The Lost Village

The spring weather has been lovely here - sunshine and clear skies, but still cool enough to walk up into the mountains.

We went off to explore some of the ancient 'Pilgrim Paths' in the Alpi Apuane - this one starting on the hill just above our little house.  I'm not sure why they call them Pilgrim paths because they seem to have been constructed to connect the little hamlets on the mountainside with each other and with the towns on the coastal plain.  Some of them were also used by workers in the marble quarries - many of whom walked for two hours to get to work and then two back.    They're beautifully constructed with paved edges and cobbled centres, navigating precipitous slopes.

In the spring weather, the stones were dotted with wild crocuses and narcissi growing up through the cracks.

Most of the paths are very well marked, with red dots, as alpine routes - but somehow, in the chestnut forest, we took a wrong turning and found ourselves in a thicket of bamboo.  It was only then that we realised that we were in the centre of a ruined village.  We should have noticed the clumps of daffodils - remnants of someone's garden, and the beautiful stone walls - all that's left of the terraces they cultivated.

The houses had almost completely vanished.  This photograph was taken from about 15 feet away from one of them and, although it's straight in front,  you can hardly see it at all. 

Down crumbling steps we found what had once been the village piazza.  Under a chestnut tree that had taken root in the wall was a water cistern fed by a spring, and a carved trough for washing people and laundry.

As we looked we began to see more and more houses hidden under the cover of wild clematis and bramble.
Doors swung open on scenes of desolation.

The front walls of some houses had collapsed into the valley.  From one window I could see the mountains through the remains of what had once been three houses.

We found our way back to the path (it was so obvious we must have been talking or looking at the view in order to miss it!)  and soon began to notice more ruins among the trees.  This was our favourite - glorious views and much of it still standing.  I sat on the front step and fantasised about living there.

The sad thing is that the path we were on leads to Sant' Anna - location of one of the worst massacres in Italy during WWII.  These villages too would have been searched and 'cleansed' by troops looking for partisans.  That's one reason they're deserted.  The other is that living up here is hard - people want electricity, running water, roads. 

Two more beautiful things I found in the woods - a magical tree bole like a sculpture and some red, red moss on a silver rock.

Mother's Day and Julia Copus' Ghost Lines

I'm a bit ambivalent about having 'days' for particular people or things. But 'Mother's Day' has such a long history - back to the Virgin Mary, and before that to the pagan mother goddesses we worshipped millenia ago.  Even nature, the earth, was seen as a woman.  Maybe to do with the mysterious processes of giving birth - it seemed such a miracle, and women risked their own lives in the process of giving life to a new human being.  It also seems an appropriate day to remember those who long to have a child, yet can't.  There's a moving series of poems by Julia Copus about the gruelling process of IVF, and its failure, called Ghost Lines, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in December 2011.    Although the programme doesn't seem to be available for re-viewing at the moment, there's a trailer clip from the Fiction Factory .  Ghost Lines is short-listed for the prestigious  Ted Hughes prize for new work in poetry and is also in the current issue of Poetry London. 

I particularly loved 'Inkling'  which begins

Last night I sensed a taking root
under the bonecage of my heart,
a stirring, shifting;  something not
quite of a breath or heartbeat's weight.

It was the inkling of a soul.
Now I shall have no peace at all
till he's caught and fastened, nested in
the cradle of my pelvic bone......

These poems are very, very special and I'm looking forward to reading them again in her next collection The World's Two Smallest Humans, due from Faber in  July 2012.

Also remembering my own lovely mother today.  I'm grown up enough to stand on my own two feet now, with grown up daughters of my own, but I still miss her.  This photo is of her as a girl and I'm amazed how Italian she looks!  - all those maternal relatives in Genoa, whose names I would love to know.

Travelling, travelling, travelling .......

So far four trains, two buses, a plane, a London underground ride and a taxi;  two hotels and a succession of coffees in paper cups and tasteless sandwiches.   No wonder I'm feeling a touch jaded.  And my poor laptop has  been trying to connect to so many internet hotspots it's become confused!   I'm currently in Ipswich giving a talk on Katherine Mansfield to the Suffolk Book League - a lovely group of book enthusiasts it was a pleasure to meet.   Waterstones even managed to sell a few books.  But I wonder whether audiences have any idea what an effort writers make to meet readers and talk to them about their work?

