33—Travailing Across the Centuries

L'elezione degli Stati Uniti had top billing today on Channel 3 here in Rome. As I heard it, Meetch McCohnell and i Rehpublicahni hanno conquisto la sinistra (the left) in a—(the word is the same in both languages—"debacle" per il presidente. . . .

Two days ago, I was walking around the tomb of the Emperor Caesar Augustus.

In the immediate area are apartments with window-box gardens, a lovely cafe with folks enjoying beautiful lunches and wine with the background music of a guitarist singing "Cahn-tahreh...." Tourists wander about with bags of souvenirs, through a quiet back lane, along a major street congested with traffic, many stopping in off the street for a quick prayer or picture at a 16th century cathedral.

I draw no conclusions about this. Empires rise and fall. People somehow survive.

Photograph by Stevi Carroll

However, in watching a 48-lecture series on the History of Ancient Rome, I found this theory of "the fall" disputed by Professor Garrett Fagan of Penn State who contended that the empire did not fall, it merely changed in order to adapt to changing times. It seemed to me this could just be opposite sides of the came Roman coin.

At the moment, thoughts of empire are too big for conclusions. For one thing, I'm sick with some some sort of respiratory thing that is threatening to turn itself into a bad cough. A fever earlier this morning sent me in and out of harrowing dreams like Alice in Wonderland.

It's after six-thirty in the evening, and I haven't seen the light of day. However, I am bonding with my dungeon (more pics soon).

Things can always be worse. As my friend Charlie noted in a Facebook comment regarding one of my stories:

.... reminds me of waking up in Cambodia with lizards all over my room. Remember - the root word of 'travel' is travail' ---

■Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from travailler to torment, labor, journey, from Vulgar Latin *trepaliare to torture, from Late Latin trepalium instrument of torture, from Latin tripalis having three stakes, from tri- + palus stake — more at POLE

Speaking of travail—

It doesn't get much worse than being buried under a volcanic lava flow. Yesterday I walked up Mt. Vesuvius, then went to Pompeii. It's definitely disconcerting to watch steam rising from the crater of this still active volcano that is considered one of the most dangerous in the world. Still, three million people live in its projected lava flow. Bizarrely, as I understand it, the most expensive properties are higher up the mountain. All this seems like folly. On the other hand, I am living on a coastline just waiting for a 9 earthquake followed by a tsunami of mythic proportion.

More details on the Vesuvius/Pompeii outing to follow, but let me set the stage: The trip itself was on a tour with our guide Antonella handling all arrangements—telling us when to pee and where the toilets were at our "comfort stop" between here and Pompeii. She advised us on the best souvenirs at the Monte Cassino (her fave being some sort of lemon liqueur)," got our tickets for the mountain, arranged lunch, and bought our tickets for the ruins, entertained us with stories and information to fill a good part of the three-hour bus trip from Rome to the Naples area.

Hey, did you know:

32—Between Keats and the Fashionistas

First off, I received an email from Ann mentioning that while in Piazza del Popolo and Santa Maria del Popolo, I missed the head of St. John the Baptist. I am grateful for the heads up on this. And with apologies for having deprived you of a description of this artifact, I promise to remediate my deficiency asap. Readers, continue to speak to me, we are all in this together.

Last time I mentioned Ali and the gifts he gave me. The elephant is for good fortune and peace. The tortoise is for long life. I must not, he said, give them to anyone. I won’t. Why wouldn’t he share that pizza with me?

Day before yesterday, on my way back from Piazza del Popolo, I took an unfamiliar back narrow street just to get away from the crowds. As an aside, streets here are a maze of diagonals. It’s easy to get lost. Two nights ago, for example, I thought I knew where I was going and at 11:15 p.m. decided I was hopelessly lost until aided by a British couple with a cell phone and map-quest savvy. It turns out I was not only on my street but eight doors away from my apartment. Even the tech-saavy guy stood looking at the little bright square of a map saying, “Via die banchi nuovi—that street should be right around here, but it’s not clear where.”

So anyway, earlier in the afternoon, I wandered into a back street to avoid the crowds when I came upon African men sitting in small clusters of 4 or 5, all with big blue plastic bags of street wares and personal items. Leaning back against walls filled with graffiti, they were listening to boom boxes and talking. I didn’t feel afraid but intrusive, as if I’d just barged into someone’s home without knocking.

