Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Just sit right back.

It's time to introduce you to my island.  I don't want to tell you her name (in Italian islands are feminine) because I don't want her to come up in any more searches.  

I could call her La Casa Gialla. But the place is filled with yellow houses (and blue and green and red and orange).

I like the name The Turquoise Window, but my windows aren't tourquoise anymore.  I had to paint them black due to a building code that I'm trying to crack. 

Fisherman's Island would work because that's what she is.  But I have wonderful memories from another Fisherman's Island in Michigan.

High Water Isle is out because they've resolved the problem of acqua alta.  The pieces of wood they attached to the bottom of the doorway to keep the rising water out were in my attic.  I've turned them into kitchen shelves. 

I almost went with The Moon Also Rises because where else can you see the sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset all in one day?  Well, I guess you can see that on any small island.  I just never thought I'd live on one.  Anyway, I googled it and there's already a book with that title.

I considered La Bella Vita Island, Paradise Island and Sunset Lagoon but they're a bit cliche'.

Hut Island is okay because her beach is covered with rustic huts.  It just doesn't have a very nice ring to it.  But it does remind me of what some American visitors said last month.  They called it Gilligan's Island.  And maybe they're right.  No phone, no light, no motor car, not a single luxury.  Like Robinson Crusoe, it's primitive as can be. 

The only phones that work are the landlines.   Primitive.   If I want to use my cell phone I have to go outside.  And the truth is, there are lights (even lampposts like in Venice with the green posts and soft pink lanterns).  And some people do have cars but there are a lot more bikes.  

As for luxuries......just because I go to the beach in the winter to collect wood for my woodburning stove doesn't mean everyone else does.  Most people have real heat.  And we do have a grocery store with four aisles, but I prefer the one that holds a maximum of 10 people (including the deli guy, butcher, cashier, bagger and stockboy which is usually all the same person). The fruit lady comes with the fruit truck a couple of times a week and there's a cheese truck.  And if you don't feel like going to the sea to catch mussels or clams you can always find a fisherman selling fresh fish from his boat in the lagoon.  That's luxury.

I think you get the picture.  That's precisely why I don't want to tell you her your name.    It's best to keep her a secret for as long as we can.  So for now, just sit right back and you'll hear a tale.   



Monday, August 27, 2018

Away with Words

When I moved to Italy I promised myself that I'd only buy books written in Italian.  And since I usually only buy books at the secondhand shop, you can bet they're all in Italian.  Almost all.  Until the day I hit the jackpot.  It seems the other English speaker in town either died or decided she needed more room on her bookshelf because I found 17 books in English and I bought all of them.

Having broken my promise about only buying Italian books I was tough on myself and left them unread for nearly a year.  But when I decided to spend most of August on the beach I found one of the books irrestible.  On the cover in small print was praise from the Chicago Tribune, "Riveting.....the perfect summer-by-the-lake read."  Summer-by-the-lake or August-on-the-Adriatic.  It's the same difference.  

It's not like I haven't read anything in English in the past 6 years.  My emails and most of what I read on the internet are in English.  But the beach book was filled with things I hadn't thought about in ages.  The fake news about Mr. Trump doesn't use these words and phrases and I don't use them with my students either. 

They may seem like everyday terms to you, but for some reason they made me chuckle.  (And that's just the kind of word I'm talking about.)      

-lug everything back.

-the queen of cream cheese.

-shuck the corn.

-Join the club!

-If you want to go on the boat you'd better smarten up.   (Straighten up rings a bell with me.)

-Hi-C, Pop-Tarts, Easy Mac and Tretorns.

-nestled sets of measuring spoons.

-"Don't be such a spaz!"

-purple lint and dryer sheets.

-a clunker of a van.

-Hallmark cards.

-muzak coming from above.

-the milk in the fridge was iffy.

-the sprawling stripmall ugliness of Wal-Mart and Rite-Aid.

-coleslaw.

-Putt-Putt.

-after school reruns.

-he yanked it away.

-he cracked his window for some fresh air.

-A:  "I'm going to the bathroom." 
 B:  "Hope everything comes out all right."

-making his voice crazy like the commercials for the monster-truck show

-Cheetos, Fritos and dusty cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli


Rereading the list makes me wonder if they're not just words from a different country, but words from a different era.  Would a car in Chicago have been a clunker or just an old, beat-up car?  And in the nineties I think I would've opened a window, not cracked it.  Maybe this book was written in a Michigan dialect.  The dialect of my childhood.  The dialect of a contadino.  And maybe that's why I found it so riveting.