Monthly Archives: March 2020

Italy

I have been so sad for my beloved Italy. My first extended stay there was in 2012 (I had been there on short trips prior to that date). On one particularly beautiful autumn day in Perugia, I was walking to my Italian class and I heard a voice from above. I looked up and saw a woman leaning from her balcony, like a modern-day Juliet. But she was not in love. She was gesticulating madly at my bare ankles. It took me a while to realize it, but she was telling me to go back in and put on socks. She kept insisting that it was “un freddino, oggi.” A cold one, today. I explained that I was from Canada and that it didn’t feel cold to me.

I thought of that moment when I watched the many touching online videos of Italians singing from balconies and windows these past few weeks, connecting in the only ways they can find. These images are particularly bittersweet because I suspect that in Toronto, we’d be filing noise complaints against each other in the same situation.

Since 2012, I’ve gone back annually, but that year was my first exposure to what I call the “large extended family” aspect of life in Italy. Italians up and down the boot will insist that their town and dialect and local pastry is vastly different and infinitely better than the one 20 miles over. And while my Italian is fluent enough that I can decipher some of those differences, to Canadian or American eyes there is still relative homogeneity in Italian culture.

There are more immigrants now, there are the culturally globalizing forces of television and the internet, but compared to life in even small-town Ontario, there’s always a feeling in Italy of being part of the same dysfunctional – and at times joyful and warm – family. There is a lack of privacy that can take some getting used to. It is telling that Italians don’t have their own word for privacy – they use ours. “La privacy.” (I do like that it’s feminine.)

It can be amusing, like when I was on a bus trip and Italians from the front of the bus got into a conversation with Italians at the back. They didn’t get up to talk to their new acquaintances. They just shouted back and forth. Eventually, people in the middle seats added their two euros.

I believe it is one of the reasons the screen window has not become a hit in a country where the lengthy mosquito-season, scary spiders and lack of effective air-conditioning ought to make it one. With a screen window you can’t lean out and tell a woman you’ve never met that she should put on socks. If you read or watch ‘My Brilliant Friend’ – the exceptional HBO series which began its second season this month — you will recall the numerous scenes in which people are leaning out their windows or off of their balconies talking to, or about, someone. (And if you aren’t watching the series, you are a fool.)

I am generalizing, and the balcony scenes of quarantined Italians likely appeal to us because they reflect a comforting stereotype in a frightening time: Italians emoting from balconies; Italians with accordions and mandolins; singing Italians; shouting Italians. And yes, it’s possible that in another month they will be throwing more than their voices from windows and terraces.

But I have lived on three continents and traveled extensively and can’t think of a people with more of a compulsion to communicate. Fittingly, Italians are addicted to their telefonini (cellphones) but that isn’t enough. This is a country where, apart from the famous baci and abbracci (kisses and hugs), it is commonplace to see people of all ages walking with arms linked – men, women, men and women. As the British journalist John Hooper writes in his book, The Italians, “No people on earth express themselves as visually as the Italians.” The need for the face-to-face is strong.

So much so that when I first heard of Italy’s nation-wide quarantine, I thought, “yeah, this will go well. A nation of pathological extroverts with limited respect for the law asked to obey the law and behave like introverts.” But they are, with few exceptions, doing what they can to make it work.

In 2016 my time in Italy coincided with a spate of powerful earthquakes; I was living 30 kilometres from the epicentre and one morning woke up feeling rather like the little girl in The Exorcist, as my bed shook and rattled. When I gave away my anxiety, Italians – friends, acquaintances and strangers – would try to reassure me, saying, Niente paura. No fear. Don’t worry. Of course, Italians have painful and extensive experience with earthquakes. Not so Covid-19. I don’t think a mere niente paura can provide much comfort against the current death and illness toll. That is where the interfering extended family and those magical musical moments come in handy.

In the News…

…there is nothing but Covid-19. I won’t offer a bunch of links on which approach is best (i.e., what much of the world is doing versus the current approach in Sweden). I will instead send you to this podcast of a debate between two scientists, John Ioannidis and Sten Vermund. It is the kind of debate I like – serious talk, respectful, listening to hear, not to correct. Yes, I have a (one degree of separation) connection to the Munk Debates, but this really is worth your time if you’d like to better understand the options.

I will also link to this article about Dr. Fauci, someone who impresses more each day and to this website, the blog of my friend Raywat Deonandan, an epidemiologist who is also funny and nice and handsome. (When he used to comment on my old blog my mother would always say, “that good-looking friend of yours left a comment.”)

Animals

It is our stupidity and cruelty and selfishness toward animals that has caused all of what we are now experiencing. So, in a way, I am glad that our lockdown is allowing them to roam more freely. My fear, however — and I believe it is justified — is that once we are out and about again, and they have become accustomed to us not being out and about, they will pay the price (as always).

This is Just to Say: Quarantine Edition

With apologies to William Carlos Williams.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten

the unsalted Saltines

that were in the

pantry

and the salted pistachios

and the President’s Choice oatmeal cookies

even though it is Lent

and I vowed no sweets

and the rest of the Kosher Dills

that were in the

refrigerator

along with a chunk of that pricey Parmigiano-Reggiano

you told me was

only for pasta

and a swig of the

Hennessy (right from the bottle)

though you said we

shouldn’t squander it

also I took one

of your Ambien last night

 

These things

I know you had probably

hoped would last us all

through quarantine

 

Forgive me

I was stressed

and it made me

feel better

Haiku Quintet: Corona Edition

Verse for these trying times. (You can also read my Ode to the Banana, my Haiku for Alex Trebek, and my Paris poem.)

CORONA HAIKU

Coronavirus

makes us stay inside and watch

reruns of Mad Men.

 

Covid 19 is,

I think, payback for human

abuse of critters.

 

So, while you watch Mad

Men or Bewitched, enjoy a

vegan snack or drink.

 

(If you choose Bewitched,

try not to channel Mrs.

Kravitz while shut in.)

 

And when we are free

again, don’t revert to the

eating of carcass.

St. Patrick’s Day: John O’Donohue

For St. Patrick’s Day, these words from poet, priest and philosopher John O’Donohue on aloneness and loneliness, isolation and longing. Fitting topics for this time of pandemic (and actually, for whatever time).

We live in a world that responds to our longing; it is a place where the echoes always return, even if sometimes slowly… The hunger to belong is at the heart of our nature. Cut off from others, we atrophy and turn in on ourselves. The sense of belonging is the natural balance of our lives… There is some innocent childlike side to the human heart that is always deeply hurt when we are excluded… When we become isolated, we are prone to being damaged; our minds lose their flexibility and natural kindness; we become vulnerable to fear and negativity.

Taken from Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong.