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The Arms of Venus
SICILY and ROME Labor Day Weekend 1999 C. Pedersen |
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Saturday Morning Palermo Airport, waiting to board. Had a glass of Marsala wine last night that tasted like a campfire in August: all smoky and smooth like a balmy evening after a scorching hot day. In the hotel bar someone sat down at the piano and started playing something just as sweet and sultry, and two waiters began dancing a mock-Tango. |
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At rush hour, small flatbed trucks piled high with
grapes queue up at the
winery. I stopped and took a photograph. One of the truck drivers, puzzled
as to why I would want such a picture, but pleased all the same, smiled for
the shot, or maybe just to let me know he was looking at me too. |
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"Palermo?" I said, pulling up next to him in my rented Alfa Romeo and gesturing thataway. "Palermo, si Palermo!" said he enthusiastically nodding his great gray head and pointing a gnarled hand. A background of sunrise over vineyard-covered hills. Hard to leave this place. |
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| Saturday
Evening Dinner, Piazza Navonna. I've been shopping. In reality I wish I could take all of Rome back home with me. Since that's not possible I'm buying as much as I can carry and afford (actually more than I can afford) to bring back. Although I have to say that my Christmas shopping is almost all done. An artist in the piazza was drawing a little girl. Magic - truly, they way he was doing it! A huge crowd stood pressing in to watch. He was drawing her from the top of the head down. Incredible. It was down to her eyes when I looked in. Perfect from hair down to eyes. |
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| I got a Venus de Milo statue on Via Bastioni - been wanting one of those for a while. Only twelve US dollars. The statuary salesman reminded me of the one from Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy. Jude's cousin (forget her name, but she's the one he is in love with the entire story) goes for a picnic in the countryside and a travelling salesman comes by and sells her two pagan statues, (a male and a female though I can't remember which ones). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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She goes home to her room at the convent where she's living and hides the nude figures under some kind of cloth, but of course they are discovered by one of the nuns and she gets in big trouble. The whole story is about how she and Jude are passionately in love with each other, but always trying to be virtuous (read chaste). I don't think it's made clear whether they ever consummate their love for one another. Anyway, it was supposed to be "the novel that shook Victorian England" and some people say it marks the end of the Victorian era of literature. Anyway, poor Thomas Hardy, moralist critics made such a stink about it that he never wrote another novel. Did write some poetry after that though. Anyway, I have this Venus statue, and prayed a secret
prayer for her not
to kick my ass. To hold me gently. In the novel The Hundred Secret
Senses (Amy Tan), Kwan says something like "Love not like money. He love
her more, you less, that what you think" Reminds me again of Percy Bysshe
Shelley, and I have more patience with him, for the moment, and his
theories on love, which I have often made fun of. The weather is iffy.
Just heard thunder. |
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| Sunday
Morning Are those bullet holes in the top of the Pantheon? This edifice! The view of it has dropped my jaw in awe. Not just the age of it, though that is truly impressive, but just the majesty of its presence! This whole piazza is great. The fresco of Mary (I think it's Mary) on the side of a building framed by these amazing moldings. I'd like to see (or make!) a map of Rome as a palimpsest. The way you see diagrams of the human body in health encyclopedias: layers of transparency: one for each system, bones to skin, but Rome would be architectural achievements by era, this period, then that period, adding on. |
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| Above the door to the Pantheon: "Indulgentia plenaria quotidiana perpetua pro vivis et defunctis." Indulgences, many of them every day, enjoy, because life is short, pal, I think is the gist of it (I could be off here though). I wish I knew Latin better - it makes everything seem so profound. The Pantheon seems to have been appropriated by the Catholic Church - Out with the damnable pagans! Still, statuary from all ages and sages is on sale just outside the door - Venus, David, Primavera, Pieta, Moses (though Moses appears to have horns on his head, the vendor tells me those are a sign of wisdom.) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Inside
the Pantheon. Three black-caped figures, somber as the guards at
Buckingham Palace, guard what seem to be the remains of Umberto I of
Italy. (Reading his name from the sign. No idea who he isbut obviously
important to someone.) I have to look at the guards a few moments to be
