No, we're not moving to California; we are returning to New Jersey, where I have lived since 1974. I wrote the following in 1981, when I was 36. You can take the girl out of California but you can't take... And as a disclaimer to all my wonderful New Jersey friends: I wrote this 26 years ago, when I was just a callow yout.
LAMENT OF A CALIFORNIAN
I don't much like the East Coast sometimes. Sometimes it's OK. This is not one of those times.
Most of the time, the East Coast is tolerable for a transplant. The weather can be handled. The commute on congested highways can be transcended. The surly shop people can be put in perspective. The dingy, trashy roadways can be overlooked. The tendency of the natives to be suspicious of human nature can be understood.
But right now I would give anything in the world for a whiff of bright California air. I would love to drive down roadways riotous in Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter with color and life. I would gladly commute in rain instead of snow and ice. I would love to spend money in stores that assume your innocence instead of your guilt.
I would like to be around people not always looking for a way to gouge the other guy out of another dollar. I would like to not hear the word 'lawsuit' again. I would like to be able to discuss something without having to first prepare a legal defense for my position.
I have been here almost seven years, with a fifteen-month break when I moved home to Los Altos [1976-1978]. Coping with the Eastern psyche has gotten easier. But right now at this moment, I am overwhelmed with all the negatives. There are positives about the East Coast and I shall enumerate them: my fiance, Angel.
In my mind I am walking along a beach on the Monterey Peninsula. The sky is that pure blue that only a California sky can attain. The clouds are so high up that the Earth by contrast seems endless and spacious. The Pacific is its unpredictable self, the water having come in from Asia on some monster wave.
Instead, I am in New Jersey, listening to Easterners who have never been anywhere but Florida and the Poconos tell me how California is the land of fruits and nuts. How can any New Yorker make fun of any place else? A Californian can have the curiosity and openness to want to experience the Big Apple, to be able to appreciate the differences. A New Yorker can be smug, taking pride no doubt in rude cabbies and a frightened populace. A Californian still wants to go visit New York, but a Northern Californian will always want to return to only one City, The City By The Bay.
I would like to live in a place where diversity is accepted, not used as a way to label people. I would like to live in a place where groups are formed based on common interests, not on ethnic background. I would like to live in a place where people are as interested in the country in which they live as they are in the country from which their grandmothers came.
I would like to be around people who are not always trying to one-up you in clever remarks, thus forcing you into the gamesmanship trap. I would like to be around people who just say how they feel with respect for others' opinions.
I would like to be around people who share my state of mind, California.
Now, having lived in Italy for two-and-a-half years, I will be happy to be returning home to New Jersey .
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Facing West
OK, now the decision has been made...we are going home to the States. We told our daughter; written notice has been given to our landlord; we have each told our best friends here in Italy. The call has been made to the international move coordinator that we used to come here in 2005; an appointment is scheduled for Monday morning for the survey to arrive at a preliminary estimate. Our daughter is going house-hunting this weekend, Saturday, so that she can move out and we can return to our home in New Jersey. It's a done deal.
How do I feel? Happy and relieved, but a little sad. I will be leaving behind my best friend on two continents, Agnes, a wonderful Frenchwoman who seems to be my twin, separated from me at birth.
I won't be sad to leave Italy behind. Nothing works here. I must have been German or Swiss in another life, because I like order and rational processes. My favorite part of Italy outside of Venice is the Alto Adige, which most Italians decry as not being Italian at all, but rather being Austrian, which in fact it was before the end of World War I. I love Corvara, and La Villa, and the Dolomiti, going northeast into the mountains. I love the food, the unselfconscious non-fashionista way of life, the friendliness. I love that people in the Austrian part of Italy understand that it is not a national disloyalty to be able to speak another language. In fact, in the Alto Adige, children are taught three languages ... German, Ladino (a recognized language of the region, not a dialect) and Italian. While they are at it, they learn English...so many English-speakers come there to ski and hike, that if you want to have a job in the tourist business, you need to learn English.
Anyway, right now I am just anxious to be gone from here, totally ready to start again in Long Valley. The best decision we ever made was not to sell the house and not to buy an apartment in Italy.
It's fun to be planning inside improvements to our home, the kitchen first and foremost. While we have been in Italy, Sandra has overseen every outside improvement that a 25-year-old house could possibly need. She jokes that this was our plan...go away, let her move in, let her deal with the roof, the driveway, etc. and we come back to a nice 'new' house. Not true, but in any case, she did a terrific job. Can't imagine what it would have been like to have strangers renting the house when all these things happened. Shudder.
So, we are going home. Some people ... me ... are meant to live in Minnesota, not Shangri-La. Shangri-La is a nice place to visit, but...
How do I feel? Happy and relieved, but a little sad. I will be leaving behind my best friend on two continents, Agnes, a wonderful Frenchwoman who seems to be my twin, separated from me at birth.
