With Green Shutters (5)

'The cracks and creases enchant me. On the outside, I see a number 20. It dribbles down, lightning slits in the fortress wall. Number 20, enter here. Number 20, dribbles here. Number 20, breaks here. Number 20: it grows here.
Here, the 20 lay their roots in stone.'
The quietest cloister in Rome: Santi Quattro Coronati. mezzogiorno di Mer, 5 Sept. Scabbia.


Yes, my most beautiful sights of Italy are the walls: certain walls; most walls. They are those most colorful walls, yet not necessarily the brightest; sometimes a grey wall can hold more visual flare than the freshly painted orange mockery next door. The color of the walls grows with time - they are aged like the wine drunk inside of them, like the generations that move slowly through their space. There will be a patch of dark metal color, then one so rained upon it appears as clear pewter. The patchwork pattern on these walls reflects the clouds, shifting steadily overhead as these erected skies hold up a slow maturation of the events on the ground.

If a beer bottle is hastily chucked over a Roman shoulder and smashes into the wall, it does not immediately crumble to the horizontal plane. The wall shows first its pain with a dents, a rough edged, monotone hole. As the drunken nights pass, the edges wear, they leak downwards and stagger the wall beneath with painless lines. The hole itself collects rain, and drops that down too.


These walls serve as intermediaries between the sky that makes Rome - Makes the water of Rome and the fruit of Rome and the light of Rome and the sometimes sooty breath of Rome: makes Rome - and the land of Rome itself. Just as the people change the products of the rain with their cultural crops and their flooded roads, so too do the walls mediate the sky as it enters the people enlightened by it.

Here in Rome, we live in layers. It is easiest to show one, to be modern, simple minded towards la festa. And yet, of course there are other layers: There is the ancient we walk through, there is the solitary rooms we sleep in, there is the flood of others from around the Mediterranean, from around the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific. And while as travelers it may be difficult to see those layers all at once, the shock of their presence forming a wall by its own accord, the Romans see it. Not all at once of course, but they see many layers, and I have proof! Have you seen a Sicilian scream about a bus? Have you seen a leather vendor grumble away a carelessly rich tourist? Have you seen the sexy stare of a middle-aged, woman tightly bound by her clothing? The Romans are dramatic. They are not one emotion, but a collision of emotions at once. They are open, releasing their experiences, soaking in the new ones that, however modern, are tainted with the ancient. Rome is not botox - it is alive with wrinkles on its face, with movement and smiles and scowls about the littlest of things.

In that cracked grey stone, we find the most vibrant color, vibrant because it holds flavor, it holds old scent, and fresh tears. These walls have watched for a long time, these colorful walls. And the walls that are yet to be colorful, the walls of a dull new orange, eventually they will bellow in frustration and laughter as walls of the city of Rome.

Minestrone (9)

Enough of this stale food, this packaged, plasticized, extracted and injected monocrop crap. Basta, Basta cosi. I am going to Italy.
And I am here. The pepperoni, the spinaci dance in my belly, spaghetti and olio winding around their waists. Even the dried peppercorns on my tongue act freshly dramatic as a grump Italian woman woken up from her siesta by a load of tourists.
No, there is no scanner here. The vendors have eyes, they have dirt-creased hands, they have responses: laughing for a stranger, excited for the meal they help to prepare, disgruntled at the rush hour where their produce cannot be given the proper care. Produtti di Italia, that is what we buy here.
I buy cheese every day or two, bread every day or two, milk and pasta once or twice a week. But the fruits, the vegetables, the greens and roots - I bring a new bag of bags of them home every afternoon. Yes, even with each day's purchase overlapping with the next, each meal is still fresh.


