Pizza n' Love

Sitting at the railway station, I’ve got a ticket for my destination, mmmhmmm.  On a tour of one-night-stands, my suitcase and guitar in hand---wait a minute.  That’s not right…

I’m in the railways station in Frankfurt, once again.  I said farewell to Italy at dawn in Pisa after an afternoon and sleepless night in a city that defies gravity.  The leaning tower was beautiful—much more so than I expected—tilting elegantly to an unconceivable degree, pure white and clean.  The tower was a lovely sight, stark against the blue afternoon sky and the lawn in the plaza was immaculate and green.  It was very peaceful there, and not wanting to leave, I ordered a pizza from a nearby restaurant, chose a patch of lawn, and sat down with my back to the tower to enjoy the view.  You see,  almost as pleasing to look at was the comical mass of tourists all leaning or pushing against invisible masses all across the piazza…

I spent the night in Pisa with a friend from France.  Since my flight to Germany left at dawn, we decided not to go to bed at all, but rather to roam the city and enjoy my final moments in Italy.  After a farewell dinner of handmade spaghetti con frutti di mare e pesto with fresh-baked walnut bread, white wine and the most delicious desert of yogurt cream with strawberries, Cedric and I spent the night meandering through Pisa, pausing occasionally for a view over the Arno, to have a glass of local syrah, or to dance to a few songs in a salsa club.  As the moon began to set, we returned to the plaza by the tower.  The piazza seemed as though a setting from a very gentle dream.  The cathedral and tower looked like massive, ghostly chess pieces in the midst of some lentissimo battle, the tower collapsing with grace over and over again, infinitely, each time you take your eyes from it and then look again.  Why does it not fall? A thousand times over you ask yourself, but still it continues to slant, ever poised, as though time did not exist as it always has before, as though this single moment was an eternal dream.

And—still dreaming?—I find myself back in the United States.  Four months and hundreds of gelatos later, older and more knowledgeable in the ways of agriculture, Italian language, and visa restrictions, I feel at peace with the idea of being home.  It has been a long and fulfilling journey. Arrivederci, Italia.  We will see each other again.

Sous le soleil de la Toscane

At last it is May, carrying me once more into a new countryside, a new farmhouse, another node of agriculture and another example of living biologically in nature. May in Tuscany and the poppies are everywhere—sometimes so brilliantly red you can barely look at them, sometimes dusty and subdued like dull lipstick.  I found a lost puppy one day as I was walking along a country road who enthusiastically followed me home, though I did not invite her. The family with whom I am staying has adopted her, and I have named her Poppy after the scarlet fields in which she was found. Red seems to be the theme of my stay here, for my business here in Montalcino is that of wine—Casa Raia produces Brunello and a Rosso made of San Giovese, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon. 

Springtime in the world of wine is the season for planting new vines, tending the new growths of more mature vines, and caring for the general health of the vineyard using biological, non-chemical methods.  The primary scourge of vineyards is the minuscule insect phylloxera which kills the roots of the plant, and can destroy an entire vineyard rapidly and savagely. In fact, a few hundred years ago, phylloxera did kill nearly all the European vines, causing an international wine crisis that was solved when somebody discovered that American vines were unaffected by the insect. Vintners began to graft European vines such as San Giovese and Syrah and all the others onto American roots, allowing the European vines to grow safely without ever exposing their roots to phylloxera. This method is still used today (in fact, it is legally mandatory) and thus, all great wines in Europe are borne from American roots.

I, however, find myself in a situation contrary to that of the grapes in Tuscany. I am a born and bred American woman, but my roots are here in Italy. Sometimes I can actually see them! I find my nose attached to dark-haired women on Vespas and hear my grandmother’s name, Guarino, murmured on street-corners in Napoli. I am the result of my family’s Italian culture grafted onto American soil, all mixed up with Lithuanian and German, Irish and British vines.  Nearly all Americans can say the same—we are mutts, we are blends, New World transplants. And here I am… finding my roots, literally digging in the dirt (while sipping fine wine).

