The Sense of Being

 We are making our way around the walled perimeter of town on our evening camminatata. Me, my Italian friend and neighbor, Carina, and my friend Kristen, another "Americana" who was smitten by this town and bought a house here. Four circumnavigations around the outer walls equals 5 k. We pump our arms and encourage each other, chatting in English amd Italian, falling to silence when the hills demand all our lung power. As we move through a narrow alley lined with terraced houses, Kristen exclaims, "There are so many smells!"
So there are! We start to identify each: coffee, begun now for the post-dinner accompaniment to i dolci, fried pepper aroma left over from the main dish, bread which has begun baking at il forno, which is what the locals still call the grocery store, even though it is now more than its original  incarnation of the town bakery. The bread will be fresh and ready for sale tomorrow morning. I make a mental note to get up early. There is an array of other smells I can't identify, but they linger as we motor past their sources, strong and distinct, giving us an extra dash of pleasure and pep. They form a sensory collage of life in this village.

  

 It occurs to me then how much your senses are heightened and fully engaged here. Sound bounces off of stone walls with sharp clarity and echoes in the dips between the hills. There is a seeming closeness and immediacy to conversations going on around you, even outside of the separating walls of your house. One friend told me from the loggia of his home in the country he can hear folks talking in the town a few kilometers away. When I eat dinner on my terrazzo I can hear the young voices and guitar accompaniment of evening mass happening below and around the corner. It's like having my own private house concert.

 All the sounds are clear and sharp. Their vibrations tingle in the air. There is little motorized sound to overpower it. No traffic buzzes by incessantly, producing a constant drone. If you are up early enough, you might catch the creak and rattle of a tractor cutting hay. You might hear yourself gasp as you watch it turn sideways to change direction horizontal to the steep grade,feeling your heart pound as you marvel that it doesn't tip over. 

You might catch the occasional rumble of a construction vehicle straining up the road. Going god knows where it's possible to go on roads that grow narrower and narrower as they go higher and higher. 

You can gauge life by your senses here. The screech of a rolling metal door means Alessandro is opening his tabacchi shop. It mist be 8:30 AM. The smell of garlic browning with a chaser of aroma of hot passata  means it's nearing 11. Pranzo is being prepared. A bit of smoke in the air means the pizzeria is heating up the wood ovens.   Must be 7 PM. And the sizzle and aroma of meat coming from several places around town means arrosticini is cooking. Lots of it. There must be a big soccer match on TV.  Expect a raucous night.

It is as if your senses are being played like a fine, masterfully crafted instrument. A string plucked here, a key pressed there.  Becoming a part of a symphony of sensory enlivenment. The sounds,sights,smells, tastes, touch are a rhapsody of life. Experiencing it, you thrum, you buzz, you hum with life yourself. You cannot escape feeling fully alive. But then, why would you want to? 

Tonight the pizza smells so good,the laughter at tables below me on the bellevedere is so sparkling, I'm going down to share in it. I can already taste the "salume piccante" on my classic pie! 

Bells are Telling

In my mind I call him a little  old farmer guy, although he may not be much older than I am. His grey/white hair is cropped so close to his head you can see his sunburned scalp. He sits in a boxy Fiat Panda, green paint faded, seats leaking batting everywhere, rust dotting the open druver’s side door. A song crackles in and out from a tinny radio, but he seems not to hear it. He is hunched over a sheet of lottery tickets, scratching away. I wonder what he is wishing for. I see him every day I go for a run down the country road that leads to the surrounding farms. I pass him driving towards town on my way out and see him sitting there on my way back. We have never spoken, but recognize each other because of our rituals and always raise a hand in a salute of acknowledgment.
My ritual is temporary, though. After three months of pounding down and huffing up the dusty, rutted dirt road, I will return to my brightly lit, air conditioned gym with the smooth sprung floors and state of the art workout machines. I will grunt and stretch alongside men and women in stylish technical workout wear. Little old farmer guy will continue to sit in his car in his sleeveless white T-shirt or plaid cotton shirt and work jeans, scratching off his tickets.
I will leave the women sitting on a bench across from the church steps, sides touching, slightly leaning into each other, like young girls waiting to be asked to dance. They are actually waiting for the statue of the Virgin Mary to emerge from the church door, carried on sturdy shoulders of volunteers to be transported through narrow alleys for one of the regular  feast days. They may have left votive candles with pictures of saints on them burning on windowsills.
I will leave the town to the echoes of the music of Danilo’s fish truck. It announces his arrival every Tuesday and Thursday at 8:30. Or 9. Or 10:30. You never know.But he always arrives.
I will leave the town to views of newly cut hay lying in curving lines arranged as artfully as any painting. I’ll leave the regular wait in the post office that is filled with talk of why the air conditioner isn’t cooling the room off or with updates on a mamma’s illness.
I will leave the town to its ongoing life, to its steady pulse.
It is a quiet Sunday afternoon as I write this. It is hot, so people are either indoors or at “il mare “  cooling off in the water. Only the pigeons are taking advantage of free water in the town fountain below - bobbing for a drink or fluttering for a bath. Here on my little terrazzo it is just me and the bells above in the church bell tower.
The bells! They are calm now. But earlier they were rambunctious- swinging, booming, insistent in their jubilant announcement of ALMOST mass, START of mass, communion, END of mass. When they have fulfilled their duty to the faith, they continue their duty to time- sounding it out in regular intervals.
When I first opened Casa da Carmine to guests I was terrified the bells regular rolling would send them running. I went to the commune to see about silencing them at night. Or dampening them on Sunday mornings. I wrote a letter to the mayor pleading my case. I lined the bedroom windows with noise-dampening curtains. On the audio program on my laptop I checked and rechecked the ambient noise levels against acceptable standards.
I went to the priest. He listened sympathetically then said I must go to the commune. I wrote another letter. I waited. I fretted. Even after glowing reviews came in. I waited for the other shoe to drop or bell clapper to wallop me upside the head. If only the bells could be silenced! What the heck- don’t people have clocks! Why do they need the damn bells!
A few weeks after this summer’s arrival I stood with my neighbor Fernando at the bellevedere across from the bell tower. The bells began to peal, robust and sonorous, swinging with mesmerizing grace despite their massive size. I threw my arms our towards them.
“Ahhh! Quelle campagne!! [Those bells]
Fernando smiled up at them.
Ah, sì! Nostre campagne! Senza le campagne non si sta bene! [Ah, yes! Our bells! Without our bells we don’t do well!]
I recalled then one visit to the commune. I was talking to a police officer, who would ultimately have to give the safety okay for anyone to go up and adjust the bells. When I proposed a partial moratorium on their ringing, he chuckled.
“Well “, he said, “One time the bells were broken. The commune wasn’t going to fix them. But the old women of the town stormed over to the mayor and demanded they be fixed. We’ve never let them go silent since, But you can try.”
Now I thought of the ladies sitting on the bench, widows all. They wear lockets with their husband’s photos in them around their necks. I imagine them awakening in the middle of the night, alone in bed. Alone for who knows how many years? Sleepy.Wondering “Is it time to get up to start another day? Should I lie here?”
The bells cut the silence and answer “ No, it’s too early.” Or “Yes, go ahead. It’s okay.”
Their vibrations fill empty space like a heartbeat. The women can rise or rest, assured.
And I admit, they have saved me from missing a bus when the alarm didn’t go off, from
 baking bread when I was lost in Facebook. They have reminded me to get my rear in gear when running so I don’t miss a meeting with friends.
The bells, when I leave, will continue to be their bells, though. They are their bells, everyone’s bells in their town, the town where everyone lives while I’m gone. They live with the bells and all the town presents or withholds day after day. They live with their love of it, then sorrows, frustrations, memories, joys, celebrations, rituals. Their hopes for a lottery win. They open themselves and their town for me and my guests to see. They share all they are and all that have willingly, generously. All that is here. Including the bells.

