so the thing with italy...

most of my... obsession is probably a good word... with italy is just a feeling, which is hard to explain. i feel more at ease
there, looser in my walk somehow. maybe it has something to do with being on a dig and being in better shape while i'm there, but i had the same feeling when i was there on my semester abroad and certainly wasnt doing manual labor then. i feel healthier. and i've been trying to figure out what about it triggers that, to replicate it here, but i havent found it yet. and i feel easier in the culture. maybe that has to do with not understanding much of what's being said around me. i dont know. or maybe because i like travelling alone, not having to worry about whether another person is entertained or doing what they wanted to get done in the day of wandering around. i went to rome for a total of about 6 hours at the end of the season. mostly, i went to get my film developed. i loafed around the streets of the vatican. sat at the base of a column in st. peters square and wrote. moved to the pantheon and sat at the base of a column there with a fanta and watched tourists follow their tourguide around, she with a silk sunflower attached to the end of a pole, held aloft for her flock to follow through the crowd. i dont like being a tourist. the conspicuousness of it. i dont like having a mapped out journey that i should follow with commentary and minute to minute itinerary. i have an aversion to tourist offices and visitor centers. i like being part of the culture and not having people expect me to be american and all the stuff that implies. life is more natural when you blend in. a little of the same is true of museum experiences. i dont read the explanatory bits and signs pretty much anymore. the naples museum has become "mine" since my group departed from following the directors around, listening to the academic explanations of things and took to imitating statuary. i feel at home there now, regardless of its definite museum-ness.

other things about italy. there's not much asphalt. many of the roads, even quite a few of the main thorofares of big cities, are paved with big stone blocks, cut square with little pick marks in them for traction (i imagine). sidewalks are paved with little cubic bricks in different colors and made into designs. most are wide and designed for ambulation of large groups cause it is not an infrequency for people to go just walk around downtown in the evening. the main street in sorrento gets shutdown to traffic in the evenings to accomodate passegiata, the nightly parade of pedestrian window shoppers who are out in hordes with their baby buggies and whole families. this is also true of pompeii on saturday nights. actually, i think it's true of most of italy. at about 9, everyone takes to the streets, the thing to do is go wander around in your latest euro-outfit and see and be seen by everyone. meet friends. just hang out with people.

driving. there are few hard and fast laws (or at least it seems that way, i've never gotten a hold of an actual italian DMV rule book, whereas i have one for the states). yet people know how to drive with more courtesy and consideration for other drivers than here. maybe this is due to the lack of big cars and the more likely possibility of getting killed if you get hit cause the cars are all fiats or are vespas and not cars at all. either way, highway driving is as it should be: you drive in the right lane. no exceptions. if you're going faster than the guy in front of you, you put your blinker on and pass, only to return to the right lane as soon as you have passed said person. no one drives in the left lane except for passing, or if you're driving REALLY fast. that whole phenomenon of on and off ramps on highways or merging streets where traffic is supposed to "zip" into itself works! i mean really works! people drive fast and accomodate incoming traffic so that there isnt any stopping when you're looking for somewhere to merge. i think people are actually aware of just how dangerous cars are, and so arent as blatantly stupid drivers. i'd almost argue that roadrage doesnt exist there, but i dont know that. horns are actually used for something, as opposed to the stupid use of them here. if you're going around a sharp turn that you cant see the other side of, honk to warn you're coming so that the bus that's careening down the hill on the other side of the turn knows to stop and let you finish the turn. also, honking at women. those are possibly the only two uses of car horns that i'm aware of.

vespas. no, it's not just cause they're italian. i like their look. maybe because my first exposure to scooters as an actual means of transportation was in italy, or maybe because of Empire Records (the movie, in which one of the characters has a vespa), or because Vespa means wasp and i think this is cool, i'm attached to the idea of owning a vespa, not just any scooter. i get attached to ideas, to certain views of how i envision things. and there is little explanation else of that. it's just how i picture something. and i picture a vespa when i picture a scooter. and it's usually in mint green, too, which is a little strange.

food. this is not a complete fabrication. food (and i mean this on very general terms) tastes better there. tomatos taste richer, mozzarella is an entire experience unto itself, gelato is not icecream, nor is it what they pass off as gelato here. maybe there are fewer preservatives and crap in their food, or maybe i avoid such foods while i'm there. maybe it's the volcanic soils of the bay of naples area that makes veggies taste different. i dont know. a good portion of the south of italy is constituted by farms and orchards that are tucked between residential areas and cities and at the base of volcanoes. a lot of good food can be bought for very little. and a lot of what would be considered luxury foods here (prosciutto, mozzarella,olives... luxury of the mediterranean diet variety) are vastly cheaper. mostly because of import prices here, i realize, and it probably works the other way as well. american-specific things being more expensive there, but either i dont notice, or dont eat american based foods there. not to say that i havent had jaw-droppingly good food here. but the simple foods on a more regular basis are better or more flavorful or something. the best orange juice i've ever had comes in an oversized juicebox for a euro and a half. bulk olives at the grocery store have not yet found a rival in any olives i try here. and i've been looking. fanta has 12% orange juice in it, whereas it's only 5% in the states. very good wine is possible for under 4 euro. and even the bad wine has a certain humor to it. or drinking it has a certain humor. the wine isnt all that funny. that's not true either. via crapolla wine and pinus wine are pretty funny. both really bad, but we drink it anyway. on the other hand, i've had a lot of bad food, mostly at the restaurant attached to the campsite. really bad food. but you never remember the bad parts as vividly as the good, and the good happens much more often.

