Similar to the question about what I answer to the question of what do I miss about the American West, when asked about Italy, I have no hesitation about my answer. In the case of Italy, it is the details. Without a doubt, the country that I have come to appreciate the most with an eye and attention to details with every aspect of life is Bella Italia. Even when these details reach hyberbolic proportions, there is something to be said for this.
Perhaps it is the non-Italian's lacuna of such details that gives us (at least me) away from a mile (1.6 kilometers) away that I am indeed a straniero there. No matter how closely I would try at times to attain such heroic measures of style or precision, it was always forced, contrived, or simply ridiculous. And, it was not lost on the Italians.
But, let's cut to the chase. When it comes to the details, there are two things that jump out at me, the food and the shoes. How trite, yes, I know, but I just returned from the grocery store to make an Italian dinner tonight and it took me back to the streets of Bologna thinking about picking up fresh pasta at La Baita on the Via Pescheria Vecchia, which is a crowded street of fresh fruit stands, home-made pasta trattorie, and of course, as fish mongers as the name implies. It is, in short, a gastronomical paradise and where I would walk through nearly every day from the train station to the Piazza Aldrovandi, where we lived for a year. The tortelloni di zucca (pumkin/squash-filled pasta) are simply nothing short of a masterpiece. Boil for about two minutes max, saute with fresh sage and real butter, and you will never look at a pumpkin the same way again.
But, when it comes to details, as my mind was wandering back to Bologna, I will never forget the shoe store. In the first place, Italian shoes are legendary. However, take that to the nth degree with this cobbler's shop on the northeast entrance to the Corte Isolani, a secret "bat cave" passageway to get to the Piazza San(to) Stefano. I am pretty sure that I stopped and gawked at the hand-crafted shoes every day that I lived in Bologna. I am pretty sure that I would sometimes just leave the apartment to go stare at the shoes.
And, I never bought a pair. Normally, I am pretty impulsive with clothes shopping, inter alia. I know what I like, I like it, I get it. Pretty simple formula.
Except for those darn shoes. In addition to them being cost-prohibitive, it was more out of respect for the shoes in the window that I never even WENT INTO THE STORE! I know that I did not trust myself to go in there, I probably would have hyperventilated or something. I just remember peering in through the window, gazing at the immaculate and meticulous footwear, every stitch in place, every fabric perfectly cut. Every sole, a work of art. The two people that worked in the store were no less intimidating. A man and a woman, both dressed from head to toe each day with the clothing and shoes of this small boutique and were themselves works of art. No matter what your sexual preference or gender, I doubt many people walked by without a brief palpitation of the heart.
Why am I rambling on about this shoe/clothing store that I was too timid to even walk into? It is because I felt that it was one of the last, truly, truly great hand-made stores that I had seen. It was as if I wanted to keep it as a shrine in my mind of what craftsmanship was all about. Perhaps if I had walked in there, the beautiful woman salesperson would have had a funny voice, or the man might have mocked me, or the shoes would not have fit or, whatever. I just wanted to have that visual experience each day, unsullied by the actual commerce of buying the shoes. Just pure, unadulterated, visual pleasure.
Is it the fashion devil who tempts me to one day go back and purchase a pair, thus breaking the enchantment?
Perhaps...ci vedremo, ... ci vedremo...
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Che Brutta Figura
One of the greatest challenges that I have had living in different countries, learning different languages, and observing different cultures is the concept of a social faux pas, because often we make them without even realizing it, and as a result, end up "giving offense" to someone unwittingly.
When I teach a class, I usually have a few housekeeping rules about class discussion. One is that if one student says "a" and the other student says "b," then student one should not say "A" back, usually resulting in "B" from the second, which then leads to "AAA!!!" then "BBB!!!" and so on, there is no resulting dialectic , no synthesis, only differences.
One of my other "house rules" concerns the concept of "being offended." For, at least, as far as I am concerned, I can only "take offense," and someone cannot offend me. For example, if someone says something to me that just isn't true, I can't, in good faith "take offense," because, well, it just ain't true.
Cultural gaffes, however, are a bit trickier, and so far, no place has been so than Italy. There is a cultural designation of a "brutta figura," and only a native Italian really understands the nuances of that. In short, at some point, every tourist or traveller to Italy will at some point make a faux pas and whether spoken or not, will be considered "che brutta figura." I know that I have my lion's share of such moments in Italy, sometimes wittingly and other times, wondered what just happened?
Sometimes, like walking into a swimming hall full of fashion-model level clad Florentines in fancy bath robes with nice swim bags, being a "brutta figura" is rather patent, other times, you may never know, though all of the Italians will be quite aware of it.
Such situations we find ourselves in even our own cultures, making gaffes and having other talk about us or worse, shame us. Shame within a cultural faux pas can be the deal breaker for further communication. Public shame is a stigma not easily overcome, nor is private for that matter. Not knowing the nuances of a society or social norms can put the kabosh on even the best intentions.
However, the true "brutta figura" for me, and by all means including myself, is knowing that faux pas, yet still committing it. Again, something that I have done (don't worry, dirty laundry is all aired in good Time), but have hopefully learned to recognize, so that I am not saying "BBBBB!!!!" to a culture's "AAAAAA!!!!" and "giving offense," when none should be taken. But, I am still learning the language of the cultural idioms, including my own.
When I teach a class, I usually have a few housekeeping rules about class discussion. One is that if one student says "a" and the other student says "b," then student one should not say "A" back, usually resulting in "B" from the second, which then leads to "AAA!!!" then "BBB!!!" and so on, there is no resulting dialectic , no synthesis, only differences.
One of my other "house rules" concerns the concept of "being offended." For, at least, as far as I am concerned, I can only "take offense," and someone cannot offend me. For example, if someone says something to me that just isn't true, I can't, in good faith "take offense," because, well, it just ain't true.
Cultural gaffes, however, are a bit trickier, and so far, no place has been so than Italy. There is a cultural designation of a "brutta figura," and only a native Italian really understands the nuances of that. In short, at some point, every tourist or traveller to Italy will at some point make a faux pas and whether spoken or not, will be considered "che brutta figura." I know that I have my lion's share of such moments in Italy, sometimes wittingly and other times, wondered what just happened?
Sometimes, like walking into a swimming hall full of fashion-model level clad Florentines in fancy bath robes with nice swim bags, being a "brutta figura" is rather patent, other times, you may never know, though all of the Italians will be quite aware of it.
Such situations we find ourselves in even our own cultures, making gaffes and having other talk about us or worse, shame us. Shame within a cultural faux pas can be the deal breaker for further communication. Public shame is a stigma not easily overcome, nor is private for that matter. Not knowing the nuances of a society or social norms can put the kabosh on even the best intentions.
However, the true "brutta figura" for me, and by all means including myself, is knowing that faux pas, yet still committing it. Again, something that I have done (don't worry, dirty laundry is all aired in good Time), but have hopefully learned to recognize, so that I am not saying "BBBBB!!!!" to a culture's "AAAAAA!!!!" and "giving offense," when none should be taken. But, I am still learning the language of the cultural idioms, including my own.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Italian Pool Rules
Being slightly unorthodox in several ways, one of them has to do with my swim bag. I am teaching my uncle, a recently retired neurologist, how to swim at the old club that I used to swim at many years ago. After our workout, we were sitting in the hot tub and the topic of tics, both voluntary and involuntary came up. I used the example of my usage of hand gestures when I speak, something I picked up while living in Italy. The joke is, "how do you stop an Italian from speaking?" "Cut off his hands..." Yep, we're going high brow today, folks. So, we decided that is a voluntary tic on my part as I could stop it if necessary, just as I will have to learn how to not eat with my left hand when I get to India.
