Italian house...
Archive post January 10, 2019…
I had completely forgotten…
Far before I had thought to come to Italy to live, my dreams had conjured an Italian house. Running an errand in the SUV a couple of days ago, I happened to take an unexplored road to avoid an accident up ahead. Bet a FIAT had spun-out on an icey strada statale. No idea really. The Carabinieri waved me right well before. Italian drivers never learn, do they? What is the rush to get to Aulla before the stores open? Making the right turn and there on the right was a classic Italian casa colonica… an Italian farm-house. Tuscan. A stone and brick box set back from the unknown road. Stopped to stare. The house nestled by some scraggly olive trees. I was lost in my head. Suddenly I saw what I once remembered of my dream-like mind’s eye. Vision reproduced for days afterwards. Then archived under My Italian house. Might have been the original spur to change direction and come East from the USA to the boot of a peninsula surrounded by sea.
I must confess of some need for a change. Summer spat me out unwillingly into Fall. Hollered but, was no help. No time to brake either to avoid colliding with Christmas. Happened quickly anyway. When in this state, My History provided a move to a new city in a new home. Home is the place to start.
Got two. I have been ruminating selling both…
One I can’t. A certain person would invoke Over My Dead Body. The last time he spoke those hardened words I cringed in his presence for a week. Still nurture scares too. Tone of voice thing. No big stick. You’s point-of-view to his insisted statement of No? DIfficult to beat… anywhere in the world… the nifty happenstance of living only a short block away from where you catch the train for work every work-day.. Views are one of a kind from the 25 foot high windows towards the old port and La Lanterna di Genova. I do love the oft apartment and most of the accumulated stuff inside. Pretty fancy. Provokes Ooo’s & Ahhh’s from those lucky to be show photographs. Am waiting for Voice Search… Find me that photo of the LR, please. No, the other one. Thanks. What grates is I feel trapped in our non-neighborhood. I miss the old apartment in the centre of Genoa. A middle-class tenement. Would walk out and meet a friend or two, three… bunches. Where You & I are now is una landa desolata. The only folk who say Ciao! to me as I am pulled along by two crazed Weimaraners are the recovering drug addicts at the Communita’ San Benedetto. Mostly guys. Friendly. Cute. Girls don’t do drugs to excess? Never see n’er una. The guys sang Jingle Bells to me from the balcony of their retreat at Christmas.
The other, il Poggiolo, is rife with ramps and stairs. Near killers. Bad back and the left hip issues. The bain of old-age or, at least an age heading in that direction. More so with bags of groceries or carry-alls of IKEA glass bottles full of sparkling spring water. I also worry months in advance of the Spring & Fall assaults on the garden though what has been sunk into Mother Earth is maturing as desired and contrary to another’s opinion.
I confided to You my deep yearnings for changing our homes mid-stream in our drive to Milan for New Year’s. Ghastly holiday sabotaged by a wayward friend, a bully and about 350,000 foreign tourist in the city to shop and eat the place to suffocation. Couldn’t even get into a museum!!! I was rewarded with a cautionary admonition of a repeat performance of said famous declaration. Gads.
Maybe it’s just a phase? About every two years for twenty years I would masticate the idea of bagging Italy and going back to America. What tipped the chew was I could not dissolve the conviction: You can’t go back. Still here. Changing homes is the same repetitive beast.
What to do? Projects. Already mentioned. Alerted to my malaise, You encourages reports on my progress to coral a builder to construct and install two fire-boxes, one in the salotto and the other in the sala da pranzo. A gardner… and one of the finest men I have had the honor to know and work with… has promised us by the end of January to erect the infamous Dog Fence. Then, and this will require all the tact my Americanized Anglo-Saxon corpuscles can muster with You-know-who, French doors and a iron balcony with stairs off the same sala da pranzo to our Scenic Overlook. There was some noise from a certain sector that eliminating two… only decorative… beams from the pre-2009 roof might be frowned upon. Frown away. They be gone.
But hey! Wait just a minute. Excitement is building. What am I thinking? Il Poggiolo will reach new heights with these Excuse-our-messes. Never mind. Onwards. Just a phase.