Seductions. Irresponsibility. Italy.

The soul concentrates, wholly, on strong impressions of pleasure or pain—so writes Dante.

Yes.

And desires to experience pleasure instead of pain often lead to hapless experiences of seduction.

Which are often followed by consequences.

(Perhaps such consequences are worth every journey through Italian flavored, frescoed, and hand-crafted purgatorios?)

Yes even more!

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We (humankind since forever ago) obsess over the desires of our fugitive souls. Then we obsess over whether or not we can ever control those desires. Then we obsess over discovering a way to find, or establish, a heavenly paradise where our obsessions rule the world. (Led there by our true loves!) Then the pain of obsessing over what we want—but cannot have—becomes such a waste of time that we engage ourselves in the useful arts of Deliberate Distraction:

We weed the garden. Reply to emails. Earn our keep. Think of others. Play with social media. Paint pictures. Arrange flowers into vases. Meditate. (“There is more right with you than wrong with you.”) Breathe into the tips of our toes and the ends of our earlobes. Eat right. Exercise. (Walkwalkwalk.) Stop at one glass of wine. Get some rest.

I’ve been distracting myself in all the right ways.

But I still want to board a plane and fly to Italy. Now.

I went to Italy in January of this year. I was there a few weeks ago. I’ve been there for two other trips of a lifetime long before January.

But I want to board a plane and fly to Italy again.

I want to check out. Go away without leave. Just do it.

For once in my life, I want to wave arrivederci while standing on my toes in a pair of sassy-ass shoes. I want my hair to be colored perfectly and cut bouncy. I wish to be sporting a smart piece of luggage stuffed with sketch pads and intense works of literature and M&M’s.

I want to have some money to take with me. Enough money.

I want to leave behind the piece of my heart that would pump weepy and worried for my family, and take only the pieces that will throb gushy and gorgeous over every little thing. (Like the frescoes! By Fra’ Angelico in Florence. Seduction via the renowned Annunciation at the top of stairs leading to austere hallways with doors opening into small cells where Dominican monks lived their medieval lives. Every little thing is in the lawn and Angel Gabriel’s wings—I am trying to grow a lawn like that and am contemplating sprucing up the colors of my own wings. Coming upon this work of art is a long-remembered experience of pleasurable feminine grace in a city dominated by masculine stone and little boy grittiness.)

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Flights to Italy.

I’ve looked them up.

Places to stay. Monasteries.

I google and google and google. Then I reject my computer and cuddle up with my books. About Italy.

ItalyItalyItaly.

I’m not even Italian, but I was raised Roman Catholic.

And ended up far more Roman than Catholic.

This happens all the time. I get obsessed about something. The next thing you know, I paint the walls of the house all over again and install new gardens, (designed in the spirit of a Renaissance palace overlooking the Tiber River with a loggia painted by Raphael), or I come home too pooped to clean, cook, and save the world because I spent the day walking to the moons of Saturn and back, (the ones named by Galileo), or I polish off a box of Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups while scribbling nonsense into journals, (in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations I attempt to make myself perfect and well managed, yet I become perplexed, wondering why Marcus was never struck by an amazing grace that would have ended savage gladiator battles, Christian persecution, and his own failures as a parent to protect the Roman Empire from the cruelest son a man could ever have, that fully wicked Commodus!)

Once the chocolate sets in, I let the wish centers inside the insatiable pleasure zones of my brain seduce me. Deliberate Distraction goes awry. Pleasure zones that are stoked by myth and romanticism and idealized versions of time travel and pretend play conquer rational thought. Even at my age. Let’s pretend we’ve cashed in our savings, abandoned America and its contentious politics, and we’ve been hired to prepare a Roman feast to be served at an opening featuring my artwork on display at Peggy Guggenheim’s Venetian palace, (overlooking the Grand Canal!), for a guest list to include a cast of reincarnated characters from Florence.

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When I arrived in Italy a few weeks ago, my husband hid our travel euros in the apartment we rented in Rome. We brought the load of cash with us to pay for VRBO accommodations all along our route from Rome to Florence to Venice. We often rent charming, owner-operated digs in which the owners might not speak English very well and/or prefer to do business on a cyber handshake. (No down payments.) In other words, we hang our travel dreams on excursions that may or may not be realized, with human beings and agreements that may or may not exist in the universe.