So, my apparent swim bag issue then must fall along the lines of a voluntary tic as well. It is something that I found out is pretty much like farting in public when I lived in Italy. Despite being a high-level and daily swimmer for the majority of my life, I have rarely had a "proper" swim bag. Usually I just have old canvas bags either from James Joyce conferences, the Sierra Club, or an Italian grocery store. Currently, I have a canvas bag from the National Wildlife Federation and a plastic bag from Del Haize, which is the Belgian grocery store chain that is known as Food Lion in the States.
Now, it being somewhat of a "tic," I don't really notice these things until I see people's reactions. Basically the first three days I came into the club/gym, the person behind the counter looked at my bag collection and drily asked, "Can I help you?" This would be endearing if it was a different person each day, but it is the same guy, and he recognizes me...
OK, level one passed. Go into the dressing room, feeling somewhat self-conscious and then level two self-conscious arrives. I really get the looks from the corn-fed true-grit 'Mericans in the locker room giving me the fuzzy eyeball. I then notice that on the plastic bag from Del Haize, there is a large fuchsia heart on it, with the logo in English, despite being from Belgium, blaring gaily out, "I love my Bag!" Someone coughed in the distance, "Kabosshhh!"
This reminded me of my first swim meet with my Italian team in Bologna. I had the typical array of bag lady surplus on me and I entered the swim hall. Needless to say, you could hear a penne drop. All heads turned. All, highly-coifed, runway-ready heads turned.
What, me worry?
In Italy, the number one rule is how you look, no matter what you are doing. In Castiglione Fiorentino, one of the street sweepers was an attractive young blonde woman who was usually sporting designer sunglasses and makeup. True story. I have witnesses.
One of the more stringent requirements at any public pool in Italy is the mandatory usage of a swim cap, which I almost never have worn in all my years of swimming. I once saw a bagnino, life guard, argue for 15 minutes, waving arms, with a BALD guy about not having a swim cap. True story. I have witnesses.
At the pool then for a swim meet, there are two more accessories that any swimmer worth his salt would not be caught dead without, a professional swim bag and a designer robe. I had a canvas bag and a monogrammed towel from 25 years ago with AAC on it and my initials in the corner.
Dead silence.
In their heads, every Italian was thinking, "Ma, dai, che cozzo stai faciendo? Che brutta figura!" Which is Italian for, "Kabosh."
So, my apparent swim bag issue then must fall along the lines of a voluntary tic as well. It is something that I found out is pretty much like farting in public when I lived in Italy. Despite being a high-level and daily swimmer for the majority of my life, I have rarely had a "proper" swim bag. Usually I just have old canvas bags either from James Joyce conferences, the Sierra Club, or an Italian grocery store. Currently, I have a canvas bag from the National Wildlife Federation and a plastic bag from Del Haize, which is the Belgian grocery store chain that is known as Food Lion in the States.
Now, it being somewhat of a "tic," I don't really notice these things until I see people's reactions. Basically the first three days I came into the club/gym, the person behind the counter looked at my bag collection and drily asked, "Can I help you?" This would be endearing if it was a different person each day, but it is the same guy, and he recognizes me...
OK, level one passed. Go into the dressing room, feeling somewhat self-conscious and then level two self-conscious arrives. I really get the looks from the corn-fed true-grit 'Mericans in the locker room giving me the fuzzy eyeball. I then notice that on the plastic bag from Del Haize, there is a large fuchsia heart on it, with the logo in English, despite being from Belgium, blaring gaily out, "I love my Bag!" Someone coughed in the distance, "Kabosshhh!"
This reminded me of my first swim meet with my Italian team in Bologna. I had the typical array of bag lady surplus on me and I entered the swim hall. Needless to say, you could hear a penne drop. All heads turned. All, highly-coifed, runway-ready heads turned.
What, me worry?
In Italy, the number one rule is how you look, no matter what you are doing. In Castiglione Fiorentino, one of the street sweepers was an attractive young blonde woman who was usually sporting designer sunglasses and makeup. True story. I have witnesses.
One of the more stringent requirements at any public pool in Italy is the mandatory usage of a swim cap, which I almost never have worn in all my years of swimming. I once saw a bagnino, life guard, argue for 15 minutes, waving arms, with a BALD guy about not having a swim cap. True story. I have witnesses.
At the pool then for a swim meet, there are two more accessories that any swimmer worth his salt would not be caught dead without, a professional swim bag and a designer robe. I had a canvas bag and a monogrammed towel from 25 years ago with AAC on it and my initials in the corner.
Dead silence.
In their heads, every Italian was thinking, "Ma, dai, che cozzo stai faciendo? Che brutta figura!" Which is Italian for, "Kabosh."
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Tree of Love
For those of you who know me, perhaps it will not come as much surprise to know that my favorite Saint amongst the canon of Christian saints is the quirky, but lovable St. Francis.
From the totally seventies movie "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" by Zefferelli on the folk origins of the Franciscans and Sisters Clare, to the St. Francis Church in Santa Fe, the nonpareil St. Francis Cathedral in Assisi to the man himself, St. Francis rocks.
One of the best memories I have teaching in Castiglione Fiorentino was one of the many in situ trips we took and this was indeed to Assisi. Having already been to the Cathedral, I was nonetheless stunned once again by this piece of devout architecture. The world would have been a much poorer place culturally if the earthquake of 1997 had demolished this truly inspired building.
Francis was an odd duck to say the least. Making a statement against his father's wealthy textile and garment trade, Francis more or less did the full monty in the town square of Assisi and then, having retired to the countryside to rebuild a church out there with a group of like-minded proto-hippies, gaining a reputation for preaching to the birds and chipmonks, Francis had a pretty rough go trying to get an audience with Pope Innocent, which he ultimately did, let's just say he was un-orthodox.
Francis had a favorite retreat in La Verne, which is above the city of Assisi. Our group decided to make the trek up the 3km pathway to stray far from the madding crowd below at the Cathedral. Being a rather hot day, we took it easy and talked the whole way up. One of the students, a wonderful young woman named Katie, was feeling rather ill, so I hung back with her and we walked at a very slow pace, but ultimately made it to the La Verne refuge. On the way, Katie told me about the origins of her hometown, which was Friendswood, and was quite appropriate for the day, a Quaker settlement. I had never heard of the history, so it was a great stroll up the hill.
Once up, it was indeed serene. Very few people make this pilgrimage outside the city confines of Assisi. There is a gnarled, old tree, held up by guy wires and looking quite ancient I must say, which is purported to be the tree under which Francis preached to his furry and feathered friends, the only ones who would listen to his message of peace and love.
I spent a good couple of hours up there, walking the pathways and sitting alone for stretches at a time, just enjoying the silence. It was tranquility and serenity embodied.
I leave you with the "Prayer of St. Francis."
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen
and Namaste
From the totally seventies movie "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" by Zefferelli on the folk origins of the Franciscans and Sisters Clare, to the St. Francis Church in Santa Fe, the nonpareil St. Francis Cathedral in Assisi to the man himself, St. Francis rocks.
One of the best memories I have teaching in Castiglione Fiorentino was one of the many in situ trips we took and this was indeed to Assisi. Having already been to the Cathedral, I was nonetheless stunned once again by this piece of devout architecture. The world would have been a much poorer place culturally if the earthquake of 1997 had demolished this truly inspired building.
Francis was an odd duck to say the least. Making a statement against his father's wealthy textile and garment trade, Francis more or less did the full monty in the town square of Assisi and then, having retired to the countryside to rebuild a church out there with a group of like-minded proto-hippies, gaining a reputation for preaching to the birds and chipmonks, Francis had a pretty rough go trying to get an audience with Pope Innocent, which he ultimately did, let's just say he was un-orthodox.