Ironically, very little Italian is being spoken these days and instead I have been trying my hand at French. The couple I am with is French/Canadian and their three children speak a strange combination of Italian, French and English. The three year-old, Noa, often asks me to play with him; “Would tu like to giocare avec moi?” To which I can only reply, “Si! Allons-y!”

…dawn breaks over the forested hills, dew clinging to each blade of grass as the last stars fade gracefully into the distilled blue of the morning sky. The goats begin to mew and the chickens cluck quietly, still tucked snuggly in their coop. A cloud inversion fills the valley below the waking farm. All is still in the last moments of daybreak as I aim my sledgehammer at a three hundred year-old wall and prepare to smash it to bits.

At the Ecovillaggio Tertulia near Florence the primary work I have been allotted is to help restore an ancient Tuscan house into a livable agritourismo, or bed and breakfast. The walls are crumbling and as we scrape cracked paint from them we find hand-painted frescos from before the second World War. In addition to my new hobby of (de)construction, I help tend the garden (lettuce, onions, tomatoes, basil, cucumber, arugula, cabbage, fava beans), and spend time with the three timid goats. Four adults and three children make up this ecovillage, along with various WWOOF volunteers and a smattering of cats, dogs, and chickens. We are thirty minutes from Florence where there are always summertime festivals, concerts and things to do when life feels too quiet up here in the hills. Next weekend (my last in Italy!) there is to be a wine festival followed by an artisanal ice cream event in the main piazza…

Speaking of ice cream, I have been on a quest to seek the finest gelato in Italy and I am pleased to announce that I have found it! In the city of Siena, not ten minutes walk from il Palio, is a bar/gelataria that is always crowded. There I ordered un gelato al gusto yogurt e melone (yogurt and cantelope) which made a lovely little springtime color combination. I stepped out of the shop and took a lick and suddenly a ray of light burst from the heavens and illuminated my gelato right there in the street, blinding several nearby tourists and nearly knocking me off my feet. My friends, I cannot find the words to describe just how smooth and creamy and fragrant that ice cream was, but I can say that after four long and toiling months of sampling ice cream throughout the country my search for the perfect gelato  has come to a close.

A Tale of Two Cities

Two cities, both alike in dignity, in fair Europa where we lay our scene, where ancient customs break through to modern interpretations, where German stoplights make Sicilian streets unclean…. I introduce you to Palermo and Dűsseldorf.

I left the village of Butera feeling incredibly positive, having said yet another tearful but happy goodbye to several new friends.  (There is a spectrum of goodbyes, ranging from those that are unemotional to those that break your heart.  The best I have found is a goodbye that makes you sad but not sorrowful, that makes you cry because you care enough to cry, a goodbye that proves you knew somebody wonderful and are saying goodbye in peace.)  I took a bus South to North through mountainous and green Sicily up to the city of Palermo, where I promptly entered a different world.  By day it is perhaps like any other Italian city—bustling, confusing, riddled with cathedrals and strangely artificial public gardens.  I visited the sea, enjoyed a gelato or two, looked at architecture. But Palermo by night…. My couchsurfing host Matteo took me to the outdoor market, scrunched like a serpent into the labyrinth of winding and crowded streets, where all the youth of Palermo were gathered.  Music bumping, vendors selling arancione and zibibo, people sitting on beer crates and everybody having a good time.  Arabic and Moroccan influence meet Italian lightheartedness, and the market place became a party.  Tuesday night.  Matteo and his friends were perfect, all gathering together to cook dinner and sing (seriously, everybody set to work chopping a different vegetable, all the while singing “No Woman No Cry” in ten-part harmony and drumming on the table.) After the slow and quiet life I have been leading in the country, it was a delightful yet drastic change.  After dinner, we took to the streets, to the market.  I made a new friend—Giuseppe the journalist who reminded me of a Sicilian Woody Allen and had me laughing all night.  Everyone was relaxed, loose, open, a little crazy.  I felt I could have stayed much longer, but the next day, far too early in the morning, I boarded a flight to Dűsseldorf. 

