Lockdown The End

On Monday we can move about freely, with conditions. Masks and gloves required and keeping our distance. It will be very unlike usual. Inhibiting.  

When you walk out that door in the coming days did you learn anything about yourself? 

Did you learn about what you really need and what you don’t? Who you really need in your life, and who you don’t? Who you will tolerate and who you won’t? What’s really important to you and what isn’t? 

What could you not have done without? For me it was reading material and dessert. A lot of one and a little of the other. One cup of strong sugarless tea a day. 

What will change and what won’t? I’ll probably keep to the limited shopping schedule and shop for more than just a couple of days at a time. When bars and restaurants open up in a few weeks I can’t really see myself hanging out in mask and gloves, so I may give that a miss for a while. 

This isn’t a get out of jail free card. We will not pass go or collect $200. 

But when we do walk out that door, spring is at our doorstep and summer is around the corner. Though nothing will be as it was, for some time to come, everything will be as it is. 

Lockdown Day 49

7 weeks in another time zone. The twilight zone. 

Quando la Pania porta il cappello, allunga il passo o porta l’ombrello. 

When the Pania wears a hat, lengthen your stride or bring an umbrella.

These mountains have stories to tell and in watching some are revealed. 

The Apuan Alps are the western coastal range between the Serchio River Valley and the Ligurean- Tirrenean sea. Barga rests on the opposite slopes of the Apennines. On both ranges are the medieval villages which have kept watch over the valley for centuries, and before that, other cultures for thousands of years.  

These mountain ranges have provided perfect points of reference for astronomers since before there even was such a thing named and the skies are fascinating to watch at all times for clues to the weather, which many of the older generation can read. Planting is done rigorously by the phase of the moon. 

Our planet’s movement is obvious as the sun sets each evening gradually traveling from a precise point on the Apuan range in the north west on midsummer night to a point south south west on midwinter night. Although to be clear, to my mind, the sun never actually sets, we go hurtling by, waving goodnight. 

A spectacular, but rare to see, due to weather conditions, phenomenon occurs twice a year, in November and January, when the sun sets above once and then through the enormous natural arch of Monte Forato, perforated mountain, in the Apuan Alps, in the event known as the double sunset. 

But every night it’s a delight to watch the skies here, as we pass all of the constellations and Orion seems to leap over the mountains as I sit in my kitchen sleepless. 

The moon is often a beautiful warm yellow, as it approaches the mountains. 

In the late 16th century astronomy was on many peoples’ minds. The native son, latin and greek scholar, poet, philosopher and humanist, Pietro Angeli, Pier degli Angeli, or as he was also known, Il Bargeo, taught at the University of Pisa. He and Galileo Galilei taught there within a year of each other, perhaps they crossed paths. 

There is quite a bit of ambient light in Barga these days and, although the night sky is still remarkable here, going out into the countryside it is spectacular. On a midsummer’s night you can have a VR experience with the depth of field confusion between fireflies and stars. Oh wait, that is reality. 

Now that we’re permitted to do vegetable gardening, and so many do here, many are preparing their “orti” for planting with each category planted in its phase, seed and gradually transplant during this waxing moon, with new plants at the full moon.

The sun, the moon, and the stars, and the clouds. Endless diversions when there has been nothing else to do but watch from inside during this quarantine. We’re all looking forward to being out and about. Whether it’s a Midsummer Night’s Dream or a midwinter’s tale, even in twilight, we can always dream. 

Lockdown Day 44

With so much time on our hands it is predictable that we would spend a lot of it online. Although in the spirit of the self-discipline of Lockdown Day 11, I try to limit it, especially on the social networks which tend to just be echo chambers from a Narcissus to an Echo. 

There is talk of creating an app for our cell phones for virus contact tracking and limited freedom of movement for those in vulnerable categories. In the recent past the surveillance state has insidiously crept into our lives. CCTV is ubiquitous. This is another level of control purportedly for the common good. Big Brother has a nefarious history going back over 70 years before the putative reality TV show.

We use the social networks to stay connected to friends, family, and possibly news, although that is a matter for debate based on confirmation bias. This is where A. I. comes into play. With our hearts and minds. 

An algorithm analyzing previous searches or ‘likes’  feeds us similar information we’d like to have or need. This applies to communication and predictive text editing. 

My news feed supposedly shows me things I might like to know based on my google searches. I use ad blockers so it doesn’t have the opportunities it once had to feed me advertising based on a random word in an email, which was way too creepy anyway. 

In my news feed it now comes up as ‘sponsored’ or ‘suggested for you’.  So I get posts captioned: this wild pony is so patient while someone sets him free, or various others about horses mired in mud, caught in fences, baby animals abandoned by their mothers being raised by humans, etc. I have never in my life searched anything like this. Or there are the ones captioned “we could sit and listen to “hair education” all day. Hair education? Really? The best are make-up tutorials performed by already attractive 18 somethings applying extremely elaborate layers of stage make-up for everyday wear and ending up looking literally plastified. Imagine having to remove that or what the pillow case, or whatever, would look like if one doesn’t, before going to bed.  These networks know exactly how old I am, it’s not like I’m hiding it on a Tinder profile. 

My most common searches are in the dictionary category: odium, laconic, Fauci, which means jaws in Italian, let that sink in; seraglio, the area where the sultans’ wives live, harem or, in italian spelled serraglio, it means enclosure for ferocious or exotic animals, get the picture? Otherwise, I look up literary references, or similar information. 

The predictive text on my phone is helpful, except when it’s not. You would think that it might predict the most common usages or expressions as you’re typing, it doesn’t, to my endless annoyance. 

What good is it?