31—OMG, It’s La Donna del Menu and L’Uomo del Sostegno Technico

What a difference a day makes. Wifi in the neighborhood is working, and Orlando came yesterday to fix the problem resulting from the outage. Turns out the outage affected the modem. The other good news is that Romaine still appears to have a sweet leafy interior. It is not helpful to begin a spiritual with murder by paranoia on one’s hands.

With that I decided to walk up to Piazza del Popolo (Piazza of the People) as a kind of time check be Tuesday’s meeting of the tour group to Pompeii. 

Selfie with Orlando 

Typed while Orlando was fixing the modem. After communicating previously with the cable company, the agreement was he would call them if he couldn’t get it fixed. He could not. And called. As the phrase “calling the cable company” numbs my soul with terror, I decided to record the event. Here is how it went down in real time, although coming face to face with the Charter Communications of Italia was surreal:

Orlando is not having luck. The company called TIM told him to call. He has on his speaker phone and is speaking with Charter’s version of Menu Woman. I love everything Italian. Except Menu Woman. La Donna del Menu? Well, first off, after you chose the correct number option, Italian Menu Woman sings. Something that sounds like what you might hear at Il Ristorante Napolitano in Branson, MIssouri. No kidding. And as she sings, her twin L’Altra Donna del Menu says periodically: “Hold on, please.” Ah, we’re through now to Tech Support Man. “L’Uomo del Sostegno Technico? I am not advanced enough to know what is happening, except for the words “non funziona.” It’s not working. Now we need a pin. No pin. Where did I put my travel sewing kit? The pressure is on…where’s a damned pin. Oh, but wait the little toothpick with the British flag that came in the pizza. (I have no idea why. But to still your curiosity will find out.) Still, even with the toothpick, non funziona. L’Uomo del Sostengo Technico is speaking now to several o women, everyone talking at once. It sounds like Christmas dinner with la famiglia italiana. 

Meanwhile, things could be worse. At the piazza this afternoon, I checked out the church called Santa Maria del Popolo (Saint Mary of the ——fill in. were you paying attention above?). A bronze tablet on the church tells how a walnut tree sprang up from the ashes of Nero and was infested with devils disguised as crows. So the church was built by Pope Pasqual in 1099 to exorcise these devils and in honor of the liberation of Jerusalem at the end of the first crusade. Well actually, the pope didn’t build the thing in that Il Popolo paid for it. 

What’s that? Could it be…“Funziona.” 

30—How I Came to Freeze the Romaine

I froze my lovely head of Romaine out of fear. The crisis surrounding this is not that my hopes were dashed for some big Caesar salad thing tonight. Did Caesar ever eat such a salad? And do we call Romaine a head since it looks more like a vegetable that couldn’t get its head together. I can’t check on any of this because the wifi is down for the entire historical center. How did they manage to found the Republic and Empire without wifi?

But getting back to the death of the Romaine. It began with, well, shall we call it a false expectation. I’d read on the rental website that my apartment is in an early 15th century palazzo with a “private” courtyard. Which raises another question? Are the pictures of rentals deceptive? Or is what we see wishful thinking? 

Whether light is a particle or a wave depends on how you look at it.

Anyway, I’d been swept away with the romantic notion of staying in a palazzo dating back to circa 1400. Who wouldn’t be, right? Each morning, I would step outside into my courtyard and feel the light filtering down from the blue Italian sky while enjoying my morning chi gong exercises. 

I was so jet lagged yesterday that I didn’t get the roman numeral o above the door exactly right. But it definitely says 1400 with a few added years so that construction was way before Cristofo Columbo’s quest for a route to enhance globalization of the spice trade but instead led to the genocide of 8 million people and a variety of environmental devastations in what we now call America.

Flash lights up the hallway
looking down into the courtyard.

So yesterday afternoon about 1:30 p.m. local time, I walked through the big wooden front door, down the hall, into the courtyard and experienced what must be the model for every depressing dungeon in Italian opera. The walls look seven hundred years old. It’s cold. And dark, like entering the womb of the history of everything that has happened in this building over the last 700 years. And that was probably plenty, given that it’s on a street called Via dei banchi nuovi—Street of the New Banks. Kind of a 15th century Wall Street?

