Saturday, July 30, 2022

Italy, or walk, eat, drink, pray, revel

Here in Italy, I want, I want, I want.

I want to explore, roam, browse, buy, consume, swim, run, row, climb, grab, have, revel. 

In my other life, I have learned to tame some of my worst desires and urges so I can (quite happily, most days) live a nice, quiet suburban, semi-Catholic life. 

But here in Florence (and before that, to some degree, in Rome and Milan), I become someone  who could work for the Home Shopping Network. I walk into stores I like and just begin grabbing things (mentally, at least) because I know I want everything and my time is limited and I need to go home with something that reminds me of the holiday's golden hours (which, of course, remind me of the original golden hours, so many years ago).

I want to do high-brow and low-brow and no brow. I want to spend the time here tiring my body -- no, I want to spend the day tiring my mind. Wait, no: I want to spend the day tiring my spirit.

I engineered it so I would wake up early today – usually that means writing, and here we are, 7 a.m., Thursday morning. But I also want to run along the Arno. And I also want to see the pietre d’inciampo.  And search for the best ciambellina (while having another caffe). I want to revisit old haunts but no, I want to find new worlds and environments.

That's not all: I want to write in my journal. I want to take photos. I want to record snippets of conversation at bus stops.

Also, like I said: I want to shop until I drop (which I NEVER want to do). Oh and I’d like, with Leo, to light a candle in every church we encounter (while saying a prayer for Mommy).

I want to walk along the cobblestones. I want to find the rare green oases hidden in this city (or go up into the mountains, as we did yesterday with Mike's friend, Dante. The other Dante?). I want a holiday with my family where I am explaining my Italian world in English to my American son, and I also want to be so immersed in Italian I feel buried by la lingua di Dante (Dante Alghieri and Mike's friend, Dante).

I want it all.

And I have already written this diary entry! More or less -- four years ago, and also six years ago and also…

But I feel these desires so keenly now because I know how time works. When I was here in 2018, we were already speaking of a future trip in 2020.

Need I say there was no future trip in 2020? We were prisoners of the backyard.

Yet even now, as Covid has slightly receded (or our fear of it has), I know I won’t be back next month – maybe not even next year.

And so I want, I want, I want. And I only have three days left to fulfill all of these voglie and desideri and fantasie.

While I would prefer to want less, I am happy to say the thing I want most is to walk every street in Florence. And you might be surprised how close I am to doing just that!

-30-

Thursday, July 14, 2022

1957, or The Year in Writing and Failing

Could I be someone who fails precociously? Or one who precociously concludes that she will fail? (My sister, Liz, at one time simply said I was precocious, and left it at that).

Here's why I ask.

Each year in December, I sum up my year in writing (here's the post from 2019), and literary translationI list articles and essays that I've published, and grants for translation projects I've been fortunate to win. 

The year-end taking-stock has been an enjoyable new ritual as I am able to log a few solid accomplishments each year even though I am still a completely unknown writer (trust me) and an emerging literary translator (emerging at my tender age, by the way, not so great).  

I usually don't begin writing the post until toward the end of the year.

But 2022 is diverging so thoroughly from the outline of my writing goals for the year that in a fit of despair, I am going to tell you about it right now. I am going to say right now that while I am writing, I am failing.

And it's because I'd decided that 2022 would be the year to write about the uncle I never knew.

What I didn’t know: it would also be the year I struggled to write about the uncle I never knew.

Nicknamed Spike, he died long before I was born -- before he could even become my uncle. And now halfway through what I’d dubbed the Year of Spike, I feel unsure of how to tell his story, unclear which elements should be my essay’s focus. And it’s making me nervous. 

It’s not that I can’t write about Uncle Spike next year. It’s just that I set aside his year in my writing life because it marks the 65th anniversary of his untimely death at age 18. Sixty-five years since his fatal car crash in 1957, which deprived my mother, a nursing student at the time, of her beloved younger brother.

And I've already set aside the story many times. Each time, in fact, that she said of the brother she lost, "We were very close."

How many times must she have said that over the years? I can hardly guess but in the past decade I know for certain she has said it several times -- often enough that I finally realized if ever she speaks about Spike when she and I are alone, she repeats some combination of those words: We were very close. Or: "My brother and I were very close." Without fail.

She said it during a rainy July 4th weekend eight years ago while Leo was napping in the bedroom on the second floor and Mike was reading sci-fi stories over his toddler shoulder, leaving me alone with my mother in the living room below.


I noted in my diary then, "This morning she said it again: 'My brother and I were very close.' ... Perhaps as a means of remembering something that’s now so long ago, it’s been thoroughly cleansed from her life."

I went on to write in my diary, "Who was Spike Tisdall? But more than that, I want to know what was Mommy like when she was with Spike Tisdall? What was lost when he was lost? I almost feel like he might have been the coolest person she ever knew." 

Those words finally shook me from the selfishness that often hovers at one end of the parent-child relationship (i.e., my end).

It was an indication that I needed to investigate this moment in my mother's life. Because whenever she's pronounced those words, it's as if in a trance. Because despite having four daughters and a husband to whom she was quite dedicated (lucky him!), she didn't say those words very often. She was a wonderful, traditional mother but also someone who would admonish us when we were growing up with this piece of her mind: "I don't want to be your best friend."