Francis had a favorite retreat in La Verne, which is above the city of Assisi. Our group decided to make the trek up the 3km pathway to stray far from the madding crowd below at the Cathedral. Being a rather hot day, we took it easy and talked the whole way up. One of the students, a wonderful young woman named Katie, was feeling rather ill, so I hung back with her and we walked at a very slow pace, but ultimately made it to the La Verne refuge. On the way, Katie told me about the origins of her hometown, which was Friendswood, and was quite appropriate for the day, a Quaker settlement. I had never heard of the history, so it was a great stroll up the hill.
Once up, it was indeed serene. Very few people make this pilgrimage outside the city confines of Assisi. There is a gnarled, old tree, held up by guy wires and looking quite ancient I must say, which is purported to be the tree under which Francis preached to his furry and feathered friends, the only ones who would listen to his message of peace and love.
I spent a good couple of hours up there, walking the pathways and sitting alone for stretches at a time, just enjoying the silence. It was tranquility and serenity embodied.
I leave you with the "Prayer of St. Francis."
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen
and Namaste
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Sliding Doors, Lesson in Italian Physics Continued
Returning now to the issues of trains, one can readily see that you cannot talk about Italy without talking about transportation. Italians and transportation are like Laurel and Hardy, who are surprisingly popular here. I will let you work out the details for yourself about that analogy.
The general law of antimatter, however, is something that amazes me each time. As I take the train to Forlì, which is fifty minutes from Bologna, I spend quite a bit of time at the train station. The train that I take to Forlì comes from Milano and the one I come back on is from Ancona. Both of these cities are major stops as is Bologna. So, while the smaller towns like Forlì and Faenza (I love that name, but finding a restaurant there is another story…) do not exhibit the full effect of this law as when then trains stop at Bologna. I usually take the Intercity or Interregional and they are more or less hourly.
But, it would be too easy to start with the train. First, you have to get to the train. Bologna has a dozen or so tracks in the main platform area. However, as a trivia question, there are two tracks that you will never have a train on. You will have to visit to know the answer. Anyways, on each of these tracks are trains coming from and going to major Italian cities as Bologna is at the center of the northern Italian train network. In fact, the train line that I ride is built along one of the oldest and straightest Roman roads in the world, the Via Romagna which bisects the Province of Emilia-Romagna. Bologna is in Emilia, Forlì in Romagna. Now you know.
So, in general, trains are supposed to run on the same track on a daily basis. That happens in fantasy lands like Switzerland, Germany, and Austria where you can set your watch by the train. As I never wear a watch and am often late (though those two are not connected in my case), I too can set my watch by the trains in Italy. Pretty much on a daily basis you can see a German, Austrian, or Swiss person being wheeled out on a stretcher from heart failure from the realization that he or she is going to be late for the first time in his or her fifty some-odd years on this planet.
The Italians, however, are different. It is okay to be fashionably late to the train station because the train won’t be there. For the first few weeks, I would be running to the station from the bus to get to the platform on time. Several times I got there when the train was supposed to leave, but I only found a guy sweeping the still-burning cigarettes off the binario onto the train tracks for the pigeons to smoke. Yes, even the pigeons smoke here. Damn, I had missed the train! This happened as I said a few times before I realized that the Italians had not even shown up for the train yet, much less the train. I had just missed the train from the previous hour, not this one. It is confusing if you start to think about the implications of that…
So, after ten minutes or so the Italians begin to arrive for this train. I have obviously learned better. If I want to take the 9:40 train, then I go at 10:20. However, if I want to leave when the 9:40 train would leave, I need to be there at 9:00 to catch the 8:40 train at 9:30 after a quick coffee. It’s kind of like a slide rule.
OK, so once you make adjustments for when you should be at the train station, the next step is finding the train. Sounds simple enough. They are large, make a lot of noise, usually pretty easy to spot in a crowd. However, remember that we are in Italy, and you can become invisible. So can the trains.
Normally if I take the 9:40, and I will let you do the math to figure out when I actually go to the station, that train is supposed to leave on Binario 4. So, you go to the main hall where there is the Arrivi and Partenze scrolling signs which indicate the trains and their binari. By the way, if there is one thing that I love about train stations, it is the scrolling signs. If you have never experienced one of these, then you are truly missing out. I have stood watching those for hours. Meanwhile I was pickpocketed and had my shoes stolen, but it is fascinating. You watch them spellbound and suddenly, rows and rows of numbers, letters, and symbols go racing by. It’s like Vegas, but you don’t have to pay. You stand there, everyone looking up as if Martians are landing (and meanwhile the pickpockets are have a field day) and everyone is waiting for their train to show up. The first time I was waiting for my train and it came up after lots of clicking and scrolling I yelled “Jackpot!!” and grabbed the guy next to me and hugged him. He was a pickpocket and took my train ticket.
The daily ritual then is for hundreds of people standing in the hall, looking up at the schedule and when the train and binario number comes up, it is chaos. Suddenly, the train that has been twenty minutes late rolls into existence on the board. However, it sometimes ends up be Ancoroma or Milanapoli so you’re not sure if it is Ancona, Roma, Milano, or Napoli. You roll the dice, it’s Ancona, binario 4. But when you get to binario 4, on the mini-scroll bar, it reads Venizia 8:56. But, it has not come, and you need the 9:40 train to Ancona. You go back to the main hall, and now, next to Romancona, the number for the binario is blank. All other trains have numbers, except yours. People are casually waltzing to respected binari, saying goodbye, talking on phones saying that they were about to leave, but not you. Standing there, after the train was supposed to leave, even on the calibrated analog system that you spent four sleepless nights perfecting, there is a blank.
Logically, a train that is coming from somewhere else must consequently arrive from that place, correct? So it seems. Looking at the Arrivi board, there is Milanoroma, binario 4. Looking back to Ancoromano, nothing. Binario 4, blank. Okay, you roll the dice again. You go to Binario 4 and you see, ES Monaco (which is very confusing because that is actually München, or Munich) 9:14. No Venezia train. No Romilancorona either. You decide to wait. There are a few coffee machines in the tunnels under the trains, so why not? Fifteen minutes later after having figured out how to actually get the coffee from seventy-two variations of sugar, coffee, water and milk with special names each, you go back to Binario 4. This time, it says Firenze 9:28. You go check the board. Arrival from Milano, binario 4. Some unintelligible gibberish that looks like there is an “a” and a “c” which you imagine could be Ancona, blank. As it is now well past noon, your hope of getting to work at all begins to dwindle. Back to the tunnel.
Now, you get to binario 4 and the mini-scroll bar is blank, except for two numbers a 9 and a 4. Suddenly, these scrolling signs aren’t so endearing. However, there is now a crowd forming and you hear whispers of faraway places like “Ancona” and “Forlì” and you figure out that you are not alone. So, then the crowd grows. Obviously you still have to work out some kinks on your analog system because magically every Italian has figured out that the 9:40 train is about to depart. It is 1:35. The mind literally boggles.
The crowd is now so large, that nobody from binari 6 and up (if you are paying attention, you know one of the trivia answers) can get by. There is a Doctor Suess story about two critters, a northbound one and a southbound one that refuse to move until an entire city and highway system is built around them. Something similar happens at this point, but eventually a little lady with more determination than most climbers of Everest have, breaks the dike and passengers from Balzonoroma come bursting through. When the confusion has hit its zenith, there is an indecipherable screaming over the intercom in a language that could very well have been spoken by the Italic tribes thousands of years ago, but you don’t understand a word of it. But somewhere in there, the Italians have managed to decipher, or at least you think they have, that among that cacophony of barking, static, and what may or may not have been singing, was the information that the train to Ancona would in fact be leaving from binario 4 as the train from Milano was in arrival. You dash to the main hallway to try and verify this, but just then, the scrolling bar has just finished spinning, and there is no train to Ancona. You sprint back to the binario to see that the train has in fact arrived.
And now, we get to the concept of antimatter, almost. The train glides towards a stop as there is another round of crackling howling and screaming over the intercom and everyone on the platform begins asking each other if this is the right train. Lots of lifted shoulders with hands out at the sides, which means in Italian, “don’t ask me, I’m invisible.”
