Notes from Italy

Who says no to such a thing?

I’m posting today because I got a nudge from substack to share an oldie so that’s what I am doing. The one they suggested had a comment from my mom who died a few months ago and it reminded me that when I first started writing Snaps, she always left a comment, and then later would text me about how much she liked it or what a great writer I was. On this one she posted “Miraculous!” It made me laugh (always with the hyperbole!) and then just as suddenly, it made me cry. Seeing it again I felt like it was a secret note she had left behind. Anyway, this post is from a couple years ago when I went to Italy with my sister, first to Fiuggi where we went hiking for 4 days and then to Rome where we tried to pretend we weren’t tourists. While in Fiuggi, we somehow agreed (through the retreat we went to) to not have caffeine or sugar or gluten or dairy which is an insane thing to do anytime but especially if you are in Italy. We also agreed to hike 10 miles every day in hundred degree heat which is just plain wrong no matter where you are. But I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Fiuggi and Rome

My sister and I are waiting for the concierge in the library of the Palazzo del Fiuggi, the hotel where we’re staying. He sent us here with a quiet tilt of his head because he is helping us commit a crime, not a crime crime but something disrespectful and against the rules, something I don’t hesitate to do because I am with my sister and we are both permanently 12, but I’ll get to that in a minute. First, I want to make sure you noticed that I said Palazzo del Fiuggi because I need you to understand the kind of grandeur and elegance of our surroundings. Marble floors, 30-foot ceilings with crystal chandeliers, this was a resort built in 1913, a medical spa visited by royalty and then later Pirandello and Picasso, Ingmar Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. We are sitting on a velvet couch surrounded by dark wood book shelves lined with first editions of the greatest books ever written, a room where romantic trysts probably took place in the 1930s, or serious discussions between strangers about art and film and life. Now here’s my sister and me in hats and dark glasses waiting for a guy to bring us our contraband, 2 cappuccinos, something we agreed not to have for the 4 days of our stay.

Me: I feel a little ashamed.

Sis: Why? We can’t not have coffee. It’s not good for us.

Me: Or pasta or gelato.

Sis: Seriously, we’re in Italy, no one does that, it’s fine.

Me: You’re right.

Sis: I’m hypoglycemic! I can’t.

Me: I’m hypoglycemic too!

Sis: You are? …since when?

Me: (wink)

Sis: Ahhhhhhhhh.

Together: Ahhhhhhhh.

Sis: In case we get busted.

Me: Yep.

Sis: Good one. High five.

A handsome waiter enters our secret room carrying a silver tray with porcelain cups and saucers and linen napkins.

Sis: Oooooo, look at this.

Me: (to the waiter) Grazie.

The waiter leaves. We clink our beautiful cups together, drink the cappuccino in one gulp like a shot, and--

Me: Let’s get out of here.

Sis: Prego.

--we scoot out the side door.

I said earlier I am 12 with my sister, but the truth is I am 12 with every person I love. If we are friends, it means we connected on some level that is curious and open and pure. We laugh easily, deliriously. We are shy and judgmental and never wrong. I am 12 when I travel too. I feel both slightly uneasy and in awe of everything around me. In Fiuggi, my sister and I meet a new friend who hikes with us. Her name is Nana so of course we sing the Rhianna lyrics Oh Nana what’s my name all day and she thinks we are idiots, but still all 3 of us lean on each other laughing, drunk from the heat. We fall in together, easy, unforced, like a rhythm. We fall in. We are almost always a mile behind everyone else on the hike. We take time to lay in the moss, discover a bone in the dirt, crowd around a neon colored dung beetle, and drink water from the magic spring, something Fiuggi is known for: its mountain water with mysterious healing powers.

We walk through the hills, hot and winded from the climb and when we look up and down and all around, all that we see is the most beautiful green, a canopy and carpet of leaves and moss and trees and singing birds, and it feels like we are in a dream, and the only thing that lets us know we are in fact on the earth is the sound of our breath and the crunching pebbles beneath our feet. A group of cows wearing cowbells appears out of nowhere, and they look at us while chewing with calm curiosity and we wonder how we dropped into this strange fairy tale, and where is the angry troll that wants to make a deal with us?

While we trudge through veils of webs and white butterflies, drinking from the tubes on our water-filled back-packs, we talk about Italo Calvino and Maya Deren and voodoo and the way both Haiti and New Orleans are places that contain so much darkness and soul. We talk about sex and tomatoes and massage. We talk all over the place from one thing to the next until a man on a horse appears out of nowhere. We stop and behold one another. He tells us what seems to be a tale for 5 uninterrupted minutes in Italian while smoking a cigar. Pausing mid-sentence, he poses for a photo, then says Ciao mie belli and continues down the hill.

If you want to know what it’s like in Fiuggi, that’s what it’s like.

In the mountains where we are staying, time passes like blood through veins. We’re only hiking 4 days but it feels like months and we don’t care if it will ever end. Once we get to Rome, the energy is faster, louder, harder, but there is still the same timelessness. Suddenly we are on the back of mopeds moving forward, looking back at oh that! and look there! and did you? as we swerve in and out of lines of tiny clown cars, pedestrians, nuns, tourists. We are main character in a 1970s Italian film, side characters in a medieval scenario and members of a 21st century audience all at once.

The streets cross each other and angle in from every direction. People walk, they shout, they gesture, they drive on the bumper of the person in front of them while beeping their horn and yelling out death threats. They park on the curb, their back-bumper sticking out into oncoming traffic, who cares, so what? that’s your problem! And yet, the style, the order, the sense of what goes with what is never not exact or intentional. Or beautiful.

A few nights after we get to Rome, my sister and I are at a concert at the Olympic Stadium built in the 1920s, which compared to the Coliseum (built in 80) is brand new but every bit as massive. We walk through crowds sometimes clinging to each other’s sleeves. And then once again we are just in it, we are with the flow, moving and dancing with 65,000 brothers and sisters, singing along with the band: All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, is here in my heart.

Addendum:

I laughed at my mom’s comment because I was vain enough to think she was talking about my writing, but now I realize she was talking about traveling, the idea of being in one place in the morning and then hours later in another place on the other side of the world, especially one where roads and buildings and statues and stadiums are still standing as they did thousands of years ago. It barely makes sense. It’s almost as unbelievable as getting a note from beyond. Miraculous!

Addendum 2

There were a lot of people there.