Category — Practicing Imperfection

Alright, people.  I know I haven’t been posting much.  Part of the reason is that I’m starting the book-writing process.  I’ve got one little segment done, so I thought I’d share it.  Enjoy!

Choose.  Every day, choose to live in love.  Choose to trust yourself, and others.  Most of all, choose to choose.

***

I planned to be President.  It came about pretty rapidly, really.  One day I was receiving a college scholarship from the local homebuilders organization.  The next, a reporter from the local paper was asking me what I thought of the First Lady, Hillary Clinton.  And then it happened.

“So, would you ever run for president?”

“Yeah, sure.”  With that flip answer, I did a quick calculation, determined when the earliest feasible time would be for me to run, and made up my mind.  I would be President.  I was 17.

***

“Daniel!”  The girl from the school newspaper was shouting at the group of us posing for a picture.  I was back in town from a series of extended travels.  One of the High Schools I’d worked with over the last 4 years was presenting a $11,000 check to the charity I’d worked for.  I was tagging along to congratulate the students, and see the completion of my work.

“Daniel, get out of there, you’re too tall!”  Daniel’s shoulders hunched as he jogged out of the picture.  His linebacker’s frame oozing disappointment as the smile slid from his face.

“Here, Daniel, come kneel in front,” someone offered.

“Nah, I don’t want to make the picture ugly.”  He said it as though he truly believed that his presence would destroy the memory of this great day.  The tone in his voice was absolute.

The 6 adult women holding the oversized presentation-check gasped in unison, “NO!”  Daniel was covered immediately in a hurled web of reassurance.  “You have to be in the picture!”  “You’re part of this, Daniel!”  “We want you here!”

Daniel found his place on the ground in front of the check, and we all breathed a sigh, glaring at the totally clueless photographer who was clicking away, her unnecessary flash blinding us.

I’d known Daniel for a couple of years.  I’d seen him as an awkward teen, too tall and too big to do what we all so desperately want to do in high school – fit in.  The first time I met him, he assured me that he was a dumb jock.  But the questions he asked during my presentation betrayed his words of self-doubt.  He was engaged and funny, asked intelligent questions, and served as a great role model for the other students.  His deep voice and heavy brow couldn’t mask his keen mind and personality.  By the end of the year, he would find himself in a statewide leadership role with the Future Business Leaders of America.

Now, a year later, he was just as engaging, outgoing and talented.  And just as willing to believe that he wasn’t good enough.

Standing in the entry to the school, we all said our thank yous and good byes.  I reached up to hug Daniel.  When we stepped away, he looked at me with curiosity.

“You know, I can’t even guess at how old you are.”

“Thanks, Daniel.”

“No really, I can’t.  But it seems amazing that someone your age can live such a fulfilling life.”

When I left my job with the charity, it was to change my life.  I sold my house, quit my job, left my girlfriend and my dog, and took a leap.  The kids I worked with knew this.  Daniel knew this.

“It’s amazing,” he continued, “that you, at your age could be living like you are.  There are so many people who don’t even try until they’re 65.  And then they can’t even enjoy it because it’s too late.”

“Thanks.  That’s exactly why I’m choosing to live this way, Daniel.”

“I know, but who gets to do that?  I mean really, who gets to do-“ I cut him off.

“Anyone who chooses to.”

He looked at me.  And then he blundered on, “Yeah, but It’s really incredible.”

“Anyone who chooses to.”  I caught his eye with my hand and brought him to my eyes.  “Internalize this, Daniel.  Really.  Anyone who chooses to. That’s who gets to live like this.  End of story.”

The beautiful boy stopped.  And he listened.  Still looking at my eyes, he nodded once.

“Okay.”

I smiled, nodded back, pulled my visitor’s badge off my shirt and tossed it in the trash as I walked out the door.

Once in the rainy winter air of Portland, I breathed.  Maybe – just maybe – if I was lucky – he’d heard me.  And maybe that would be what he remembered in 10 years when he looked back to this day, and not how he’d ruined the picture.  And maybe – just maybe, he’d remember that he gets to choose.

