have learned in recent years of a saying some people of the Jewish faith use when someone dies. It is an expression that almost magically converts grief into the pure joy of beloved memories:

“May her memory be a blessing.”

I will be leaning on this word-formed lifesaver in the days and weeks and months to come and I say to you:

May the memory of Liz be a blessing to all of you.

Remember her and be filled with the joy of having known her.

THANK YOU.

-30-  

Edith Bruck is alive and well!

During our trip to Italy, I was lucky to see many friends I'd known in Florence, but perhaps the most important meeting took place near the Spanish Steps in Rome.

It's the area where Edith Bruck lives -- "my author."

Indeed, Mike even arranged for us to stay near Piazza del Popolo during our visit to Rome so I would be able to to walk to Edith's apartment.

It was our third meeting; the first took place in 2018, shortly after I began translating, "Silvia," one of the signature stories in This Darkness Will Never End.

I spent three glorious hours with Edith this trip. Imagine if your 94-year-old grandmother was a famous writer. Over lunch, she reminisced, she complained, she repeated herself, she smoked! (those thin cigarettes -- the whole time). But she also told me about a story (novel?) she wants to write – but can’t because she’s lost most of her eyesight – and I wish she could write it. It’s called “La Caccia,” and it’s about two journalists who go looking for the last sopravvissuta.

Is that how she feels – like l’ultima sopravvissuta? The last survivor of the Holocaust?

(With only 220,000 survivors left worldwide, according to the Claims Conference, she may well feel that way).

She proudly told me she has a new book coming out this Fall! "L'Amica Tedesca."

She made some very interesting comments, including, “Quando scrivo in Italiano, una parola partorisce un’altra.”  That means: When I write in Italian, one word gives birth to another. She said it to explain that she can’t write now because she can’t see. And since she can’t see, she can’t put down one word and then see where it leads. She said she’s always done her writing by using yellow legal pads propped up on her tummy.

She and Olga (longtime assistant) were very kind and they both told stories about Papa Francesco in great detail. Truly one-of-a-kind to have a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust with such close knowledge of a Catholic Pope! Beautiful friendship. They showed me a special photo book from their visit to Casa Marta, where Pope Francis had lived, that the Vatican created for her (Editor's note: Pope Francis asked to meet Edith Bruck in 2021 to thank her for bearing witness to the Holocaust and to apologize for all the pain she'd suffered).

She told me she thinks about her parents every day -- 80 years after their brutal deaths in Auschwitz (mother) and Dachau (father). She even sang a lullaby in Hungarian that her father used to sing to her!

"Finché vivo, vivono loro ... nei miei libri, nel mio cuore."

As long as I'm alive, she told me, so are they -- in my books, in my heart.

And we spoke of the survivors who rarely if ever break their silence -- like her brother, who witnessed her father's death while they were in the concentration camp and told her what happened but tearfully begged her never to ask again. So she didn't. And she wonders, she told me, what were her father's last words? Was he asking about her? She'll never know.

If your grandmother was a famous writer ... I was spellbound! What a privilege it is to translate another person's words. I sat there combining all of my own identities -- journalist, translator, writer -- and grateful to have entered into a one-of-a-kind relationship with a writer like Edith.

Some of what I blogged about is so frivolous. My memento shrines! Whether the Crazy Drycleaner is still in business (in my old Florentine neighborhood). The barista who said 'Ri-buongiorno.' But this feels momentous.

Yes, there were happy moments, and sad moments during our visit. But mainly proud moments because we were celebrating the publication of "our" new book -- the translation of her first short story collection, This Darkness Will Never End, which has been a milestone for me, and a continuation of the flow of her works into English (three of which have now been published by Paul Dry Books in Philadelphia).

May it continue! I have translated most of her second short story collection, Two Empty Rooms, and even managed to publish an excerpt with Jewish Currents magazine.

My thanks to everyone who has supported this translation! (Including the National Endowment for the Arts). I've been touched by your gestures and interest -- a British colleague of mine at CNN Travel learned about the translation while we were chatting one day over Slack and ordered it from Amazon that day!

