My local bar, Ranieri, is decked in black curtains today. Last night in the Derby della Madonnina (any game between the two soccer clubs of Milan), Inter lost to arch rival Milan. A happy day for the black-and-red’s. A day of sadness for the black-and-blue’s. A veritable death for the hardcore such as Sergio, the owner of the bar. My interista husband’s take on the match: “We were unlucky.”
Monday
“The daily -ism”
On what happens to one’s -isms
in a strange land with -isms of its own.
(Read this.)
Tuesday
“Postcard #11: Francobollo”
On the beauty of a single stamp
and a thought-provoking question.
(Read this.)
Wednesday
“You’re invited to a Spring dinner”
In which a colorful dinner
is thrown together quickly.
(Read this.)
Thursday
“Time out for quiet contemplation”
In which we find a place
to sit and ponder.
(Read this.)
Friday
“Milan color story #4: Green”
In which we admire
the Gray Lady’s greens.
(Read this.)
Milan, that great Gray Lady, has not filled her wardrobe with greens, but the color has, like a tenacious weed, crept into the cracks of her closet providing life and vibrance when weather permits. Which is to say, that much of the green (though not all) in Milan’s overall palette is there thanks to both nature’s insistence and man’s neglect.
When I first moved here, ironically, I hated the green despite the fact that it is probably my favorite color. The Milanese, for all their properness, are not ones for manicuring and weeding. Thus tram tracks and park benches, ruins and castles are punctuated by the random sprouting of grass, dandelions, and whatever else the Earth has on offer. This is not to say that the well-tended hedge doesn’t exist, but this is by no means Paris, with nature ubiquitously sculpted to the millimeter.
As has happened with so many other aspects of life here, the passage of time has placed a filter (you could call it love) between my eye and the unkempt. I now see that the green softens hard lines, playing counterpoint to the architectural accuracy of man. As with the ingredients in Italian cooking, greenery is often left to its own best devices. Vines such as vigne vierge and wysteria know what they’re doing. The more you leave them alone, the more they grow in beauty.
Green is also the color of “public” Milan. Park benches, garbage cans, gates, and fountains are painted green. In this, too, the Milanese are not particularly fastidious. Sometimes it’s kelly green, sometimes forest. Sometimes sour apple, sometimes emerald. Typically the color plays straight man to something more ornate—the city’s seal or the loose, aggressive hand of a spray-painter.
Awnings and banners are often a dark, rather soothing green, placed between you and the sun as if the color could literally cool you down. Pharmacies announce themselves with green neon crosses. This is the color of life, vitality, healing.
And here and there, if you look very carefully, you’ll see the odd palazzo painted a minty or sage green. These buildings and their weathered paint-jobs tug at my heart, for they are part of the old Milan, and yet they have resisted the trend toward ochre, cream, gray and stone. They hint at the insistence on being fanciful, light-hearted, and eccentric—even when so many forces around us would have us relinquish these precious human qualities.
[If you enjoyed this post, you might also like “Milan color story #3: Pink.”]
I’m not a Catholic, but I like going to churches in Milan particularly when they are empty, except for other solitary types like me, moving about quietly in the shadows, observing the quiet and the play of light with dark.
Sometimes, the churches have gardens or cloisters, and these spots, particularly this time of year, are magical for just sitting and for—as the Jesuits at my children’s school say—reflecting. The Jesuits talk a lot about the importance of reflection. I couldn’t agree with them more, although I don’t do it often enough.
Yesterday we went to the cloister at Santa Maria delle Grazie, which is probably best known for housing Leonardo da Vinci’s Cenacolo, “The Last Supper.” The flowering trees are in full bloom there, planted in the four corners of the tiny symmetrical garden. Arches and columns frame your view no matter where you look. You feel protected, safe with your own thoughts. And no matter what you believe, the presence of that belief is with you here in this tiny space: Faith—in something good.
lt’s been one of those days folks. Running, running, running around, with not a minute to breathe. Emails that had to be written. News that had to be absorbed. Documents that had to be put in order. Decisions that had to be made. Provisions that had to be laid in. No time for blogging until now. And now, it just happens to also be time for making dinner. So today, I’m killing two birds with one stone and inviting all of you to a dinner/blog otherwise entitled, “I can eat a rainbow.”