Usually, I wake up in the morning, make a cappu (or have one made for me by one of the wonderful women I live with). I catch a ride with Deb into Barga and spend the day writing, walking, eating and repeating.

This morning, when we reached the studio, I changed my plans. The studio, which is full of beautiful, passionate art, is an unqualified mess. The studio consists of four rooms. The front is a great cavern of color and shape, the place where tourists and locals can wander in and view the paintings and photographs that Sandra and Deb have on display. Through a curtain to the right is the back room where the artists work: studying figures, editing photographs, consulting with clients. Bright overhead fluorescent lights and photographic equipment dominate.

Behind the workroom is an alcove that has been walled off with drywall – something completely strange in this ancient space. The alcove houses a workbench, paint, mats, shelves of paper, drawers of miscellaneous hardware, and a collection of years of partial drawings, sketches and paintings.

A small ground-level window opens onto a lovely garden, but is obscured almost completely by a side-table crammed with more papers and mats.
The fourth room is a bathroom, hidden behind a plywood door, and completely unexpected.

Along with the toilet and sink, this room houses boxes of plates, forgotten frames hanging from the pipes, a baker’s rack full of baby-food-sized jars of paint, and the cups liberated from cafes and restaurants in the town.
I remember the first time I walked into the studio. I was blown away with the power and beauty of the images in the space. The passion of the women who own the studio washed over me as I sat on the small sofa against one wall. I was excited to think that these women could make a living with their art – that they had carved a little space in the world where beauty and passion were primary and sufficient.

Things are rarely that simple, but this studio gives me hope.

So, today I changed my plans. “Will you let me clean up the studio today?” “Assalutamente, si,” came the response – almost before I had finished asking.
I spent the first hour just walking from room to room, assessing the situation; snapping pictures, sweeping, taking stock of the stacks. After that, I started rearranging. Sandra is prolific. I was totally amazed at the variety of subject-matter, style, and materials. One moment I was sorting through canvases, then wood panels, then round wooden boxes, then pottery, and even a piece of marble. There are probably 100 pieces in the 20×20 studio, hanging from the walls, stacked in the corners, leaning against furniture.

My marketing background kicked in, and I started by rearranging the intimidating entrance from one flanked by huge bins of prints, to one that beckons to passers-by to come in and look at the beautiful postcards that feature the works of Deb and Sandra. On the little table in the middle of the room, I arranged information about their wedding photography business.

The studio began to open up. I really enjoy arranging spaces, whether it’s furniture or artwork, it’s therapeutic for me. While I’m often unable to do this for my own space, I’m able to help clear the physical surroundings of others. I’ve found that when I’m arranging a space, it will talk to me, letting me know what color or shape should go where. The gallery talked to me today, but it also fought me a couple of times: once when I tried to hang a painting of a flower too high, and then when I moved from paintings to begin hanging photographs. That’s when the studio kicked me in the gut.

The workspace houses some of the most striking works, in my opinion. A bold, large painting of a nude hangs high in one corner, while the opposite wall is covered in photos of partially nude figures portrayed as angels. Among these photographs is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. I don’t say that lightly and it’s not meant as flattery. It’s simply the truth. I was so stuck by it last time I was here, I wasn’t able to look at it for very long.
This photograph was propped against the wall where almost nobody saw it. So I made a space, found a chain, and hung the beautiful figure high on one wall where it could be enjoyed by all.

Yes, I know the walls in the gallery are old. Yes, I know large photographs with glass are heavy. Yes, I know. However, it wasn’t that heavy, and the chain hung on three nails – for about a minute. It was quite beautiful for that one minute. Fortunately, I had cleared the area below so that when it came crashing down to break on the marble-tiled floors, the other beautiful photographs were out of the way.

Evidently, the gallery wasn’t ready for the photo to hang there just yet. As the glass shattered and scratched the beautiful image, I wanted to scream. This great tribute to my friends. My contribution to the display of their passion – broken and scratched. (Okay, I know it’s really dramatic, but it sucked – big time.) I seriously wanted to hide and cry. Instead, I got the broom and Deb found a box for the glass. There are people who make you feel horrible when you break their junk. And there are people cheer you up when you break their art. I really do prefer the second kind of people. Whether she knew it or not, Deb made an effort to cheer me up over the next hour.