The train stops. The air is thick with anticipation. No, that is smoke. Every single Italian has just lit up a cigarette and is frantically smoking it, knowing that they are about to board the evil “non-smoking” train. The pigeons begin to descend, shaking from nicotine withdrawal. Now, how the concept of non-smoking trains got passed in Italian is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that it is more or less obeyed, is nothing short of witnessing the birth of the universe. Smoking in a crowded auditorium after an Umberto Eco lecture is another story, again. Especially when it was Eco. But, that will have to wait.
The doors begin to creak open. The pigeons are going nuts, waiting for the Italians to toss their cigarette butts to the platform. As I said, this train is coming from one major place and going to another, stopping in a middle major place. This equals lots of people. Lots of people with mass. Let us restate our law: Two or more objects containing significant mass are required to fill the same place at the same time. And so it begins.
Unlike the buses which have an ingress and an egress, the trains have one, two-foot wide door for each end of the car. On the inside of the train, there are thousands of Milanese people who were last sighted in the Bermuda triangle when the train left the station 12 hours ago and on the platform, there are thousands of Bolognese who are now a week and a half late to work. And there is one, two-foot wide door standing between them. Instead of standing aside and letting the Milanese descend and then have the Bolognese board, it happens simultaneously. I don’t mean, about the same time. I mean sim-ul-tan-e-ous-ly. The Milanese would never yield to a Bolognese and vice versa, so what happens is antimatter. As a Milanese descends, a Bolognese boards and presto! Two bodies occupy the same space. The mutated result is a part fusion, part fission. At the beginning of the process, the Milanese and Bolognese masses merge to form one larger massive body of four arms and legs, two heads and several brands of designer clothing including at least six pairs of sunglasses. And then, the fission begins and the boarding Bolognese and the descending Milanese seem to appear more or less intact, though not necessarily with the same three pairs of sunglasses.
After this defiance of natural process occurs, you start to fight for the seats. But that, like the flight is another lesson in Italian Physics.
For now, the train begins to pull out of the station. The pigeons swarm the tracks, and an American comes running up the stairs onto the platform believing that he has just missed the 16:45 train to Rome and realizing that the “long lost friend” who hugged him in the station just lifted his wallet. In the distance, the ambulance can be heard responding to a call about a German tourist at the train station.
The general law of antimatter, however, is something that amazes me each time. As I take the train to Forlì, which is fifty minutes from Bologna, I spend quite a bit of time at the train station. The train that I take to Forlì comes from Milano and the one I come back on is from Ancona. Both of these cities are major stops as is Bologna. So, while the smaller towns like Forlì and Faenza (I love that name, but finding a restaurant there is another story…) do not exhibit the full effect of this law as when then trains stop at Bologna. I usually take the Intercity or Interregional and they are more or less hourly.
But, it would be too easy to start with the train. First, you have to get to the train. Bologna has a dozen or so tracks in the main platform area. However, as a trivia question, there are two tracks that you will never have a train on. You will have to visit to know the answer. Anyways, on each of these tracks are trains coming from and going to major Italian cities as Bologna is at the center of the northern Italian train network. In fact, the train line that I ride is built along one of the oldest and straightest Roman roads in the world, the Via Romagna which bisects the Province of Emilia-Romagna. Bologna is in Emilia, Forlì in Romagna. Now you know.
So, in general, trains are supposed to run on the same track on a daily basis. That happens in fantasy lands like Switzerland, Germany, and Austria where you can set your watch by the train. As I never wear a watch and am often late (though those two are not connected in my case), I too can set my watch by the trains in Italy. Pretty much on a daily basis you can see a German, Austrian, or Swiss person being wheeled out on a stretcher from heart failure from the realization that he or she is going to be late for the first time in his or her fifty some-odd years on this planet.
The Italians, however, are different. It is okay to be fashionably late to the train station because the train won’t be there. For the first few weeks, I would be running to the station from the bus to get to the platform on time. Several times I got there when the train was supposed to leave, but I only found a guy sweeping the still-burning cigarettes off the binario onto the train tracks for the pigeons to smoke. Yes, even the pigeons smoke here. Damn, I had missed the train! This happened as I said a few times before I realized that the Italians had not even shown up for the train yet, much less the train. I had just missed the train from the previous hour, not this one. It is confusing if you start to think about the implications of that…
So, after ten minutes or so the Italians begin to arrive for this train. I have obviously learned better. If I want to take the 9:40 train, then I go at 10:20. However, if I want to leave when the 9:40 train would leave, I need to be there at 9:00 to catch the 8:40 train at 9:30 after a quick coffee. It’s kind of like a slide rule.
OK, so once you make adjustments for when you should be at the train station, the next step is finding the train. Sounds simple enough. They are large, make a lot of noise, usually pretty easy to spot in a crowd. However, remember that we are in Italy, and you can become invisible. So can the trains.
Normally if I take the 9:40, and I will let you do the math to figure out when I actually go to the station, that train is supposed to leave on Binario 4. So, you go to the main hall where there is the Arrivi and Partenze scrolling signs which indicate the trains and their binari. By the way, if there is one thing that I love about train stations, it is the scrolling signs. If you have never experienced one of these, then you are truly missing out. I have stood watching those for hours. Meanwhile I was pickpocketed and had my shoes stolen, but it is fascinating. You watch them spellbound and suddenly, rows and rows of numbers, letters, and symbols go racing by. It’s like Vegas, but you don’t have to pay. You stand there, everyone looking up as if Martians are landing (and meanwhile the pickpockets are have a field day) and everyone is waiting for their train to show up. The first time I was waiting for my train and it came up after lots of clicking and scrolling I yelled “Jackpot!!” and grabbed the guy next to me and hugged him. He was a pickpocket and took my train ticket.
The daily ritual then is for hundreds of people standing in the hall, looking up at the schedule and when the train and binario number comes up, it is chaos. Suddenly, the train that has been twenty minutes late rolls into existence on the board. However, it sometimes ends up be Ancoroma or Milanapoli so you’re not sure if it is Ancona, Roma, Milano, or Napoli. You roll the dice, it’s Ancona, binario 4. But when you get to binario 4, on the mini-scroll bar, it reads Venizia 8:56. But, it has not come, and you need the 9:40 train to Ancona. You go back to the main hall, and now, next to Romancona, the number for the binario is blank. All other trains have numbers, except yours. People are casually waltzing to respected binari, saying goodbye, talking on phones saying that they were about to leave, but not you. Standing there, after the train was supposed to leave, even on the calibrated analog system that you spent four sleepless nights perfecting, there is a blank.
Logically, a train that is coming from somewhere else must consequently arrive from that place, correct? So it seems. Looking at the Arrivi board, there is Milanoroma, binario 4. Looking back to Ancoromano, nothing. Binario 4, blank. Okay, you roll the dice again. You go to Binario 4 and you see, ES Monaco (which is very confusing because that is actually München, or Munich) 9:14. No Venezia train. No Romilancorona either. You decide to wait. There are a few coffee machines in the tunnels under the trains, so why not? Fifteen minutes later after having figured out how to actually get the coffee from seventy-two variations of sugar, coffee, water and milk with special names each, you go back to Binario 4. This time, it says Firenze 9:28. You go check the board. Arrival from Milano, binario 4. Some unintelligible gibberish that looks like there is an “a” and a “c” which you imagine could be Ancona, blank. As it is now well past noon, your hope of getting to work at all begins to dwindle. Back to the tunnel.
Now, you get to binario 4 and the mini-scroll bar is blank, except for two numbers a 9 and a 4. Suddenly, these scrolling signs aren’t so endearing. However, there is now a crowd forming and you hear whispers of faraway places like “Ancona” and “Forlì” and you figure out that you are not alone. So, then the crowd grows. Obviously you still have to work out some kinks on your analog system because magically every Italian has figured out that the 9:40 train is about to depart. It is 1:35. The mind literally boggles.
