il macellaio

tearing it up, endlessly analyzing the infinite possible interpretations in your mind, that's a waste of time, he said. the melody, the harmony of poetry is something you feel in your gut.

dario cecchini had very large hands and a collection of appropriately large knives. the wall of his shop read 'chi mangia la fiorentina unnà paura di nulla.' he who eats a steak alla fiorentina fears nothing. this is also written on his business card, which encourages prospective clients to make an appointment. dario cecchini is a butcher.

the shop was decorated with an incredible diversity of elegant art. restored antique furniture was balanced against wild modern sculpture. next to some of these latter pieces were silly sketches by the sculptors, made on the shop's own butcher paper. in the corner, a heavy door with a window looked into the stainless steel cooler: there were six sides of beef hanging on enormous hooks, and more chains hung down, waiting. already wrapped, cuts of pork, veal, and boar peeked out of the drawers in a plastic chest. in the corner chilled a stained white bucket, half full of unidentifiable innards.

behind the elegant curve of the glass display case, there was a small scale, piles of butcher paper, and an old machine that seemed capable of vacuum sealing a vespa. we were there after hours; the case was empty and spotless except for a few sheets of paper set parallel on the steel display platters - orders phoned and faxed in, notes to the two apprentices. next to the case, right out on the floor of the shop, was a wooden table about waist high. the legs were 4x4s, and the surface was 18 inches thick, curving slightly on the bottom. three feet long and two feet wide, it was half a tree: the surface was a hundred dark dents and in the center, a shallow worn into the wood by the rocking of a heavy blade. the block shone, greased with the fat of bones. i couldn't stop staring at it, and cecchini said simply, 'i made that.'

in addition to having this exclusive and impeccably decorated butcher shop, signore cecchini owns and runs a restaurant across the street that is open 3 nights a week and has no menu. you eat what he brings you. and until recently, if you caught him at the right time and in the right mood, he would recite sonnets of 13th and 14th century vulgar tuscan poets and hundreds of lines from dante's inferno before going back into his locker to hang hundreds of pounds of top-quality beef on stainless steel hooks.

but signore cecchini doesn't do dante anymore. he feels that roberto benigni and other italian actors have made dante a commodity. it's fashionable to recite dante now in soccer stadiums. or, benigni recites a canto on television and the next day every italian bookstore is sold out of the comedy, only so those books can gather dust on another set of shelves. signore cecchini is also a showman, no doubt: even while we were being introduced he threw out a wide variety of tuscan cuss words, trying to shock and alienate the theorists from the university, the people who want to take what is sacred to him and show it the self-indulgent saw of literary theory.

i asked signore cecchini if there was a connection in his mind between his love of poetry and the work that he does with his hands, tearing up animal bodies with his huge hands and his huge knives. he said, 'listen, i'm not a dante scholar, a dantista. i'm a butcher. i think that poetry is something that the soul needs to be healthy, and the only way i know how to approach poetry is to learn it by memory, to feel the words in my gut and then, from there, to speak them out loud.'

dario cecchini is relatively famous in italy and even abroad for his odd combination of callings. he has appeared on 'the today show.' this notoriety allows him to request his clients to make appointments, to serve whatever he wants at his restaurant, and to make a sack of money doing it. it could be argued that, to some extent he too has sold out, using poetry as a way to compliment and enrich himself. he doesn't seem to mind the attention it brings him.

but i want to let this butcher have his ego and his success. not because only very few butchers jump up on their counters to recite poetry for their customers and neighbors, but because all butchers know about bodies, about how much they weigh. and because all butchers cut themselves sooner or later. cecchini's reaction to this latest commodification of dante seemed almost physical, as if hearing dante torn up and sold for 50€ a seat gave him the same pain as seeing a choice cut ground up for goulash, or nicking a finger with one of his cleavers. swearing at us, refusing to recite in public, it was as if he was instinctively pressing this wound with his unmarked hand, or sticking the bleeding finger in his mouth.