I won't be sad to leave Italy behind. Nothing works here. I must have been German or Swiss in another life, because I like order and rational processes. My favorite part of Italy outside of Venice is the Alto Adige, which most Italians decry as not being Italian at all, but rather being Austrian, which in fact it was before the end of World War I. I love Corvara, and La Villa, and the Dolomiti, going northeast into the mountains. I love the food, the unselfconscious non-fashionista way of life, the friendliness. I love that people in the Austrian part of Italy understand that it is not a national disloyalty to be able to speak another language. In fact, in the Alto Adige, children are taught three languages ... German, Ladino (a recognized language of the region, not a dialect) and Italian. While they are at it, they learn English...so many English-speakers come there to ski and hike, that if you want to have a job in the tourist business, you need to learn English.
Anyway, right now I am just anxious to be gone from here, totally ready to start again in Long Valley. The best decision we ever made was not to sell the house and not to buy an apartment in Italy.
It's fun to be planning inside improvements to our home, the kitchen first and foremost. While we have been in Italy, Sandra has overseen every outside improvement that a 25-year-old house could possibly need. She jokes that this was our plan...go away, let her move in, let her deal with the roof, the driveway, etc. and we come back to a nice 'new' house. Not true, but in any case, she did a terrific job. Can't imagine what it would have been like to have strangers renting the house when all these things happened. Shudder.
So, we are going home. Some people ... me ... are meant to live in Minnesota, not Shangri-La. Shangri-La is a nice place to visit, but...
Saturday, January 5, 2008
On the way to Piazza Erbe
A late Fall day in Verona, walking our usual walk from our house to Piazza Erbe.
This gingko tree is the most beautiful tree in the city. It goes out in a blaze of yellow and gold. Many painters try to capture it, but I think this photo gets it.
This gingko tree is the most beautiful tree in the city. It goes out in a blaze of yellow and gold. Many painters try to capture it, but I think this photo gets it.
Another one of our temporary friends, confused about which end is up.
The Painted City...as Verona was once known.
The furs are out! Women walking out arm in arm....so European.
The cupcake tower.
New friends in town
One day in November we went for a walk and found that frozen motion fantastical figures and creatures had come to town. All over the city, in piazze (piazzas, in English) large and small we found them. They stayed for about three weeks, and then ... tired of being stared at and misunderstood ... they moved on.
I'm stuck.
Which way?
Anatomically almost correct Iron Man.
Little girl smiling.
All the statues are two-sided...some happy on one side, the other side in a state of panic. Wonderful stuff.
No room of their own
The lion of Saint Mark, symbol of the Venetian Republic, is keeping watch in Piazza Signori.
Dante in exile.
Sometimes a woman just has to take action.
Sometimes a woman just has to take action.Does she cry that her passion is unfulfilled?
Or is the stonecold marble just too much?
This is Italy.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
New Year's Eve 2007
We had the best New Year's Eve in many years at the Relais Villabella in the countryside outside of Verona at the edge of the village of San Bonifacio (Verona Province). http://www.relaisvillabella.it/A 'relais' is French for a country home or chateau with a small number of rooms and a dining room. This particular relais is on sprawling acreage which you enter by passing through a medieval stone arch, up a long curving drive, through towering trees, and at night, tiny white lights.
Our friends Agnes and Alexander
had last been here twelve years earlier.
The VillaBella has sustained a lasting
reputation for fine dining in a beautiful
old building. They were delighted to make the arrangements for New Year's Eve at this beautiful place, to show us another side of Verona.
I don't know if you'll be able to read the menu.
We were served 8 courses, with wines to accompany each course (not for me, folks ;) , not to worry) by the most gracious staff I have yet encountered in Italy, save for the Locanda Cipriani on the Island of Torcello in the Venetian Lagoon. The only course I could have eliminated was the ravioli, only because it was 9 stars instead of the perfect 10 stars of every other course. The cuisine was 'high Italian', rather than regional specialities...more what you would find in a top restaurant in Rome.
La Creme di zucca con riduzione di aceto balsamico e cuore ghiacciato al gorgonzola (cream of pumpkin with a balsamic reduction and a chilled heart of gorgonzola)
Not since my accident in February 2003 have I danced so much, and had so much fun. Of course, a regular 4-hour-interval course of Advil all day helped prepare me to boogie. The DJ was on fire, playing great mixes of Italian, Spanish, French and American songs, all flowing seamlessly into each other.
The wait staff timed everything to the minute, so that hundreds of champagne flutes filled with Mumm's Cuvee Privilege 'Cordon Rouge' were raised at precisely midnight, with the last dessert course following ten minutes later.
Then, at 2 AM, a buffet of more casual typical Veronese fare was put out for those who hadn't eaten enough earlier. Groan.We skipped it, leaving at 2:45 AM. Agnes and Alexander dropped us off two blocks from home so that we walked through the sub-freezing night air to the apartment. Then I had a piece of traditional panettone...couldn't resist.
The entire evening was elegant and delicious. We're hoping to go back again, maybe this time we'll rent a room.