and the experiences of things. castellamare is one of my favorites. it's a small port town between pompeii and sorrento named for a castle built on the mountain behind the town that looks out to the ocean. as is the way, we'd go to dinner around 8, come out of the train station and walk down the hill toward the ocean. at the base of the hill is a piazza, lined with tall trees and iron lampposts, a huge gazeebo in the center with stainglass dome. sort of what i picture paris to be like. little old women in groups of three are walking around, slowly, enjoying the evening. we walk along the edge of the city, where it meets the water, following old trolly tracks that havent been in use for some time. past huge warehouses right on the bay, parting for cars to pass through and noticing the sign that advertizes horse meat for sale. hmmm. come, after 10 or so minutes' walk, to the marina where private and some commercial boats are docked. there's a boardwalk that stretches from the street to the water. along the street side are some 25 booths that are each a seafood restaurant. spread out in front of each are some 20 tables. it's impossible to tell which tables belong to which booth other than the change in tablecloths. we walk to somewhere in the middle where antoinetta 10 is, our 'usual' booth. i dont know if there is an antoinetta 1 through 9 somewhere else. we sit (i've never been to castellamare with a group smaller than 12) at one long table. the same woman that has probably been working there her whole life, certainly for the last four years that i've been there, comes over and hands out a couple of menus. we say something about "menus? there didnt used to be menus." she confirms, says order whatever, you dont have to stick to the menu. we ask what's good today. she lists some things. we say, ok, that sounds good. we get clams and mussels and octapus and squid and mixed seafood platters and spaghetti with shrimp. we order a couple of plates of olives and lupini for the table. lupini are some sort of nut that have a waxy coating on them. if you squeeze them correctly, the meat shoots out of the coat and can be aimed at people. the lupini wars begin. we order wine, five or six bottles, which are slightly fizzy and not good wine. we get some water which comes in big plastic pitchers and is from the naturally frizzante spring nearby. a little cloudy but tastes wonderful. the food starts to come out. more and more of it. seafood that rivals most i've had. maine might be only place with better. we eat. we eat ourselves silly as the sun sets over vesuvius, visible on the other side of the bay, over the boats docked in the harbor. as we eat the pirate guy, a man of about 60 with a gravelly baritone voice who speaks some unintelligible version of neapolitan italian, comes by, pushing his cart full of toys, announcing what he has through a battery powered, multicolored bullhorn. he's blowing bubbles with his other hand with an automatic bubbleblowing toy. opera guy, a severely misshapen man with no neck and a hump, comes by, wearing his straw hat, slapping a beat on his chest and singing in a striking tenor. there's also a midget on stilts walking around, wearing a green sequened vest and bowtie. on stilts, he's pretty much normal height. they're all regulars there, are there every time i'm there. we finish eating, more food than we thought possible, and sit around laughing for a bit, everyone solidly tipsy, if not drunk. eventually we ask for the bill. somehow, even though we've each had a plate or two of seafood, a plate of olives, nearly a bottle of wine each, the bill still only comes to about 8 euro each. we pay, thank the women, walk by o per e' o muss (a vendor that sells whole cow snouts and pig noses), perhaps buy a toy from the pirate guy, walk slowly back to the trainstation, stopping to swingdance in the street, but finding that we're too drunk to either lead or follow, and get to the train (the last of which, in true castellamare fasion, has already left, abandoning the group to find either the bus which runs later than the train, or to wait for a miracle in the form of someone we know from spartacus offering to drive us all back to camp in shifts). every time is roughly the same. every time is just as fun.

speed. the US, for pretty good reasons, is on fast forward all the time. people are in a hurry to get there, get done, get famous, get rich, get out before anyone catches on, get GOING! other than their driving habits, italians hang out at a slower pace. dinners are hours long (hmmm, as evidenced by nori and my dinner/brunch tendencies?), punctuated by bottles of wine and conversation. cafes, while designed for a quick espresso shot so that you can run off again, lend themselves well to hanging out with your coffee and talking to the bar people. projects and work and related things take more time, but are usually done with careful attention and done correctly. people take pride in their work that i think is absent in the general population of america. probably because more businesses are family owned and operated and have a small, specific, loyal clientelle, the people that own the places are much more attunded to what they put forward as theirs. in cosenza, we stopped at a little corner market for lunch, went back to the meat counter and asked for sandwiches. not only were the sandwiches huge, heaped with prosciutto and mozzarella, the women brought out fresh basil and oregano unprompted and spread both on them, sprinkled a little sea salt, wrapped them carefully in wax paper, and sent us on our ways. the sandwiches cost under a dollar each.

i think the biggest connection that i have with italy is its connection to its past, a sort of refusal to remove the collective memory of objects and moments starting from time immemorial. ruins are everywhere. monuments are still monumental and still bear the names of the people for whom they were built. america, both for lack of a very long history and proclivity toward buldozing everything at regular intervals, has none of this. certain places do on a very minor scale, the east coast as a general whole being sort of one of them, san antonio and it's missions another, arizona and the four corners region a very large and very enticing third. but not in the same fluid way that italy has a continual layering of history that blends now and then into one. i think this has most to do with my one recognized fear of forgetting and being forgotten. i mean on the grand scale. my vision of true success is immortality, in the tradition of the classical authors and statesmen, or, perhaps shakespeare. a lofty goal, i realize, but there none the less. i set that as my general life goal (and is probably why i archive my life as closely as i do, incase anyone ever wanted to dedicate a museum to me, it would all be there with relevance of said object tagged to it with a date). italy is a country of packratism.
- posted by Claire @ 12:46 PM 1 comments