If all goes well, an accomplished musician might play enchanting music that will float through our fourth-floor medieval hideaway on its way to heaven.

Renting owner-managed VRBO’s can feel like taking a free fall dive into a desperate trust, for sure, but I continue to allow myself to be seduced by the fairy-tale potential of the found travel poetry that arises from these kinds of acts of desperation. Using excerpts from an exchange of emails regarding a place to stay in Venice, here’s how such emails blossom into poems my fugitive soul can’t quit:

Found Travel Poem, 2016 AD

You don’t need to send any advances

So please you’ll pay cash at your arrive

in Venice Thanks

I’ll give you apartment when you arrive

I prefer meet you under the clock at train station

I will wait with my small dog Boston Terrier

Together we will go to the apartment only ten minutes I prefer walk

We wait.

Sincerely.

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Darkness threatened to wilt the glow of our romantic spells when my husband forgot to pack the money hidden in our Roman love nest. He didn’t remember this divine tragedy until our train was puffing forth from Rome to Florence. Who cared? We’d deal with it in Florence.

In Italy.

We’d deal with our divine comic tragedy in Florence Italy where we were going to meet up with our daughter, who was studying abroad.

The process to rescue our money took part of a morning and all of another afternoon. There were anguished calls followed by missed deliveries followed by siestas and a lot of not today maybe tomorrow. It was the one afternoon we had set aside for shopping with our daughter, who was doing what we had always dreamed of doing when we were her age—taking art classes in Italy. It’s true what they say about helicopter parents—they encourage their children to experience the dreams they (the nutso parents) never realized.

My husband and I didn’t go to Europe until we were well into our 30’s.

By the time I first saw the David.

The rest of the world was so done with David.

But the thing is, if you stare long enough and David senses you’re a goner, he’ll wink at you. All your sins! Forgiven in the wink of an eye!

ItalyItalyItaly.

Italy!

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So now I have journeyed more than half of my blog’s way, I have found myself within a shadowed forest, I have lost, as usual, the path that does not stray. (Apologies Dante!)

Furthermore, instead of getting on a plane and going back to Italy, I am resolved to the fact that the best I can do is send my daughter a list of the shops where I’d hoped we could have spent an afternoon getting all gushy and gorgeous over every little beautifully-Italian-made thing.

Only in I T A L Y.

Before sending the email, I asked the spirits of my new Murano glass rosary, (purchased near our Venetian hideaway) to remove the pain of glumness and bratty regret from my soul. I chose this rosary for the rainbow beads and the big yellow “any-prayer-of-intention” bead at the center. Yellow is my daughter’s favorite color. This rosary was presented to me as an option from a collection of unseen rosaries stored away inside a drawer in the back room of an art gallery, by a young lady as bright and beautiful as my daughter. The young lady watched me examine other rosaries on display and asked if I wanted to see one of her favorite rosaries. She told me she hand picks the beads from the Murano glassmakers and then the owner of the gallery strings them into rosaries.

Soon, after I sent my email to my daughter and rubbed the yellow bead on my rosary, I received a found poem via email from my daughter about her experiences going on one of the shopping excursions from my list. After reading my daughter’s email, the pleasures of laughter condemned the pain of my glum brattiness to the infernos of hell:

Found OMG Poem, 2016 AD

OMG!!!!! Aquaflor is such a beautiful store! And the ladies who work there are so nice! I wanted to smell and buy everything! It was too expensive for me though!!!

It was in a small alleyway I would have never gone down! The door was so small I walked up and down the street! Then I found it!

I’m reading on my little balcony now. Nice peace and time to myself.

Except

I did have a run in with a pigeon!

I’m resting and reading and I hear something slamming into the walls!

Then I see it come walking into the living room!

It flew into our living room!

They are so annoying!

I locked myself in the bathroom until I heard it fly outhahaha!!!

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Ittaleeeeee!

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Boston Terrier. Waiting for us at the train station. Venice.

Boston Terrier wiped out after climbing up and over all the canal bridges.