Why are these things connected? Why are such random posts coming up in my news feed? Why isn’t predictive text very good? Because A.I. isn’t. 

Which brings us back to the recent calls for interconnectivity for the common good in the time of the coronavirus and beyond. What could go wrong? A lot.

Cherries Jubilee

Trees blaze 

Burning bright 

White 

On steep dull gray

Forest slopes

In the hopes 

From another life
Nights

When the flambé king sang songs of love

Lockdown Day 33 of 55

swallows or house martins 

or whatever 

you Insist 

they are

screeching and chattering

like they rule the roof

pumping their little pointy wings

loping to gain loft

flying arcs 

jet-propelled from gutter to gutter

flapping and flitting

and dive bombing

kamikazes until the last second

Lockdown Day 30

There is hope. Thirty days into lockdown and it looks like we have real progress. The peak was at eleven days in and then it has taken another 18 to 20 to confirm real improvement. We seem to be coming out the other side. Our rigorous reclusion restrictions have been effective. 

Language is a living thing and while we’re all inside there isn’t a whole lot else to do but read or watch films, unless you’re working from home which is a whole new challenge.  

With so much time on my hands and reading a lot, I’m thinking of languages, reading friends’ posts in italian and french, all pretty much the same woes and diversions, and an excellent exercise for language skills. I read anything and everything I can, in Italian in particular, no matter how ridiculous or colorful. I’ve learned a lot.  

Italian is a beautiful language, poetic, descriptive. It is easy to learn to pronounce, as every letter is pronounced, you say it like you see it. Grammar, though complicated, is also very clear in certain ways. Verb endings tell you exactly who, how many, and when, and sometimes even gender, such that you often don’t need a pronoun. Andiamo! Let’s go! 

Adjectives, though often similar to English, sometimes have very different meanings. My husband’s home made pizza was often described as squisita! exquisite? Well that’s one way to put it. It usually applies to food. Whereas we would say delicious, that word in italian has a different application too in that it is not unusual to describe “una donna davvero deliziosa,” a truly delicious woman, lovely in other words.  

Sometimes I use mnemonics to remember words, or some other associative element.

As I read about the pandemic pandemonium elsewhere, I cannot help being reminded of another word association. When our son was in school we’d hear about friends having bocciato, flunked, a test or the year. It comes from the verb bocciare, something that didn’t pass, e.g. a law, or was put off to be done over. In the Tuscan dialect it means failed. Although there seems to be no origin connection, ours comes from old english, I always remembered it by our word: botched. 

Lockdown Day 25

At risk of seeming irreverent, there is so much suffering out there, but here’s some fan fiction, a little fantasy, which we could all use right now.

In more optimistic moments there is something delicious, like being a person of leisure. Hm, there’s no C there. Weird. Never mind. Too much time on my hands. The long empty hours of nothing doing. Killing time as if there were nothing else to do, or perhaps to keep from worrying, as April may, in fact, be the cruelest month, for some. 

Soaking long in a fragrant steamy bubble bath. Staring out the window at no traffic below.

Lounging in leisure wear, looking at the clock to see if it’s the cocktail hour yet, no, only 10:45, 15 minutes to go. Not really, but like something out of a Fitzgerald novel, or mid twentieth century drama or better yet, Nick and Nora Charles in their suite at the Ritz, or was it the Plaza?  Wherever.

-Nicky?  Nicky!  (Reclining odalisque-esque in her charmeuse dressing gown, bracelets jangling, on a sumptuous suede chaise lounge, Nora stares blankly at her cerise nails, and then sighs and raises an immaculate eyebrow at the empty martini glass in her other hand )

-Yes, darling? (Amidst the sound of clinking ice cubes, Nick calls brightly from the other room )

-Nicky? Where’s Asta?

(an indecipherable mumble from the other room, drowned out by the sound of the martini shaker)

-Nicky? You didn’t… No… Nicky… No.  (Nora rolls her eyes, bats her long eyelashes, and tries to stifle a smile)

(Nick appears in the doorway with martini shaker in hand and a conspiratorial smile under his pencil thin mustache)

Lockdown Day 24

In a recent Facebook post someone said they never wanted to see the word: “unprecedented” again, and another added: “tremendous.” They were, of course, referring to certain political dialogue. 

We arrived here when our son was 3. Our neighbors had two children and they would all play happily together. Our son was very energetic and at times the other parents would laugh and shake their heads, “e’ tremendo eh”. Tremendous, I thought? Great, terrific? No, it means, you’re a little terror, in a good way if it’s said with a smile, or at worst, terrible or a real Brat! Today, that would be an understatement, fortunately no longer in reference to our son. 

Many languages have “false friends” similar words that do not mean the same thing in different languages. 

My husband, even after speaking french, italian and english for 25 years, had occasional lapses into other languages.  One night he was talking to a french friend about additives, you know the stuff they put in food to preserve it , “préservatifs”  he said. We all had a good laugh.  In french and italian “préservatifs” , “preservativi” means condoms, and that’s certainly not what he meant.

A young boy I once knew, got his head stuck in the curved arm of a rattan arm chair, as they do, and yelled “ Help! I’m castrated!” directly translating the italian word incastrato, caught. 

Long after buying  a house in Italy and all the administrative correspondence, I still feel that when I address a letter to: Egregio Signor, I’m making a flagrant error.  No, I’m addressing it to: Distinquished Sir.  

It has been on my mind a lot lately as I read the word for hospitalized, which in italian is: ricoverato, which is so close to recovered, but yet so far. 

We’re still not out of the woods yet, although the statistics are better, many more are recovering, and only slowly but surely consistently improving. 

Time and patience