I admit to feeling a perverse consolation after a woman on the plane, here for two weeks to visit her priest (what’s that about?), spoke condescendingly of my failure to write nine months in advance which is required for a tour of the catacombs. So bite, it lady. This isn’t a tour. I’m living it. 

Right after arriving, I got a call that my beloved soulmate-cat Reno might be having a health issue, as the day before I left, Dr. Dan had wondered if the unusual behaviors Reno was exhibiting might be something more than an adjustment to his thyroid meds. 

Fortunately, my very attentive landlord Orlando had left me a device that enables me to get online. But only if I sit in the courtyard. Unfortunately, trying to figure out with the cat sitters what’s going on required a phone. It was unclear due to several circumstances whether my Global Package from Verizon is functioning which mean I could owe Italian Roaming services something that would impress even those banchi nuovi dudes.

#29—Passeggiata

This will be the last posting from Rome...this trip, anyway.
I threw my coin in the Trevi Fountain with the hope of return.

One final note to my friends in Netarts who feed the gull with the gnarled foot. You all know him by different names, my favorite being Chester. Anyhow, his pigeon cousin over here in Piazza Navona is probably the most well fed bird in the piazza. LIke Chester, he seems to have learned how to evoke sympathy of tourists.

It was warm this afternoon, so I opened my window. I love the sound of Rome in the streets...the language, the cars fitting their way through the narrow streets, the arguments, the enthusiasm for absolutely nothing, and always under it all the lovely symphony of life as expressed through the Italian language.

Passeggiata is a term I've mentioned before...an evening stroll, slow with no particular plan in mind, except perhaps to show off a new romance or a new outfit. Italians always dress up for the passeggiata, whatever dressing up may mean to them. It's a stylin' time. And everyone wears a scarf, men and women. At some point, food and drink are likely to be involved. But there's no fast food here, at least that's evident. In Italian, the kind of slow we're talking about here is piano, piano...the word is repeated. Very slow, as in musical instruction. Passeggiata is not only an evening ritual, but as I see it, a state of mind. Tranquillo.

Perhaps the closest we come in the American culture to passeggiata would be "living in the now." But really, that's not passeggiata because those who are working to live in the now are trying. As Yoda said, one mustn't try; one must do. How do you do Passeggiata? Even the question is ridiculous. The point is you do passeggiata without doing. So is it Zen? No, Zen is a spare, often ironic non activity to empty the mind. I can't imagine an Italian sitting still with an empty mind.

I don't mean to suggest that all Italians are brilliant. Passeggiata has nothing to do with being smart or not smart. Sitting in front of my gluten-free pizza place sipping vino and watching the passeggiata, I see all sorts of Italians, no stereotyping...except as I've said they're all dressed up, whatever dressed up means to each individual, and the scarves, always the scarves. It's the piano, piano that makes the passeggiata. You can spot Americans like me. We're not dressed up and even though we may think we're strolling, we're not piano, piano.

First of all, it's not said piano like the American musical instrument. It's pronounced in a flow...peeahnoh...and gently...and not just spoken on the go but spoken as one physically slows to a stop and gestures downward with the hands, as if telling someone to take it easy. peeahnoh, peeahnoh.

And anyway, where did all those chariot races get those ancient Romans. Just have a look at the Circus Maximus, and imagine those horses and chariots tearing around the long oval track in the heyday of that arena.





Have you noticed that sports arenas tend to fall into ruins. Winners and losers come and go. Even the games change and are forgotten. But the streets remain open, quietly reinventing themselves as piano piano, the human race inches its way forward through the centuries.

To understand passeggiata, you must really believe in the stroll and allow it to take you where it will. Women walk arm in arm. I've seen boys and fathers holding hands. And of course couples pause here and there for the kiss, the caress. It's a gentle time. A sweet time. The night is brimming with friendship. The streets are full of food, as nearly every other establishment is a bar or restaurant. The food is beautiful. The world is lit up. It's as if you're witnessing a world that has been relieved of the anguish of suffering as part of the human condition.