why does it feel so right to do that, anyway? it makes us seem more animals than enlightened beings. and maybe that's the point. he may reject complex interpretations, he may cuss and stomp and make a little scene, and it may have all been part of the performance, the act - but i bought it: for cecchini, poetry has weight. he feels it in his bones, feels it running in his veins. to see it be made into a fad, sold on the auction block for cheap; that cuts him, and deep.

three

1. buon harry potter

tonight i went with some friends to see harry potter 5 e l'ordine della fenice at the multiplex. on the ride there, i got a phone call. at the end of the conversation, my interlocutor signed off saying 'ci vediamo domani, buon harry potter.' now, the sense of this was totally clear and translates perfectly into english as 'see you tomorrow, enjoy harry potter.' but literally (i find literal translations so very much fun), the phrase renders as 'we'll see each other tomorrow, happy harry potter.' italians wish each other 'buon compleanno' and 'buon natale' - happy birthday and merry christmas, respectively, and that's familiar enough to a native english speaker - but they also feel so free to use 'buon' with almost any noun. the textbook example is 'buon divertimento,' which literally translates as 'happy [as in happy birthday] - happy fun time.' and so, tonight, we took it to the next level, and i'd like to send out those same wishes to the virtual community tonight: God bless us every one: merry harry potter.

2. the conditional past

to continue the grammar thread, while recently reading the end of an italian short story, it really jumped out to me that the whole paragraph was in the conditional past. and so it seems, despite my best efforts to the contrary, that i am becoming an adult. just making sure we're all on the same page, there are three types of hypothetical phrases in italian. the present: if x happens, then i do/will do y; the possible: if x were to happen, i would do y; and the impossible: if x had happened, i would have done y. and let me interject here that hypothetical phrases are my personal everest of the italian language, my personal standard of fluency. if i ever am irritated with someone, bring my hands together as if in prayer and rock them at the wrists and bust out a hypothetical phrase without effort, i will be celebrating at the summit baby.

in the 'impossible' variety above, 'i would have done y' is an example of the conditional past. if the conditions had been different, i would have made a different choice. but that's impossible. there's no turning back. the conditional past is grammar's recognition that our choices have consequences, that these choices matter, and that time travel doesn't exist: past choices can rarely be undone. with all this in my head, reading the last paragraph of that story, i surprised myself by saying, 'oh SHIT!'

3. jogging part II

although it's been very hot, i've been running more and more. this is partly because exercise helps me unwind and work out the stress of my projects, not knowing when it's appropriate to address someone formally or informally, and continually attempting and failing to construct correct hypothetical phrases. but it's also because i want to sort of stay in shape, and i don't want to eat less, so i have to run more.

weeks ago i was talking with one of the neighbors who is a runner and he asked me about my route. i told him i go down to the roundabout, over the bridge, and then loop back through a rather industrial area. he looked at me incredulous, his disgust completely unmasked. that part of town? it stinks! and he made a move as though to hold his nose. i run for an hour down at the park. why don't you run there? i shrugged. well, angelo, because...i don't like running in a small circle and i like to be surrounded by heavy machinery when i work out, ok? there, i thought it. i couldn't figure out why he was so up in arms about it.

so, it's taken me weeks, but i may have had an insight into this. and may be an insight into other italian mysteries such as 'why do people wear such nice clothes and sunglasses all the time?' and 'why do people always bring coffee to the table on a tray?' if i probe angelo a little more next time i see him, i bet he would translate his disdain for running on the wrong side of the tracks as 'you run there? that's 45 minutes of your life - you could be having an experience that would be so much more aesthetic than that!' it comes as no surprise that italians are sensitive to beauty. i mean, they have some of that here. but what impresses me is the tenacity of their commitment to it in the most quotidian arenas. you're going to the store? why not put on your new shoes? some jackass american kid is coming over? why not use the best china? every moment is an opportunity to experience something beautiful - why not take another five minutes of thought and planning to make the afternoon something to write home about?