The beginnings of a risotto with young, tender zucchini
Santa Cristina. An easy Umbrian white. Fruity and floral. Salute.
It’s Spring! And we can eat beautiful colors! Raw, cooked, barely cooked. Stuff for the forks, stuff for the fingers, stuff for the wineglasses that’s fruity and floral, a green so pale it whispers. Pull up a seat or cross your legs on the floor. Whatever makes you comfortable. I’m cooking light, and it’s all fairly typical. Glad you could come.
Still in the oven, soon to be just-roasted asparagus.
The oh-so-typical grated carrot salad with olive oil, sea salt, and fresh lemon juice
NOTE: The blues aren’t present in this culinary rainbow. We carry them with us by nature of being human, so we’ll leave them out of tonight’s fare. The music? Jazz. Discordant, improvised, optimistic.
Dessert. What else? FIngerfood. Unadorned. Succulent.
[Sometimes the reason for the postcard is nothing more than the beautiful stamp you get to put on it. And while we’re on the subject, my little girl asked me yesterday: “Mom, how come when we see something beautiful, we feel like we have to own it?” Good question, my dear.]
[If you liked this post, you might also like “Postcard #3: Arco della Pace.”]
We’ve all heard it said. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” But this is one of those things that’s much easier bantered about than done. On vacation, it’s fun to fully immerse yourself in the way other people do things, to dress up in the way they are. To even, temporarily, try on their thoughts and opinions. But in real life, over time, if you live in a foreign country, you become an interesting mix of your old and your new, perpetually-away-from-home self.
One of the things about me as an American that has been both an advantage and a disadvantage here and which has, in any case, been tested, is my way of taking things on full-steam ahead, as if every new passion/idea/philosophy-du-jour is a full-time profession. We love “isms.” And we apply our national “ism”—consumerism—serially to almost everything new that interests us. It’s no wonder we say “I’ll buy that,” when what we really mean is, “Yes, I accept that as a valid point of view.” If we could buy it, really, we probably would.
Before I came to Europe, single and chugging down the “career girl” express, I went to the gym every day. Every day. It was a religious thing. And if I didn’t do it, I felt badly. Guilty. My puritanism kept track of my perfectionism/egotism. I wanted to be perfect in word and deed. (What a bore, but so be it, that’s how it was.) And it wasn’t until I moved to Amsterdam and then to Milan that I realized that “ism”-ing through life didn’t leave a lot of room for other people (you know, relationships?) and for Life with that all important capital L.
Besides which, Italy makes it very hard to stay on the metaphorical express train to anywhere. If the Romans don’t passionately share your ideas about accomplishment in all colors and sizes, how are you to carry on “accomplishing” in your accustomed style? (Ex-patriotism has the last laugh.) I don’t know how to explain it. Family is the great “ism” at work here, even greater than Catholicism. And so, a new order was imposed on me, but it was an order that I was wanting (and needing) to accept. Partially, that is.
I still believe that if I want to do something I should try. I still think about possibilities more than I think about impossibilities. I still suspect that doing something really well requires a degree of obsession. I still believe that elbow grease and determination can change a life. And this is one of my qualities that Italians seem to really admire, even if they find it all a bit naive. I think they’d like to “buy” some of this American-ness if they could, but most of them don’t have the right currency.
As it is, I’m trying to replace “isms” with balance. The American in me needs the best of both worlds. But even balance can be taken too far I suppose. Anything can. In the end, you have to do what feels right, regardless of what category it falls into. So I leave you with this badly thought out blog, and welcome your thoughts on the subject. A tennis court is calling: “Get-it-out-of-your-system-ism!”
[If you enjoyed this post, you might like other “Confessions.” If you liked the illustration, you might like to check out “Salt.”]
This past week, I was over-whelmed with spring cleaning. What happens when we clean our houses. What bubbles to the surface. What reveals itself to be true. What our junk says about our current state and next steps. What the season does to us.
Monday
“Spring Cleaning #1: The game”
In which the cards are
all on the table.
