Tuscany Journal: 2007 part 1

The earth embraces you here. The honey is light light yellow, from chestnut trees. The butter is perfumed. The chicken, wild boar, venison, and rabbit all come from the property, mushrooms the same in season. The vegetables come from that patch yonder behind the vines. The wine is their business, also their pleasure to share. The herbs come fresh from here and there, screaming in Tuscan accented perfumes. At the moment one of Anna’s chickens lies marinating in the kitchen, fragrant with rosemary and olive oil from the plants outside the window. It will end up on the grill. The wild boar is marinating, and the pasta dough defrosting for a quick dip in boiling water for Sunday dinner. Even the water comes from their own well.

I had my morning walk along the ribbon of road that runs past the vineyard. The land is seamed with steep crevasses so densely wooded that you have to look carefully to realize that one false step would pitch you into trouble.

There is birdsong all day, from the break of dawn, but the birds are far enough away from the windows that they don’t wake you like the birds of Hawaii, which are thick in the jungle which spreads right up to your window The trees and bushes in Tuscany are more orderly and considerate. There are swallows, hawks, songbirds, crow-like birds of which I don’t know the names. They are profuse, twittering and cooing in the dense woods, suddenly taking flight from a tree in the medium distance, soaring overhead. Paolo has been known to fire his rifle at a hawk threatening the chickens. There are hundreds of birds, thousands of them, seen and unseen. I even heard a cuckoo this morning clear as a bell. At night their mammalian counterparts, the bats, are beeping signals around the rooftops.

Tuscany is soft. The light is soft, the colors are soft, attenuated, the hills are soft, the crevasses are clothed in green so as to soften their dangers. There is enough humidity to keep the earth soft most of the time.

The customs of hospitality are deep in Tuscan life. When I come to visit, I am cooked for and my dishes are washed. Whatever I would like to eat, I get, even if it is a nuisance to make. The difficulties of pleasing me are graciously hidden – the costs, the time, the change in schedule. Over the 45 years we have known each other I have become a sister. Pappa died, so did Mamma. One brother died, and the other is estranged. I am the closest Paolo has to a sister – how strange after all these years when we saw each other so rarely that such a tight bond should have been forged. I know all of his people, how they died, how they lived.

Since my new husband’s arrival Anna has enjoyed calling him “the guest,” serving him first, before me, saying, “Guests first,” with a mischievous smile. “I’m not a guest any more, am I. My husband smiles and receives the beautiful food – the homemade pasta, tomato sauce out of the freezer made from tomatoes picked at their sweet height in August, the chestnut honey from their own hives, rabbit and chicken from the fattoria, truly fine wine from downstairs, water from their own well, salad from their own garden, homemade biscotti and torta for dessert.

One discovery is what they called in Hawaii “plumeria” which they call something else here. It is the yellow flower with heady perfume which they weave into leis in Hawaii, and here it lines the road, bathing the air with perfume. There is also honeysuckle, and touchingly red poppies. They are no more than ornament here in Tuscany, but I was traveling just after Memorial Day, and pictured these beautiful flowers in the mud and blood of Belgium in the First World War. The contrast between glory and gore was so striking when it was first made that it has never faded, and strikes my heart as I walk down these soft Tuscan roads.

We went into Florence, hopping the crowded train. Once in Florence it is clear why people take the train. It is like an exploding box stuffed with too many people and their accoutrements, including their motorbikes and cars. The old stone palaces and bell towers, and the less imposing apartment buildings around them (all tightly controlled under historic preservation laws) stand their ground stolidly against the onslaught of tourists and Italians doing business with them. The crush of tourists is unique. There are lines of them threading the streets, following guides who hold high flags of various colors so as not to get lost in the crush. There are tourist groups on Segways gliding in formation along the stone pavement. Good idea, I guess, but it looks a little ridiculous to me. What would the Medicis have said?