il crudo sasso

monday morning i left early from arezzo and took a train/bus north to stia, a small hamlet in the casentino valley. i walked from the station to the Castello di Porciano, of which only a single tower and a lone wall remain. but on the north side, the stone that remains was covered with a blanket of ivy that moved slowly from a green that was almost black in shadow through a fire orange into a deep blood red. i don't know what has caused this change in color: it's still july (even in italy), and why is the only west side so eager to get on with autumn?

i took some pictures for the dante project, then talked to an old man at the fountain. he was filling up a blue plastic watering can and had four more patiently waiting, their long spouts all in a row. he was very inviting when i asked if i could fill my water bottle. he gave me directions to the trailhead where i could start up towards monte falco, one of the high peaks of this region and of in the appenine mountain range. i'll gloss over that part of the journey, suffice it to say that it was steep and took a long time. when i came out of the oak forest into this little bald meadow at the top, to my left was all of eastern italy. the appenines run down the spine of the italian peninsula, and on a clear day, they say you can see all the way to the tyrrenian sea, and from monte falterona (the peak just to the east), you can see to the adriatic. really fantastic, even with a little haze.

from there i followed the appenine ridge for about 15 km until i more or less slid down the eastern side to the sacred hermitage and monastery at camaldoli. i spent two nights there in the guest house of the monastery, where i had a cell to myself. this made me very happy, despite the fact that the bed was about 4 inches too short. after walking more or less 30km, i slept great. tuesday i ambled in the forest and chilled out by the little brooks that dante describes running down the mountain; at a pasture hidden in the forest, i stood shyly at the fence while two horses nibbled at hay from my open palm.

in the afternoon and evening i sat in on two sessions of a national conference on liturgy. i heard an architect's fascinating talk about the centrality of the altar, how the altar defines a church as 'lo spazio in attesa,' the space in waiting. space waiting to be actualized, made into a place.

yesterday i left camaldoli shortly after 6, taking a different path to the southeast towards la verna, the summer retreat of St. Francis of Assisi and the site of a beautiful monastery that sits on what dante calls 'il crudo sasso' - the raw rock. that seemed pretty spot-on to me: approaching through the forest, there were huge boulders everywhere, covered in moss and jutting out of the ground like impacted teeth. i don't know much about geology, but from the extreme angles of the striations in these stones, the area seemed like the place tectonic plates come to party. either that, or it is the scrap heap of the LORD.

rising out of the canopy, the forbidding surface of the largest boulder was chosen by Francis and his closest followers as the site of their retreat. at the time, they simply spent the summer months each crouched in his own hovel. standing beside the site of francis' first cave, one of the friars explained that it was chosen for him by his brothers as the most luxurious: only a little rain would come in when it was windy. a nice gesture; it is always windy.

il crudo sasso figures prominently in francis' hagiography as the place he received the stigmata, the spontaneous appearance of the wounds of Christ on his hands and feet. i knew that. i did not know, as padre gildo explained, that in the last years of his life St. Francis wanted only two things: first, to know in his heart the love that Christ had for all people. and secondly, to know the pain that Christ experienced on the cross. i don't know how to react to that.

falcons

party people (and those who would not identify as 'party people'):

this is the casentino valley, which follows the route of the arno river south from its source in the appenines towards arezzo. this is twilight. this is gherardo, who goes to art school by day and by night is one of italy's most accomplished falconiers. and this is a falcon. in italian, un girifalco grigio.

last night i found myself at gherardo's house chatting with his parents and drinking coca-cola, watching as gherard set his two prize falcons free to float about on the evening air, watching him swing a logoro - a length of cord with a baby chick tied to a weight on the end, watching the falcons scream down from on high to claw the chick to shreds in midair. their rear claws (which correspond to human thumbs, i suppose), are muscular and the talon is longer and much more intimidating than the others, which were already considerably intimidating. at the last possible moment, the falcon's feet drop down from their aerodynamic tuck to thrust these rear claws into their prey. when i saw this happen in living color, the force of the falcon's descent and the strength of the claws ripped the chick's head off.

