Thursday, April 26, 2012

TUSCANY: February, 2003 (Part 3)

The following morning I climbed a steep, narrow pathway up, up, up to the Basilica of Santa Margherita, which was situated at the top of the town. I explored the inside of the church, lit a candle and sat in silence. My prayers, my meditations and my lit candles were wishes for a life of peace, purpose and creativity

For me, peace meant not panicking about paying the rent. Purpose was a reason to exist. I'd puzzled, cried and moaned for years about being blessed with a gift for acting, yet as my career had sputtered to an end I didn't know what to replace it with. Should I keep writing screenplays so I could join the millions of other writers in Hollywood with unproduced scripts? Creativity had to be more than the dinner parties I served up every month...didn't it?

My thoughts drifted away in the warm air of the cavernous basilica. Sunlight spilled across the nave from stained-glass windows on high. I was the only visitor. A spicy aroma of incense permeated the wood pews and brought to mind the masses my family attended every Sunday in the Orthodox Church. My brothers and I had no choice in the matter and tried our best to stay alert through long services held in droning Ukrainian. As payback we embarrassed my mother by wolfing down the after-service cupcakes. Fair trade, as we saw it, and the only merit churchgoing held for us.

In adulthood I discovered comfort in the ritual of Sunday morning services. I experimented with church. For a long time I attended an Anglican service, then I went to a "Self-Realization" temple, where all major religions are honored. William, raised Roman Catholic, rebelled and had nothing to do with organized religion. No, we wouldn't be wed in a house of worship.

I respected his perspective on the great unknown but sometimes longed for companionship in the wonderment of forces bigger than those we can see and touch. I needed to believe in something larger, in a kind of fate or destiny in order to find peace and purpose. William believed in talent, discipline and just a little luck, while my mind could drift for hours in mystery.

Back outside Santa Margherita, I studied the far-reaching landscape way below. Green and fertile earth stretched to the horizon. Squares of cultivated farmland held tiny houses with itsy-bitsy white sheets hung to dry across gardens and yards. From a height of over sixteen hundred feet, I looked at foggy clouds hanging over pastures. Birds twittered and hawks dipped low. I looked up at the moving sky. The fierce wind of the night before, still in action, had clouds scurrying as if in a sped-up film effect.

Should God have cared to listen to me, a tip of his head was all it would have taken. In such a place, it was easy to imagine a monastic life of peace and study. Here on the tip-top of Cortona, Emily Dickinson and I would take our leave. I wanted to marry that man back in Rome. I saluted God and took off back down, down, down to back my bags and bid farewell to the sisters.

On the train ride back to Rome I thought about my first trip to Italy.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

TUSCANY: February, 2003 (Part 2)

After coffee served by my new best friend, the darling and chubby sister of mercy, I was out the door and in to the town of Cortona. February makes for excellent travel in Italy. The streets were empty but for locals. The downside is shuttered restaurants, as family-owned businesses use this time for their travel as well.

Nevertheless, the chance to explore in relative privacy is well worth the limited dining choices. I could always find one or two available eateries in any small town — and hell, it's Italy, the food's tasty. A bowl of pasta, a chunk of bread and a glass of wine are enough after a long day of hiking in brisk winter coolness. I mean, my mother's idea of a pasta dinner was spaghetti soaked in Campbell's tomato soup.

After a day of exploring I found my small restaurant of the day. As I sipped a Chianti, I examined the rough-hewn walls and uneven floors and reflected on how Cortona represented a hushed, enchanting and solitary adventure. I touched my index finger to an amber candle holder with its single flickering flame and waited for my linguine con tuna, tomatoes and capers.

My history as an actor brings with it the hazard of adapting too easily to circumstances, as if I were playing a part. In Florence, I missed William. From a bridge I pictured our future married life and considered the dignity I would find at the end of a tunnel as I moved from girlfriend to fiancée and finally, wife.

Here in Cortona, living in a convent, I slid into a mirage of independence and imagined myself as an Emily Dickinson type. I could live in a place like this. Mornings would find me shopping for foodstuffs at the local market, chatting away in melodic Italian. Afternoons I'd work on a novel and evenings I'd enjoy a simple meal before retiring under a mountain of quilts. I'd to read myself to sleep lit by a full moon shining through a small window cut into a stone wall.