I like so much the Italian tolerance of bumbling tourists trying to speak their language. They do not usually break into English, but will humor us by answering in Italian. This contrasts markedly with many other European countries, where efforts to speak the language are met with natives trying to practice their English. In this part of Italy, despite the raucous and unruly politics, the frustrating regulation, the corruption, the inertia which sometimes weighs down even the best efforts, people like their culture, like themselves. If you ate as well as they do, you might like it too. Walking past a vegetable stand on the left bank of the Arno was as overpowering as passing a heavily perfumed woman. If a cantaloupe screamed as loud in the A&P the shoppers would be scandalized. The seasons here are a bit ahead of ours and there were fraises du bois (wild strawberries – fragole di campo), cantaloupes, peaches, and apricots.

In the morning, our first goal was scotched by the long lines of tourists waiting to enter the Duomo, the cathedral. We were not going to spend our day standing in a long line of Americans, Japanese, Australian, English, and Other tourists. We wandered on to the Uffizi, which was closed on Mondays, and then to the shopping area around the Ponte Vecchio. The leather goods were soft and well made, the clothes no better than anywhere else, the jewelry held little interest. We landed in a small café attached to the Hotel Lungarno for a lunch of high class sandwiches along the Arno, watching the skulls and kayaks go back and forth on the still water. Perfect run for boating. On a stone landing below the bridge parallel to the Ponte Vecchio a young couple was making out, in plain view to us, though quite far away, unseen by the people passing on the bridge above them. The service in the café had the slightly bored, slightly servile attitude that I have found also elsewhere in Florence, where the sheer, incessant weight of tourists seems to have exhausted shopkeepers and waiters, welcome as the tourists are to the ledgers of their shops and restaurants.

In one shop I asked for the bathroom. It was tucked under the stairway to the basement, complete with shower. I could not for the life of me find the light switch, so had to close the door on any light at all. Afterwards I could not find the door handle in the total blackness, and claustrophobia began to take hold. I called for my husband, but he was standing in the street outside the store waiting for me, and the storekeeper was vacuuming the shirts in the front window with a vacuum cleaner attachment seemingly made for the purpose – just strong enough to remove dirt without disturbing his artistic window arrangement. I calmed myself down and made a studied manual search along the door jamb for the door handle, which was on the near side of the door instead of the far side, where I initially searched. It took me quite a while, and I had one of those experiences where you live as a blind person for a few minutes. I didn’t like it, but realize that one would cope.

By four o’clock we were tired from walking, and Anna picked us up at the train station, and brought us home for a supper of leftover pasta with tomato or wild boar (our choice), homemade broth with pastina (an enormous bumblebee has just flown in through the open window), freshly cut prosciutto, four-year old parmesan cheese, “crostini” (toast dipped in broth on one side, spread with homemade pate on the other, toast spread with a certain kind of tasty sausage mixed with mild, mild stracchino cheese, and for dessert sliced strawberries in their chianti riserva.

One evening my husband and Gianni tried the various vintages and types of wine made on the fattoria, and chatted about the wine business and afterwards Paolo brought out a bottle with a soda label on it.

“Do you want some soda?” he asked my husband.

“What kind of soda?” He sensed irony there, although they were speaking different languages.

“Actually, artisanal water,” Paolo grinned.

“Ummmm. Very special water.”

“It was made by the lady up the road.”

My husband offered me his glass to take a sip.

“Stai attente (Be careful),” Anna advised, in on the joke.

I took a sip of burning grappa, too strong to take more than a sip of at a time. It is poured out a half inch at a time, into small glasses. Only a Russian could drink more.

Tuscany, underneath, is not the ever-sweet, soft place. As mentioned in another posting, there are passions afoot which are dangerous and threatening, but on the surface no place is so sweet and soft.

Tuscany journal: 2007 part 2 - Fascism

I have friends of long standing in Tuscany, Italy. I stayed with them for 11 summer weeks almost 50 years ago, and we have stayed in touch. Since then they bought a vineyard in Tuscany, where they have worked very hard, and have built a nice business. The family has shrunk over those years; Pappa died of cancer in 1968, Mamma died of cancer two years ago. One brother died of cancer 10 years ago, leaving a wife and twin sons who live near the vineyard, but are not close to the rest of the family, and another brother has become estranged. This leaves my “brother” Paolo (names have been changed), his wife Anna, and their son Gianni running the vineyard and living in the family home. Gianni has taken over the marketing of the wine (he doesn’t like to work in the fields), and spends long periods of time in Texas and Colorado, hobnobbing with wealthy Americans who play a lot of golf.