Yes, we’ll get the picture reprinted. Yes, I’ll finish cleaning the gallery. Yes, these things happen. I’m not so sure I’d have been as generous and kind, but I’ll remember to try next time.

—

When we got home, we found Sandra in the kitchen cooking dinner. Vegetables. And soup. I’m pretty sure that before I got here, there was a good deal more meat eaten in the house. But Sandra worries every night whether I will have enough to eat and cooks accordingly. Tonight we had a fabulous mixture of baked fennel, potatoes, carrots, peppers and onions, prepared lovingly by Sandra. Her mother made the soup (fabulous as well). Her mother, it turns out, also took care of my clothes. She brought them in from the yard where they were drying and folded and ironed them – even my underwear. For real.

Then, as we sat down for dinner, I saw something out-of-place at my setting.

Tommy, who knows I like Harry Potter, spent the day carving a legitimate kiwi-wood wand for me. Evidently, he’s not very handy, but he did a great job with this thing, even carving my initials in the handle.  Wow.

After dinner we all sat down for a game of Italian Pictionary ®. We use this as my vocab lesson, me guessing in English and Sandra, Deb and Tommy guessing in Italian, explain the words as we go.

It was a very full day. More than usual I am struck by how giving the people I am staying with are. They have a person they met for one day six months ago sleeping on their floor and sharing their table. It’s amazing how well it has worked for the last 10 days. We all give what we can and it works.  What more can you ask, really?

I have a special kinship with children. In almost any social setting, if there are children present, I find myself in their company. I’m not sure if this says more about them or about me. It’s not clear who seeks out whom.

This year, as I’m in Italy, I spent Halloween in an Italian town. Sandra, Deb and I took Deb’s eldest nephew, Luigi, who is maybe 8, into Barga for the Halloween celebration. It wasn’t trick-or-treating, but rather a celebration in one of the squares of the town, complete with music and sweets and performances.

We stood for a while, on the edge of the scene, observing; picking up the bits of skull-shaped confetti, collecting treasures in a vest pocket.

After a time of wandering through the square, we headed out to search the streets of the town. Children in masks and capes trotted along with excited voices. The selection of Halloween costumes in this small town must have been sparse. Each child wore one of three masks, with various cloaks and capes, making the whole evening even more surreal (as though I needed that, walking through an Italian mountain town on Holloween).

Just outside the walls we found a stand selling freshly roasted castagne (chestnuts). We ran into our friend, Frank, who noted with a tone of amusement that the nuts had been brought in from a neighboring region, though Garfagnana is known for its castagne (this is rather like being in Idaho and having Oregon potatoes). The nuts, however, were excellent, owing mostly to the fact that they were being roasted in front of us over an open fire in a great drum – on Halloween night – In Barga.

After a while headed back into the town, where bands of children were knocking on the doors of vast, empty “palazzos” (palaces) and running away squealing. Luigi expressed a little fear about the ghosts that he might see that night, and Deb, in a fit of gallantry, handed him her flashlight so that he could shine it on any fantasma he might see and make it disappear. He spent the next hour shining the light on practically everything, systematically determining what was real and what was ghost.

We returned to the square to find hoards of children filing in behind four men carrying a coffin. I’m not sure exactly where the coffin and the children went, but Luigi stayed by Deb’s side. About a minute later, screaming children flooded back into the square as firecrackers exploded somewhere out of sight.
Luigi is fairly new to the area, his family having moved back to Barga about a year ago. He has just started learning to speak Italian, and has a Japanese father – not so common in Barga. He is a beautiful, self-purposed child, intelligent and, at times, over-confident. (The first day I met him, he told me he had just built the kitchen chairs that I had seen his father assembling earlier.) On Halloween, in a dark piazza, surrounded by children who knew each other, and who were talking in excited Italian, all of his confidence melted away. While the others ran forward to play a lottery game, Luigi moved to the back, closer to his auntie.