Sometimes I am disappointed, that all I can say in Italian are in introduction of myself as a student, and then a heaping sack of food words. But, we are communicating through our mouths somehow, the Italians and I. If we eat together, if we share their handsome produce, bagged by hand in paper and plastic, instead of crated crates of crudely decrepit crassness, if we pass the food from one to another, the game of telephone comes through more clearly, the scents brighter, stronger, more audible. Yes even a stranger from across the Atlantic can learn in the first dish to cook with the Italians, to cook with their fruits, their pomodori, their piatti. I don't like to go out to the restaurant. I don't like to go out to the supermarket and rush back home. I like to make my way from the bakery for half a loaf of Napolina to Roberto's for some guanciale and parmiaggiano, to the frutavendoli, back and forth between them until I find the perfect combination for a salad, sauce, a stuffed pepper, a midday snack and some vitamin C. They teach me as we speak, even if it is only with the price and a smile - I know what to make of a dish, if I can listen to what is fresh, sometimes even see the dirt around the cracked hands of the fig vendor in the Piazza in Trastevere. Nothing more than, "che...che Buona."
---
Tomorrow is Rosh Hoshannah and Today in the Campo, I picked out seven apples and passed her the bag. Relentless sugary munching on a sweet new year. She did not weigh them. She looked in the bag, shifted hands, and said un euro cinquanta. Un limone (to contrast the sweetness and raise its happy effect) as bumpy and gnarled and plump as I could find. E tre funghi (tonight was to be my second attempt at a stuffed peperono). It was rush hour, it was the Campo, and soon we were both gone. But all day I carried those apples in my pack with the crusty stubs of bread. Carried them when I went back over the filthy Campo (though at least it is filthy with bright, fresh leaves and fruits of Roman soil) while those useless sweepers attempted to tidy the place while blowing puffs of smoke into the air and spitting mud all over the ground in two neat little brush-stroked lanes. In late morning, she was the first apple seller I saw, and I walked all the way around the Campo and saw other busy people with more costly apples and I walked back and stood there with a bag of reds and speckled yellow-greens, and I waited for her to come. I paced around the stand to every angle to catch her at ready. And when the lines had cleared and I stood solitary off to the cash register at the side, she was still in a hurry. But she still has my three euro, and I her apples, and we trust each other with them.
---
Roberto and I smile easily to each other now. Just as easily as we started, really. The first day Mark and I walked in on our way home through Trastevere, we found ourselves talking about peace and tranquility of the world, of what is important. And when I returned from Florence he dramatically responded to my fazed view of the city with the knowledge that Rome truly has "cuore, cuore." This he assured me of with a nod, a squeeze of the brow, and bend of the back, and crook of the arm; it was as though he was wrapping his skin around the heart of Rome, in his heart, in his San Francesco a Ripa store, In his full-feeling city.

Roberto has given me many interesting cheeses, each one with a lingering bushy smile. He's a skinny guy, for an Italian specialty shop. The buconccini, the Sieneta, the Malga, each wrapped up finely in plastic, wax, unwaxed, with a twist that remains impenetrable until it is warmed by the heat of the pan and the cutting board. But when I see him next, I am going to want him to wrap something different. Product of Italy, I want him to wrap a journal for me. Hopefully there will be a nice little stick handy to put on the edge. Smiley man, friendly man, a bushy moustache on his skinny browned frame - skin the color of the yellowed lights of his shop. How can I buy cheddar from Trader Joe when I get back home? How?
---