I haven't been to Ipswich before and at first glance it seems like most modern English town centres - hardly any old buildings left and most space taken up by a pedestrianized shopping mall with all the usual suspects;  Monsoon, Debenhams, H&M, McDonalds, Gap, Benetton, Costa coffee, M&S.   There is, apparently, another face to Ipswich - the waterfront - which I haven't seen yet. 

There are lots of very young mums here, strolling around with their babies in buggies - some of them don't even look old enough to have left school.   That's something you don't see in Italy and I wonder why?  Do Italian girls have better things to do than have babies as teenagers?  Most wait until their late twenties or early thirties.  Cultural differences?  The family group is certainly stronger and more important in Italy than it is over here, so perhaps young girls feel less compelled to begin their own.  But there's also a demographic shift in Italy - the birth rate is dropping and the government are worried about it.

Now I'm about to start the journey again in reverse - taxi, trains, bus, plane (fog permitting) and hopefully Neil will be waiting for me at Pisa airport around midnight.   It's sunny over there he tells me and tonight the sky should be clear enough to get another look at Venus and Jupiter together - the brightest objects in the night sky.

40 Women Sculptors for International Women's Day

As it's International Women's Day today, I thought it might be appropriate to post something about an exhibition celebrating the work of 40 women sculptors who have lived and worked in Pietrasanta during the last fifty years.

Whatever you think of gendered events, (and I know many of the women here are very ambivalent about them) it's difficult to turn down the opportunities that positive discrimination sometimes presents.   The work featured in this exhibition is extremely varied in style and subject matter and the sculptors come from almost every part of the world, including USA, Italy, Norway, Venezuela, Russia, Europe, and Japan.

They were all interesting, and I had my own personal preferences, but here are some that I found really interesting.  Sadly, one of my favourites, 'Dancing in the clouds' by American Shelley Robzen, can't be shown because it was highly polished black marble in a spotlighted situation which didn't photograph.  In fact, it was difficult to get any good photos at all, given that the church 'St Agostino' has no natural light.

My favourite artist of the older group,  Alicia Penalba (from Buenos Aires) died in 1982.  Her 'Trilogie'  - the three bronze figures standing at the entrance to the church, is really beautiful.

The gesso maquette for Grand Gisant reminded me of dinosaur vertebrae.

Again in the older group, the Italian Fiore de Henriquez who died in 2004, had a strange, almost feral bronze figure, full of quite violent life.  It's called 'Ippogrifo' - the Hippogriff.

I loved this small, alien landscape with its lonely figure by American Jill Watson who now lives near Pietrasanta.  It's called Giardino - garden.

This relief, by Swiss artist Maja Thommen, looks simple, but is incredibly intricate. She's a very interesting artist who paints, creates installations and also performs with a gypsy punk band.  It's called Donna Velata - veiled woman.

Dutch sculptor Margot Homan exhibited this bronze figure of a women holding her finger to her mouth - Il Silenzio.  It's very finely balanced.

There were some images that I found quite disturbing, including this male, almost zombie-like figure by young Italian artist Elena Bianchini.

Altogether a fascinating exhibition.  I'd have loved to do a creative writing workshop with it!

The Two Faces of Italy

I'm reading a very interesting book at the moment, 'The Dark Heart of Italy', which promises to enlighten my own ignorance of the tortuous pathways of Italian politics.

Italy is outwardly seductive - the beautiful landscape, history, art, food, wine and language.  But learning - or trying to learn! - that language has made me more aware of the duality here.  Just the word for icing sugar for example.  In English it implies decoration, enrichment, as in 'the icing on the cake', but in Italy it is a 'veil' concealing what is underneath.  This is a country where the word for cunning, 'furbo', also means cleverness and is used admiringly.

Two Faces of Italy - Catastrophe in an Idyllic Location - will Schettino ever face justice?

It's a country where the rich declare less than 50,000 euros a year in earnings and drive around in Ferraris and  Lamborghinis.  It's a country where most attempts to bring corrupt politicians and officials to justice usually founders in a maze of judicial bureaucracy.  It's called the 'muro di gomma' - the rubber wall everything bounces off.

While I'm on my terrace admiring the view, northern Italy is experiencing violent unrest - to watch the news you'd think half Italy was burning.  The 'No Tav' movement has blocked an autostrada and the railway lines to protest against a proposed fast rail link from Turin to Lyon.  There are burning barricades and violent clashes.