Passeggiata is not what I would call festive. There are festas, or festivals. That's not passeggiata. As I watch passeggiata, I see life moving sweetly, slowly, beautifully against buildings that are old and peeling, their walls buckling outward, worn and stained with the ages. Passeggiata both defies and transcends time, except that isn't entirely correct because both defy and transcend transitive verbs. There is no direct object with passeggiata, only strolling.

Passeggiata is a slow movement of people who come out of their homes to walk about town. Oh, they've got their TVs, their passion for sports, their jobs, their petty annoyances. And don't get me wrong, passeggiata is not just for the pure of heart. Passeggiata provides a great opportunity for gossip.

There's no workbook available to guide the harried American on how to slow down to a stroll, no formula for getting passeggiata right so that you can enjoy the moment. If you're having a conscious moment, it's not passeggiata.

I don't think I'll ever be a stroller who will enjoy spending long slow hours over food late into the evening. I don't like dressing up, especially in the high-heeled shoes that Italian women like to show off. I wear a scarf only when it's cold.

But I do get piano piano....peeahnoh peeahnoh...I typed that slowly, pausing for a moment with my hands over the keyboard, and saying the words in Italian, saying them slowly, savoring the tranquility of the sound. In fact, I think I can say that passeggiata might describe the new way of writing I have discovered here...strolling, letting the stroll take me where it will. I sure do enjoy looking around and am always eager for a chance to gossip. But mostly, words are like food, not fast food but slow food with its savory tastes and fragrances, beautiful food, the embodiment of sun, earth, and rain opening and nurturing the seed...words the color of wine, full of the grape and the vine...words like the sound of that real pizza crust, both crunchy and chewy at once...words pulsing with the perseverance of a heart in defiance of time, making their way through the ruins breathing air full of the whispers of history, turning those whispers into the language of whatever the moment brings to mind....

I thought I was going to learn huge important things during my stay here. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. I will say that on my final stroll, I bought myself a bracelet that I'm now wearing. It's a simple narrow strap with a snap created by a happy man made happy by making these bracelets with scores of Italian sayings. He also seems to take great pleasure in matching people to his bracelets. I held several up to my arm before this one. However, the moment I lay this one across my wrist, he reached over, snapped it on, and that was that: a bracelet, along with my mind read and my fortune told, a mere 8 €.

Il mio braccialetto dice:
"La cosa piu' bella? Avere un cuore grande e saperlo donare con semplicita'."

Or, as the bracelet would say in English:
The most beautiful thing? To have a big heart and to know how to give it with simplicity....


So then, dear friends, it's ciao for now from the Eternal City. If Delta Air does what its flight plan promises, I should be home with my cats for dinner on Monday. It breaks my heart to leave Rome, but it's time to go home. And oh, by the way, if you find some discrepancies in my blog numbering system, just tell yourself it could have been a lot worse if I'd used Roman numerals.

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# 27.6—The Half-Opened Door

Even as I was sitting in the restaurant in Pizzo following my tour of Maierato, it began to occur to me that I was to blame for what happened. Although blame might not be the right word because I don't really know what happened. I know only what I felt about what happened.

When Polma wrote back to me the first time, I couldn't just allow the adventure to unfold. I had to, I don't know how to say it, I had to create the adventure. I sent Polma a packet of documents that my neighbor Peggy had found regarding my grandparents' emigration and arrival negli Stati Uniti. I sent a family tree telling her all about us. I sent pictures. Just going to Maierato...showing up...allowing her to discover me as I would discover her was not enough. I was learning Italian, writing in Italian, very bad Italian, but oh look at my accomplishment. The adventure became a drama. My drama.
Without fully realizing it, I had wanted to change the past, to be embraced by the kind of Italian family I'd always wanted.

For as smart and festive and generous as my family was, it was nevertheless fraught with guilt trips, mistrust, manipulation, and animosity...all of this a legacy of the darkness my grandfather brought with him from Maierato to Pittsburgh.

That door of Polma's house, one side open, the other closed was a Cutuly thing. Who knows if it was intentional on her part, or just something that brought up thoughts of the past in me. Perhaps she had wanted something from our meeting that I had denied her by imposing my own drama on the situation. Perhaps she'd left the door open on purpose hoping I'd walk up the stairs and find her.