sure they are not made of wax. On the other side of the rotunda, another group of guards watches over the bones of Vittorio Emmanuel II (Padre de Patria). I know that means father of the country but how and when he got the title, I'll have to look up later. These three guards are showing reassuring signs of humanity, bouncing a little on the balls of their feet, looking a little bored. I appreciate this fidgetiness. At the Church of St. Ignatzio. I came to see this ceiling I heard about. The subject seems to be angels throwing the disbeliveers out of heaven. While these handsome people - all men, interestingly, are being tossed out - muscular men, with only swaths of cloth billowing around their unmentionables - the angels, all actually very muscular women, brandish swords and spears. There are other men, further up in heaven, but they only seem to be calmly pondering theological issues and having mild discussions with their compatriots. So one could interpret it to mean that the women are the ones who decide who's out and who's in, while they themselves remain on the border, neither out nor in. Hmm, disturbing. Let's get off that train of thought at the next station. I'm trying to figure out what shape the ceiling actually is. There are a lot of terrific 3-D effects going on, making the ceiling seem much higher than it actually is. It's Sunday morning, so some people are in fact here to pray. An organ plays unobtrusively. The Trevi Fountain. Too crowded with tourists. The sun is bright now; it's noon. I want to take a photo but feel I cannot capture the size and splendor. I want to go home and read the story of how it was built. Who commissioned it, etc. I asked a man standing next to me if he knew, but he was less knowledgeable about the fountain than I, and more interested in my phone number and the whereabouts of my hotel. Michaelangelo portrays the male form with such grace and beauty. I could just about eat all three of them. The Spanish Steps. I've made it. Hot, irritable, hungry, disappointed. A baby is crying inconsolably, the next tier up. I'm looking across at the Keats/Shelley memorial house, a faded salmon in color, with a charming tile roof. I'm disappointed because I saw on the door that just as of recently it is open on Saturdays too, not just Monday through Friday. So I could've come here yesterday, instead of having raced through the crowded Vatican and Sistine Chapel. (Why don't they put revolving seats in there, tilted way back like a planetarium, moving like the Haunted House at Disneyland - it would be much more orderly - not like the ostensibly religious throng pushing one another: "I want to see God! No, me first!") Had a rash of feeling inadequate when I was at the Vatican Museum. There weren't very good labels on most things and felt I should be able to guess what period, what story was represented. Felt as though they weren't labeled properly because everyone else would already know automatically. Probably in true Catholic form, they want you to turn to an ordained expert to explain it all to you. Someone who has a direct line to God's own stored knowledge of art and history. I was just wishing yesterday for a little booth I could go into and beg forgiveness from some anonymous person with a soft toned voice for not recognizing every piece of artwork in the place. ("You are forgiven my child, say three Hail Marys and read four encyclopedias.") The sun is full and bright, it's awfully hot. I don't know why I am loath to sit and eat at a restaurant. Guess I don't want to feel I'm wasting my daylight hours. Every vacation comes to this feeling - that one hasn't made enough of it. It's as bad as dying. Anyway same idea. Lots of desires, not enough time. Cum ferus feris. Engraved in stone above a snarling animal (wolf?) above a door, across from the Caf Academia where I got the Marsala wine. I think it means something like 'Wild things are wild,' but can't be sure. One day Latin will start to sink in. After the forty ninth time I take it maybe. I've only had it two years, and after all, they were separated by almost a decade. At the restaurant. Seeing all those people on the Spanish Steps, and that group of men standing in the doorway of the Keats/Shelley house was like coming to pay respects at your friend's grave and finding a bunch of strangers there playing cards, drinking and laughing and talking loud. |
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| Today's midday meal: olives and bread, proscuitto and melon, spaghetti a la carbonara, (with eggs and bacon - too cheesy, I barely touched it) and saltimboca - the crowning glory of the meal! White wine and sage sauce to die for. Also started with an "aperto," bright red in color, served with the rim of the class covered in sugar. Gold table cloths again. This time a winnie-the-pooh yellow sort of gold. I like the two table cloth idea. One to change, one to keep. White on top means you could bleach it. Ready for a nap now. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sicily made me wish I could draw better. As a way of seeing better. Photographs capture an image without ever having to really look at the subject. This is why drawings and paintings are better than photos. Especially thinking of that man last night at Piazza Navonna, drawing the little girl. That was much better than a photograph. Looked as realistic as a Black and White photo, but more alive, more magical. Some of those old buildings in Sicily, just crumbling in the middle of a field, they must've dated to the Roman Empire. Maybe before. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sunday Evening Am dining in a somewhat dingy restaurant. Was drawn in by a statue of Venus by the door, presiding over a small pool with live goldfish, and mollusk shells someone must've found on their trip to the ocean. I'm the only one here, which makes me a little nervous, the only one besides the husband and wife who run the place, and their eleven-year-old daughter. I'm sitting by the stairwell; an odd smell is wafting up from below. A family of four came and sat down a few tables away, so I was momentarily relieved, but they got up and left again before ordering anything. Trying to remember when Venus de Milo is thought to have been sculpted. Seems to me she was dug up on an island (Milo) accidentally by some farmer tilling his fields, and is of uncertain origin as far as the era. I like to think she is Greek (though wouldn't she then be called Aphrodite of Milo?) I tend to think the Greeks had better artistic sense than the Roman engineers. |
