On Waiting for Mail in Italy
Growing up American, in the efficiency and customer-service-orientated country of that Grand Ole’ USA, I have become accustomed, unwittingly, to timeliness. I don’t know what exactly I mean by this, only in that one waits the appropriate amount of time one should wait. Like waiting in line: there is a line and people wait their turn. Like waiting for mail: the post master tells you the time and the package arrives. In Italy, the difference between what they tell you and what actually happens is unmeasurable and therefore completely unpredictable.
I have been waiting for a package from my mom for Christmas since the 15th of December, when she sent it. International mail is received in a port outside of Rome and must, by dint of the nature of mail being delivered, somehow find it’s way here. That the package is there I have no doubt, amongst other packages and packages of mail. That the men and women who deliver the packages have not done work since the 24th of December I have no doubt, they shut down, throw in the towel, they’re finished until January 7th of the New Year. After today I will wait the amount of time it will take to dig down into the pile where the package resides, I will wait for the driver to drive to Bracciano, I will wait for the frustration he will have for not being able to take his car next to my door, I will wait more.
Eh!
Last year it made me nervous; I feared what I was waiting for would not arrive at all. I’m not nervous anymore. They just don’t want to work. Who can blame them?
If the economic situation is growing worse in efficient countries, maybe they should take their lessons from the southern half of a country that doesn’t like to work at all. Don’t take the making of products, the merry-go-round of consumption, so seriously. Take long breaks of not working at all…
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Photo Dictionary
Crazy that this is done with images for text instead of using HTML, nevertheless a great idea and beautifully typeset: The Photographic Dictionary.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
The Plaque of Peter Nichols
If you have made a slight walking tour through Bracciano’s picturesque centro storico, bending and weaving among streets that make no certain direction and seem to have no certain name, you probably have seen the cats I write about, the view of the lake worth seeing, the castle, the old buildings and their flower pots, the shut up windows and the open ones, and maybe, you have seen the plaque bearing the name: Peter Nichols. The plaque is suspended there by no certain gravity for it exists almost by itself, an anomaly among the ancient, a reference to someone obscure.
Maybe you have read the plaque: Qui visse e opero il grande giornalista scrittore inglese/ comm. Peter Nichols o.b.e./ 1928-1989 Maybe you have read further: cittadino onoravio divulgo/ l’immagine di Bracciano/ nel mondo/ amo moltissimo questo paese/ e come lui stesso desse:/ in questa casa lascio il mio cuore… 1995. Maybe you didn’t understand—and I’m not going to translate here—or maybe you only caught the words as I first did, il grande giornalista scrittore inglese, the great English journalist-writer.
Who was Peter Nichols? Honestly, I have no clue.
Living next to the glass encased Mary, in the piazza which bears this plaque, Simon and I have since become friends with Peter’s widow and their son, who erected the plaque on their house. They own that whole big house and look after many cats and dogs. She used to work in TV, as an actress or an anchor… I’m unsure. Paola lent us a book by her husband, about a pope; but, as it was in Italian I didn’t make it past the title. She has since lost the English versions.
Peter worked for the The Times of London in Rome, reporting on the Vatican, which most of his books were about. He seems to have been one of the thinkers of his time on the Vatican, too blurry a subject, too awash with too many veins of opinion.