Except maybe I was tired of doing that Cutuly thing of responding to an invitation to reach out, only then to be mistrusted. I was, in fact, angry when I realized she was ignoring my calls.

I like Tolstoy's idea that all happy families are the same, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. We were not an unhappy family. We were in many ways a family tormented by insecurity, much of that torment originating in my grandfather's darkness of spirit: a bright inquiring and able mind imprisoned by a fear of...of, well, nothing...fear that life is like that boarded up station where there will be no one to help us.

It was a terrible thing that chronically pulled the Cutuly family together while simultaneously driving it apart. My father and I were at odds for decades, the doctor-scientist and the poet. He never got over the fact that my first words were "by sels." By myself. Or that I hated school when he made his mark in life by succeeding there so brilliantly. My mother opened his dark insecure world to music and travel, but he fought her every step of the way while building his world on her optimism and confidence. The tragedy of all this is that my father was a good and generous man, a kind and profound doctor who healed so many but not until the last days of his life was he able to heal himself of the terrible wounds of insecurity inherited from his father.
There was always great love in the Cutuly family. But it was love fraught with the tension of chronic and hyper-vigilant self-protection. When I was a senior in high school, I was inspired by a quote from Joseph Conrad's novel "Victory."—"Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to love, to hope—and to put its trust in life." This is always what I've aspired to but perhaps never understood until now.

After standing before Polma's house, seeing, feeling, reflecting on the poverty of this town from which my grandparents emigrated, I am ashamed of myself. I allowed myself to imagine a lovely little village, I guess like Rossano Brazzi's family in "Three Coins in the Fountain." Everyone would be loving and merry. The past would be different, the darkness washed away so that all that was left would be the talent, the creativity, the generosity of spirit, the love that could have made us a family that would have nurtured by support instead of criticism, the family that sometimes gave as a way of maintaining control.

Perhaps Polma was hoping for exactly what I was hoping for. But then I used my education and opportunity to create a situation that might open her up to criticism and judgment. Back in Rome, I bought a bracelet I am now wearing It's a leather strip that says,

"La cosa piu' bella? Avere un cuore grande e saperlo donare con semplicita'."

"The most beautiful thing? To have a big heart and to know how to give it with simplicity."

Calabria is a wild mystical land, rugged country where ruins and daily life coexist. It's tempting to think of this simply as beautiful and charming. Which, it is. But it's also country that is a living representation of the history of any civilization, of any life. Calabria taught me a lot in my short time there:

We must learn from the ruins, as we must also learn to love and be loved by the life that now is. It's easy to walk through the open doors and clear that we must find another way when a door is closed to us. There are so many beautiful places in this world calling us to visit and admire them. But what about those places where there is no way in or out unless you have someone to help you? And how do we respond with compassion and wisdom to those half-open doors? Then, finally and perhaps most importantly, where do we find the insight to recognize that while the half-open doors may appear to belong to others, they might well be a response to something in ourselves?

In these questions, we find the challenge to our humanity.

One day, I hope to walk through that half-opened door.








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#27.5—Meeting the Family

Perhaps if the weather had been better...things would have turned out differently...or if I'd stayed in Pizzo...
But I know that isn't true.

I am sure it was Polma who hung up on me.
The question was: Why? She'd written to me welcoming me into the family. I'd written in my letter that I was sad that the spelling of our name got changed from Cutuli, and she'd started her letter:
Cara Joan Cutuli....

From the moment I read this, I was sure we'd become great friends.
When I wrote back that I was coming and she called me to say she hoped I would come, I could feel the connection on the phone. We were on an adventure of discovery together.

When I called Polma from Florence in 2011, I said I didn't know where I would sleep in Maierato. Was there a hotel?
She said I could stay with them. But the day before I was to fly down to Calabria, she called to say there'd been a death in the family. She and her mother were going to Canada. There was no one in Maierato "to help me." It struck me then as a strange phrase. I would need help with Maierato. Now I know what she meant.

She said after that call that she would phone me from Canada when I got home. She never did.