---
It felt strange going all the way to the Campo to buy bread from an unfriendly, hurried baker. I wanted to meet an unfriendly baker in Trastevere. The first time I went in, she was curt. I knew nearly as much Italian bakery lingo as I did today, but it's all about timing in the oven, and how much you knead the bread. The next time I ordered two cornetti, lemony frosted and my first, in exchange for some euro and a broken friendly offering. Yesterday, I gave a quick ciao. I got a pagnato, mezzo. And just as I was leaving, I tossed in a pointed Buon Domenica. She smiled. Today, I noticed, we still do not know each others names, but we know our produce - her work, my appreciation. Un ossagio d'Italia, I told her, as I asked for two different half loaves.
---
I had wanted to share that day, but by the end of the morning's market experience, I felt like I had only given the two vendors half of what they wanted. The first had run all over the Piazza Trastevere for me just trying to break my hefty ten. But I left there with three syrupy, oozing figs, the lightest flesh with the slightest hint of sweet water and a blast of sugar within. "Due fichi" had meant three to him, " with the explanation of "...che...Buona." Came back a week later to make some sweet insalata. Roberto had some Greek Feta for me, but at first didn't know why I needed so much, or wanted to put it with fichi. The fig man. Asked for some figs and in a moment I felt myself spinning away with a kilo plus of little tough balls of the fruit, boxed and bagged with 4.50 euro and a smile. Still don't really know how that happened so hastily. But when I left, I remember, between the dizzing results of a rapid--paced sale, that there were no more figs on the table when I staggered away grinning goofily. They went very well with the feta. The full kilo plus.
---
First I wanted to know what that dirty looking batch of pre-cut leaves sprinkled with bright violet beans and glowing carrot slices was. Really, sitting in that shallow crate, half shoved to one side, half of the pale wood planks showing, it reminded me of the market's equivalent of the pork butcher (they are definitely the most raw; the whole store looks pinker than a 60's diner). But on a Saturday before Notte Bianca, after a week when I had learned that if I did not stock up on energy and excitement for Sunday, the quiet would make me sad and hungry, I just asked: "Minestrone," I chewed on the familiar word. That is my next dish, or pot, as the case may be.
---
Damn it. I just got back from Despar - the desperately dispensed despot. I have some pale red tomatoes (they're supposed to be truly red tomatoes). I have a 44 cent pasta bag, which I should be frustrated with myself for buying. The tear in the bottom of the frail green plastic just about amounts to my amount of confidence in this shop. I looked for twenty five minutes, three friends waiting for beans. Canned, frikkin' beans. "Sotto," the red-shirted, broom-wielding man said. Not sotto. Not! Alla entrata. Sopra. SOPRA!
I hope the pasta e fagioli turns out tasteful. Hopefully rosemario will save the evening.

Mattina, Domenica, Siena (self)

Prompt: With a limited capacity to speak Italian, we see many people that we do not actually converse with. Without even meeting them, we still make presumptions about them in order to try to understand what they are doing in this foreign land. One might even say, we tell ourselves stories about these strangers. Tell me a story about one of your strangers.

A creature rustles on the wall...a shutter. The opener grimaces out at the day, one arm half raised, the other in full stretch at the rope above.
This morning, I realized, I reached Italy.
As I sit here on this wall, Italian sun washing my face in soft tangerine, I remember a walk through Cahors. Beyond the city barricades of Sienna, I sit now at a junction - a way home, a way away, a road to the road. I am glad to be writing here, in this book, and thank you pen but I would prefer a more natural version of your kin.
I have said twice now that I have been in Italy. And that was true. But each time, I lose it. And each time, it returns with more magic of itself unguarded. Here I am, and I am in no need of bean soup to see Tuscany properly. A church, a bus to a walk, friends. Eyes open, eyes closed, I am here.
The people that walk by - I can hear them in these morning streets, cobblestones ricocheting off the brick walls. One seemed a drunk, or rather an old woman, or rather - when my presumptions from her head movements gave way to full-bodied sight - She was elderly, and handicapped by Leash of Dog; her head and shoulders did indeed bob unpredictably.
The cars here, head not to market. They go far from here, or they go home. The people to work. The birds to sing. Not consumption, but life, the day. The cars run beside the city walls, they go through them. They shake and buzz. This is real.
The sun and I, we seem cradled by two peaks of the valley - dividiamo, resting encieme. We rest in Italy.
Another shutter opens, and three motorbikes move on, up the hill.

