Tag: europe

Density

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I’m riding a tour bus through the streets of Naples. If you’ve never been to Naples, put it on your list.  I’m riding the bus with—that’s a good question.  Who am I riding the bus with?  I don’t have a term for this type of relationship.   We’ll call her Rosa.  Once, we were married to brothers, so you might say she is my sister-in-law.  But the brothers are dead, and the one that was once my husband has been dead for so long that I now have another husband, so who am I riding the bus with?  I could say she’s my friend, which would be somewhat true, but also somewhat false.  You choose your friends, but Rosa and I didn’t choose each other.  We are family, but I no longer have a name for how.  We did choose to take this trip to Naples together, though, and to get on this bus.

Castello dell’Ovo, Naples

The port, the castles, the zillion churches, and beeping herds of motor scooters are zooming by us on all sides and I think, “What a shame Pio didn’t get to bring me to Naples.  He would have loved that.”  Then a little giggle bubbles up inside me as I realize OF COURSE Pio brought me to Naples.  Why else would I be on this bus with Rosa, listening to the Italian guide channel, humming along to the songs?  How else could this have happened?   And I feel quite delighted.

It’s cheaper when only one of you has to buy a plane ticket, a bus ticket, and pizza.  It’s easier when only one of you has to figure out how to be gone from work.  One of us is more of a particle (that would be me) and one of us is more of a wave, now.  One of us is denser and the other lighter. 

It’s easier, in ancient cities, to feel less bound to things like time.  It’s easier, after you live through a death, to feel less bound to things like density.  I love to consider the fact that everything is mostly made up of nothing, anyway.  That atoms are mostly “empty” space, so that what “is” and what “isn’t” are more the same than different.  When I say I “love to consider” that, I mean it literally.  I love to sit with it and try to feel it, try to imagine it.  Tangible, imaginary, present, past, future…are all made up almost entirely of the same material.  The difference is negligible.

All of that is very lovely.  But in the evening Rosa turns the tv on and all of the sudden the world is full of war and inconceivable suffering.  Which doesn’t feel at all like the peaceful nothing of empty space where time is a big pond you can swim in.  How can all of this be possible, simultaneous?

I don’t know. One minute I’m on a tour bus humming along to “O Sole Mio” and the next minute I am aware of the apocalypse that is also happening. 

We had a fantastic view of Vesuvius from the second story of the bus.  How in the name of common sense can so many people be living so close to this enormous volcano?  All of us know what volcanoes are capable of and all of us know that Vesuvius is not to be trusted.  Even though lava and crumbling buildings are mostly made of nothing, I wouldn’t like to be beneath either one of them. 

Ironies are everywhere.

On the subject of war and exploding volcanos, I don’t think it’s actual death that I am afraid of.  I’m already mostly made of nothing.  I’m afraid of suffering.  Of pain.  That small percentage of particle that is physical and can feel sensations changes everything.  At all cost, I don’t want it to be cut, burned, crushed.

Let’s not talk about that anymore.  Let’s get back on the bus.  Let’s not look at Vesuvius.  Let’s admire the Castello dell’Ovo.  How it sits between the land and the sea for 2000 years.  Let’s think about how 8 years can go by after your husband dies and how both of your spirits go through a transition.  And then both of you are ok.  Different, but quite alright.  And the castle is full of tourists, not knights in armor, and the ocean still laps at its feet.

Rosa and I get off the bus and are walking back to the hotel, trying not to get run over by motor scooters.  Her husband has only been dead for 4 years and she still fights it.  The suffering makes her denser, it seems to me, and further from the lightness that is everything.   Our lives have been so different that we are an inconceivable pair. 

I’d like to sit at a table by the street after getting off the bus and have a cold drink—a Spritz, to be exact. I would ponder the castle and pray to Vesuvius to be nice.  But Rosa wants to go to the hotel room to lie down.  I wouldn’t mind sitting at a table “alone,” but I decide to go with her.  The dead brothers would appreciate that.  I can have a Spritz another day.  Besides, I have writing to do.

La Pigna

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Medieval cities sound romantic.  They are stunning, quaint, and mysterious from the outside.  Inside, their rooms, however, are rather dark and cold.  It makes sense.  The windows are made to let in enough light so that people didn’t bump into each other or suffocate.  In the times before glass, I guess, luminous interior spaces were not a thing.

               Here in my mini apartment in the citta’ vecchia of Sanremo, I have a window and the window has a view of other windows.  The neighbors, luckily, are a little more private than I am, and I guess more used to dark chilly spaces.  I pulled a chair over from the little table and sat it up against the mini refrigerator.  The space is so small that my feet are sticking out the window.  A patio would have been nice, but there aren’t a lot of patios in medieval cities either.  The apartments with terraces were out of my budget.

               Not all of Sanremo is medieval, just the part called La Pigna (“pinya”) but I wanted to stay here.  It seemed romantic, quaint, and mysterious.  And I wouldn’t say that in that regard it has been a disappointment.  It’s also chilly and a very steep hike in all directions from the door.  I like it.  Next time, though, I’ll choose something with more light.

               My stepdaughter Kiara lives here.  We grew up together, kind of.  She’s beautiful, confident, and 26 years old—a force to be reconned with.  Being a step parent is not the easiest thing I’ve ever done.  There is a lot of pride-swallowing involved in the beginning, and opinions you get to keep to yourself, and things you just have to breathe through because that’s the best/only option.  But it isn’t easy for the children either, and they are children and you are the adult.  So you get to suck it up. The good news is that happy endings are possible.  Case in point. You might get to visit medieval cities overlooking the Medeterranean Sea.

               Tomorrow we are taking the train to France together for the day.  Who would have thought?  When she was little, we collected clams from the beach on Sunday mornings, and raked mango leaves out of the yard, and puzzled over how to add and multiply fractions.

               You can sleep deeply in medieval cities.  The stone walls block everything from street noise to wifi.  I’m not one who minds sleeping in rooms where others have been born and died.  It seems to me that, among other things, that’s what houses are for.

               Homes in general are small in Italy–smaller than in the USA anyway. Italy is small and if people weren’t tidy, it would be unlivable.  There are no extra spaces, no extra things, and every object has a place it belongs.  Tidiness is knit into the fabric of how people live their lives.  For as much as Italy is known for chaos, daily life is made of processes of order and correctness. Although, I admit, I haven’t been to Napoli yet. That’s next week’s trip.

               By now, a hot day is under way above the medieval city, but my feet sticking out the window (an egregious violation of order and tidiness) are cold.  I’ll pull the shutters closed over the window now, put on my shoes, and head down the stone stairs that are the public street until I reach the Mediterranean.  People have done exactly that right here for 1000 years.  And in 1000 more I expect they still will. 

I like the sound of my footsteps blending with theirs.