I bent down to arrange some of the Halloween confetti with Luigi. There’s something about bending down to the level of children that makes them pay attention to you. Within about a minute I had 5-10 children helping me with my creation.

Quickly, the quiet moment dissolved into the chaos of the evening, and the children started running, playing, chasing. Luigi caught the attention of a boy from his class. Without words, he engaged the boy. We watched as the boy first ignored Luigi, then dismissed him, physically pushing him away. Luigi came back to Deb to be reassured just by her presence – then he tried again.

Soon enough, the boy was chasing him. Luigi crouched and then charged, swerved and darted around the square as one, two, three others joined in. Deb and I watched in apprehension, aware of the power dynamics of one-on-many, and yelling out when the play got too rough.

Luigi was clearly pleased, if a bit unsure, as he ran from the boys. Then his foot caught on one of the centuries old stones that pave the piazzas of the town. Down he went in a spectacular crash, his knees, hands and cheek hitting the cold ground. Everything stopped. While Deb ran forward and the kids moved away, Luigi picked himself off and walked away. Debbie jogged over to him and steered him to a bench away from the crowd.

There were no tears. Just a bruised lip and skinned hands. We regaled him with tails of the battle, his bravery and skill, and his confidence snuck back. As he cleaned his red hands with my cherry blossom hand sanitizer, we agreed it might be time to finally head home.
Watching this brave little boy, I felt a powerful connection. Stripped of most of the tools we use to make friends, he headed into a crowd of strangers, and doggedly pursued one until he had a friend. I often feel that I’m running up to people I meet, testing to see if they will play with me. Hoping against fear that my efforts won’t leave me pushed away, on the ground with skinned knees, but knowing that, when they do, at least I’ve done my part. At least I’m sure that I haven’t missed an opportunity for something beautiful.

And now I’ll have the image of Luigi, picking himself off, dusting himself off, and cleaning his hands with my cherry blossom hand sanitizer. Grazie, Luigi.

There’s a comfort in not knowing the language that’s spoken around me.  A liberation of sorts.  When I’m in a room of English speakers, I have a compulsion to know as much as possible about what is going on, about what is being said.  It’s like pieces of my brain are assigned specific tasks, gathering, analyzing, condensing and reporting back so that I can make an assessment of everyone else’s lives and actions in comparison to my own.  What a trap.  It’s quite exhausting really.

When I came to Italy in May, I noticed that my mind was more at ease.  In a room of rapidly speaking Italians, what I heard was a lullaby.  Stripped from the need, or even the ability to understand the conversations around me, I was able to relax, bathed in the emotion of the experience.  I came to regard the random English conversations of tourists and ex-pats as intrusions into the place I had found for myself.

During that trip, I had the experience that people would often speak to me directly when my family had Italian language interactions.  It was probably because I was the youngest in the group, and there was an assumption that if anyone knew Italian, it would be me.  But that was misguided, as my dad had spent a fair amount of time studying the language before the trip.

As these experiences happened, I found that trying to understand the words – to take apart the sounds and make sense of them – was not that useful, even with the college conversational Spanish I had.  What worked much better is what I call the “magic ear” method.  You remember those books “Magic Eye” from the 90’s?  The ones where you look at a seemingly random image of blurred dots, and by unfocusing your eyes, a 3-D image pops out?  I was never really able to make them work, but when it comes to understanding the conversations around me, I find that unfocusing the ear, and just feeling the experience leads me to a much more accurate understanding than trying to understand the words.

Of course, it’s not an exact science.  I met a lovely woman last night whose energy was gentle and powerful at the same time.  I just wanted to sit near her as she spoke with Sandra and Deb.  When I met her, I introduced myself and told her it was a pleasure to meet her.  Then she said a number of animated things, followed by a smile and “va bene.”  I know those words!  So I repeated, “si, va bene.”  She chuckled a bit and Sandra interjected to let her know I didn’t understand what I was responding to.  We all laughed and went to sit down.