All of this speculation and rumination about Spike swirled about when I had recently enrolled in the MFA program at Bennington College and was busy bumbling down the road marked 'Fiction.' I (stupidly) wasn't thinking about Nonfiction. So the light bulb that I needed to study my family history remained flashing on low in the back rooms of my mind while I worked on other essays and projects. 

Until my father got sick, that is, and it became clear my mother was in the early stages of dementia. 

At that point, I had already laid the groundwork for gathering the information I needed to know about this beloved brother and the close bond he had formed with Mommy. One of the first tasks had been: finding out when Spike died. I can't tell what that says about our family dynamic: I didn't know when he died until 2015 when I searched online for his obituary.

That unleashed me down a rabbit hole of speculation. Up until that moment, the dates that anchored me in time as far as family history were 1936 (the year my father was born), 1938 (the year my mother was born) and 1966, the year my parents married. What lay between was a bit of a no man's land. Not anymore.

Similarly, I am haunted by the casual way my mother supplied the date that Spike died during a conversation I recorded last year for posterity. Age 84 at the time of the interview and more or less housebound, she had already begun to slip into dementia, spending her days chain-smoking, unsure of the month or sometimes even the season. 


But when I inquired if Spike had died during the summer, barely a second passed before she said, “July 25.” 

The way she would recite our birthdays or Christmas Day. Like a bullet train conveying the information to me, cutting through her mental fog.

So, early on in this project, drafts were littered with references to famous dates in history: July 4, 1776, for example, and December 7, 1941 – the day for our parents and grandparents that lived in infamy -- as I aimed to construct a realistic timeline of her life (and the dates that resonated with her). I was so struck by how quickly she summoned the date of his death from her addled brain that I began reimagining her personal calendar of milestones. It’s the day, I now suspect, that divides her life in two. And I was trying to couch it in light of other moments. One more unneeded detour, I suppose.

So many other interesting tidbits have emerged while I've been researching my lost uncle -- including documents I would otherwise not have had. For example, an archival newspaper article about the crash from a now-defunct local publication, The Patent Trader, which covered Westchester, where my grandparents had a lake house (one that sat about a mile or so from the site of the car accident). I keep a print-out of the article on my bureau so the five-word headline greets me every time I reach for a pair of socks: "Youth, 18, Killed in Crash.” 

It’s a basic news headline. Yet when you know the “youth” in question, it has all the sorrow of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Also: he was driving a brand-new convertible that had been a graduation gift from my grandparents. He was headed off -- possibly on scholarship, my aunt says -- to the College of the Holy Cross for his freshman year.

And sixty-five years later, some of his old Brooklyn Prep classmates (octogenarians whom I tracked down on the Internet) remained so shocked by his death that they hastened to reply to my email, offering little remembrances that seem to be spit out of a time machine. One said Spike was a bit of a wild man and mentioned something about "smoochie-smoochie basement parties."

It's been nothing short of exhilarating to finally know more about this phantom in my family tree. And that's an end unto itself.

But I so wish to publish an essay about it and have failed again and again to gain an acceptance, even as I have approached the material from various angles and in differing formats (flash CNF, for example).

Why do we write? Why do we bother?

I don't know. I only know I am galvanized -- no, haunted -- when I think about the annual silent vigil my mother has possibly kept on July 25. This secret part of her life that I ache to know more about.

I will keep writing -- this practice has saved my life too many times to abandon it. But it's not without failure. Not in 2022, the year of writing and failing. I will report back in December as I always do. In the meantime, we'll all keeping toiling away so we can map out on paper the world we imagine in our minds, the world we hunger to illuminate through words.

-30-

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Italian trip prep? La Canzone del Sole

... Some moments are truly as stunning as they sound.

Imagine the scene: I am 20 years old, I am sitting on the cobblestones of Piazza del Campo in Siena one Spring afternoon and next to me are Italian student friends who are singing songs while strumming guitars.

One song heavy in the rotation is made up mainly of simple Italian words that even this wayward study abroad gal could understand: la canzone (the song) del (of the) sole (sun). La canzone del sole. The song of the sun.

I only had to hear it a few times before it became forever my favorite Italian song and one of the many small facets of Italian life -- one of the many small moments of a semester abroad -- that essentially wedded me to Italy for life (like being the Bride of Christ? Kinda).

There were many afternoons of music in piazza that Spring. And as we sprawled out in Siena's central square (the site of the famed summer horse races), I would ask Nando to play the song over and over, to the point where he had long since tired of it. But for me it conveyed the magic of understanding words in another language, and understanding a pop song, to boot. It's also an awesome love song! A song about faded love, about love's fickleness, about the ways we link ourselves to others -- and then unlink ourselves. 

Fast forward many years, and it's the perfect song to blast on my phone while I walk the dog around my suburban Connecticut neighborhood (Caramel is too rambunctious to risk using headphones -- I need to keep some part of all of my senses trained on her). The perfect song to prepare for my trip to Italy. Indeed the first part of the preparation for any return: immersing myself in memories.