Domestic Arts 101

 Domestic Arts 101

I don't do laundry. Not in the US. Usually. It's not that I've dug into some kind of fertile feminist planting ground. I'm not making a statement. My husband prefers to do the laundry. He is particular about how it is done. And he has heard the horror stories from my children about shrinkage and colorization of white underwear. I suppose even a person fully secure in their masculinity draws the line at pink underwear. But here in Italy I am my own laundress. 

Hanging the wash today on my tiny triangle of a terrazzo, I was reminded of all the domestic tricks my housekeeper, Giovanna, has taught me. She came to me 7 years ago, my second one here. She is a combination cultural,liason and big sister, even though she is much younger than me. Her Italian domestic experience greatly pre-dates mine. You may think "Laundry is laundry. How can it be so different? " Ahhhh....because it is! 

Italy's space is much more confined than in the US. It is a much smaller country - about the same square mileage as the state of Arizona. Given that, and the fact that so much of the developed areas are squeezed in between numerous mountain ranges (but aren't they beautiful!), you have limited space. We in the US are used to spreading out : lush lawns circumnavigating McMansions, warehouse sized SUV's, malls with parking lots spread eagle like a sultan on his harem bed. We are of the "gimme land lotsa land under starry skies above" mentality. But here (unless you are a church), you will most likely have to make due with a starry sky from a postcard sized balcony. So common tasks like hanging 3 sets of bedsheets on one 12-foot washline present a challenge. Nope, no dryer. Like most Italians. Why throw money away on expensive electricity when you have a sky-wide solar unit on the premises? 

My first year here I was confounded as to how to do a rapid turnover of guests with sonlittle drying space. I panicked and draped sheets, towels, dishclothes, rugs over every possible pendant surface in the house. 

Enter Giovanna in year two. 

My first week back, she poked her head out of the back door at a quizzical angle as I was wrestling sheets onto the line. 

"Teresa, che fai? she trilled [Teresa, what are you doing?]

I explained my exasperation with the lack of drying space as I spread my arms to indicate the amount the hanging sheets had already eaten up and then pointed to the remaining pile in the laundry bag.

"No,no,no,no!" she clucked as she came down the back stairs. 

She tore the sheets from the line in one quick, light move, then folded them in precise quarters and tossed them back on the line. No clothespins necessary. Their weight held them on the line. 

"Waste of time," she told me. 

She repeated this domestic ballet twice more with the other sheets. There were about 3 feet of remaining line space onto which she hung 6 towels by letting them sag in the middle and touch corner to corner, one clothespin per two tangential corners. Two hours later, from the combination of sun and warm breeze, everything was dry. There were plenty of fresh, clean linen and towels ready well befor the next guests arrived.

She has taught me other things/

The fastest setting on the washing machine to get the cleanest clothes using the least water.

How little time it takes for espresso to be ready.

That tomatoes taste best left unrefrigerated and eaten soon after buying. 

How to strategically open and close shutters and double paned windows to keep the house cool. Or  warm. Or breezy. Or however you like at the moment.

I’ve seen how much I can do with how little- space, time, energy (both my own and the kind I pay other people to provide), things. It seems much more relaxing, reassuring to live this way, without the anxiety of “Is there enough?”

It’s another welcome re-set for my psyche that being here provides.

Oh, but I still sometimes turn underwear pink.