Later that night, in a conversation about how Puritan Americans can be, Sandra told me that Fabiana had told me it was nice to meet me, but I needed not to be so uptight.  Within 30 seconds of meeting me.  Funny.  I guess it’s true.  If I’d been practicing “magic ear” I might have gathered as much.  The beginnings of conversations with new people, just the act of meeting them can be full of tension for me, full of potential, yes, but full of judgment as well.  Adding the element of a new language is a whole different thing.  There’s a twinge of the old tension, but it’s mostly overridden by the twinges of fear that I might say the wrong thing, or hear the wrong thing, or make someone else uncomfortable with my slow ability to communicate.

I guess maybe it’s time to practice “magic brain” or “magic heart” and let some of that go.  Okay, maybe all of it.  Eventually, I will understand the language, and the bliss of being able to hear the language around me as a beautiful song and to experience the emotions of the people in conversation as more pure, without the labels that speech brings, that will change.  I’m hoping that maybe, just maybe, when that happens, I will find that I have changed a bit too.

My first adventure in Fornacci di Barga was to find a wireless internet drive.  It’s just a crazy little jump drive that has a place for a micro card and a sim card.  Plug it in, and you get internet.  Lovely.

I asked if there was anything I could pick up while I was out.  Yes, some bread.  Seems easy enough, right?  Not so much.  On the way from the airport, the first day, we stopped at the grocery store.  My one task was to grab some bread.  “Brown bread” said Sandra, “cooked in the oven.”  Now, I don’t know about you, but when my family picks up freshly baked bread, we give it a squeeze to make sure it has a good crunch with a nice soft center.  I searched the bread bins (you can’t believe how many different kinds of bread there are) and, after rejecting a flat, tough loaf, I found a nice soft one.

Wrong.  I went back to the bread area with Deb to see what, exactly, I should be looking for.  Well, first, you go to the bread counter, not the bread bins.  Second, you have to know what you’re ordering.  Then they just cut off how ever much you want from these foot-and-a-half long loaves of flat, brown bread.

When I squeezed it, it was clear I had no idea what I was looking for.  Never would I have selected this bread.  However, it makes some of the best toast in the world!  And is great with cheese!  And is just yummy!

So, today when I asked what I could pick up, I wasn’t so excited to hear, “pane cotto nel forno a legna.”  I tried to memorize as much of the phrase as I could, and headed out.  I scoped out the bread shops on the way to the internet place.  There were two.  On the way back, I would pick one and stop.  After success with the computer guys, I was excited to see if I could work out the bread.  I got a good feeling from the first shop, so I stepped in.  Oddly enough, there was almost no bread in the bins.  Perhaps it’s a little late in the day.  I have no idea.  However, these lovely ladies responded brilliantly when I apologized for not being able to speak well in Italian and asked them for “pane cotto nel forno…” – “a Legna,” they supplied.  Si, si!  I was so excited.

“No, non aqui.”  Not here.  Really, in a bread shop.  Maybe it’s because there’s no bread in the shop.  “Dove?”  Where could I find this elusive bread.  One of the women came out from behind the counter and spirited me outside the shop, pointing across the street and telling me to go to the meat shop.  Mind you, this was all in Italian, so I’m fairly sure that’s what she was saying.

I headed across the street, but couldn’t see the meat shop.  I looked back at the bread store, and both women were now standing outside their door, waving me on to the meat shop.  As I entered the shop they celebrated with me.  I had found the Pane, cotto nel forno a legna!

Now, let me just say that, as a vegeterian – even one who isn’t that principled about the thing – the smell that comes out of these meat shops is horrifying to me.  It’s seriously like death.  The case is filled with beautifully presented slices of meatiness, but the smell is tough for me.  Regardless, after another apology, and another request for pane cotto nel forno… “a legna,” came the response, I had my half-loaf of lovely, hard bread.

When I came out of the shop, the bread ladies were still there, waiting to celebrate my success again.  We waived and shouted “CIAO!” across the street at each other.

When I got back home, I relayed this story to Deb who laughed at me when I asked why the bread shop wouldn’t have this type of bread.  Apparently, this is bread cooked elsewhere and brought in.  It’s cooked in a wood oven.  The other bread at the bread shop is not.  That’s a good tip.  So, if you’re looking for hard, flat, brown bread, try the meat shop.