-LYRICS-

Cosa vuol dir "sono una donna, ormai"?
Io non conosco quel sorriso sicuro che hai
Non so chi sei, non so più chi sei
Mi fai paura oramai, purtroppo 

(ENGLISH -- my impromptu translation -- abbi' pazienza, non me ne fido)

What's that mean, 'I'm a woman now'?

I don't know this cocksure smile you have 

I don't know who you are, I don't know you anymore 

Alas now you frighten me


(Sorry but they sound so much better in Italian) 

The artist, Lucio Battisti, remains one of my favorite Italian singers, and a legend among singer-songwriters in Italy (RAI Radio did a wonderful docu-podcast about him that you can find here).

I'm in overdrive preparing for the full immersion that will occur next week when I arrive in Italy -- I'm watching the Italian news on TV (and a soap opera that takes place in Naples), listening to an amazing podcast about overlooked Italian women writers (my specialty) and reading a novel by the stunning and inspiring Sardinian writer Michela Murgia

But nothing beats the perfect pop song, especially when it's a song that convinces you to commit your life to studying a foreign language and the incomparable, inimitable people who speak it.

-30-

Friday, July 08, 2022

Leo turns 7 -- Lost diary entry from the Leo Journal

July 9, 2019

He’s 7 today, dear journal – the journal that only exists because 10 days before *he* was born, I was suffering a bout of insomnia and felt compelled to write, and then kept writing, and then emboldened both by the writing and the perseverance that had been required to have a baby at my advanced age (!), I went to grad school (long-deferred dream), began writing and publishing essays, began teaching, BEGAN LIVING. 

BEGAN -- again.

Seven years old, the boy who has completely changed my life. Long have I known of my weakness for men – I just didn’t know it would be a boy over whom I would completely lose my mind, a boy who would conspire to soften every rough edge I have (mind you, he’s still working on that one, bless his heart). A boy who would help me exit that dark wood I had strayed into, to crib a line from Dante. I lurve this boy, I lurf him. 

Sure, I am hyperbole personified but I am comfortable saying he saved my life. Even if it were hyperbole, what of it? If I believe he SAVED my life, that life is SAVED, regardless. I think of the Van Morrison song, “I Forgot that Love Existed.” That’s how his presence in my life feels. And it’s seven years of feeling this way.

Lost Diary Entry

-30-

Thursday, July 07, 2022

Caro Diario -- "Mi pare superfluo..." (Primo Levi)

Caro diario,

Non si scordano certi frasi, colte sia in conversazione che tramite la lettura. Una tal frase si trova nel prologo del libro di Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo:

"Mi pare superfluo aggiungere che nessuno dei fatti è inventato..."

Avrò modo di leggere e rileggere quella frase perché l'anno scorso quando ho fatto un salto a New York, mi sono comprata una nuova copia del libro e l'ho lasciato sul comodino insieme ad altri libri che volevo leggere o rileggere quest'anno (compreso Il sistema periodico, sempre di Levi).

La frase mi colpisce per diversi motivi. 

Per primo, con quel pensiero Levi avverte che ci sarà chi mette in dubbio il suo racconto dei giorni trascorsi nel Lager. Aggiacciante.

Poi sinceramente è anche agghiacciante quando pensi che sia accaduto proprio come ha detto lui. Non è inventato niente perché il male esiste eccome.

-30-

Tuesday, July 05, 2022

Mi consigli un ristorante? Ultimate Florence dining guide

I consider the author of the Italian blog IO AMO FIRENZE the gold standard for restaurant reviews of places in Florence. She has visited nearly every restaurant in Florence, I suspect! She's also extremely knowledgeable about the city. And now she has written the ultimate guide to dining in Florence.

Your Italian rusty? All you really need to know is the meaning of the subheds, and I'll help you out. Here are the first two categories:

'Trattorie tipiche' = literally typical restaurants, or what I would call traditional, local eateries. Something authentically Florentine. These are the places I've visited time and time again.

Ristoranti toscani di fascia più alta -- Higher-caliber (and high dollar) restaurants that serve Tuscan cuisine

Once you've decided what kind of dining experience you want, google the name of the restaurant (in bold) and see if it's in a part of the city you want to visit. You won't go wrong with her recommendations if you're looking to have a typical Italian meal (she's also very knowledgeable about other kinds of cuisine, especially Asian, but here limits herself to Italian food).

Many of these are restaurants aren't mentioned much in guide books, if at all. For my money, I'd like to visit the following places she mentions (under trattorie):

*Sostanza (detto i’Troia) 

*Trattoria Marione

*Il Brindellone

If you see a place you want to go and would like a translation of what she wrote, leave a comment here!

I've blogged about great places to eat as well and you may want to take a look at where I ate in 2015 on a solo trip to the city of Dante:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2015/05/where-to-eat-in-florence-update.html

There's also a quickie overall guide to Florence that I put together a few years ago:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2016/05/my-quick-hit-guide-to-florence.html

The guide at IO AMO FIRENZE is, again, here:

https://www.ioamofirenze.it/mi-consigli-un-ristorante/

Buon appetito!

-30-