it was awesome.

as gherardo eloquently explained, falconry has been an art since the middle ages, with rich traditions in the west and in asia. the logoro he used with the chick was a western design, but gherardo also showed us a logoro that falconers have been using in pakistan for centuries. a length of flexible cane with string on the end, it allowed gherardo to simulate the flight of smaller birds by using a real bird's wing instead of a weight at the end of the cord. he handled the cane with practiced grace; his motion reminded me of flyfishermen. then, he reached into a small pouch at his belt and pulled out another chick, which he pulled apart with his bare hands, throwing pieces to the falcon, who caught them in the air.

it was awesome.

although gherardo has established an obvious intimacy with the birds that he's had for a long time, he was very frank about using hunger as a means to keep his new acquisitions close. the falcon comes back because of the chick, whether he tears it to pieces or whether gherardo does the job for him. in the end, that only increased my appreciation for what these falcons are capable of. birds of prey seem to be machines of desire. when they flew towards their prey, it was as if every feather was perfectly aligned towards their aim, as if every atom of their bodies were drawn effortlessly along their line of sight.

tomorrow i'm going up to camaldoli, a benedictine monastery in the northern casentino valley, and on wednesday i'll be at la verna, St. Francis of Assisi's summer refuge. thinking of the falcons, it makes more sense why monks everywhere take a vow of poverty, and why perhaps St. Francis, who spoke of 'lady poverty' as his beloved, was able to revolutionize the church in his brief lifetime. i don't know if it's 'right' to deprive falcons of food to bind them to you. i've tried to starve a few girls into liking me, and it didn't work very well.

but watching those falcons, i felt free. the grace with which they moved their wings to catch the currents, the speed and control with which they approached, the ferocity of their attack: the air is their element, and they can do almost anything they want up there. being in the presence of that power, i felt a part of it. but also because it's slowly becoming real to me that my desires are my own, that i can make choices. i don't intend to take any eternally binding and highly uncomfortable vows in the next few days, but i want to take a long look at these monks, who have pointed every fiber of their being toward their desire and are living in the consequences. to be really free, does one have to choose to live in desire?

hot bodies

hello, it's 00:20, and i am sitting in arezzo. i should go to bed, but the last two days are worthy of description, so here we are:

i spent yesterday more or less around the house labelling photos for the dante project and typing up a translation of a mario rigoni stern story that i'll finish tomorrow. around 16:30, i put on some clothes and walked in to the center of town, where i met up with a local poet and high school latin teacher with whomi had chatted a few times last year. she was going to give a lecture in nearby monterchi, comparing the work of two painters: in this corner, from 15th century san sepolcro, piero della francesca; trading uppercuts and color palattes with with the 20th century florentine ottone rosai. taking advantage of the opportunity to salute her, listen to some italian, and see some art all in one swing, i was going to check it out. i was getting a ride with her and her husband. it was very, very hot.

the ride to monterchi bordered on the surreal. i don't have time to do justice to the complexity of the personalities involved, but there were three principal players, plus me: professoressa verde, made-up to the max, expressing her anxiety about her lecture by confirming a series of superfluous details over her cell-phone. her husband, francesco, smoking incessantly, expressing his anxiety that we were running late. every 2 minutes, he would set his jaw and announce the time, followed by our expected arrival time in monterchi. with the interaction between these two characters alone, i was already primed for a spectacle. we left 10 minutes behind schedule, only for professoressa verde to realize 5 minutes into our 45 minute drive that we had forgotten a friend of hers from the previously mentioned provincial government, to whom she had also promised a ride. and so, another rapid, pointed telephone call. the woman was on her bicycle, on a nearby street. we would turn around and pick her up.