Elsewhere there are demonstrations against austerity measures.  One in three Italian youths doesn't have a job.  The fact that you have to know someone to get a job makes things doubly hard.  PM Monti has pledged to reform the labour market and create a meritocracy, but will it happen? or are the practices too deep rooted?  Like Japanese Knotweed in Britain, Nepotism is wild and out of control here.  You need a lot of 'furbo' to get anywhere.

Fancy a Cheap Ferrari?

In Italy, Berlusconi's replacement, Mario Monti, is busily trying to clean up the Italian state.   He's promising changes to the tax system - at the moment even the low-paid are taxed at 50%, which is why everyone avoids tax whenever possible.  The black economy is huge here.  But the rich are the biggest tax evaders of all and Monti is threatening to chase them up.  Which is why they're selling their Ferraris and buying something less eye-catching in an attempt to evade the dreaded Guardia di Finanza - a financial police force with blood-curdling powers!  So, if you want a testosterone boost, or fancy a display of machismo, the car dealers of Milan will probably be able to oblige with one of the rocket powered machines guaranteed to raise the CO2 levels of the planet even on a trip to the supermarket.  Sadly, I must confess that I do experience the odd moment of lust when one roars past my modest Peugeot on the road, but my sensible self soon re-asserts itself!

Spring has come to Capezzano

I’ve just come back from a very stormy England, tired and travel-lagged.  Pisa airport at midnight was very cold and damp and not unlike the UK airport I’d just left.  But waking up in our little house in the olive grove the following morning things looked very different.   Spring has really sprung in Capezzano.

               
The mimosa is flowering and the grass is starred with purple/pink anemones and tiny narcissi.  The creamy green hellebore we call ‘Easter Roses’ are everywhere.  The sun has warmth in it - enough to sit out and drink a glass of wine wearing only a jumper.  It certainly lifts the spirits.

It has obviously affected the cats as well.  Our adopted wild cat, Batcat, (who turned out to be female) has been sitting in the olive grove wowling at the spring sun (and everything else) in a very ominous way and it seems as though every tom cat in the village is strutting across our terrace trying to look suitably feral.  After dark there’s a great deal of tumbling and chasing and more singing - a kind of feline X-factor!  I fear this means kittens for Easter, but Batcat sadly isn’t tame enough to catch, put in a box and take to the vets.   Yet.

I was given a couple of preview copies of Young Adult novels to read when in the UK - ‘Wonder’ by P.J. Palacio and ‘Now is the Time for Running’ by Michael Williams -  neither of them out until the beginning of March. It’s interesting to read another genre, also interesting to see what publishers are buying from abroad - one was a best seller in America, the other in southern Africa before being brought over here.  UK publishers aren’t taking many risks these days.

Carnival in Viareggio

It's carnival time again in Viareggio, which is one of the best carnivals in Europe - famous for its gigantic floats, some of which are designed by leading artists.  This one is 'Anger', identified by its maker as the most problematic human emotion.

It's hard to convey the sheer joy of the carnival;   every kind of music - from Puccini to Abba - bouncing off the walls, whole families in fancy dress,

people dancing in the street, ankle deep in confetti and streamers.

And the sheer size of the floats - towering many stories above the buildings, and taking up the whole width of the road.

 
In between the floats, small parades, just as striking.

There's always a satirical theme - this year European politics took another beating.  We had Sarkozy as Napoleon on a horse

with Angela Merkel riding shot gun dressed (or undressed) as a dominatrix.

And it was hard not to connect this float with Captain Schettino of Concordia fame, steering the ship of Italy onto the rocks, a vulture on his shoulder, taking the whole of Europe with him,

though Berlusconi is in a life belt with three nubile mermaids (well, he would be wouldn't he?).

One of the most impressive floats was a visualisation of last year's Japanese Tsunami, with the motto 'On the surface we contemplate Flowers - underneath an Inferno'.  Video Link here.

Surrounded by Geishas with umbrellas and fans dancing out an impeccable choreography, it  was really moving.

I had a fabulous time and the weather stayed fine, temperatures around zero, but no wind or snow.


If you want to know what it sounds and feels like to be there - I found recommend this little video on You Tube filmed at last weekend's parade.  The final parade will be next week, but by then I'll be in England - unexpectedly.  Meanwhile, I've got to go and get the confetti and silly string out of my clothes!