The crowd is now so large, that nobody from binari 6 and up (if you are paying attention, you know one of the trivia answers) can get by. There is a Doctor Suess story about two critters, a northbound one and a southbound one that refuse to move until an entire city and highway system is built around them. Something similar happens at this point, but eventually a little lady with more determination than most climbers of Everest have, breaks the dike and passengers from Balzonoroma come bursting through. When the confusion has hit its zenith, there is an indecipherable screaming over the intercom in a language that could very well have been spoken by the Italic tribes thousands of years ago, but you don’t understand a word of it. But somewhere in there, the Italians have managed to decipher, or at least you think they have, that among that cacophony of barking, static, and what may or may not have been singing, was the information that the train to Ancona would in fact be leaving from binario 4 as the train from Milano was in arrival. You dash to the main hallway to try and verify this, but just then, the scrolling bar has just finished spinning, and there is no train to Ancona. You sprint back to the binario to see that the train has in fact arrived.
And now, we get to the concept of antimatter, almost. The train glides towards a stop as there is another round of crackling howling and screaming over the intercom and everyone on the platform begins asking each other if this is the right train. Lots of lifted shoulders with hands out at the sides, which means in Italian, “don’t ask me, I’m invisible.”
The train stops. The air is thick with anticipation. No, that is smoke. Every single Italian has just lit up a cigarette and is frantically smoking it, knowing that they are about to board the evil “non-smoking” train. The pigeons begin to descend, shaking from nicotine withdrawal. Now, how the concept of non-smoking trains got passed in Italian is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that it is more or less obeyed, is nothing short of witnessing the birth of the universe. Smoking in a crowded auditorium after an Umberto Eco lecture is another story, again. Especially when it was Eco. But, that will have to wait.
The doors begin to creak open. The pigeons are going nuts, waiting for the Italians to toss their cigarette butts to the platform. As I said, this train is coming from one major place and going to another, stopping in a middle major place. This equals lots of people. Lots of people with mass. Let us restate our law: Two or more objects containing significant mass are required to fill the same place at the same time. And so it begins.
Unlike the buses which have an ingress and an egress, the trains have one, two-foot wide door for each end of the car. On the inside of the train, there are thousands of Milanese people who were last sighted in the Bermuda triangle when the train left the station 12 hours ago and on the platform, there are thousands of Bolognese who are now a week and a half late to work. And there is one, two-foot wide door standing between them. Instead of standing aside and letting the Milanese descend and then have the Bolognese board, it happens simultaneously. I don’t mean, about the same time. I mean sim-ul-tan-e-ous-ly. The Milanese would never yield to a Bolognese and vice versa, so what happens is antimatter. As a Milanese descends, a Bolognese boards and presto! Two bodies occupy the same space. The mutated result is a part fusion, part fission. At the beginning of the process, the Milanese and Bolognese masses merge to form one larger massive body of four arms and legs, two heads and several brands of designer clothing including at least six pairs of sunglasses. And then, the fission begins and the boarding Bolognese and the descending Milanese seem to appear more or less intact, though not necessarily with the same three pairs of sunglasses.
After this defiance of natural process occurs, you start to fight for the seats. But that, like the flight is another lesson in Italian Physics.
For now, the train begins to pull out of the station. The pigeons swarm the tracks, and an American comes running up the stairs onto the platform believing that he has just missed the 16:45 train to Rome and realizing that the “long lost friend” who hugged him in the station just lifted his wallet. In the distance, the ambulance can be heard responding to a call about a German tourist at the train station.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Flying Lessons, Italian Style
Having just flown from Brussels to Amarillo, via my favorite transitional airport, for now at least, Newark Liberty, I remembered a piece I wrote a few years ago about my least favorite airport experiences traveling back to Italy from the UK.
Hope you enjoy. (Remember, it only hurts when you laugh):
_____________________
And so we come to a very brief lesson in Italian physics. This law is best defined by the experience of riding Italian trains. The law that we will discuss today in Italian Dynamics (ID) is that of the anti-matter law. In normal three dimensional space, it is impossible to have two bodies which contain mass occupying the same space at the same time. In ID, this law does not exist. Whereas normal physical phenomenon resist being turned into anti-matter, ID requires it. In other words, as a law: Two or more objects containing significant mass are required to fill the same place at the same time.
This law can be seen on a daily basis at the train station, or any other place that requires a line in Italy. Requires is a big word. However, we must first digress on the concept, or rather the lack of the concept of a line before we return to the issue of trains. A well-known textbook axiom taught in school in geometry is that in Euclidean space, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Italians were absent on that day.
I was in Dublin recently and saw a very curious thing. There was a bus stop and the bus had not yet arrived, but there was this odd event. People were standing in single file. The bus came, they stayed in line. They boarded the bus, the bus left, and a new line eventually formed. I was in shock. I cursed myself for not having my camera with me. People back in Bologna would never believe this. I tried to remember if I had ever seen anything like it. Misty images of standing in line at movie theaters in America drifted by, but it seemed like a dream. Did people really stand in lines?
Wondering if the world was coming to an end, I was relieved to be back at the airport a few days later for my flight to Forlì with Ryanair. Ryanair is the Irish answer to Southwest Airlines. You can buy very cheap tickets and change them (with a rather large fee) and go to exciting airports like Forlì, or Stansted and spend another hour actually getting to the city you want to go by bus or train, in these cases Bologna and London. However, the main thing that Ryanair learned from Southwest Airlines is what is affectionately called “the cattle call” by those who have experienced it. As you know, that means no assigned seats and general admission. Obviously these people have not been to a Who concert or lived in Italy.
So, Ryanair adopted this same procedure. Bad idea. Very bad idea. Italians do general admission on any airline, regardless of the boarding procedure. Now, they are encouraged to do this. At Stansted, they have a horribly underexplained system of queuing that the Brits seem to figure out in their typical Brit-logic, the Americans just wonder aloud until an annoyed Brit clues them in on what is going on just to shut them up, and then there are the Italians.
The queuing is like this. Numbers 1-64 on the inside of a cordoned passage, 65 and above on the outside which wraps around so that the two lines begin at the same place. When 1-64 are in, they readjust the cordon, and voila, the second line goes in. Simple enough, right? I arrived from Dublin and got to the Forli gate in Stansted. There were more or less 50 or so people. I was number 118 on the card, so I had to go on the outside. People continued to file behind the first line. Much more than 64. Finally, a Ryanair person announces, only in English, the queue system and that people with 65 and above need to move. No one moves. Then, the employee announced how to look at the card to find your number. No one looks. Meanwhile, there is an Italian-speaking employee looking around bored. Now, since the flight was ninety percent Italian, you would think that the Italian employee could help clear things up, but instead, there is a sudden angst among the big line. “Are they letting us through?” As such, there began a condensation of matter. Now, everyone wanted to be at the front of the line.
While I was still standing alone on the outside, beginning to feel quite lonely, the Ryanair British employee who had made the announcements assured me that I would be first in the second group. I smiled politely. As the push from behind increased, an Italian-speaking Brit began to try to explain to the crowd the system. He pointed to where their number was and explained that most of them needed to move. Now, they got angry. Now they had no excuse. Several of them obviously understood the English, but in a way that only Italians can do, completely ignored it. They had become invisible. Nobody could see that they were number 130 and in the front of the line. Telling a couple of ladies six or seven times that they needed to move, the Brit finally began to give up. They ladies looked at him wondering, “Whom are you talking to? We are invisible.”
Finally, some started to give a hint that maybe they would act like they happened to hear this Brit. And then, the Ryanair employee started saying several times in English that those with 65 and above needed to move to the other line. This only caused everyone with 65 and above to start pointing their fingers at me and laughing. I smiled politely.
