In Florence I wandered across the medieval Ponte Vecchio, which bridges the Arno River. Tiny art shops and clothing stores were crammed one after another on the classic Florence structure. In the setting sun, the view of lamp-lit houses and apartments alongside the riverfront was one of warmth. I smelled garlic and tomato emanating from home kitchens.
As I leaned on the ancient stone of the bridge and looked down into the calm water colored with ripples of light, I felt a sentimental pull to family. Whenever I saw a look exchanged between lovers, I missed William. This heart tug was a curiosity to me, a gentle reminder of companionship, partnership and friendship.
I wasn't filled with loneliness. To visit and to observe different parts of the world was all right by me. The sensation was one of floating in singularity, like a ghost. I liked missing William because I knew I could get to him in a train trip. If there were no one waiting for me perhaps I would have experienced profound aloneness.
I started to notice an interior split on this trip. My singular self, rubbing against the part of me that wanted to marry William. Marry William, I whispered over and over while studying the water. This was a different marry than the partnerships of my past. I used to see couples, old and young, bent to each other in serious talk or laughter in what seemed a married conspiracy, and used to believe they were acting. Putting on a show and faking it in public. Even with William's crankiness and my neediness I was beginning to glimpse a new reality. I was buying those couples and ending my cynicism. I was looking into the possible with fresh eyes.
I shivered in the Florence evening and moved on to find warmth in red wine and a dinner of tender chicken roasted in lemon juice. Ah yes, alongside a bowl of white cannellini beans coated in olive oil and topped with crisp pancetta. If there are people to look at, food to feast on, books to disappear into, and marble — for God's sake — marble and stone walkways, and if there's a man somewhere who's missing me, a fellow I have the privilege to pine over...what could possibly be wrong? Certainly nothing in Florence was amiss on this January evening.
The next morning I set out to find another friend, a fellow named David.
The David is only the David up close. In Italian cities and especially in Florence, there are replicas of this famed Michelangelo statue on every street corner or teetering in front of trattorias. He's on millions of postcards and in thousands of books, but I'm telling you: it ain't the David until you stand in front of the real gentleman.
This trip would be my second date with the man and he was in the middle of a major cleaning, surrounded by a partial wall and scaffolding. David stands thirteen feet high. He was sculpted between 1501 and 1504 out of a single piece of white marble. For all his brawn, David is nevertheless vulnerable. Poor David, since I last saw him, had been hurt. In 1991, a deranged maniac claimed he heard voices telling him to take a hammer and smash one of David's toes.
In the Galleria dell'Accademia, David's home, a long hallway leads to the statue. Lining these walls are other unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo. On my first visit in 1986, I dutifully examined these works while wondering where the main site was located. As my curiosity peaked, I turned a corner and sucked in a gulp of air.
Frozen in place, I tried to calm my heart and carefully, quietly...as though not to disturb anything...stepped forward. I stood awestruck for close to an hour as other tourists wandered around me. He's so real and yet carved in perfect stone. That is the genius. I'm not sure I even knew what genius was until David and I met. Every sinew in his arms, every muscle appears to breathe and have blood moving through it.
Starting in 2002, experts labored through the nighttime hours to give David his first bath since 1873. The statue had been covered in dirt and grime, much of it carried in on the clothing of his audience. It took a full two years to finish the restoration but many determined it was worth it. David now shone brighter and lighter and had a "healthy glow."
That was all well and good, but for me David glowed whether he was spotless or tarnished. I considered myself hugely fortunate to have had two visits with the man, and I was star-struck as my feet skimmed across the museum's floors to the exit. I landed on the cobblestone street still slightly dazzled.
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