I'll continue to talk about the book in the Fall, including a visit to Otterbein College in Ohio where I'll be the guest speaker at a class on Holocaust literature. There will be some other stops, too, which I will detail on the blog and via social media.

The written word, the spoken word, the translated word -- a passport to a world of discovery, understanding and friendship.

-30-

Memento shrine (Italy) 2025

Christmas morning for me, if somehow instead of Santa Claus coming down the chimney it was Babbo Natale.

My memento shrine, the haul from two weeks of consuming everything I love from il Bel Paese and my ode to all of the little items I stud my daily life with, in a bid to retain a bit of Italy in my otherwise suburban American life.

It may seem like an odd habit, these memento shrines, especially since I don't shop much back here at home. And what an example of conspicuous consumption! One magazine wasn't enough -- I needed three, plus the Settimana Enigmistica, my favorite puzzle  (there are competing puzzle magazines, but this is the real McCoy, to be clear -- wink wink), and several editions of the newspaper I read in Italy, Il Corriere della Sera, (the copies are buried in the photo under the striped box containing coffee cups from Bialetti, which constitute a somewhat new obsession: buying sets of coffee cups with Italian expressions on them for our morning coffee. Once upon a time, we were arranging trysts in hotel rooms in Madrid -- true story! -- now I consider it some mark of our love that every morning our coffee cups "match" because they form a set). (These cups read "Amore mio" -- my love/my beloved -- and "Sole cose belle" -- only beautiful things).

And, of course, books. As I mentioned I was able to find a book by Edith Bruck that's out of print, a Natalia Ginzburg that I needed (because I have now accepted that I will read one or more of her books every year, not unlike the ritual re-reading of A Christmas Carol) and three books from Giuntina, which has published many books by Holocaust survivors, and which I bought directly from the publisher, a lovely turn of events for many reasons (this haul includes Tagebuch by Liana Millu, the author of Smoke Over Birkenau; this latest acquisition is the notebook she kept as she journeyed home from the concentration camps at war's end).

The photo above represents not only my own consumption but also Leo's: the pricey Ferrari shirt? It ain't mine! Ditto the pale green sweater and sweatpants from Benetton (on mega sale!).

Other items of interest:

*A baby bottle of Vin santo

*Every possible permutation of Florentine paper gifts -- wrapping paper, note cards, posters, note pads

*Cans of fancy tuna in olive oil for the chef

*Biscotti for our morning coffee (a new kind! Mike is obsessed with ones that are integrali because he thinks they are healthier)

It's actually less of a haul than in previous years. When I win the lottery -- as Mike often says -- I am going to Italy and buying everything the newsstand guy (il giornalaio) sells and every book I've ever wanted at Feltrinelli and all the biscotti in the world (which is to say at the Conad supermarket) and every kind of Florentine paper, including Florentine wallpaper if that exists. And since we're talking about the lottery, an apartment in Florence.

Curious about previous memento shrines? This one is coffee-themed:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2017/06/italian-trip-2017-post-12-what-i-bought.html

And the more restrained Montreal edition:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2019/09/montreal-memento-shrine.html

Wow, I've been at it a while:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2011/04/christmas-in-april-il-nostro-inviato.html

Signed,

Your Italian memento scout

Tiny moments of exquisite beauty in Italy

The apartment in Florence where we stayed this month during our trip to Italy had a top-floor terrace that stares directly at the Torre di Arnolfo, which defines the Palazzo Vecchio and is arguably the symbol of Florence. In the early morning hours as Leo and Mike (and the rest of the city) slept, I had my coffee while staring back at it. One morning, the silence surrounding me was so profound that the flapping of a bird's wing overhead was singularly audible. 

(Fun fact: the apartment is on the top floor -- 75 steps up!)

Each trip contains certain touchstones -- I revisit my old apartments, I retrace my steps along treasured walking routes, I prowl beloved bookstores and newsstands for all of the written material that I feel as though I need to live. I observe the small moments of exquisite beauty, something I believe my mother would have done (a habit she almost certainly instilled in me by modeling it).  

But each trip is also different, and engenders a specific set of preoccupations. 