And then, showtime. There were two Ryanair employees who were going to start taking tickets, one of them was the Italian. The exasperated third employee who had tried to assure me that she would be able to control this began to mentally think about career changes to an alligator wrestle in Louisiana as she announced that we would begin boarding only those numbers 1-64. All others would have to move. She removed the cordon and the madness began. The other Brit who was one of the ones taking tickets was desperately searching for the number, handing her the boarding cards as she checked off the numbers 1-64 while Francesco was letting anyone go by with a cheerful “Buona Sera.” The cordon was placed back. Francesco was told again what he was supposed to be doing and the announcement was made again that only 1-64 could board. The Italians looked at her in amazement, “Whom is that strange British woman talking to? We are invisible.”
The cordon was removed. Repeat. Cordon replaced. Now, instead of having Francesco explain this in Italian over the intercom, he was given the task of checking off the numbers and two Brits would take the boarding cards. So, then, those with 65 and above didn’t move to the other line, they just stood there, making it nearly impossible for people with 64 and below to get by. Meanwhile, I had become quite a sideshow attraction standing there by myself on the other side of the rope. I smiled politely as my lower lip quivered.
After fifteen minutes of this, the now frazzled woman employee turned and asked Francesco if 1-64 had passed, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then, she found him singing with a group of Neopolitans at the next gate and so bringing him back, they counted the cards and yes, 1-64 and 25 others had boarded. So, in a defiant act, she removed the cordon on my row, and I mean my row as it was just me and two Japanese tourists who had gotten lost, and I was able to board. I thanked her. She smiled politely as a tear squeezed from her eye and she was wondering if her psychiatrist would still be up at this hour.
The plane ride is another story.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
A Moveable Feast, Part III
(Note: reminder that this is a piece I wrote about six years ago and have recycled here. I would write this differently today, but that is not how life works. The greatest joy of a professor is the eureka-moment that we see in our students. Often it takes much longer for ourselves. Prego.)
But, on the other hand, Hemingway has previously warned us in the preface, that “[I]f the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.” So, “if the reader prefers,” he may read this as fiction or fact, leaving the question in suspense of whether you are reading a work of fiction or fact. Simple enough, but what is the weight of your choice as the reader? Again, I asked my students, just who was Hemingway’s audience?
To return to the beginning, I mentioned that Hemingway begins his book with the sentence, “Then there was the bad weather.” The Yoga sutras begins in a similar way and has troubled translators and interpreters for centuries. The sutras begin with the word, atha. This word may be translated as “now,” “then,” or “so then” and the like. “Now is the time for the practice of yoga,” or “Then, one begins the practice of yoga,” and other various translations begin this work. But what is before if we take the word to mean “then” in a concessive manner? What must happen before you begin yoga? A common acceptance is that the yoga sutras were composed by the same Patañjali who also wrote the grammar sutras and ayurvedic sutras. It has been supposed that the “then” aspect of atha is that first you must learn the grammar of Sanskrit and the science of living well through ayurvedic practice, and then you are ready to begin yoga.
In addition to this example by Hemingway and the yoga sutras, Thucydides is also known to play tricks with beginnings and use unconventional structures in his writings that frustrate students and translators of Greek. Derrida, a student of classical studies and philology took the concept of deconstruction in language to its logical conclusion by looking at every word and exploding its meaning into meaningless by exponential combinations of potential meanings in relation to all other words. He has been criticized for killing the possibility of reading, because of the inevitable entropy of communication as one reads a text or performs any act of communication. So, what do we do? Do we stop communicating?
I think not. Let us look again at Hemingway’s opening sentence, “Then there was the bad weather.” The students who were in my class are future interpreters, translators, and language experts. These students take three foreign languages from their first year in college and some are fluent in three from the start. As a “philologist” myself, this group really impressed me. However, they had not expected one of the first questions that I had for the class. “What does Hemingway mean by then?” Silence. Mummuring. Silence. More mummuring. Silence.
A hand goes up.
“Prof. Fulton, we don’t understand the question, could you repeat it please?” I repeated, “What does Hemingway mean by then?” Silence. Shuffling of pages. Coughs.
“Ok,” I asked, “how would you translate this word? Adesso (now), dopo (after), ora (now), ormai (from this point)? And what is the difference?” Signs of interest began to creep over their faces, brows began to frown. Now, they were starting to get it. How do you begin a work? How do you dive into another persons work and try and capture its meaning, dare I say essence? I asked again, “What does Hemingway mean by then?”
Now hands began to go up.
“Maybe he didn’t include what came before.”
“Maybe he is starting in media res and will tell us later.”
“Maybe he didn’t expect the bad weather.”
“Maybe weather has something to do with the story.”
“Why does he begin the story with bad weather?”
“It throws the reader off because everyone thinks of Paris in the springtime.”
“It is stream of consciousness.”
And so a discussion of a book begins. The responses move from “maybes” to more assertive responses and we are deep into the discussion of why Hemingway would choose to discuss bad weather in a book about Paris. Gay Paris, the image that many have of Paris in the twenties is suddenly inverted into dark, gray, cold and miserable Paris. Reality. So dark and cold and miserable that Hemingway and Hadley actually leave Paris, (though later to return) after the first chapter, quite surprising for a book that is supposed to be about Paris.
But, I returned to the question again. This time, they really listened. “What does Hemingway mean by then?” What happens to people when they meet on the street, or when a conversation turns to mundane things. We talk about the weather. But what does the weather really mean to us? Why would Hemingway talk about the fact that then there was the bad weather. A time in his life that was to be remembered as the best, yet we begin with dirt, cold, and smells of stale beer and decadence in Paris.
Bologna has been cold, dark, and wet for the past four months. At the beginning of March, we had a record snowfall of over a foot in twenty-four hours. The red clay tiled roofs were covered with thick, wet, white and grey snow. Patches of red would slowly emerge above kitchens and heaters and the streets were slushed with black, messy sludge within a day. The sky in the Emilia-Romagna padana (valley of the Po River) is notorious for winter haze and fog. Ferrara, home of black magic in Italy, is often shrouded in a misty garment of cold, dark fog. The sky wraps itself in a mantel of darkness in northern Europe and keeps this mantel wrapped tightly for months.
I remember talking with people in Austin about my future in Italy and many were jealous that I would be sipping wine on rooftop terraces soaking in the Italian sun. Our rooftop terrace has been wet for a great deal of the time, and the sun has been vacationing in the environs of Ethiopia as was Poseidon at the beginning of the Odyssey. Yes, we have enjoyed some wonderful Italian wine, but more often then not, only after ducking into the apartment after escaping the chilled weather outside.
Living in another country presents many obstacles, challenges, and setbacks that can never be fully anticipated. On a daily basis, you are reminded that you are not from here, whether it be the language, or the simple fact that you order something in the wrong sequence at dinner. You have to deal with new customs, new schedules, new rules, and new ways of looking at life.
Standing in line for four hours at a time at the Questura to try and get your Permesso di Soggiorno (the Italian green card) only to be told to come back next week (for the fifth time) with no explanation tempers your nerves and your patience. Having people really think that you are actually quite ignorant because you speak well enough to get by, but not well enough to fit in yet, provides your ego with humility. Teaching a class of seventy students who laugh out loud (not out of rudeness, but mirth) when you mispronounce a word in Italian and then proceed to correct you in perfect unison reminds you that you are not in Texas anymore.
There are countless events that happen in our lives that we often miss, don’t care to notice, or simply “don’t have the time to deal with,” and yet these small, or large if it be the case, occurrences weave the fabric that make us who we are.
Spring has found Bologna more or less, although as I write, winter is making one last stand. However, on the train to Forlì this week I saw the Po valley transformed into a beautiful tapestry of almond, cherry, peach, apple, and pear trees full in bloom. Spring does find even Bologna and it found Paris for Hemingway eventually. Soon, we will be able to sit out on our terrace again, looking out over an array of red-tiled rooftops dotted with green penthouse gardens, sitting in the Italian sun, and enjoying a glass of Italian wine.