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Fake David watches the sun set over Florence and the Arno River every day.

With tourists more fashionably dressed up.

Festive and fun Piazzale Michelangelo.

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One medieval monk’s cell overlooking the cloisters at Museo di San Marco, Florence.

Artist and Saint Fra’ Angelico painted frescoes to aid the monks in commanding their souls to control all forms of harmful pleasure and pain.

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The annoying pigeons and their more annoying partners in crime

appear in your snapshots whether you want them or not.

Piazza San Marco, Venice.

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My daughter in Europe.

OMG!!! ITALY!!!!! EUROPE!!!

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SEDUCE OUR FUGITIVE SOULS FOREVER!!!

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Gypsies. Tramps. Thieves.

Peasants. Criminals. Prostitutes.

Slaves.

My husband. My son. My daughter. Myself.

Rome.

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No one makes it through life without a little hunger.

And, we are all slaves—

to our stomachs, to the beat of our hearts, to the madness of our desires. It is, of course, best to become a slave to your own desires, rather than the desires and expectations of others.

Yet here I find myself, living in a time in history when people all around me wish to become the slaves of other masters promising to coach them, cut them apart, and put them back together into idealized forms of god and goddess-like perfections. They seek to confess their crimes, vanquish their poverty, and avoid being seduced by authentic beauty and pleasures. They worry about how people have sex, how people eat, and how people use grammar.

They worry about how people judge each other as authentic or not.

Maybe it’s just me.

Best to leave my American bourgeois grumblings for a week and go to Rome for some attitude adjustment, with my family. Because, as my son says, the Romans were so badass. It’s true—every time I go to Rome, I excavate more and more of my humanity and can never be sure how badass I might have once been. Could I have been a vestal virgin? A peasant? A papal servant? A champion gladiator? A designer of fountains? A stray cat? A chanting monk? A trapped lion? A good Catholic? A happy Pagan?

We decided to go to Rome in January, a time in America when the new year is celebrated with gatherings of great councils of experts and social media gurus at work selling post-humanist “ta-da!” processes for achieving perfection, and post-humanist wonder drug formulas for brain boosting, and post-humanist public humiliation platforms for incorrect use of the comma.

It’s also the time of year when colleges are on break which meant my daughter was able to travel with us.

On our fifth day in the Eternal City, we walked from the ancient exile zone of the Jewish Ghetto (where we were staying) across the Tiber River to the ancient exile zone of Trastevere. We wanted to learn the art of preparing a typical Roman meal.

We were—every “perfect-American-family” one of us—hungry.

So hungry.

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Sycamore trees bow into the now-walled-up Tiber River.

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Somewhere in the maze of the narrow streets that make Trastevere so irresistibly charming, Chef Andrea welcomes students into his kitchen at Cooking Classes in Rome. Don’t be late—it was the ugliest American thing we did. I go to Europe to find beauty in details. If you are late to Chef Andrea’s class, you will miss out on his special attentions to delightful beginnings for your day.

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Involtini alla Romana. (Roman style beef rolls in tomato sauce.)

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Bay Leaf. The Romans take it from plants growing everywhere. We learned how to prepare two forms of tomato sauce. One was used to submerge the Involtini alla Romana and let it cook, the other was for our handcrafted Cavatelli pasta.

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Using Italian-made hand tools to handcraft Cavatelli pasta. Very zen.

Every piece of pasta has someone’s heart rolled into it.

How much salt? One pinch per person.

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Carciofi alla Romana. (Roman style artichokes.) Roman-style artichokes are the food of the gods. American-style artichokes are for barbarians.

Goethe wrote in Travels through Italy: “The peasants eat thistles.” Supposedly it was a behavior he found too repugnant to ever enjoy.

DO NOT DO THIS:

There is a secret stuffing prepared for the artichokes.

The most authentic stuffing uses a Roman herb growing wild along the Appian Way.

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Dessert. Crema al Limone con Kiwi.

And a lesson in which is the male and which is the female lemon.

Using the electric whisk.