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| My bruchette with tomato just showed up. I don't think this place will poison me. Thinking about Socrates's discourse on love, via Diotima, in Plato's Symposium. Half rich, half poor, love is. Constantly slipping between a wealthy identity and an impoverished one. The music overhead is sad and cheesy. The dcor colors are primarily this pinky salmon (walls, tablecloths, napkins) with aqua color for the over-top tablecloths. The ceiling is high and arched, and painted a shade of that Roman mustard-gold I've been seeing everywhere. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Two fake ivies hang from the ceiling in macram hangers; a third fake plant (ficus look-alike) stands in an alcove. Almost all the artwork has been done by the same artist. Five canvases, about five or six feet long and three feet high. Screen prints, closeups of aquatic life, cut at odd places. A fish eye, fin, body (no nose or tail) swimming in coral. That's the best one. The others are still shots of aquatic plants, all close up, larger than life. Flowers. Sort of a muted, underwater Georgia O'Keefe. Cheesy, but not without a certain kitschy garage-sale appeal. My seafood risotto has just appeared. Nothing spectacular, but the parsley is fresh. The most striking thing about this place is a large vase - if you could call it that - you might also call it a jar, or a pot, or a vessel - standing to one side of the room, at the other side of the mouth of the stairwell from where I'm sitting. Anyway, it stands about as high as my hip. I'd judge it's about three feet wide at its widest point. The mouth is probably one and a half feet wide. Its coloring is irregular - looks to've been dug up from the same hole as Venus. I ask the waiter about it. "Where's it from?" "From the sea. Is very, very old." "How old? Do you know?" "Maybe seven, eight hundred" he trails off. He has to mean seven, eight hundred AD. People can't have been making pots like that seven or eight hundred years ago. Can they? I have to appreciate the consistency of the Venus/feminine/ocean theme throughout. (Venus is the daughter of Poseidon, god of the sea, if I'm remembering right). I think I already had the world's best gelato today at lunch, so there's no hope of matching that. Italian women - the styles of speaking and dressing, the particular expressions of femininity, I can see a connection here with Italian-American women I know at home. Their boldness. I think women are the real leaders of the Italian family, maybe any family, I don't know, but the power of women is very obvious here. When I say boldness I mean in the way of dressing, showing one's body, also in speaking - loudly - to one another and to the men. I have felt sort of disregarded, in a few instances, by women, in the past few days. The same phenomenon I've been noticing at home - especially since I've just started working at a new place - the way women selectively ignore women they consider threatening or of no use to them. Whereas men are more inclined to be solicitous on some level, even gay men, in their interactions with women. It's so maddening sometimes, the way women treat women. And boring. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| A few other customers have shown up in the course of the meal. Prices in all the restaurants are in Euro Dollars and Lire. I wonder if it would have been beneficial to change my money into Euro Dollars (anyway, I would have been able to use them again, in their same form, if I had to go to any other country in the line of duty.) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You don't get the bill until you wave the waiter down and specifically ask for it. I like this whole idea of dining being a long, drawn-out experience. Gelato is the food of the gods. The one in front of me is again the big, cold truffle. Similar to the one I had a lunch. They roll it in some kind of fabulous chocolate powder - semi-sweet, fine. I liked the street I walked down this afternoon on my way back from the other side of the river. Via Magno Pompeo / Via Germanico. Very residential. The street, the sidewalk, the gate and the fence, then a smaller garden or tiled area, then the door to the house. There was a lot of ivy type plants spilling tendrils over the walls toward the sidewalk. Also lots of palm trees growing inside the small yard. Or geranium or other kind of plant I don't know the name of and have rarely seen in New Jersey. Flowering, green. This place is much warmer than NJ all year round. Seems closer to Florida or maybe Georgia, semi-tropical. "I'm a Great Big Girl in a Great Big World" (words from the music playing overhead). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Monday Morning
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