Over dinner one night, we discussed politics.

“Oil is also an armament in today’s world. Chemical weapons, like the ones they thought Saddam Hussein had, are not the only dangerous arms. Oil also is” said Paolo. “The greatest danger today comes not from Iran or North Korea, but from Venezuela.”

I was so surprised by this remark that I didn’t have anything to say, but agreed with his contention that oil was like an “armament.” “I think the Second World War was partly about oil, wasn’t it?”

“No Ann,” Paolo twirled his hand in the air. “The Second World War in Germany was started for economic reasons, because the Jews held all the economic power. They had to get rid of them.”

I was stunned again. It was odd to hear such talk from Paolo because, although he has something of a temper, he does not thrive on hate. There was no way to continue the conversation without getting into an argument, so I expressed my disagreement and we moved on.

“You know, Ann, at heart I am a Socialist, but why should I pay taxes to help people who refuse to work!” Paolo said.

Gianni chimed in. “There can only be people who work and people who starve. Let them starve. Why should I work so hard to support people who refuse to work? With the taxes the way they are, how can I make any progress? I want to work on this land for maybe ten years, then retire to the Caymans.” I was hearing reverberations from his time in America. Italian young men don't dream of retiring to the Caymans.

“Giuseppe, you are contradicting yourself,” I said with a smile. “You cannot become so successful that you can retire in ten years and at the same time be prevented from being successful by the high taxes.”

The conversation glided around, with Gianni getting more and more agitated. “President Bush was too timid. He should have dropped an atomic bomb on Iraq” segued soon into his story about a rabbi who wanted 20,000 casks of kosher wine. “The rabbi came and started telling me how to make my wine, how to keep the place clean. As if I don’t know how to keep the place clean! Any Jew who comes into my business and starts telling him how I am supposed to make my wine will have to get out of my home. I am the boss here,” he jabbed his finger toward the ground. “I told the rabbi ‘I don’t care who you are. Let you and your other rabbis stay out of my face. It is I who makes the rules here, not you! I make the rules! I won’t make inferior wine just to please some ignorant rabbi!' We got into an argument and he finally slapped me right in the face”

“Really? And what did you do?”

“What would you do? I slapped him back.”

“Don’t you think that’s just the rules of their religion. I don’t think he was trying to insult you,” I tried to calm him down, but couldn’t let this pass without a comment.

“It’s not only them, it’s dirty, lazy immigrants who come into my country and try to change it. This is my country. They have no right to tell me what I should be doing. Keep them out. Down in Texas the immigrants are coming in through tunnels, and I agree that Americans should stand in the tunnels and shoot them as they come through. Shoot them! What right do they have to come into the country? It’s the same here. Kill them if they try to come in.”

“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” I ventured.

“You think people don’t believe this in America? They do. I know plenty of Americans who will tell you the same things I am telling you.” The vitriol continued to pour from his mouth.

Homosexuals aren’t too popular around here either.

“Pfft,” Paolo semi-spat. “They are ridiculous. I mean, let them do whatever they want to do, but I can’t be around them.

“You are around them, whether you know it or not,” I offered.

“Nooo. I can tell. You can see them a mile away. They’re just disgusting and I don’t want to be around them.”

I had to say something. “I can’t personally go along with your feelings against Jews because a good number of my friends are Jewish, or against homosexuals because a large number of my colleagues and even a couple of my bosses have been homosexual”

“Me too!” crowed Gianni. “So many of my friends are Jewish.”

Gianni dismissed global warming in a manner transparently reminiscent of American conservative talk show hosts, then he took another tack. “It is too late to stop the climate change, so why bother to shut down companies who employ a lot of people and produce pollution?”

“We should just give up?” I asked.

“That’s all we can to. It’s too late! Don’t you understand? It’s too late! Why should we pay taxes to cut down pollution when it’s too late already. I work in the country. I don’t produce any pollution so it’s not something that I’m contributing to, but I pay taxes, don’t I?”