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Our cooking instructions included intriguing history lessons and useful magical secrets about how to properly infuse artful details into your work as a chef in the kitchen. Many of the recipes are derived from necessity and are composed using the kinds of foods that were available to be used by the lower classes that lived on the “other side of the river” in Trastevere. The prostitutes learned to prepare and strategically place aromatic meals out into the narrow alleyways where the scents of sexy cooking became concentrated. Such tantalizing pleasures—on several levels—were impossible to resist by potential customers.

Indeed, cooking engages all the senses.

We opted to have wine pairings with our courses and Chef Andrea’s choices were exquisite.

My husband and I have enjoyed various styles of cooking classes in France, in other parts of Italy, and in the United States. Chef Andrea’s Cooking Classes in Rome exceeded our expectations and the price was surprisingly reasonable.

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Time to eat our works of art with all of our new friends from all over the world.

The Carciofi alla Romana appetizer.

Paired with Prosecco di Valdobbiadene.

First course: Handcrafted Cavatelli fatti a mano con sugo di pomodoro fresco e basilico.

Paired with Frascati Superiore DOC

Second course: Involtini alla Romana.

Paired with Negramaro, from the heel of the boot in the famous and breathtaking

Puglia region in the south of Italy.

Dessert: Crema al Limone con Kiwi.

Paired with Moscato, 100% Malvasia del Lazio “gleaming golden yellow grapes”

harvested in late October.

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At the conclusion of our meal, Chef Andrea asked if any of us would one day use the secrets we learned back in our own countries. What artist does not wish to change the lives of others for the better? And why go to Rome if you do not want to be inspired to create something great?! Or be transformed?

We returned home on a Saturday evening. By the next night—Sunday—our humble gypsy-camp kitchen in America was being transformed into a Trastevere-style trattoria. My daughter’s boyfriend wanted to learn everything we could remember from our day with Chef Andrea in Rome.

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You don’t need a big, industrial, or high-tech kitchen in order to make art with food. In fact, most of our classes in Europe have taken place in kitchens as small, or smaller than, ours.

Rome in January was lovely, about 60 degrees. I was happy to find some parsley hanging on in my herb gardens, even though snow was on the way.

For the handcrafted pasta:

We had to ask for artichokes at the supermarket. They brought some out from the back storerooms. They weren’t as beautiful as the artichokes in Rome, but still worthy.

In order to offer finely-grated Pecorino Romano,

this is the side of the cheese grater to use:

Chopped herbs and garlic and SALT.

The secret to cooking and eating garlic,

and still being able to get a sweet (not smelly) kiss from your true love all over Rome:

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The artichokes will definitely require some more practice:

Lemon zest in the milk for the dessert:

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Beautiful snow began to fall during the last course. I set the dessert glasses out to be blessed before assembling the Crema al Limone con Kiwi into them.

A glass of limoncello for everyone.

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The next day, Monday, there was a generous slice of beef, a few slices of mortadella, and some pasta left over. I sliced the meats and dropped them, along with chopped garlic, into fresh tomato sauce and, borrowing a tip from the prostitutes of yore, began letting it cook. Sexy aromas floated up to—and swirled all around—the desk where my husband had returned to his workaholic self. (Monday was the Martin Luther King holiday. Though my husband had not driven into his office in Boston, he had begun work by 7AM and hadn’t left his desk even as the noon hour approached.) Soon, I heard my husband coming down the stairs, through the narrow alleyways, and finding his way into my kitchen.

We had a nice lunch together, planning our next trip to Italy, and a possible Roman feast at our son’s apartment in Brooklyn.

All roads leads to Rome. (Trucks created from random scraps of wood by my son when he was a toddler. Hand tools made in Italy for rolling out pasta.)

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If you want to know how to make the food Chef Andrea taught us how to make, you will have to visit him at his Cooking-Classes-in-Rome studio in Trastevere.

Is it worth it to travel all the way to Rome to learn how to make a typical Roman feast? And bring more beauty into your life? And spend time with your family making new friends over food? And feel more hopeful about our post-humanist world?

OMG.

Is the Pope Catholic?

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Excursions

The Gypsy Apprentice

Tag Archives: Rome

Seductions. Irresponsibility. Italy.

Gypsies. Tramps. Thieves.