Whoever Peter Nichols was, his plaque bears the proof that he was and has since become memory. I think it is a great thing that Paola has put up the plaque, giving him a name, albeit suspended. Personally, I owe to the plaque a bit of luck for it bears both the words grande and scrittore. The plaque awakens a curiosity and in that, its purpose has been done.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Nightmare, Friday Morning, 2008 12 26
Walking down a road, the Braccianese, with dad. See purse or bag attached to a dismembered leg with a boot on which is against one of the trees on the side of the road. Not sure if the leg is ‘real’, from a person, or not. I turn around and look down the road, there is a cloud or contrail showing in the blue sky in between the sycamore trees which line the road. I raise my camera to my eye and press the button to release the shutter but nothing happens. It is set to the timer function and the moment is gone, missed, and I am upset. Stop in a café with dad, he orders some chocolate and takes a sleeping pill from his purse or briefcase and puts it in his mouth. He wants to get a drink but I ask him why and he does not. We are trying to reach a green field of grass next to a hospital and need to cross streets with trams coming through them. We reach the field and lie on the grass below a large tarpaulin tent cover. I ask dad why he continues to take pills and how he is feeling. Amber continues talking to him and asking similar questions. He puts my camera on and goes to see the doctor while I wait in the field, but after a moment I chase down after him and reach the hospital. I go upstairs through elevators but when I reach the floor I need I realize that he did not leave the field at all and so I go back down and return to the tarpaulin tent where I find my dad sitting down and not looking well. I am trying to take some pictures of a friend from Africa but cannot get close enough and the lens is too wide and difficult to focus. With dad again now. We go back to the hospital together and stop by anoter café/bar next to it and dad produces a bottle of prossecco and proceeds to pour into a glass and drink. The doctor suddenly appears next to me and grabs the bottle and pours it all out. He confronts dad who almost falls backwards down stairs on the wooden patio next to the bar, but I grab him by the necktie he is wearing and pull him back. He cannot walk properly. I accompany him with the doctor toward the large building in front of us.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
FIB: The Rains
The rains have relented, the sky has lifted, and lavender-blue has been left in the wake. I’ve wondered, on beautiful dull purple evenings after rain or a long day of grey, if this color exists elsewhere. Where? Purple, caught up in its sheer majesty comes down from white-tipped mountains and becomes enraptured by the reflection of itself in the lake; so it grows. Dark grey clouds lose their threat in lavender, lighter white ones pass in pretty light-blue. This light of early twilight enchants me, fortifies me. If this is the reward for long pouring rains, so be it. Bracciano is not under water.
But I guess Rome is. The Tevere has re-sparked, it has been given new life. At times I’ve walked by that river and wondered: how could Rome be founded on this? Rome the super-power built on the banks of a shallow trickle. But the Tevere is rising above the walls of its embankment. It is alive!
I like it when nature regains the upper hand. It proves that of the gods we have created none can be as unpredictable and unmerciful as the original dominating force. Separated from that which has made us but nature can always take us right back. Unlike human wielded power which strives for excess, nature always rules with balance. Beauty comes after the storm, quiet and lavender-blue, the earth here almost cries with itself and sometimes it weeps over.
The Tevere, alive! We’re going to go see it! Water running havoc through ancient streets…
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
FIB: Surrogate Cat
Oh! dreary rain, side-winding rain, cold pelting rain. Today the centro storico is slick, though on days of sun it’s bright, so bright that the sun slants through few straight streets and blinds you. Really, you can’t open your eyes. It’s like Saul on the road to Damascus just to go get an afternoon coffee, only God doesn’t come down at the Caffé Grand’Italia, just the woman with the stoic face and very perfect posture, whose always there. Sometimes the deserts look like heaven on earth, to see but not to touch. How could one eat those towers of hardened sugar and chocolate for four euros a pop. I find it difficult. Their colors… it’s their colors.
When the rain comes sideways down the piazza the cats miaow for shelter. Here they are, one on every cushion. Not that Max is a stranger. He’s come since the day we found him, abandoned and flea-ridden. Though in those days all the females had milk, the sun was hot and he got on quite well. Now Pico Piconho, abandoned, once flea-ridden, does not have the luxury and looks for Max’s milk. Max is only grey and white: he has no milk. But he entertains the kitten with the thought of it all the same. The kitten kneads his soft belly as if his soft belly were dough to make bread, the smell of which would go so well with this rainy afternoon.
I’m not sure if it’s because the one cat and one kitten are abandoned that the older Max doesn’t smack Pico sidelong like Sofá Sofonisba does. It’s as if Pico has a sad sorry air— a kitten without its mother—enough emits from him to cause others to take pity. They let him curl into their fur and knead their bellies, the search for milk is always unhopeful, they play carelessly. Max cleans him and holds him steady by stretching a white paw around him. It’s cute. It makes me want to be a cat so I can curl into a soft fuzzy belly while the rain pours grey and dreary all afternoon.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Intelligence
The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his cell.