prof.ssa verde gave her husband a brief description of this alessandra as we went in search of her. she's passionate about art, specifically piero della francesca. she works at the provincia. she's taking classes at the university. she's a little...spaced out. she's rather fat. and there she was, waving at us eagerly on the sidewalk, next to her dilapidated bicycle. a brown skirt and leopard print top were stretched across her generous build. as she settled herself very close to me in the back seat, she chattered away; beads of sweat collected on her upper lip. somewhere in the middle of the unfiltered narrations of her consciousness, she made my acquaintance. no, really, the pleasure was mine.

over the next 45 minutes, prof.ssa verde became more and more nervous about her talk, and now having no one else to call, she turned to the two bodies in the back seat. she delicately took a book from her purse and did an impromptu commentary on some of the verses she herself had written inspired by these two painters. she encouraged me to buy her book after the lecture. alessandra kept interrupting with the most far-fetched mental associations ('listen, you know what comes to mind...?'); francesco was clearly furious about our continued state of tardiness and that this fat lady in the back seat - the reason we were so late in the first place - wouldn't shut up and let his wife read her damn poems. and all the while, it was very, very hot.
the sweat pooled precariously above alessandra's lips and then ran down into the folds of her neck.

today i got up at 6 and caught a bus to the marina di grosseto on the adriatic sea, italy's west coast. my host family has been there on holiday for the last 2 weeks and i went down for the day to be with them and take a dip. the beach was narrow and crowded, but the water was beautiful. i swam out to the buoy and floated there, looking back at all the people under their umbrellas, walking along the edge of the water, splashing each other. summer in italy is a celebration of the human body. every woman wore a bikini, regardless of age or physical fitness. every man over 25 wore a speedo. there were bellies that spilled generously over waistbands, thighs that slapped against each other. old women sunned their shoulders, their tops arranged in ways that tempted physics.

and i have to tell you, every body was beautiful. the sun was high and the water calm and blue all the way to elba. many of these families have been coming to this beach their whole lives for a few weeks in july or august. and it is very, very hot. what a wonderful freedom, to lay down your weight and have the sea take it. to come back under the umbrella, and read the afternoon away in magazines.

immigrant girl

hello, i'm back in arezzo this morning after four days on the road to the north and east. i was in bologna, verona, padova, and ravenna taking pictures for the dante project. the mosaics in ravenna are really mind-boggling (the area above and around the small altar in San Vitale has over 400,000 individual tiles), and a youth hostel there was my home base.

as i arrived on monday evening to check in, the carabinieri drove up. i was slightly concerned: unlike the polizia, who write parking tickets, the carabinieri are military police whose uniforms are a very serious shade of navy and whose sidearms are not attached to their belts by a little elastic cord. i was not the reason for their visit, however: as i was chatting with the saucy blonde running the place, they brought a dark-skinned and dishevelled girl from the back seat of the car into the hostel. once inside, the driver of the car spoke with the proprietess. this officer seemed to spend his spare time lifting small automobiles into the air and biting the heads off small vermin or unattended infants. tiredly, he explained that they had found the girl wandering in the middle of the road; she had no where to go. as he was speaking, she seemed ashamed of herself. she stared at the floor. she pulled a carefully preserved romanian passport out of her large fanny pack. the saucy blonde's gaze chilled and she sighed. there was a bed for her, she could stay.

ravenna is a port city on the northeast coast, and so is a popular point of entry for eastern europeans looking to find work to support their families. italians have a complicated relationship with these immigrants. as in the united states, immigrants work the lowest level service jobs. the cops are always chasing dark-skinned vendors of trinkets or off-brand merchandise away from tourist attractions. italians call these young men 'vu comprà' - a jab at their poor pronunciation of 'voule comprare:' do you want to buy a...? many of the issues have correlates in the united states. immigrants often bear the brunt of frustrations about the lack of employment opportunities for young people and a political system gridlocked in partisan bickering and back-channel corruption. non-native speakers or darker-skinned individuals are often looked at with the same diffidence as hispanics are in some parts of the united states.

