Tutto bene

I’ve been promising a newsy blog post for a while now, and what better time to write one than in the breezy pre-breakfast hours of a Tuscan morning. I sit on the steps of the home of Diane, a childhood friend of my dad's; she lives and farms here with her partner Dieter and their adorable Gordon Setter, Gordon (!), who lies patiently at my feet waiting, just waiting for me to throw a stick.

A few days ago I posted about my departure from Rome for this place with some ambivalence; now I’m sure it was exactly the right thing to do.

“How,” one Miss Ali Schechter beseeches, Facebookishly, “did you get to Italy already?” My response: “Very easy. One 11 hour Aeroflot flight to Moscow, seated next to a Vietnamese septuagenarian who's never been on an airplane before and needs help with his seatbelt (I helped him!), with cranky flight attendants wearing orange lipstick. Then a 2 hour layover in Moscow airport where the only restaurant open is a TGIFridays. Then a delightfully short 4-hour flight from Moscow to Rome! Easy peasey.” After spending just under a month in Southeast Asia, I found myself longing for many things: not being stared at as I walked down the street (gasp) alone…paying the same price as the locals, and not a “special” astronomically higher tourist price, for anything and everything…weather that allowed me to walk at a normal pace without literally dripping sweat unto the sidewalk below…pasta…

All attempts at clever writing aside, I am learning as I go what this trip is about, and that means learning the difference between challenging myself to be in/stay in/seek out uncomfortable situations and challenging myself to change: “Self, you are gong to do something different now.” (To any PACIE reading this, I can’t help but imagine Martie, calling upon Monty Python, saying, “and now for something completely different!”)
So without much fanfare my plane landed in Rome, and I boarded the train for Ostiense Station (Termini is sooooo for tourists), and I met my fantastic CS host and his friends and we – yep, you guessed it, stayed out til 4am local time, dancing. That’s 10am Vietnam time, which would mean that I should’ve been exhausted, except I don’t believe in jet lag.

The next few days I spent wandering the streets and laughing, out loud, at the sheer Italian-ness of Italy. In front of thousand-years-old buildings, the buildings’ architects’' great-great-great-great-etc. grandchildren, gesticulate wildly, their towering mound of gelato in one hand coming perilously close to toppling from its dubious perch atop a tiny cone. A Vespa roars down an alley, slows, and stops next to a Franciscan friar who gives the driver directions. The Coliseum…is.

I had time to spare while waiting for mom who is meeting me in Rome on the 14th, so when Diane wrote that I could hop on the train to her Tuscan villa/working farm…I did! Correction: I know I said the train cost 10.55 Euros, but actually…it was 9.40! (Thank you again, Ostiense Station.)

So I show up Diane and Dieter and Gordon the dog greet me, welcome me to their should-be-in-a-magazine-perfect home, give me a towel and a bicycle and point me in the direction of the beach. I meditate under the slanting rays of Italian sunshine that are unlike any rays of sunshine anywhere. We have dinner and drive into Marina di Grosseto for the best gelato I’ve ever tasted. I sleep like a baby.

Day 2 in paradise: “Do you want to go to Siena or Florence?” Well! I’d never been to Siena. The Duomo there is huge and gorgeous, and I was literally moved to tears by the beauty of the Biblioteca di Piccolomini. Wandering out the back door of the Cathedral Museum, a display of tiny, 2-inch-square watercolors caught my eye. The little, brightly-lit cave of a shop was filled with the original artwork of, according to the business card, Silvia Tanganelli. “Are you the artist?” I asked the woman sitting behind the desk. She was. I told her how much I loved the little paintings. And the big ones. And asked her to translate a few of the ellipses-enclosed one-liners that she’d scribed in pencil below the images. “Perhaps you can help me translate? I want to do also in English some paintings.” So we sat, for hours, discussing the most appropriate poetic version of things that sound much better in Italian than they would translated literally into English. “Anche noi” – literally, “also us” – became, after much debate, “We are with you.” Silvia bought me lunch and wrapped up a few of her paintings and we said our farewells.

Then I went and lay under an olive tree and watched the clouds pass for an hour.

And now I will go and find Ticciano (sp?), the manager of this magical place, and, if I understood correctly, learn to make mozzarella. If this is a dream, let me sleep just a little longer…

With love and cheese.
Julia