At the station I met Birte—a friend I have not seen in nearly five years—and she introduced me to Germany.  It reminds me strikingly of home, though this could be simply that in contrast to Palermo everything is tamer.  But it is true; German city structure is decidedly more Western, and the people are decidedly less Italian.  For example, when the crosswalk light is red, a native to Dűsseldorf will stop and wait, even if there are no cars.  It would be laughable to imagine a street in Palermo with people waiting patiently on either side for the light to turn.  But Dűsseldorf is alive in its own way.  When the sun shines on the Rheine the banks are filled with people on beach towels drinking beer.  I have seen every color of the rainbow expressed either in hair color or jeans, and plazas and coffee shops are always packed with friends and families taking a relaxed, yet punctual break to enjoy each other’s company. 

I love the Rheine, and it has inspired several silly yet serious poems.  Here is one…

There is no time when I sit by the Rheine, for time, too, lost itself

I wait by the wharf in Dűsseldorf, for how long?  I could not tell.

For time on the Rheine is a swallow in flight

It journey’s with nary a care

Where the river will flow, I surely don’t know

Though I’m sure it will take me somewhere.

For there is no time as I sit by the Rheine, and time is a flying thing

At the wintery wharf in Dűsseldorf somewhere a bird starts to sing.

Yankee Go Home

*Crshhh* Code red. We have a code red situation. Imposter, code name “Yank”, has been spotted infiltrating our numbers with potential malicious intent.  I repeat: Code name “Yank” has been observed outside of enemy territory running amok. Out. *Crsshhh*

Yes, folks, that’s right. Yours truly has gotten mixed up in some shady intercultural and inter-governmental business and has been introduced to the dark side of Euro-American relations. I will speak plainly, folks: it ain’t good.

The Saturday before Easter, amidst Catholic processions and long-winded masses at church, I participated along with nearly 20,000 other people in a protest march against the construction of an M.U.O.S. in Niscemi, Sicily. The placement of this Mobile User Objective System in Niscemi would make it one of four very large satellite telecommunication units that are dispersed throughout the world, set in place by the American Navy. But what is the matter with this Machine of Unusual Size? you may well ask. My friends, apart from the fact that the electromagnetic field of the MUOS is so strong and widespread that it would endanger all Sicilians to the risks of leukemia, cancerous tumors, infertility, diminished crop productivity, interfering with pacemakers and other electronic instruments, and the loss of biodiversity, it is also American and therefore has no business being in Italy. As I discovered on Saturday as I was marching alongside thousands of angry Italians (and one French guy), Americans are the source of a great deal of hostility here in Europe. Upon questioning, I found that the root of this hostility is threefold. First, a general bitterness towards our good ol’ fashioned American sense of entitlement. Secondly, they dislike our tendency towards a “savior complex”, even when nobody wants to be saved (“being saved” translates as “being conquered” or “being used strategically to control resources”). Finally, there is a twinge of jealousy for our oversized life over in the New World, an envy which manifests itself either through cultural imitation or a simmering resentment.

The construction of a MUOS unit on Italian soil (in a small American Navy base) is quite reasonably the cause of outrage here in Sicily, but I must admit that I had never first-hand witnessed such anti-Americanism. People carried signs bearing the message “Yankee Go Home” and “sBARACKate” (a clever play on words, meaning “pack your sh*t and leave, Obama”).  A larger-than-life Abraham Lincoln puppet with an American flag pinned to his hat and his eyes popping veins and blood dripping off of his fangs made his way through the crowd, and people chanted “Sicilia é piú bella senza di voi!” (Sicily is more beautiful without you!) Needless to say, I chose to qualm my instinct to explain that we are NOT all murdering, conquest-driven imperialists, deciding that this was no time to single-handedly take on 19,998 Italians and one French guy.

