Notizie Dal Mio Cuore - 38
Sometimes it takes a bacio to help you understand the most essential of things in life.
Un bacio is a kiss in Italian. Well, it’s either a kiss or it’s a delectable chocolate by Perugina made in Perugia (the city Mary Jane and I traveled to months ago). When you buy a bacio there is a little piece of paper wrapped around it. On that piece of paper you will find a saying in several languages. And when you read that saying on New Year’s day…. as you should… there is the possibility to be given something to contemplate. At least that’s the tradition I started this year with Mary Jane. Find a bacio, eat it first, then read the saying as a message for your year. Sounded like a good proposition. Better than the one I would receive by answering the incessant phone calls from Bicycle Man throughout the holidays (I lost count after 23 attempts. I think we need to change his name to “stalker” I mean, honestly, it’s been just short of a year since we started this whole thing. I don’t think it’s an “Italian male” thing anymore… he’s now graduated to another level. Which, I believe, justifies any guy that is with me from now on answering the phone when he calls and saying….. well, I’m too much of a lady to articulate it here!!!!)
Anyway on to more pleasant thoughts…. on New Year’s Eve I opened my bacio… as did Mary Jane. We didn’t particularly like what they had to say. So we decided you were allowed one “do-over” and would search the city for the right bacio with the perfect message on the first day of the year. We found them in a little bar not far from the Duomo but far enough to be 30cents less than the tourist prices. It’s important to also be frugal when and where you can! (good new year lesson… and reality of living in la bella citta’!) Mary Jane opened hers first and was very happy with what it had to say. I on the other hand wasn’t so pleased. But I made my commitment, I was stuck with it. “A good friendship is of equal value to the eternal bond of marriage.” My first thought was “well great! here I go again, another year of making more good friends and petting my cat!” Then we proceeded to walk toward the Duomo…. my good friend Mary Jane and I…. and parted ways as we reached via dei servi…. the street famous for the BeBop (or also now known as FITC’s former home) and that great Turkish take-out place which kept me fed during rehearsals (see previous missive).
But, I must of course admit, there is something beautiful about my relationship with Mary Jane who is a dear friend here I have come to know and respect deeper and deeper as time goes by. She is older than me by, I think, 20 years and has had a relationship to Italy for 40. She is single, beautiful and full of all the humanity any one person deals with in a lifetime. And, together we talk about men and singleness, love and Italy, family (she has three children), cats (her Julius is one of may many four-legged amanti - he jumps on me as soon as I sit down and snuggles right into my chest) among many other subjects. Mary Jane brought a pharmacy of pills and potions to my home when I was incredibly ill last week and went to the farmacista for more. She’s helped me clean my apartment when life got too crazy and feeds me all the time trying to fatten me up. She’s a cool, sexy, hip chick and I am honored she shares her secrets and passions with me.
There is something about the ex-patriate experience. You come to know people you never would have in your other lifetime, in that other life where everything made sense and had a rhythm you didn’t even consider or think about. But when you move your body to another world….. and when you are “older” and do that….. your need for certain things becomes sharpened — the having of connection and communication. This has brought many people into my life - older, younger, male and female - from all over the world that I never would have been able to let myself come to know (or been in the circumstance to). I’ve developed friendships that I rely on to fill my life here with meaning. We share the intimate challenges of navigating this common desire to be in this foreign land as well as the fear that this same desire will undo us. We hold hands together and face her and want so much to love her - Florence. But often she just can’t let us. And she is stronger than we are individually - her beauty is world-renowned and her history tied to everything we know of the modern world. How can any one person dance this dance alone? And, no matter how many good friends you make, there are of course moments when you feel that is exactly what you are doing. Dancing da solo. I wonder at times if it is the same for people in Paris or Tokyo or Madrid. They are certainly beautiful cities in their own right. But they are not the medieval city of the Renaissance. I so long for Florence to embrace me. But I’ve not been the kindest of lovers. I’ve criticized her because there has been so much I didn’t understand. And because I was afraid and because here I am given a daily opportunity to face my own deeply ingrained insecurities which blind me from time to time.
This is my public apology to a city I now see I must first befriend before running to the alter…. which of course is the best path for any union. Then you know all the faults of your chosen partner and can still settle into a world of more comfortable possibilities for companionsip and growth. But not if you expect them to be…. New York……or London….. when they never were meant to. I suppose if I am wise, I will learn from my bacio…. The beauty of a kiss can introduce you to a series of miraculous events unfolding. And this kiss has brought me to the contemplation, as I left Mary Jane on the first day of the year and walked down via Pronconsolo not far from the Bargello and the ristaurante where Fabio my 29-year-old-waiter-who-I-try-to-avoid-daily is employed, that the depth of marriage is only enhanced by the comfort . . . and discomfort . . . of what you learn during the growth friendship. And if I want an “eternal bond” with a man, with Florence or even with myself….. then first I might consider not looking subito (immediately) for love and passion…. but lentamente (slowly) for the qualities only a real friendship affords.
These are my thoughts and lessons for today anyway…… Like the unexpected journey of a kiss………. speaking of……. well, that’s another story, for another day.
And now you know when I say “baci” I send you kisses from Florence ragazzi!
Baci ancora,
Bari