It seemed to me that Gianni’s parents were a little alarmed with their son too, and I didn’t want to create massive problems for them, so voiced my opinions with a smile. After Gianni had gone out, I turned to Paolo and said, “What would your father say if he heard this? He fought against Mussolini.”

Paolo spread his hands in frustration. “Times have changed.”

Pappa’s grandson would have been sporting a brown shirt and doing the goose step, striking a hateful stake into a family of great good will. Maybe it is too late, though not in the way Gianni was thinking.

Adirondacks Journal: 2005 - Climbing Blue Mountain

In 2002, when I was 60 years old, I said I’d never climb Blue Mountain again. I was in a group that included some young boys, their fathers, my 26 year old son and his fiancée, Jessica. Toward the top, 4,000 feet above sea level, where it becomes a long, steep climb up sheer rock, I began to feel faint and nauseous. “I’m too old for this,” I muttered to myself. “I’m probably having a heart attack.” It was a relief to come upon strong, young Jessica sitting on a rock, her head in her hands.

“I’m never going to do this again,” she moaned. "I feel like I'm going to throw up."

“I agree,” I was panting. “What’s the point of all this suffering?” I took off my baseball hat and whooshed away the flies and mosquitoes. “My hatband is soaked.”

When we reached the top, we sprawled on the flat rocks.

The men were lounging, drinking water, enjoying the view of the lakes below, and the boys were racing up the observation tower. “It must be a mental thing," Jessica said, "or maybe a macho thing. Look at them. They look like they’re actually having fun.”

“Maybe. I’m never doing it again,” I repeated.

Twelve years before that, I had decided that romance, too, was nauseating and painful, and not worth the pain and frustration, and I had withdrawn from romantic life. Then, in 2003, I started dating again. It turned out to be interesting, challenging, fun, but there was a lot of pain, and the closer I got to the right sort of relationship for me, the more painful and disappointing it became when it didn’t work out.

In 2006, I met Donald, who felt like the right guy for me. He was getting divorced, and seemed amazed that he had found me. He told me he loved me a thousand times. Then his wife wanted him back and kaboom, he was gone. Men going back to their wives is never a surprise, but it was still a shock. “So much for love,” I told him as he mouthed an, “I’m sorry.”

Donald was a mountain climber. He was 73 years old and in much better shape than I was. He was 5’9”, 140 pounds, not an ounce of fat on him. His legs were iron, his stomach the same. For exercise he went up and down stairs three at a time, and ran 5 miles every morning. He spent “about 20 minutes a year going 50 miles an hour down a ski slope.” Donald and I climbed cliffs and hills and mountains together, and I got stronger and stronger. There was something wonderful not about the climb, but about disproving my own hypothesis that I was too old to climb mountains. I told him that this year I was going to climb Blue Mountain again. “You’ll have to pace yourself,” he advised. “You can make it.”

Climbing Frankenstein’s Cliff in New Hampshire I felt a little nauseous, so we rested a little, and I was better. “I’m just going to put my head down and climb,” I announced. At the top we had milk and turtle candies and I felt fine again.

As we assembled at the bottom of Blue Mountain I was psyched. I had upped my daily swim from 30 to 40 laps, and took two turns around the nearby nature preserve, instead of one. I would go up Blue Mountain, and maybe other mountains later, opening up to new adventures.

The younger members of the climbing party, scooted up the mountain together, getting lost from sight. I tried to remember what it was like to have a body made of air – a mere nothing to carry up the mountain at full speed. They never tired.

The grown-ups tired. We made pretty good time, but by the time we got to the steep part at the top, we had to stop every hundred yards or so and collect ourselves.

As I looked up at the steep stretch I thought of my statement on Frankenstein’s Cliff, “I’m going to just put my head down and do it.” That’s what you have to do if you want to climb tall mountains. That’s what you have to do if you want to do anything difficult. If you want to have a happy relationship, a happy marriage, that’s what you have to do. If you want to discover what you love to do in life professionally, and make a living at it, you have to just put your head down and do it.

I didn't want to say I was too old, to retire from life, to do easy things. I still wanted to climb the tall mountains. I'll put my head down and do it.