I’m sure that many of you reading this already knew the extent of dislike other nations have for the US, but deep down, I believe that most of us see ourselves as “good guys”.  Am I wrong in assuming this? As citizens of the United States we are well aware of the separation between the interests of the people and the interests of the nation, and many of us identify with an entity that is NOT accurately represented by our government.  What I mean is, the actions of our government in the eyes of Europeans and most other countries (our actions being, to them, watered-down seizing, raping, and pillaging) are NOT supported by a great number of us. Thus my reactionary defensiveness when I find myself in the midst of an anti-American parade.

Of course, we must keep in mind that many of these activists (in particular those who were chanting the loudest) are simply riot-makers and chronic protesters. A large group of people were there just to play bongos and sing “O Bella Ciao”. Naturally, anybody who educated themselves about the construction of the MUOS knows that the US Navy and the Italian government are the ones to appeal to for change. It is, naturally, easier to use the term “Americans” rather than chant the names of politicians, and so I find it easier to not be offended. And regardless the sheer quantity of people protesting the MUOS had quite an impact, and hopefully will aid in the termination or at least inhibit the construction of the MUOS unit.

To conclude, I would like to mention that I had never heard of MUOS prior to arriving in Sicily. There are three other MUOS towers already in place (Australia, Hawaii, Virginia), each one approximately 140 meters tall with emissions of 500-2000 KW. I am going to educate myself on the subject, and I urge you to as well! www.nomuos.org

With love from Italy. Until next time!

Yankee Out.

We're All Mad Here

The sidewalks are coated in ash and lined with garbage sacks.  Rain has been falling heavily, but every so often the clouds part, revealing a smoking Mount Etna.  The rain collects and flows through the streets in rivers because there are no drainage routes.  Sicily seems to be brooding, and so am I.

I left Salento on Monday evening, after a series of heartfelt goodbyes and many earnest promises to write and return.  Even as I was packing up my room, I was already beginning to miss waking at dawn to milk the sheep, seeing the Salento sunrise, going to pasture with Domenico and making ricotta in the echoing, music-hall dairy where we would sing opera at the top of our lungs and press curds into hard rounds.  I was already missing Mari and the way she would make sarcastic jokes and laugh with her whole body.  I was already missing Antonio’s jazz playlists and kitchen-dancing and the eternal flow of friends who would gather at the house every night.  I miss helping with the lamb birthings (I pulled an amniotic sack off of a suffocating lamb the other day!) and I miss the tranquility of the Salento region.  

But sometimes, when travelling, we must leave places that make us very happy, risking comfort for the potential of encountering something equally as essential.  And so, I took a night bus to Messina, and then south to Pisano at the foot of Mount Etna to start anew at Sotto I Pini, a small farm and Bed and Breakfast within view of the Ionian Sea.

I am unenthusiastic because there is very little work here, and the family who I am living with seems to be scrounging for things for me to do.  It does not help that the rain has prevented me from working in the small vegetable garden, where at least I know I can be useful.  I think what gets to me is that I feel as though I am wasting my precious time and theirs—that a true exchange of ideas, knowledge, and culture is not something I can expect at this farm.  Naturally, I plan on moving along quite soon. I am in touch with several other WWOOFing farms in the area and I believe I can relocate within the next few days.  

There are two small children that live here, however, whom I know I will miss.  Okay—miss may be too strong of a word.  This afternoon alone I have been socked, bit, licked, impaled by an umbrella, tackled and screamed at, mostly by the two-and-a-half year old Giuseppe. The six year old Teresa is a tomboy and very sweet (and seems to like me an awful lot).  The other WWOOFer here seems easily stressed by the children and their bipolar tendencies (gleefully entertained by a coloring book one minute, angrily brandishing an umbrella the next), but I actually don’t mind the chaos.  The trick to remaining calm is two-fold: a) don’t take the temper tantrum personally and b) remind yourself and be thankful that you are not their mother. 

To be continued...