(Read this.)
Tuesday
“Spring Cleaning #2: Dusty dreams”
On the dreams we carry with us
and the deeper power of maps.
(Read this.)
Wednesday
“Spring Cleaning #3: The change of season”
On the blues that settle over the
Italian peninsula this time of year.
(Read this.)
Thursday
“Spring Cleaning #4: Haircuts for everyone”
On pruned sycamores, fresh starts,
and William Carlos Williams.
(Read this.)
Friday
“Spring Cleaning #5: Monkeying around”
On the brilliance of a little rubber monkey
and her creator, Bruno Munari.
(Read this.)
A small one-week feature on what happens when we clean our houses. What bubbles to the surface. What reveals itself to be true. What our junk says about our current state and next steps. What the season does to us.
It’s Friday. Time to lighten up. Seriously. At least that was the message broadcast by this postcard, which I found while once again rummaging through my basket of small books and miscellany collected over the years. It features Bruno Munari’s toy monkey, Zizì, originally designed in 1952. I love Zizì, and I love Bruno Munari.
The postcard is actually a z-card. If you turn it and look at it from different angles, you see Zizì in a number of irreverent monkey poses. She’s always irreverent; she can’t help it. The postcard reminded me that we actually have the monkey (it was reissued in 1997 and 2007). I gave her a dusting, straightened out her kinky tale a bit and got her ready for her close-up. Her rubbery, primate message is clear and irrefutable: Why be in a funk when you can be funky?
The bigger story is this: Bruno Munari was an endlessly creative and playful designer who created ingenious books, toys, fanciful machines, and color tests (to name a paltry few of his creative experiments). He used design to create function, but also often simply as a stimulus for joy and further imagining. He played with design lightly and enthusiastically, with wit and insight. His books which are, as far as I can tell, for adults and children, are full of graphic jokes, overlays, reveals, and die-cuts. One of the first books I bought here in Milan was his Nella Nebbia di Milano (In the Fog of Milan), which is, coincidentally, dedicated to “Charlotte.” I remember holding it in my hands and feeling clearly that it was one of those signs that I was at the right place in the right time on my personal map.
But today, the first and last word belong to the little rubber monkey who popped up during Spring cleaning: “This life is to be enjoyed, starting now.” So, I’m off, to do just that. Not easy to do when tax preparation is on the docket, but we’ll give it our best shot.
Final note: The Triennale di Milano is now open also in New York at 40 West 53rd Street.
A small one-week feature on what happens when we clean our houses. What bubbles to the surface. What reveals itself to be true. What our junk says about our current state and next steps. What the season does to us.
Our houses aren’t the only houses that get cleaned this time of year. The bigger house—the city—gets cleaned up too. Here in Milan, for the past two weeks or more, crews have been scurrying around the parks pruning trees and bushes. My littlest always asks me: “What are they doing?” And I tell her that in the Spring, the trees need to have their hair cut. She accepts this explanation graciously, and we move on, admiring the stark new shapes that the trees present. I can’t resist photographing them. And so, here is one “BEFORE” picture (actually, it’s a tree that didn’t get pruned), followed by several “AFTER” images:
These are all sycamores—platani, in Italian. My favorite. I love their mottled, army-camouflage trunks and their white, bleached-bone branches. Trimmed like this, they have a post-apocolyptic look, but I adore it. They are unburdened by dead dry growth, ready for new. Lanky, angular and awkward like teenagers. All future. No past.
Whenever I look at them, I feel energized, refreshed. They are the antidote to my change-of-season ills. If they can do it—confront a new growing season, shed their dead weight, start again, renew themselves, have energy enough for everyone that sees them—so can I! I remember a poem that I loved in college, written by one of my favorite American poets:
Young Sycamore
I must tell you
this young tree
whose round and firm trunk
between the wet
pavement and the gutter
(where water
is trickling) rises
bodily
into the air with
one undulant
thrust half its height-
and then
dividing and waning
sending out
young branches on
all sides-
hung with cocoons
it thins
till nothing is left of it
but two
eccentric knotted
twigs
bending forward
hornlike at the top
—William Carlos Williams
The Daily Cure 