Butt Massage

All of us have something that we do really, really well. I’m a really, really good swimmer. Not the fastest one, but my form is excellent. My body stays on a steady forward trajectory, I stretch all my moving parts, and there is little splashing. One day a man who was toweling himself off at the side of the pool remarked, “Very graceful,” as I came up the steps. Don’t ask me about tennis, or baseball, or running. Somebody else can gloat over those things.

I went swimming today, finished off my thirty laps at a faster pace than usual, and swam underwater to the side of the pool, loving the silence and stealth of being under water for four lanes.

I threw my towel over my shoulders, took my bag and left the pool area, walking out of the large pool space, along the end of the small pool, turning right to walk along the glass separating the small pool from the visitors gallery along its length. As I walked, barefoot, I heard steps behind me which seemed just a little close. I didn’t want to turn around. Nothing was going to happen to me in this public area and the women’s locker room was a half a minute away. As I turned the corner toward the locker room I glanced backward to see who it was.

It was a young, heavyset black boy. Maybe about 16 years old. He said something I didn’t understand, and I stopped and asked, “What did you say?”

“Did you have a nice swim?”

“Oh yes. I always do.”

“You got your toes wet, huh?”

“I got all of me wet. It was great.”

He mumbled something else. He was wearing bright red baggy shorts almost down to his knees, and a white shirt with a bold flower print in the same bright red, sneakers and white socks. He was leaning against the rail in front of the seats where parents sit and watch their children swim, but there was nobody there at the moment.

“What did you say?” I asked, smiling politely.

“After you come out you want a butt massage?”

I smiled at him and laughed slightly. He laughed too. He saw I wasn’t going to freak out. “Come on. Give me a break,” I said and turned to walk the five steps to the door to the women’s locker room.

He looked after me smiling, as I saw when I turned and gave him one last glance.

What was that all about? I am a 64 year old woman. He is a 16 year old boy. I know what a butt is, and I know what a massage is, but what is a butt massage?

I did not feel for one second endangered, and am actually quite complimented.

Was he normal? What do you think?

Teddybears and Cossacks

“Every woman needs a teddy bear and a Cossack.” A 70-year old Danish woman friend quoted an even older Danish woman when I gave her the following riddle to solve.

Both men are your age, mid-60’s.

One man is always thinking of ways to please you. He is generous, affectionate, remembers your birthday, drives long distances to pick you up. He is extremely well read, loves ballet, theatre, good food. He listens to you play the piano, tell your stories, cry. He is tall, overweight and soft-muscled, ordinary looking, a willing but unexciting lover. He is well rewarded at his job, has never been married (though has had a long relationship), and wants you.

The other man is terribly busy, rarely has time to chat. Even when you are together you don’t chat much, which is fine. His efforts have paid off – he’s rich. He collects art, and I mean Art. He is tall, thin, elegant, good looking, tidy to a fault, well dressed, charming. He can be unpleasant. He doesn’t call often. He excites and pleases you as no other lover ever has. He is divorced, with two grown children, terrified of commitment and will go no further than to look at you lovingly, with the thought “What am I going to do with this woman?” telegraphed from his eyes.

Which one would you choose?

Wages of Sin

A pair of stretchy black gloves with fake leopard skin fluff at the wrist lay on a seat on my way to the door as the train bucked a bit, screeched a bit, pulling into the last station on the line. I was the only person in the car. I picked up the lightweight, attractive, practical gloves, studied them, looked around for the conductor, who was elsewhere, and put the gloves in my pocket. It was stealing. I know that. But how would the woman ever get them back? The lost and found at Penn Station has never had anything I’ve ever lost. They were pretty. I stole them.

I put them on the kitchen counter when I got home, and the next morning picked them up to put them on. They stank of a perfume I don’t enjoy.

I rinsed them well and left them overnight to dry. The next morning they still stank. I washed them with dishwashing liquid, rinsed them well and left them to dry. They still stank.

Now I have a pair of gloves which will offend me if I wear them, assaulting my senses with a heavy, musky perfume. They are still lying on the kitchen counter, pointing their allegorical fingers at me in “I told you so” accusation. I must either assault the accusing perfume with my own scent by wearing the gloves, or I must throw them away.

“Thou shalt not steal” is post hoc, useless in this situation. I know what I won’t do next time, though.