Summertime in Orvieto means lots of music. There are festivals of all sorts—strings, choral, classical, folk. One day a week or so ago, I noticed a poster for a choir coming to the duomo that advertised that they were going to sing some Bach and Palestrina. I’m a big fan of Palestrina, having sung his Sicut Cervus a million times at St. P’s, and I felt like it would be like a taste of home, so this Wednesday, the other 2 American girls and I went up to town for some pizza by the slice at my favorite pizza by the slice place, Il Capriccio.

The concert was nice; the choir was from Greenwich, and they did a Magnificat, a Stabat Mater, some Bach, a Brahms piece, an Ave, and then Harris, Klatzow and Holst. I was pleased to hear the Klatzow, since we had also done a little bit of his work in choir before, but I was disappointed they didn’t actually do any Palestrina.

It’s always nice to see a performance like that in the duomo. Last year we heard Mozart’s Requiem performed very well, making for quite a moving concert. In fact, last summer I wrote a poem about the concert. Here it is, if you’re interested:

August

Remember this:
Mozart’s requiem,
the kyrie’s crescendo rolling
dark and steady and long
like the Wyoming thunder
I heard when I was thirteen
in a field of blue and purple.

At twenty-one it is a Christe eleison
sighing like an abandoned lover,
an Ariadne waiting for her Theseus to
come to her. And (Christ, oh have mercy)
it is magical and fitting to end
such a thing with a farewell to the dead.

We dug them up, took them from their
stones, singing. We left our own
trail of dead—a temporary life of dirt
and terra cotta tiles and Etruscan red-figure.
They weren’t the dead we wanted,
but Christe eleison anyway.

We will only lose what we want
on that cold concrete floor of a cathedral
that took four hundred
years to build.
How many generations worked
so that their
children’s children’s children’s children
times almost infinity
could admire the INRI and the C major
chords that descend through the nave
and burst out of the heavy doors
into the piazza, where the four saints
stand guard and witness our lamentation
to our own dead,
to theirs.

This evening I learned a new hand gesture. Some of the students are from Le Marche, a region further south, near Puglia. (One told me that it was where the tourists began to go after the recession and Tuscany became too expensive.) Apparently, in the 19th century they had their share of witches who would make a horn sign (think Texas Longhorns or Rock On type of thing) and point both hands shaped as such at someone and curse them. Now, it’s used as a colloquial gesture that means a sort of joking “I’ll get you” type of thing.

I don’t even remember what I did yesterday. Oh yeah, Cerveteri. Amazing. Tons of tombs. It was eerie because I’d walk to the mouth of a tomb and because of the coolness of the tufo rock, there are a million gnats and flies, and all these flies would be buzzing like there were still bodies in the tombs, like it was a horror film or CSI, and that was grody, but then there would be a lot of butterflies outside, which reminded me of the ancient South American whoevers (Incans, maybe?) who believed that the soul was manifested as a butterfly after death. Or something, it’s very beautiful and poetic and I’m butchering it. Also, there were these 3 adorable kittens (I know, who is this, right? Im not a cat person!) and they were soooo cute and just hanging out in the slits of the rocks and near the tombs. We called them Etruscan kitties. Or even better, Etruskitties. Or Etruscats. I am just hilarious, aren’t I?

Today I went to Cortona. Very cute. I think it’s where they filmed Under the Tuscan Sun…it’s also very steep, as it is on a hill. A steep hill. I felt like I was trudging up the streets of San Francisco but with fewer cars and even fewer transvestites…The old people there are all super cute. They kind of just sit in the mornings, on their terraces or in the piazza. I didn’t notice all of them talking much, some of them just sat and were. I kind of like that.

Tomorrow I am going to Norchia (and Sovana again, but whatever, it was sweet) with a few folks and a prof from summer session. It’ll basically be four ridiculously nerdy Classics people going to our equivalent of Disneyland. Rad.

This morning we went to the Festival of St. John the Baptist (San Giovanni Batista) at San Lorenzo Nuovo. We parked near a chapel and walked down into the market, which was like a Thursday or Saturday market at Orvieto but on a much bigger scale. There were people of all ages buying things of all kinds. The first stand we stopped at was for Erika to buy some eel, which I did try later and did not care for much, but I tried it anyway. They had the sweets set out in big bins, licorice, candies, sweet dried fruits everywhere. There were porchetta vendors and bakers and tons of clothing stands, as well as garlic.
After buying cheese and bread and meat, Erika found the fried fish man. A small stand was set up under an umbrella where men stood around talking while they waited for the fresh batch of fish to come out of the frier. The vendor was pudgy and probably in his late thirties. He received a cell phone call while we were all waiting, and I watched him gesture in Italian even through the phone lines. When the fish came, it was hot, so hot he almost burned himself when he served it to the men ahead of us. A big bag full of tiny silver fish, about an inch to two inches long each, which he mixed with shrimp and breaded octopi. Everyone ate together in a cantina. The table we got was inside, luckily, and due to the stone walls, was very cool. We ate with our hands. I tried the fish; they were meant to be eaten whole, and when I heard this, Carol, one of the Americans, said to me in a slight Chicago accent: “Don’t think, just eat,” and she popped a few fish into her mouth. I followed suit, trying not to actually look at the fish, whose entire skeletons and eyes I was eating. They tasted pretty good, but I didn’t like the swallowing part, when the tail is just a tad too crunchy for me to pretend I’m eating something else.

