No Time to Waste

I've wasted a lot of time in my life just sitting here thinking that I'm wasting a lot of time.  I've spent hours worrying about what I'm not doing and wondering about what I should be doing.  Sometimes I try to convince myself that it's okay because at least I'm thinking about it and not just letting life pass without even noticing.  But that's really not okay.  Noticing is a step in the right direction.   But thinking about it instead of doing something about it can hardly be applauded.

I've never really been able to explain how I feel about my idleness.  And I'm sure no one has ever really been able to understand. When I complain, their usual response is, "You do more than anyone I know."   This makes me think the people they know must be real losers.  I've dug a lot of students out of their holes.  Sometimes all it takes is the Nike slogan.  When I'm in my encouraging mode I often feel strong and think, "I'm ready.  I have to listen to myself.  I can do it, too."  But in the end, the students are the only ones that make the changes.  They send me thank you notes and they start living.  I'm proud of myself for having helped, but disappointed that I'm still stuck.

When I went to Paris a couple of months ago, a friend invited me to Auvers for the day to visit the house and town where van Gogh spent the last 70 days of his life.  I was never a big van Gogh fan, but I seldom turn down an invitation.  (Remember?  I do more than anyone you know.)  There's no reason to miss an opportunity to learn more about an important artist, see a new town and speak bad French and bad English with an old friend all day.

Van Gogh lived in a small room above a cafe.  It's since been turned into a museum which consists of a restaurant, the original staircase to get up to his small, empty room, another empty room with a short video presentation, and an unoriginal staircase to get back down to the large gift shop.  

Although I appreciate receiving my Monet umbrella, Gauguin pencil and Prendergast bookmark, I've never been much of a gift shop shopper myself.  Fortunately, Olivier is.  As we were leaving, he bought me a book called Van Gogh's Letters, the Mind of the Artist in Paintings, Drawings, and Words, 1875-1890.

On the night train back to Italy I started reading my souvenier and found the perfect words to describe what I've only ever been able to call "wasting time."

July 1880
I would be very pleased if you could see me as something other than a kind of idler.  

Because there are quite different kinds of idler.  There is the man who is idle from laziness and lack of character, from the baseness of his nature.  You can, if you like, take me for one of those.

Then there is the other kind of idler, who is idle despite himself, who is consumed inwardly by a great desire for action, but who does nothing, because it is impossible to do anything, because it is as if he were imprisoned in some way, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because inevitable circumstances have reduced him to this.  Such a man does not always know himself what he could do, but he feels instinctly:  nevertheless I am good at something, I can sense a reason for my existence!  I know that I could  be quite a different man!  How could I be useful, what could I do?  There is something within me, but what is it?

That is quite a different kind of idler.  You can, if you like, take me for one of those.

(And you can stop reading here, if you like, because that explains the way I feel.
But you can continue reading here, if you like, to find the solution.)

A bird in a cage in spring knows quite well that there is something he would be good at, he feels strongly that there is something to be done, but he can't do it.  What is it?  He can't quite remember, then he gets some vague ideas, and says to himself, "The others are building their nests and producing their young and raising their brood."  Then he bangs his head against the bars of the cage.  And the cage is still there, and he is mad with grief.

"There's a lazybones," says another bird who is passing.  "He's comfortably off."  However, the prisoner lives and does not die, nothing shows on the outside of what is going on inside him.  He is in good health, he is more or less cheerful while the sun shines.  Then the migration season comes, and a bout of melancholy.  "But," say the children who look after him in his cage, "he has everything he needs."  Yet for him it means looking out at the swollen, stormy skies and feeling the revolt against his fate within himself.  "I am in a cage, I am in a cage, and so I lack nothing, fools!  I have everything I need!  Oh, for pity's sake, give me freedom, to be a bird like other birds."

That idle fellow is like that idle bird.

You can't always say what it is that shuts you up, what walls you in, what seems to bury you alive, but you still feel some kind of bars, some kind of cage, some kind of walls.  

Is all this imagination, fantasy?  I don't think so; and then I ask myself:  My God, is it for long, is it forever, is it for eternity?

Do you know what makes the prison disappear?  It is every deep, genuine affection.  To be friends, brothers, to love, that opens the prison by its sovereign power, its powerful charm.  Someone who does not have that remains bereft of life.    
-Vincent van Gogh    

That leaves this 8th Grade Queen, this don't-go-to-bed-til-there's-nothing-else-to-do college girl, this smile- spreading-old-people's-home Social Director, this Halloween-Christmas-New Year's party thrower, this come-have-dinner-at-my-red-picnic-table hostess and this annual beach party organizer with no choice but to keep trying to break through the cages and break down the walls on her quest for some real Italian friends, because she's not the type to remain bereft of life.

Lions and Tigers and Jehovah's Witnesses

Take a long drive in Illinois and you'll find miles and miles of cornfields with a lone farmhouse dropped in the middle.  In Italy, it's kilometers and kilometers of vineyards and instead of a lone farmhouse you'll find a clump of four or five houses called a borgo.

Borgos were built to house different families that had land in the area.  They used the same well, split up the chores and borrowed each other's tools.  In the winter they even shared their animals' heat.  After dinner the families would head to the barn to sing and play games, benefiting from the extra warmth of the livestock.  Today, borgos are often inhabited by extended families who share babysitting services, WIFI and the remote control for the gate at the end of the driveway.  (see Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My. Gates and Shutters and Curtains, Mamma Mia.)

I live in a little borgo.  I wasn't surprised to learn that my borgo was built before they had running water and electricity.  The surprise came when I learned that in 1970 when I was on an airplane going to see my uncle's new electric car in Hollywood, some of my Italian neighbors were still using outhouses.  And in 1981, when I was riding my bike to town to see the first airings of MTV (cable hadn't come to my house yet) the Italian barrista was riding his bike out to the country to deliver messages to the people that still didn't have phones.