as in other european nations, racial diversity is a relatively new phenomenon in italy. until recently, the first sentence of french elementary school history texts was 'our ancestors the gauls,' and 50 years ago, that was accurate. but not anymore. europe is struggling to maintain national identities that can no longer rely on the subconscious support of 'people who look like us.' what can they lean on? in france it's the secular state - no head coverings allowed. elsewhere it's language. the term 'vu comprà' preserves the distinction between the old stock and the newcomers - those who know how to use the subjunctive and those who can just make themselves understood. in the netherlands, it's knowledge of national history and customs, and how high you score on the test determines your eligibility for citizenship. last year on the camino de santiago, we saw the unfolding of a publicity campaign billing this 1200 year old pilgrimage route as the 'main street of europe' - a path that predates all of the nations that now surround it. but history resists that sort of simplification, and clashes with the present reality. every few towns there was a statue of santiago matamoros, one of the later incarnations of st. james (whose tomb is the journey's destination). matamoros is rougly translated as 'moorslayer.' is that an image that a unified europe wants to rally around? europe is struggling with difference - between its own member nations and between the northern and southern hemispheres. i chuckled to myself yesterday in mantova, virgil's home town: the mythic history of italy begins with aeneas, the founder of rome. he too arrived on italian shores bedraggled and without a reservation.

the carabinieri gave the romanian girl a last glance and walked out, their keys and handcuffs jangling. the proprietess processed her documents, gave her a key and pointed to the stairwell. the girl never spoke. as she was shuffling away towards her room, a cell phone rang inside her small backpack. she rummaged furiously through some shirts and a small towel. she found the phone and answered, mumbling. there was a long silence, then she cried a little and choked out three or four words slowly, quietly. i don't speak romanian, but i got it. who hasn't said it?

'i want to come home.'

back in arezzo

let me be brief. i got back from the farm on sunday evening. on tuesday, i went to siena for the famous palio - a bareback horserace around the semicircular campo in the center of the city. if i start talking about it, i'll be here for an hour, and i have to go. but suffice it to say, it was absolute madness. a girl passing by bumped into the guy next to me, who took offense and said something, so without a word, she just punched him in the face. that is how invested the sienese are in this: emotions were running high. when the 10 riders finally started, 2 were thrown in the first lap, their horses still tearing around the track shaking their manes - even they couldn't believe it. there was confusion at the finish - first the flag of the nicchio contrada was flown out of a window of the palazzo pubblico, but they took it back in after a just a minute. oca was the official winner and the place exploded. young girls were consoling their sobbing brothers. when the nicchio flag was flown from the palazzo, two middle-aged men from that district standing near me screwed up their leather faces and embraced as if they had both just become grandfathers. when that flag was taken back, their joy turned to a rage i had never seen.

yesterday i spent part of the day in florence, taking pictures for my dante project. i was just going about my business when i came across a piece in the Museo dell'Opera in Santa Croce that really rocked me back. preparing for a bronze bas-relief with scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, the late 16th century sculptor giambologna made some studies in terracotta, two of which are preserved in the museo. in the first, joachim is being chased out of the temple. the piece was pretty beat up, and so was the second. it was entitled 'the meeting of joachim and anne.'

i did some research on this, and while i knew that anne was the mother of mary, according to apocryphal texts, joachim was her father. he was chased out of the temple because he and anne had been unable to bear children: not having 'given children to israel,' he was publically humiliated. just as i would have done in that situation, joachim left the city and went to live with shepherds. but he was called back to his wife when an angel appeared to him in a dream; at the same moment the angel appeared to anne telling her that a child would be born. joachim and anne met at the gates of jerusalem - this is considered by commentators to be the moment of the immaculate conception of mary.

i didn't know any of that when i was looking at the sculpture. i just knew that giambologna knew what he was doing: this little terra cotta bas-relief was so obviously a study, a rough rectangle of baked clay, and yet the two central figures were so animated, reaching out to embrace each other. their movement and their desire were palpable. and the figures had no heads or arms: broken, lost in the last four and half centuries.