Winter comes to Capezzano

Yesterday  we had a blizzard - winds strong enough to blow a steel barbecue across the terrace and relocate the TV aerial, and a few inches of snow frothing over the olive trees like soapsuds. We're on the edge of a Siberian front that's bringing unusually cold weather across europe.    It's still snowing on and off and more snow and freezing temperatures forecast for the weekend.  Winter weather like this doesn't usually last for longer than a couple of weeks, though further north it's more severe.

We're cat and dog sitting at Peralta for ten days or so at the moment - one frisky little hunting dog called Ellie who's obsessed with chasing objects, an elderly, deaf, arthritic, but very aristocratic Spinoni called Frank (short for Frankenstein!), Vaniglia- a shy burmese cross cat, and a big, affectionate black and white male called Pino.  Tonight they're all in beside a roaring fire and we've opened a bottle of wine to keep out the weather.

Neil is about to start another sculpture down in the marble yard, but tomorrow is the feast of San Biaggio, so nothing is open now until Monday.  Typical Italy!

The Most Depressing Day of the Year?

This is what it looked like at London Bridge station last night

Back to England yesterday.   A weary journey.  Two ‘incidents’ brought trains to a complete halt between Gatwick airport and Victoria station London, resulting in extreme congestion and delays on the remaining services.  Forcing our way through crowds - like a riot, or sale day at Harrods, having station gates slammed in our faces because there were too many people on the concourse for safety.  Then missing the main line train we could have got on because the doors were locked just as we reached the train (still 2 minutes to departure)  Policemen patrolling the station in threes with AK47 assault rifles in their hands and other weapons slung about their persons, accompanied by sniffer dogs.  This isn’t an England I recognise, but fear I must get used to.

It took less than 2 hours on the plane from Pisa to Gatwick and another three and a half to get from Gatwick to London (normally 30 minutes) then another three to get out of  London northwards.  Hungry, tired, cheated of an evening with my children and grandchildren, I wasn’t in too good a mood by the time I arrived in the midlands.  But thinking about the suffering of  the families of the two people who died after throwing themselves under high speed trains put it all into perspective.   England isn’t in great shape right now.

And maybe it had something to do with the fact that the third week in January is statistically supposed to be the most depressing week of the year, and Monday, 'Blue Monday', the most depressing day.  Obviously Tuesday wasn't good either.

Of Cats, Polenta and more Etruscans

The starving wild kitten we began feeding in July and christened 'Batcat',

is now a fully grown-up feline of the female gender.  She no longer hisses and spits and will allow us a brief stroke when putting out her food, but attempts at further intimacy are furiously rebuffed and often result in disappearance at escape velocity!

Woke up this morning to cats yowling in the olive groves and suspect that Batcat is on heat, though she turned up innocently for breakfast with scarcely a hair out of place.   When she is tame enough to catch we intend to take her to an animal charity for neutering, but at the moment that seems a distant prospect.

Meanwhile I'm trying to increase my repertoire of Italian cooking.  Friends told me that Polenta is easy - you simply need a non-stick pan and the patience to stir for 30 minutes.  So I made the attempt and produced something that should have looked like a golden mound, crisp at the edges, but actually resembled a pale yellow breast implant when it flopped out of the pan, and tasted of nothing much.  Hey ho!  Back to the recipe book.

I'd like to share some more pictures from Orvieto, if you can bear it?  This is Civita di Bagno Regio, a few miles from where we were staying at Lake Bolsena.

Civita is miraculous - a pillar of rock rising up from the centre of a huge volcanic crater (which reminds one of  pictures of Colorado) topped with a very ancient walled town.

The front gateway is Etruscan, as are the chambers hollowed out of the rock beneath.  This is a staircase cut into the rock to go down to a water cistern.  And yes, we did go down!

  Most of the buildings inside the walls are medieval.  The streets are very narrow and shady, so not good for taking photographs unless you have special lenses.   This was one of the little bars.

Earthquakes destroyed parts of the town in 1349,  1695   and 1764,  though the ruins of many houses are still standing.

 Erosion has since caused many of the outer buildings to collapse into the crater.   This house and garden (inhabited) were overhanging the edge and someone had inserted wooden props into the rock under them. But I wouldn't have spent a night there for any money!!

 Only 5 families now live there permanently, though there are shops, B and Bs (all safely in the middle!), and some lovely small restaurants.  It's one of the most beautiful places I've seen in Italy.  Utterly unique.  This is a cactus on someone's garden wall overlooking the canyon.