Most of my neighbors were born in the houses they live in now.  In America I heard days-gone-by-stories from my grandparents and great grandparents and they were referring to when they were very young.  In Italy, I hear these stories from my neighbors and they're referring to not-so-gone-by days. I can imagine Gemma going to the well to get the water because Gemma is still alive and the well still exists.  There's no need to go to a museum to learn the history of the area because I'm living with the history of the area.

Though I feel like I'm in the middle of nowhere, at least I'm in the middle of nowhere with a few nice neighbors.  I can hear Fabrizio calling for his cat, Paris, every evening.  I can watch Maurizio's dad trimming the hedge when there's a waning moon (if you trim when it's waxing you won't get good results).  I can listen to Emma and Bianca's melodious Italian and giggles in their inflatable pool.  And I can smell Virgilio's meat cooking on his homemade grill.  He burns wood in a little metal basket.  As it burns, the coals fall onto a tray below.  He spreads them out, lays a grate on top and cooks.  There's no button to turn the gas on and there's no charcoal or lighter fluid.  He goes to the woods, collects dead branches and cooks his Sunday meal.

From the kitchen window I can see a couple of the borgo's gated driveways.  Last week I happened to be looking out when I saw the Jehovah's Witnesses.  They rang  two neighbors' bells and were invited to approach the house and talked for a minute.  Then, unaware that I was watching, they came down my little road and stopped in front of the house.  With no gate at the end of the driveway there's no place to attach an intercom or buzzer.  To make yourself known where I live you have to come right up to the house and ring the doorbell. It's called a doorbell, not a "gate-at-the-end-of-the-driveway bell."

Perhaps it was the first time the Jehovah's Witnesses had called on a house with no gate.  I stood there waiting to see what they'd do, while they stood there wondering what to do.  In the end they moved on to the next gated driveway, rang the bell and were invited to approach the house.  It seems not having a gate in northern Italy is more threatening and provides more protection than having one.  Few houses have signs that say divieto d'accesso (keep out) or proprieta' privata (private property) but with a gate, who needs a sign?

For an American in Italy, a house with no gate says, "Welcome" without a welcome mat. It's too bad they're so hard to find around here.  

Weeping Willows and Crying Pines

I wouldn't say that I've gotten used to things in the three years that I've been living in Italy.  In fact, it seems like I'm finding it more and more difficult to accept the cultural differences and gracefully hold my tongue.  As they say, love is blind.  In the beginning, I'm sure I didn't even notice unusual things.  Then when I started to, they passed as different and funny.  But I used to mean funny in an odd, strange sort of way.  Now it seems that every time I say, "Hmmm...isn't that funny?"  it's because it really is funny and I find myself laughing at what seems like yet another strange Northern Italian behavior.

I live in an area filled with what I refer to as crying pines.  Yards and public spaces are often very well-landscaped and pine trees seem to be a decorative favorite.  Most of them are allowed to spread their wings and become well-rounded, but very few are given the chance to grow "up". Their tops are chopped.  There's no trimming or shaping or gentle pruning. They're simply chopped and left pointless.

The pines don't die, but they don't seem to be really living either.  They just exist.  They might still serve a purpose, like providing shade or blocking the view of a neighbor's ugly house, but they'll never make it to Rockefeller Center.  Hopes of reaching for the stars are dashed.  Someone decides the trees have grown enough and they put an end to it.  And what's left in life when you're done growing?

It's too bad the pines aren't chopped in December so we could use the tops as freshly cut Christmas trees.  Instead, In Italy, if you're weird and want a real tree, you buy one growing in a 7-gallon plastic pot.  Can you imagine what a tree skirt looks like on a 7-gallon pot.?  It actually looks like a skirt.  It's even weirder when you use the same live tree again the next year after it's been in your yard in a pot.  It doesn't take long to find the good side because it's the same good side as the year before.  You'll probably even remember which branches were the best for the heavy ornaments.

When my teenage niece and nephew from America came to visit we took a walk around the top of the medieval wall of Cittadella.  It was market day in the square below.  The streets were packed and from above we smelled the fish stalls, saw the tops of the food trucks stained with soot from their stoves and photographed the overhead view of the fresh flower vendors.  But the thing that really struck us from the top of the wall (which probably doesn't strike the Italian visitors) were the butchered tops of the crying pines.

During their visit we were guests in an English class at an Italian high school.  The Italian students had questions about America.  They wanted to learn things about school, sports, fast food and vacation.  They couldn't believe there's no school on Saturday and they were surprised that not all Americans eat McDonald's every day.  Then it was our turn and we wanted to know why they chopped the tops of their pine trees.  The teacher quickly came to the rescue and said it's too dangerous to let them grow, which left us wondering why Italian pine trees are dangerous and American ones aren't.

When I was a kid my dad planted two pine trees in our front yard.  The purpose was to watch them grow.  We were supposed to remember that in the year he planted them they were as tall as he was.  I remember the "as tall as he was" part, but I've forgotten the year they were planted.  It doesn't really matter.  I know they were planted long before GoogleMaps was created and as far as I can tell they're 50-feet tall now and they both have points.  Lucky for them, my dad's not Italian.

Maybe the reason I can't help noticing every crying pine I pass is because they're calling out to me. They're a constant reminder that I've stopped growing.  Or maybe I never really started. The difference is, my lack of growth is my own fault.  I'm merely existing, with no point.  I can't be afraid of a few growing pains.

Watch out Rockefeller Center.