At one point during our travels, I developed an obsession with the Roma-Viterbo train line, which is separate from Trenitalia. It's not entirely odd: our apartment in Rome overlooked one of the stations on the line. And when I am in Italy, I am immersed in "my beat," which I define as the ordinary aspects of Italian life, the parts of Italian life that an average Italian contends with. 

It reminded me of the PATH trains that link lower Manhattan to New Jersey inasmuch as it's both local and separate. They are like an alt subway line, which is slightly odd. If you were a traveler to NYC, you could mistake them for the actual subway system, no?  

When I poked my head inside the station I could see from the window, it was as old-school as it comes. The tracks were visible from the entranceway (the long train tunnel simply deadends into the lobby of the station) and on them sat old tram-like trains. There was a bustling coffee bar attached, of course, and I had my breakfast there one day, knowing that while it appeared scruffy, the volume of customers and the people who frequented it (real Italians) guaranteed a fine cappuccino and a light, fluffy ciambellina. Yet still, I am both irked by this random, standalone train line and also by my obsession with it!

More from the Rome Journal: You can buy calendars where each month is a photo of a young Italian priest. Yes, I, too, am wondering how on Earth I left Rome without one of those calendars! I mean, dai, per l'amor di Dio ... you cannot top that. I tried to explain it to Leo by saying it was driven by the dearth of vocations and that the notion of a slew of new young priests would give older Catholics such joy....

There’s an article in the current L’Espresso that is so funny: Italian politicians who years after they’ve left office continue to enjoy la scorta (police escort/secret service-level protection), which is to say they still jump the line (in traffic, at the airport, etc) when it’s convenient. The article cites a two-century-old line of poetry:

Io so’ io

E voi non siete un cazzo

Not a poem I've ever read. (From Wikipedia: La celebre frase che il Marchese rivolge a un gruppo di popolani («Mi dispiace, ma io so' io e voi non siete un cazzo!») è ripresa dal sonetto Li soprani der Monno vecchio di Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, che comincia così: «C'era una vorta un Re cche ddar palazzo / mannò ffora a li popoli st'editto: / "Io sò io, e vvoi nun zete un cazzo"».)

ENGLISH SUMMARY: The gist of the line of poetry, spoken by a nobleman to commoners, is roughly: I'm important (or I'm someone) and you're a nobody (said more colorfully in the Italian: 'You're not jack squat,' or, 'You're a fuckin' nobody.')

I was walking through Piazza della Signoria one evening only to find a concert in the loggia behind the Uffizi – a gorgeous soprano and a small ensemble. Leo didn’t want to linger but luckily the singer’s voice lingered, following me out of the piazza (I walked extra slow).

New 'addresses' emerge on each trip, often connected with coffee bars or bakeries that serve good ciambelle/ciambelline (who would care? Yes, yes I know. There's a reason few people read this blog!). I stopped at Caffe Le Logge by the post office one morning for a cappuccino. I was out on my morning walk and needed to refuel before venturing across the river. When I returned later to buy some pastries (which were quite good), the barman said, "Ri-buongiorno." I believe that's the first time I've ever had someone say that to me. Good morning -- again. (Not that you would care if you weren't obsessed with Italian and why should you be?!)

And while we're on the topic ... The trip was especially fruitful in one delicious way: I ate some of the best ciambelle I've ever had (none would qualify as a ciambellina, where -ina indicates little). Soft, doughy, enormous, and of course covered in sugar.

Taking the pulse of Firenze -- and my own

Dante considered Florence a den of snakes, and I can see why, but he also lamented his exile from this bejeweled city and I can absolutely see why -- years into my own (voluntary?) exile from Florence.

It’s truly beguiling as cities go -- not one you can write off easily (though he and I have both tried!).

Beguiling describes its allures and also its current state, mired as it is in overtourism -- but can we blame anyone for wanting to visit this enchanting city I once called home?

(Not unlike the notion that Italy is familiar to me, I also revel in saying that Florence is a city I once called home. Maybe how native-born Manhattanites feel? Though that level of entitlement I could never approach). 