A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so; and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again and look with terror at the wall, until one day he begins afresh to beat his head against it; and once again he will faint. And so on endlessly without hope. One day he will wake up on the other side of the wall.
Perhaps he is still in a prison, although a larger one. No matter. He has found the key; he knows the secret which breaks down every wall. He has passed beyond what men call intelligence, into the beginning of wisdom.
—Simone Weil, An Anthology
Simone Weil is no woman to reckon with.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Dream, Sunday Morning, 2008 11 30
I’ve arrived at an apartment on the ground floor of a high-rise in New York. It is David Alan Harvey’s place. He’s talking with another person there, a bit stressed out after a party. I’ve brought chocolates which I had been giving out at a school event before and give him a selection. I look around the place, see a watercolor painting he has made illustrating something which has moved him deeply, something with symbols which relate a great coincidence. I go outside to the patio and sit down on a sofa. Another photographer from Magnum is there. At first he is a man, but then she is an asian woman. I ask her to take some photographs with my camera so I can see how she works. She takes my camera and takes out the lens and puts it in her own old-fashioned camera, a brown thing with big buttons. She holds her camera in the way of Steve McCurry with hands crossed and looks around, sees a mirror and steps close to it putting the camera to her eye. She takes several pictures. She looks through pictures she has taken and says ‘this one is pretty good’ and shows me a picture of an animal or insect in the long green succulent leaves that were reflected in the mirror behind her. On the top-right corner you can also make out one of her eyebrows behind the leaves and the camera. Now the asian photographer is also cooking some type of meat, a thick steak-like texture, I try some, keep chewing and can’t swallow it. Amber is sitting on a sofa and Harvey has come out into the patio. There is a large type of insect walking on the walls and eating ants and leaves and ‘helping to clean’ the apartment. It attaches to one of my fingers but I manage to pull it off. I look up at Harvey and feel the earth shaking from side to side beneath my feet—it is an earthquake. I move away from the walls of the high-rise and look up to see chunks of concrete falling down from high above. They crash next to us but this doesn’t seem to phase anyone else but me. There is a garage with mechanics working on a car with a soldering iron and Amber thinks the flashes are from a grenade.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
An Open Letter to Brenda Venus
Dear, dear Brenda: It’s come to my recent attention that you have found yourself in the lucrative market of memorabilia. Not only is the public, with the right cash, allowed to buy an old bra of yours, we can also, if the money’s right, purchase some actual things that the late-great Henry Miller touched, and maybe not only touched but sweated in or sweated over. And so I figured, if these things are not allowed their posterity and are not going to be freed in good thoughts for admirers and nosy academics to view and not own, maybe you, Brenda Venus, would like to take some of your earnings and give in return.
With a friendly and generous ‘V’ you could sell bVenus ‘lingerie’ until you run out of string. You could sell more Henry Miller watercolors, more love letters, more things that the great man touched. Or, with a plump and happy ‘M’ you could link to the Henry Miller library and it would be as if you passed up the chance for a lousy buck… almost. But who cares for old stuff of dead men when there’s money money money! Maybe, Brenda Venus, you would like some of our help as we would like some of yours.
So, Brenda Venus, what do you say? It’s a long time till death yet and you’ve got a name and an image still faltering in the ranks. True, some beauty never dies, but one must be truly beautiful for that to happen. To Look only matters in who you present yourself to be but shrinks once sunk down off the surface. I can’t imagine Brenda Venus, what you learned from Henry Miller; but then again, perhaps it was only sex.
Reinstate your name Brenda Venus! Give an ‘M’ today!
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Traces, 2008-11-14
Reading about and seeing photographs from Surtsey and the surrounding islands led me to think of the explosive events of birth and of death. Earth is alive itself, and its geological life can be like the life of a human being. Smooth, round, soft and flexible flowing slopes of youth with occasional outbursts. Settled, brittle, hard, eroded, stubborn forms of old age.
Conclusions are often destructive.
One must strive to stay soft by keeping one’s mind open and free from absolute conclusions. Softness leads to birth.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z