Before that, however, there was then for us as well the bad weather.
But, on the other hand, Hemingway has previously warned us in the preface, that “[I]f the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.” So, “if the reader prefers,” he may read this as fiction or fact, leaving the question in suspense of whether you are reading a work of fiction or fact. Simple enough, but what is the weight of your choice as the reader? Again, I asked my students, just who was Hemingway’s audience?
To return to the beginning, I mentioned that Hemingway begins his book with the sentence, “Then there was the bad weather.” The Yoga sutras begins in a similar way and has troubled translators and interpreters for centuries. The sutras begin with the word, atha. This word may be translated as “now,” “then,” or “so then” and the like. “Now is the time for the practice of yoga,” or “Then, one begins the practice of yoga,” and other various translations begin this work. But what is before if we take the word to mean “then” in a concessive manner? What must happen before you begin yoga? A common acceptance is that the yoga sutras were composed by the same Patañjali who also wrote the grammar sutras and ayurvedic sutras. It has been supposed that the “then” aspect of atha is that first you must learn the grammar of Sanskrit and the science of living well through ayurvedic practice, and then you are ready to begin yoga.
In addition to this example by Hemingway and the yoga sutras, Thucydides is also known to play tricks with beginnings and use unconventional structures in his writings that frustrate students and translators of Greek. Derrida, a student of classical studies and philology took the concept of deconstruction in language to its logical conclusion by looking at every word and exploding its meaning into meaningless by exponential combinations of potential meanings in relation to all other words. He has been criticized for killing the possibility of reading, because of the inevitable entropy of communication as one reads a text or performs any act of communication. So, what do we do? Do we stop communicating?
I think not. Let us look again at Hemingway’s opening sentence, “Then there was the bad weather.” The students who were in my class are future interpreters, translators, and language experts. These students take three foreign languages from their first year in college and some are fluent in three from the start. As a “philologist” myself, this group really impressed me. However, they had not expected one of the first questions that I had for the class. “What does Hemingway mean by then?” Silence. Mummuring. Silence. More mummuring. Silence.
A hand goes up.
“Prof. Fulton, we don’t understand the question, could you repeat it please?” I repeated, “What does Hemingway mean by then?” Silence. Shuffling of pages. Coughs.
“Ok,” I asked, “how would you translate this word? Adesso (now), dopo (after), ora (now), ormai (from this point)? And what is the difference?” Signs of interest began to creep over their faces, brows began to frown. Now, they were starting to get it. How do you begin a work? How do you dive into another persons work and try and capture its meaning, dare I say essence? I asked again, “What does Hemingway mean by then?”
Now hands began to go up.
“Maybe he didn’t include what came before.”
“Maybe he is starting in media res and will tell us later.”
“Maybe he didn’t expect the bad weather.”
“Maybe weather has something to do with the story.”
“Why does he begin the story with bad weather?”
“It throws the reader off because everyone thinks of Paris in the springtime.”
“It is stream of consciousness.”
And so a discussion of a book begins. The responses move from “maybes” to more assertive responses and we are deep into the discussion of why Hemingway would choose to discuss bad weather in a book about Paris. Gay Paris, the image that many have of Paris in the twenties is suddenly inverted into dark, gray, cold and miserable Paris. Reality. So dark and cold and miserable that Hemingway and Hadley actually leave Paris, (though later to return) after the first chapter, quite surprising for a book that is supposed to be about Paris.
But, I returned to the question again. This time, they really listened. “What does Hemingway mean by then?” What happens to people when they meet on the street, or when a conversation turns to mundane things. We talk about the weather. But what does the weather really mean to us? Why would Hemingway talk about the fact that then there was the bad weather. A time in his life that was to be remembered as the best, yet we begin with dirt, cold, and smells of stale beer and decadence in Paris.
Bologna has been cold, dark, and wet for the past four months. At the beginning of March, we had a record snowfall of over a foot in twenty-four hours. The red clay tiled roofs were covered with thick, wet, white and grey snow. Patches of red would slowly emerge above kitchens and heaters and the streets were slushed with black, messy sludge within a day. The sky in the Emilia-Romagna padana (valley of the Po River) is notorious for winter haze and fog. Ferrara, home of black magic in Italy, is often shrouded in a misty garment of cold, dark fog. The sky wraps itself in a mantel of darkness in northern Europe and keeps this mantel wrapped tightly for months.
I remember talking with people in Austin about my future in Italy and many were jealous that I would be sipping wine on rooftop terraces soaking in the Italian sun. Our rooftop terrace has been wet for a great deal of the time, and the sun has been vacationing in the environs of Ethiopia as was Poseidon at the beginning of the Odyssey. Yes, we have enjoyed some wonderful Italian wine, but more often then not, only after ducking into the apartment after escaping the chilled weather outside.
Living in another country presents many obstacles, challenges, and setbacks that can never be fully anticipated. On a daily basis, you are reminded that you are not from here, whether it be the language, or the simple fact that you order something in the wrong sequence at dinner. You have to deal with new customs, new schedules, new rules, and new ways of looking at life.
Standing in line for four hours at a time at the Questura to try and get your Permesso di Soggiorno (the Italian green card) only to be told to come back next week (for the fifth time) with no explanation tempers your nerves and your patience. Having people really think that you are actually quite ignorant because you speak well enough to get by, but not well enough to fit in yet, provides your ego with humility. Teaching a class of seventy students who laugh out loud (not out of rudeness, but mirth) when you mispronounce a word in Italian and then proceed to correct you in perfect unison reminds you that you are not in Texas anymore.
There are countless events that happen in our lives that we often miss, don’t care to notice, or simply “don’t have the time to deal with,” and yet these small, or large if it be the case, occurrences weave the fabric that make us who we are.
Spring has found Bologna more or less, although as I write, winter is making one last stand. However, on the train to Forlì this week I saw the Po valley transformed into a beautiful tapestry of almond, cherry, peach, apple, and pear trees full in bloom. Spring does find even Bologna and it found Paris for Hemingway eventually. Soon, we will be able to sit out on our terrace again, looking out over an array of red-tiled rooftops dotted with green penthouse gardens, sitting in the Italian sun, and enjoying a glass of Italian wine.
Before that, however, there was then for us as well the bad weather.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
A Moveable Feast, Pt. II
The preface of Hemingway’s book is just such a communication. From this odd preface, we have to wonder, who really was Hemingway’s audience? Was this a journal, a memoir, an autobiography, a novel, or what? The preface makes it somewhat unclear. I asked my students this question and we discussed this half-page preface for nearly an hour, which utterly confused them. What was this odd American professor doing? Why are we spending so much time on something that doesn’t matter? This is not paranoia, for they later told me that this is what they were thinking, and saying.
But, what is the importance of a preface? Consider also that this was the last thing that Hemingway wrote before committing suicide and never saw it published. And yet, he felt the need to write a preface to somebody. I don’t think that it is a stretch of reality to suggest that Hemingway was well into his plans for suicide at this point and, in fact, no one was overly surprised when he actually carried it out. Having won the Nobel Prize for literature a few years before for The Old Man and The Sea, Hemingway sunk into an alcoholic downward spiral with multiple health problems and a fourth failed marriage. But, before checking out, he gave us this unassuming book.
Hemingway is also another author who people tend to take or leave. Too journalistic. Too stilted. Too arrogant. Too full of bullshit. Too “fill-in-the-blank.” The reaction to my announcement that this would be our first author to read did not exactly bring down the house in thunderous applause. Hemingway’s reputation as such is international. But, I am also one who is known to put Aristotle and Allan Bloom on a reading list just to get a reaction, so I proceeded as planned. We began with Hemingway, and we began with the preface.