Conversations floated around about politics, about the Civil War, about divorce rates, about vegetarianism. The wine was aleatico, a sweet red, one of my favorites from last semester. A family must have owned the cantina or bottled the wine; they stood by the entrance to the deeper part of the cantina tunnel, one of them with bright blue eyes. Satiated, we wandered back through the other part of the market, admiring the porcini mushrooms that seemed to come in all shapes and sizes. Strings of red garlic lay in a large heap next to two old gentlemen whose photos I tried to take without looking too conspicuous. I got a shot of my hand, instead.

The fireflies are out. It’s like God threw glow in the dark glitter into the sky around the house, in the forest, in the trees, in the road.

It is magic.

This past weekend started for my friends, as the Itlains would call it, a “casino.” What a mess. They were supposed to go to London for the weekend, but the Italians, in their infinite wisdom and sanity, decided to make Friday a day for striking. There were notices that public transportation would strike, the trains would strike, maybe teachers. And the baggage handlers. And those baggage handlers, while legally exercising their right to strike, created un gran casino for my friends. Exactly during the hours of their flight to London, those baggage handlers would strike their hearts out. No London. No H&M. No Pimm’s. Etc, etc.

So Friday, as consolation, we went to dinner and ate a really fine meal: pizza margherita, gnocchi, coca-cola to quench an American craving. And somehow, by divine providence, the waitress knew and asked, “Would you like fries with that?” So we got patate fritte and they were delicious! Ketchup and mayo and fries salted just right made the night. We were stuffed, but we got nutella crepes anyway.

The next day, after strong encouragement from Poppy, I looked up info for a day-trip to Civita di Bagnoregio.

I warn you, dear reader, that I am trying to make sure that the term “musical” in reference to amazing moments and experiences of beauty and indescribability (word?) does not become overused. I want it to retain its meaning and strength. So as the day progressed and we made it through the bus ride (through unbelievable autumnal Umbrian countryside) and then trekked through the deserted side of Bagnoregio to the bridge that crosses a valley into the Civita, “il paese che muore,” in which only 14 people reside, I was hesitant to deem the day truly musical. It had been great, sure, but not musical.

We had arrived during siesta, la pausa, that inconveniences any traveler that doesn’t realize Italians are serious about lunch and rest and closing up shop for a few hours. As such, we searched for food and at first were a bit worried: the first place we found was expensive and they were closing in 20 minutes…we crossed the bridge into the civita and walked through the arch that greets visitors, draped in redtoyellowtogold leaves. Piazza San Domenico, which was nothing but a church, was the first thing we saw, and on the left, a hanging sign: L’antico Forno. We walked in after looking at a moderately-priced menu and realized it was the B&B where Rick Steve’s had gone and fallen in love with. His photo with the owner and cook, Franco, graced the walls, as did yearly Christmas cards from the Steves’ family. We took a seat and soon Franco himself, warm and short and a bit tubby, took our orders. 2 types of bruschetta, pesto gnocchi, red wine, tiramisu and a chocolate cake later, we were the last diners in the small dining room. He chatted with us about the new Pinocchio movie they were filming…
(Me: “Ma Roberto Benigni gia’ ha fatto Pinocchio, si?”
Him: “Si, ma fa schiffo!”
Me: “Yeah, it didn’t do very well. Mai ho visto.”
Him: “Nessuno ha visto!”)
Bob Hoskins apparently is playing Gheppetto and Franco comes to us and says, “There is a famous American actor here, maybe you know of him?” I saw the photo and couldn’t place his name at first but then, “Wait…that’s! That’s! Yes! I know who that is! He’s really famous! He’s a good actor! It’s Smee!”

After eating and chatting and getting restaurant recs from Franco, etc. etc. we went in search of Bob Hoskins and the Pinocchio movie crew. We didn’t find them, but our brief exploration of the deserted town was eerie and fun. That meal and the friendliness shown to us by Franco made the day officially musical. We rode home on the 530 bus satisfied.

We also got to jump in crunchy, fallen leaves.

Sometimes I just have to take a second and stop and remember that I am living somewhere that people dream of going to and often never get the chance.

As we were driving into Rome yesterday for our fieldtrip I was sitting and listening to music and looking out the window and realizing once again that I was in Rome. Rome. One of the most important cities in the world, with some of the richest histories, in one of the most artistically influential countries civilization has known, both ancient and modern.

We went to the Capitoline museums and got to see works like The Dying Gaul and Cupid and Psyche and the so-called Brutus and the Capitoline wolf, etc. Google them if you’re unfamiliar…it’s just strange to go somewhere and see what you’ve always studied in your art books and they’re just there, hanging out on a pedestal and a in a slit of light is coming from the window and outside that window is Piazza Venezia and on the other side of the museum is the ruins of the Roman forum…

We encountered a rude, probably bitteraboutherlife guard…she accused me of taking a photo con flash (“Mi dispiace, ma non ho fatto con flash…”) and kicked a girl out of a room because she had a water bottle and then watched us the whole time we were looking at the rest of the works.

Then the forum. Yes, I’ve been there. But that was a few years ago and it was a bit hotter then and a bit more crowded and I think I appreciated it less, maybe. Maybe not, but in any case it was still stunning to take a break and sit on ancient rocks while our guide explained that this was not the senate where Caesar was murdered but that was somewhere else and this senate held 300 senators and then was later turned into a church (so much for the separation, eh? I guess they don’t have that here…)

I love that on the arch of Titus there is an old engraving, someone who had sold donuts years and years before and “Ciambele” is written, just barely visible, about 10 feet below the depiction of the procession with the spoils from Jerusalem…

Ploy and I ventured to find my cellphone charger, which I had left in Rome the previous week. We ate gelato and took a bus, not in that order…home around 6ish and dinner, etc. and I realize again that I am living in Italy and it’s not a dream and it’s almost over.