Was I a woman teetering on schizophrenia? Who would want to marry that?

I finished my dinner and walked home along cobblestones streets to my room and the nuns. I stopped outside a bar advertising "Nutella Night." Anyone ordering a drink would receive a tasty and free Nutella treat. Nice combo, I mused. Beers and Nutella. Nutella. Could be my middle name.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

TUSCANY: February, 2003 (Part 1)

From my train window I saw the destination high upon a Tuscan hill: Cortona. A medieval, walled town sitting like a curlicue atop a Dairy Queen ice cream cone.

I left the train station and stepped on a bus that wound its way up the hillside and dropped me in a town square. Here in Cortona I would spend four days living in a convent priced at thirty-five dollars a night.

Pure fantasy: me and the monastic life. I've boarded at a convent across from the Sistine Chapel in Rome. I've spent days in silent retreat at monasteries in California. Let me tell you, the relief of day-to-day chit chat is...well...relieving. Monasteries and convents tend to park themselves on idyllic landscapes, secreted behind walls and, though not glamorous, they're usually spotless, tiptoe quiet and often serve decent homemade grub.

After hiking up one small alley and down another I found the Cortona house of nuns and checked in like Maria arriving on set for a round of "The Hills are Alive." The nuns themselves were right out of Central Casting. A short, round-faced sister pinched my cheeks, slipped her arm through mine and led me down a marble hallway, up three stairs and around a corner. We stopped in front of a dark wooden door.

She unlocked it with a skeleton key and pushed it open to reveal my room, which held two single beds dressed in fresh linens. All the while she chattered away in Italian. I couldn't understand the specifics but was able to detect her pride when she showed me a private bathroom in sparkling tile with a large tub.

I was ready to move in.

After she left I dropped my bag, opened the shuttered windows and looked below to a cobblestone street. My stay was silent, peaceful and perfect...until a windstorm struck at four in the morning and those charming shutters hammered at the stone walls.

Once the storm settled, however, I slipped back into a deep sleep until dawn broke with the delicate voices of nuns singing morning prayers. The gentle sounds wove their way through stone hallways, up the stairs and under my door. I lay still in my bed with blankets pulled to my chin, watching sunlight creep through the shutter slats. It was a most delicious awakening.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

FLORENCE: February, 2003 (Part 3)

The rest my time in Florence I spent gazing at Jesus and Madonnas in the Uffizi, lunching on a picnic in the Boboli Gardens, wandering around the Pitti Palace for more Renaissance art and searching up one street and down another for the Mercato Centrale.

I have a fascination for city markets, and the view didn't get much better than a two-story indoor market of stalls stacked with vibrantly colored vegetables and fruits. The reds, purples, oranges and greens looked freshly dipped from the palate of a painter.

I inhaled air pungent with the aroma of cheeses. Smoked meats dangled from the ceiling. Fresh-caught fish tinted in pale grays and pinks lay one after another, as if napping. Oh, I regretted that William and I were living in a hotel room. Grand as it was, it did not have a stove...a stove...I'd give up those white linens for a stove.

My lunch space at the market was shared at a rustic wood table with local workmen in from the street for glasses of golden beer and their sandwiches of choice, giant hot pork panini. The meat, crispy on the outside, pink on the inside and succulent in juicy drippings.

I took a last long walk around the city, which shimmered in the autumn light. It was comforting that as the world spins into advanced technology some things stay put...David, the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio, Tuscan light, and pork sandwiches.

On my last night in Florence, rain poured down in sheets, creating pond-sized puddles. I sloshed in and out of a restaurant for dinner, and on my way back to the pension decided to celebrate and stepped into a dimly-lit taverna. I found an empty stool at the bar, ordered up a cappuccino laced with whiskey and looked around at the crowd of Firenzian hipsters.

Young couples laughed and flirted, moved close to light cigarettes and sipped from martini glasses while sharing casual winks. I wanted to join in. I wanted to converse, to have beautiful Italian sentences and witticisms drip off my tongue. To laugh or chat passionately about world politics and art and food and love. My satisfaction at traveling alone melted away as quickly as the foam on my coffee. My singular melancholy was as romantic as that of a spinster. Kate Hepburn at the beginning of "Summertime."

I finished my drink, slipped off the barstool and stepped back out the door as anonymously as I had arrived.