As I write, I’m sitting in a living room on Via della Vigna Vecchia – not #1 but rather #12, and outside, from a tiny terrace, there’s an up close-and-personal view of the tower in Palazzo Vecchio. At this moment, the churches are chiming out 7 o’clock and I feel compelled to go out on the terrace to hear the bells – like the world coming alive in surround sound.

We arrived on Monday, and as usual, I have professed my love for Florence -- and spent time getting reacquainted with her -- by walking her streets. That is the way for me to take the city’s pulse, and my own. Will you grow weary of reading that only when I have prowled the streets for hours each day do I feel as though I am truly visiting Florence? Speriamo no.

Denise posted on Facebook that she was at the Shore for her birthday, and I had a serious case of FOMO.

And yet, while she was at the beach, I was meeting with my one-time roommate, Irene, and her husband, and reveling in the joys of old friendships. We chose to meet up at this ridiculously cool bar by the Sant’Ambrogio market, where Mike and I found seats outside while we waited but when Irene arrived, she said, “Well, have you seen the internal courtyard?” I had not and let’s just say the nuns who once lived at the convent now converted into a bar had some nice green space (would they have enjoyed the glass of Bolgheri we had? Maybe).

Yesterday I found two books I’d been looking for at the Florence branch of Il Libraccio: Vita immaginaria by Ginzburg and Lettera da Francoforte by Edith Bruck (finally!). Who knows how many more books I’ll try to schlep home? The quantity I’d like to buy is probably a number in the low three figures.

I also shopped at my old market (in Italian, Il Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio) yesterday. Still authentic, still wonderful, still selling qualche etto di prosciutto (crudo, always crudo, for chrissakes) that I can’t resist.

State of the city: positively infested with tourists, and the main part of centro storico is now full of quickie snack stops for travelers (rather than residents), as I wrote during an earlier trip. If back then, there were 15 snack stops (panini shops, wine bars geared toward foreigners, convenience stores) in a half-mile, now there are 40. And they've displaced local shops that served residents.

State of Leonardo (as he is known here, not far from Vinci, home of the other Leonardo): Well, we saw my old friend, Chiara, last night for a walk through centro & then dinner, which was lovely until we said our goodbyes and Leo yelled at me, “Three hours of you talking in Italian!” But what was nice: I suggested we go to a bookstore (so Chiara could pick out a book for her upcoming vacation) but instead she said she wanted to find Andremo in città, (i.e., the book I translated) which they didn’t have (alas).

(Update: The state of Leonardo was quite good at the Ferrari store where we bought him a pricey shirt and also before in the mountains where he was surrounded by cats and dogs.) 

I spend my days taking an inventory of what was and what is, especially since Mike insisted we rent a place on our old street (which is also around the corner from my last apartment in Florence). My old tower of course is still there but now at the base, there’s yet another restaurant for tourists (meanwhile our bread bakery not far away is long gone; oh the focaccia you could get there!). At Vivoli, there’s a line out the door – not so surprising, as even at 8:30 a.m., gelato is yummy (apparently) – but they’ve also expanded and taken over the corner grocery Paola used to run. I guess no one needs gorgonzola anymore.

Morning coffee with biscotti: enjoyed on the tiny terrace while the Torre di Arnolfo looks on (see above). The only cool respite in a city baked by the August sun.

My church is open most days and more gorgeous than I remember (just a neighborhood church) plus the ‘Crazy Drycleaner’ (our nickname, not the name of his shop) is still there – but the macellaria (butcher) where we bought the Thanksgiving turkey one year is gone.

Italy? Still stunning

Of all the ways I've aged, perhaps the one I like best is how easily I am satisfied at times. (Or maybe I should say the only way I've aged that I like? Though fair enough, I'm not as dumb as I was yesterday, and that's also helpful).

I've written before in this space about the 24 hours I spent in Rome a few years back, and how utterly wonderful they were, no matter the scant time I had to enjoy the Eternal City. Now I come again to say almost any amount of time I spend in Italy is a cure for a life-threatening disease I didn't know I had.

If you read nothing else, let me also say this: We arrived in Italy a week ago and as usual it is both breathtaking and familiar! Oh how lucky can I be that Italy feels familiar? So very lucky indeed. Also: I don't consider myself one to have a bucket list but something that could top it for me?