When I wrote again in 2012 that I was coming, she never responded. Yet when I called from Rome, she sounded quite enthusiastic. So when someone hung up on me, I figured I'd called the wrong number. But then when there was no answer for a day and a half, I realized it had all gone wrong. Why? Italian friends at home and in Italy had said I would be greeted with open arms and tables filled with food. Nothing was more exciting than Italians than welcoming someone who cared so much about family. There was even the MasterCard commercial about how making such a trip, despite the cost, was priceless.

So, I thought, to hell with her. I'd just scrap the trip to Maierato and hang out in Lamezia for a couple of days...but then I thought, hey why not just go to Pizzo, see what's going on there. The train from Rome had been so relaxing and enjoyable.

After we returned from Maierato, Tony and Carmelina dropped me off at a restaurant in Pizzo. After lunch, I felt agitated. I had nearly two hours until train time. It was perhaps a ten-minute drive along the coast to the station. Tony had promised to leave work to pick me up. But he wasn't answering his phone. I grew panicky. I tried to walk, but the road had no sidewalk, and the long way felt too dangerous. I was also tired. Emotionally drained. The owner of the restaurant was Tony's friend. He'd told her to take care of me. She did, driving me back to the train station. I figured I'd knock on Tony's door to tell Mariateresa that I'd gotten a ride back.

But the next thing I knew I was invited in. Tony was out. Carmelina was there with Mariateresa, her mother named Teresa, and the three kids. Did I want coffee? Perhaps some chocolate. Use of the bathroom. We began talking...in Italian...about my day. Somehow the words were there to express the emptiness and disappointment. They asked about my family in America and my life there. Mariateresa checked out m my Web site. Then I brought forth my iPad to show pictures of my family that I'd planned to show Polma. This family was delighted by them, asking questions and getting all the relationships straight. Little Nicole was more interested in the iPad and wanted to get her nursery-school hands on it. So we decided to take a picture.

Tony came home. Everyone was talking. A real Italian family. Tony friended me on Facebook. I kidded around about whether to accept. I did, and then he sent me a friend request from Mariateresa. She liked my profile picture. Then she tried to figure out how to get a translation of my blog.
This was the family I'd been looking for. Tony took out pictures Nicole had drawn and showed me the drawings of Papa and Mamma. He was such a proud Papa, beaming as Nicole explained all her little drawings to me. She's four, and Tony helped us both with our language. When little Francesco started crying, Tony held him. And baby Rebecca got handed around from Nonna Teresa to Nonna Carmelina.

One hour passed. Then thirty more minutes. In preparation for my departure, I took one final portrait of the family who took me in...back row left to right: Mariateresa, Rebecca, Carmelina, Nicole, Tony, with little Francesco and Teresa in the front.




This was what I'd come for, to be embraced by the real meaning of family. As I prepared to leave, I told Carmelina she'd been my angel for the day. She gave me a baggie of chocolate for the train.
Then I pulled my little traveling companion from my pocket for a picture. Strange as this was, it felt right, and Carmelina was delighted:




After a terrible day of being shut out, I had experienced the feeling of family in Italy. I'd been taken in, helped. Encouraged in my quest. Supported. And all per caso. By chance. There was a kindness in the world. And I'd been touched by it. This was the lesson I came here to learn. To have trust in life. Trust I'd maybe never had, having always been haunted by that darkness that narrowed my grandfather's vision of life and the world. I was like my own family: bright but shadowed...confident yet insecure...loving but skeptical...forgiving but not...it was an exhausting way to be. But the day had somehow freed me from this.

I walked up to that boarded up station, a transformed person. The conductor never came through the train to collect my money. I had a free ride home...a metaphor, I was sure...and by the time I got back to Lamezia, the sky was blue and sunny. All was well with the world...until that is, Orlanda thanked me for Cinzia the Plant and asked if I'd made it to Maierato. After having survived my day in Italian, I felt confident enough to describe the experience...the wonderful family and the dismal, spiritless town.
And Orlanda said, in Italian, "It is not possible to know a town in one day. Perhaps you will have to come back to find out about the town and what happened."

Orlanda always had an usual expression on her face, probably due to her eyesight that was very bad. She seemed to look at everything through a microscope. And suddenly, she seemed to see through me. Like a wave from that mean green sea crashing on the rocks at Pizzo, the truth of what had happened swallowed my so-called transformation and all the glib phony drama of me and my metaphors. What happened had been my fault....


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