Warming the Center

The climax of this day is such a subtle yellow.
I sit on marbled sidewalk, surrounded by dusty pools of pale-canary sepals.
This has all come so gradually, so dripping from closed lips, from tense tongue, from echoing mouth, down, flavorfully, warm, slow, dripping down my throat.
The day began. It was closed, resting. And upon arising, the day became glum, disappointed and bare in the fragrant wind. The center of my stubborn frying pan refused to heat.
Slowly I spoke, smiled. Later I shared.
Now I breathe deep, am caught amidst a veil of dog droppings, and release the canine-clotted yet breezy evening air with Laughter.
Dinnertime. Showertime.

Excitement (2)

11:53 pm
8-21
tuesday, day two

I have been excited, a spark of fire in this electrified fortress.
I have been excited, I have walked everywhere, quickly.
Rome has jumped at me, loomed at me. Roma has walked with me, steered past me. Romani have ignored me, and brought me into their world. I walked to them. I ran to them. I am very excited.

I was asked to be excited. They said, "You should be excited." Said like their parents must have, "You have no idea what you're going to see there; this will be the memory of a lifetime." I was not asked, I was told. So I found an answer to their question-telling, scrounged it up from an offspring culture ten thousand miles and two thousand years away. I decided: Rome will be overwhelming. Rome will be - I am afraid to go there. Rome will have so many layers of meaning in each footstep, so many people with significance in each piazza, so much time in one glimpse and I will not be able to take it all in.

I am here, I am in the city, and I confess I cannot take it all in. I saw the arch of titus today, and my mystification has reversed itself. I looked for meaning from across the Atlantic, from the new world, from a newly plowed and erected civilization still looking for meaning in itself. Here I looked for those storied layers of overwhelming meaning and I found one purpose; Power.
Right now, I want nothing more from this past that sadness. To think that such greatness was achieved, such a social system perfected and that the fuel of its leaders through their great reigns was a desire for Power. It was not a lust for power, nor an obsession. It was not a part of the system. Power was the purpose itself, what drove the (ever shifting) leading individuals and thus the empire.
And how many died a natural death? How many used that power to find respect for those who had less? It was their own purpose, and once fulfilled, the power was not to be shared, not to be lost, lest they lose themselves. Rather be slain by fellow leaders with a blade in thy throat. Rather slay thy friends, and, in the name of gods, in the name of God, in the name of the powerful self, live a single-meaning life. Is this the basis of western culture?

The Italians have not been at war for fifty years. There is nothing left to violate the beauty that colors this land. I like it this way. Ciao Romani.

jews in rome

i saw the arch of titus today.

Rome is very impressive, very intelligent, but entirely savage. the frequency with which a system like this appears on our planet, a system of militant hierarchy that, with cultural ignorance, dominates the surrounding world, amazes me. Saddens me.
But I have experienced this disheartening sadness as you have (as only the best of today's journalists can bring); the response that can lessen the sadness for future generations is not to close off from it, to hide in the darkness of its shadow, but to consciously create, provoke, a newer, peaceful world in the world around each of us, in the communities that we are all an integral part of.

it is savage of me to respond with pity and sadness only once i have seen the roman plight of the jews. but perhaps that experience will rather be a gateway for my jewish self to better understand the communities of the gentile world, a world that is not separate. The world is not separate.

With that, I am very excited for some day trips, go see the lands around Rome, the communities that Romans are neighboring parts of.

And it's great - The Italians are very good at making themselves understood, at least the friends I made buying food and walking by on the street and, well, the Italians. They could converse with a child. Remnants of an empire?

And also, very excited to try the Jewish restaurants, Da Giggetto serving carciofi alla giudea. Synagogue down the street. I really don't understand why it took the [eternal] Pope until the 1500's to put the jews in a ghetto. In the capital of Catholicism?

LOst?

This should help you get back to the Piazza:
http://honorsinrome2007earlyfall.blogspot.com/

Di dov'è se?
Abito al Campo de'Fiori.

LOst?
I always seem to be. Often intentionally. Those rhymes make me hungry for some Shel Silverstein.