Biking on the ancient Appian Way in Rome

Pinch me -- maybe my bike tire rolled over a cobblestone once tread on by Julius Caesar's chariot! (because yes, there are sections of the road with the original cobblestones). You can visit some interesting ruins and of course the catacombs.

That's one of the special things we did in Rome. We also visited (again) the Borghese Gardens and saw the Ara Pacis for the first time. Perhaps most importantly, for me, I visited with Edith Bruck and she is well, for a 94-year-old woman. I spent three glorious hours with her! She has a new book coming out in the Fall, I am pleased to say. She is not very mobile but as long as she is near a pack of cigarettes, she's OK! (She smoked those tiny thin cigarettes my entire visit).

Also, for the record: Seeing SPQR on every manhole cover in Rome is still cool!

Oh and you can buy a calendar that features the face of a fresh, young priest every month of the year!

We explored Piazza del Popolo and the area around it (including Via del Corso, site of the nightly passaggiata) quite a bit as we stayed on Via Flaminia, one block outside of the piazza (thus we had to pass through a gorgeous monumental gate each day to enter Piazza del Popolo). It was ground zero for all of the young people visiting Rome last week for the Jubilee youth summit owing to the fact one of the churches on the piazza is a pre-requisite for all pilgrims before heading to the Vatican.

Rome was hot, somewhat crowded and still the Eternal City.

Best food so far:

Extra large, extra doughy ciambella (Rome)

Crostini with rabbit ragu

Pinsa with mozzarella di bufala and pomodorini

Fiori di zucca fritti

Verdure fritte miste

My favorite chocolate bar: dark chocolate ('fondente') with whole hazelnuts

Best walks so far

-- Cross the bridge closest to Piazza del Popolo, walk along Tevere to the bridge by Piazza Navona, stumble into the piazza where the Pantheon is located, then Via della Scrofa, which becomes Via di Ripetta until you reach Piazza del Popolo (Rome)

-- Walk along Arno in the town of Onda (mountain town outside of Florence)

I’m in the mountains now – the mountains of Italy – and need I say, it is absolutely beautiful? We visited small, run-of-the-mill towns yesterday and my heart broke from the beauty. It was the Jeanne small town variety of beautiful – a rocky stream with multiple small waterfalls ran through the center of town and you could walk along the stream (the towns of Londa and Stia). You could stand on a bridge and look over at the stream, and ogle the buildings that line the stream (including, in Stia, a restaurant where we ate).

At one point, we walked through the town of Stia during lunch hour, and the sound of Italian radio filtered out of a door or a window, much to my delight!

We try to do something different each trip, and this trip we have chosen to stay a few nights at an agriturismo in the mountains east of Florence. Good decision! We have visited mountain towns before but I don’t recall our ever staying overnight at a farmhouse as we are now. So imagine you’re visiting Vermont but all the signage is in Italian, the picturesque tavern keeper speaks Italian, the tourists you find at the secret swimming hole are Italian (or German – but of course). Oh and it's somewhat hot.

And then there’s a certain extremity to the matter – the roads we travel to reach this farmhouse are so narrow, no American could possibly consider them fit for two-way traffic. I have visited Vermont many times and probably there are a few roads like this but are the locals going 90 mph around each turn?

While right now I am using my laptop and I have been texting with Italian friends, I am largely offline, content to read my Natalia Ginzburg book (Tutti i nostri ieri) (I've tried to read this novel before but it never appealed to me as much as her other books) and articles in the copy of L’Espresso I bought in Rome.

Right now, as I write: One of the barnyard cats is meowing outside our kitchen window. The silence is so complete, it is loud!

So far in Italy: I have walked – run – swum – biked.

What else? Leo (known as Leonardo here) has begun to tease me while I’m talking on the phone here to Italian friends:

I say: “Si,si.” And then he says, “Si,si.”

I say: “Certo.” And then he says, “Certo.”

My mind is not totally 'bifurcated' yet between English and Italian but getting there. 

So to sum up: Italy is still marvelous! And hearing Italian is still marvelous. Wish you were here! Especially some of you -- and you know who you are.

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