In the preface, Hemingway speaks to you, the reader. He says about the stories in the book that “[s]ome were secrets and some were known by everyone and everyone has written about them and will doubtless write more.” As you will see when reading, Hemingway relates stories about meeting such people as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ford Maddox Ford, Wyndam Lewis, Sylvia Beach, Ezra Pound, and the F. Scott Fitzgeralds. And, in fact, much has been written about some of the meetings and relationships and they inevitably fill a large portion of survey courses of modernism, creating the paradox of the idea of modernism killing the individual, but from modernism, we have such fascinating individuals who still hold our attention with their adventures in Paris.
We see Hemingway move from one vignette to another, sometimes with connections, more often not. We see the subtle evolution of Hemingway the unknown upstart fresh from War World One to Hemingway the writer who moves among the moveable feast as a regular player. We see relationships rise and fall as in the case of Miss Stein and Hadley, Hemingway’s first wife as well as the gradual ascent of Hemingway among the “generals” of writing such as Joyce and Pound. Hemingway relates scenes that appear to mean nothing, but in light of scholarship on these writers and the fact that most were dead by this time, these scenes take on a different shade of significance. When Hemingway is asked by Joyce (in the previous scene involving Joyce, Hemingway was only able to look wistfully through a restaurant window watching the Joyce family enjoy one of Joyce’s infamous spending sprees in a fancy dining place) to share a drink, Hemingway notes that Joyce did not drink white wine. As a Joycean, you realize the subtleness of this. Inevitably, Joyce’s habit of only drinking white wine seems to come up and you can’t be in the “club” if you aren’t aware of every idiosyncracy of Joyce before you can read him. Hemingway is aware of this, even in 1960, and reminds us that we were not there. Perhaps we don’t always know as much as we think we do in the academy.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
A Moveable Feast, Pt. I
This is a short narrative that I wrote while in Italy, decided to bring it back from the ashes of memory. Will serialize it for short attention spans of today's fast-paced world. Prego.
A Reading.
A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s book about his youthful exile in Paris during the 1920’s begins with the enigmatic phrase, “Then there was the bad weather.” At first glance, this may not be curious at all for the casual reader. In fact, I would hazard to say that very few people even notice this phrase. But then again, I believe that reading is an art, and like all arts, it takes practice.
The reason this opening sentence has caught my eye has several layers. For the first layer, I need to talk briefly about the course that I taught my first semester in Italy, entitled: Exiles in Time, Memory, and Place. We read works by Hemingway, Salinger, and Joyce for the primary texts. I chose to begin with Hemingway’s Moveable Feast for several reasons, also because it is the most accessible in language for foreign students. However, it was also because he is talking about a specific time in his life that he remembers from the vantage point of a sixty year-old man, the year before he shot himself in Ketchum, Idaho. His circle was closed, he left America as a rather young man with no experience, and he died in America, older in experience than years.
Hemingway was writing about the time of a life that seen from its twilight, he regarded as the best part in retrospect. He closed the book saying, “But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.” If Hemingway was ever really happy after those years, it is difficult to say. Just as difficult to say is whether he was ever happy at all. Or, was this an embellishment seen through the eyes of a broken, alcoholic and embittered man? Such questions can generate good discussion, but ultimately we may always be left wondering.
However, let us return to the beginning of this work, or better, before the beginning, namely the preface. As my students quickly learn, I have a strong interest in prefaces, introductions, and beginnings. They are components of a text that are easy to breeze over, taken without concern or notice, but they can also be treasure troves of insight to the book and often are a direct communication from the author who may later hide himself in the text completely, leaving the reader to walk through his own dark wood, wandering and wondering.
A Reading.
A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s book about his youthful exile in Paris during the 1920’s begins with the enigmatic phrase, “Then there was the bad weather.” At first glance, this may not be curious at all for the casual reader. In fact, I would hazard to say that very few people even notice this phrase. But then again, I believe that reading is an art, and like all arts, it takes practice.
The reason this opening sentence has caught my eye has several layers. For the first layer, I need to talk briefly about the course that I taught my first semester in Italy, entitled: Exiles in Time, Memory, and Place. We read works by Hemingway, Salinger, and Joyce for the primary texts. I chose to begin with Hemingway’s Moveable Feast for several reasons, also because it is the most accessible in language for foreign students. However, it was also because he is talking about a specific time in his life that he remembers from the vantage point of a sixty year-old man, the year before he shot himself in Ketchum, Idaho. His circle was closed, he left America as a rather young man with no experience, and he died in America, older in experience than years.
Hemingway was writing about the time of a life that seen from its twilight, he regarded as the best part in retrospect. He closed the book saying, “But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.” If Hemingway was ever really happy after those years, it is difficult to say. Just as difficult to say is whether he was ever happy at all. Or, was this an embellishment seen through the eyes of a broken, alcoholic and embittered man? Such questions can generate good discussion, but ultimately we may always be left wondering.
However, let us return to the beginning of this work, or better, before the beginning, namely the preface. As my students quickly learn, I have a strong interest in prefaces, introductions, and beginnings. They are components of a text that are easy to breeze over, taken without concern or notice, but they can also be treasure troves of insight to the book and often are a direct communication from the author who may later hide himself in the text completely, leaving the reader to walk through his own dark wood, wandering and wondering.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Not quite Proust, but...
I was cooking a pasta dish the other evening, tagliatelle with gorgonzola, pear, and nutmeg spices, and I was reminded of perhaps one of my most cherished eating places in Italy, La Bottega del Vino, owned and operated by Marco, who else? In Castiglion Fiorentino, there are a surprising number of good restaurants for such a small Tuscan, hilltop town, but Marco's was the best.
Affable, talkative, and a true lover of food and wine, Marco was the consummate host for the consummate consumer.
His pere e formaggio pasta was signature.
We had been living in Bologna for the past year, a city known throughout Italy as the place to go eat, though more importantly, also to shop for fresh pasta and cook yourself, so CF had some serious competition to stack up to. I arrived a couple of weeks early, as Vanessa was in Rome for a month, to set up the apartment with the two cats and the sundry items we had carried with us to Bologna from Austin and those accumulated while in Bologna and set out on the town to find some good restaurants.
Though the first evening I ended up at the "23" pizzeria, which had a stunning backyard and view of the valley, the second evening I went an epicurean step up and found La Bottega and had an incredible crepescular dinner, chatting with Marco (quite proud of my Italian) for a couple of hours over a multi-course cena italiana, featuring the pear and gorgonzola pasta, finished with a divine cheese plate that Marco crafted each evening with a medley of cheeses that had to be eaten in precisely the right order.
While making that pasta, I was reminded of Marco, his large laugh, his hospitality and his love for what he did.
A fine memory indeed.
Affable, talkative, and a true lover of food and wine, Marco was the consummate host for the consummate consumer.
His pere e formaggio pasta was signature.
We had been living in Bologna for the past year, a city known throughout Italy as the place to go eat, though more importantly, also to shop for fresh pasta and cook yourself, so CF had some serious competition to stack up to. I arrived a couple of weeks early, as Vanessa was in Rome for a month, to set up the apartment with the two cats and the sundry items we had carried with us to Bologna from Austin and those accumulated while in Bologna and set out on the town to find some good restaurants.
Though the first evening I ended up at the "23" pizzeria, which had a stunning backyard and view of the valley, the second evening I went an epicurean step up and found La Bottega and had an incredible crepescular dinner, chatting with Marco (quite proud of my Italian) for a couple of hours over a multi-course cena italiana, featuring the pear and gorgonzola pasta, finished with a divine cheese plate that Marco crafted each evening with a medley of cheeses that had to be eaten in precisely the right order.
While making that pasta, I was reminded of Marco, his large laugh, his hospitality and his love for what he did.
A fine memory indeed.
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