Under the Neapolitan Son

Anybody there?

2011-07-13T21:11:00.002+01:00

Probably not since I haven't posted for the amount of time that results in lost followers. But I wanted to write that, the other day, I started to watch John Turturro's film PASSIONE, and I was hit with what can only be described as a post-traumatic stress response. Nausea, anxiety. The glorified, romanticized images of piazzette that are normally drug-dealing, hoodlum-hanging sites of feelings that run the gamut from discomfort to sheer terror for the uninitiated passer-by (i.e. me), made it impossible for me to watch the rest of the film. One young Neapolitan woman says that living in Naples is hard, that, more or less, it's beauty and theatricality do not make up for the daily difficulty of navigating such uneven terrain, and I'm not referring to cobblestones (though those make for rough passage with a stroller). I am curious what any of you expats in Naples who have returned to your homelands now think, remember, feel about Naples. Right now, I'm feeling only despair. Of course, there is more to my response to Turturro's film than the city can be blamed for. Personal things, things to do with The Husband, La Bimba, my own psychoemotional background. Still, Naples is a force to be reckoned with and I'm not sure it's useful (except perhaps to increase tourism) to portray it as an exotic land of extreme emotion, dark red lips, and heart-shattering song.

Conclusion

2009-07-03T06:39:00.004+01:00

“Siamo africani:” Contemporary Views

De Jorio’s La mimica attempts to return both subjectivity and agency to the Neapolitan common man and woman. His text performs solidarity with the ordinary Neapolitan, defending him as philosophical and complex, while exploiting foreign interest in the Neapolitan picturesque [32]. His representation of contemporary Neapolitan life as centuries-old culture finds contemporary expression on the Comune di Napoli website, “unlike other cities which are in themselves museums, display cases for their art but with no real heart, Naples is famous for the character and drama of its everyday life which is played out by the people who have lived and worked in the historic centre for centuries” [33]. It appears that the show does go on.

Today, Neapolitans appear to re-objectify themselves as a contestatory move: we are exactly what you say we are. And above all, we are not you. When deploying negative stereotypes lodged against them from the outside, Neapolitan self-deprecation is a performance that defines Neapolitan identity as wholly other. Because Africa is the repository or the site of total difference in the European imaginary, Naples becomes Africa. This total difference then becomes a point of pride: to be different is to be special, to stand out. For Kendon, the performativity of Neapolitan gesture is limited to its Austinian work: “a means by which promises were made, blessings accomplished, wishes expressed, contracts agreed to” [34]. He calls the “culture of the basso popolo of Naples in the 19th century” a performance culture (following Hibbitts) [35]. In my experience with the Naples of the early 21st century, the performativity of gesture, dialect, use of proverbs, and self-deprecating reappropriative language, appears to have a wider function, one that may have been in operation when de Jorio was writing: a performance of otherness-as-exclusivity independent of claims to superiority or inferiority.

Shirley Hazzard, an Australian writer who has lived off and on in Naples since the 1950s, writes in her essay “City of Secrets and Surprises” that visitors to Naples “do not take kindly to the devotion Naples inspires in all who know it well. Most galling perhaps is our very acquiescence in the charges: Yes, quite true, the streets are unswept, the museums inconvenient, the services unreliable...Indeed, Naples is often indefensible” [36]. Hazzard goes about defending the city anyway, turning, like De Jorio, to the city’s Greek past. She refers to Naples as Greece’s “northernmost colony” [37] and as “a city of secrets”[38]: “Naples always has something of an air of having survived calamity: it is one theme of her story” [39]. Her Naples is devoid of people, a ghost town of buildings, landscapes, and presepe figures. She writes in a throwback Romantic style, marveling over the city’s apparent contradictions, its “dilapidation and magnificence”[40], its histrionic nature: “Glimpses of the arcane, the grotesque, the diabolical will never fail to startle and estrange--compounded, as in most great cities, by modern violence and disaffection. but few days will pass without some fresh discovery of dignity, delicacy, and endurance--where you are not humbled and exalted by acts of human fellowship and inexpressible grace” [41].

Thomas Belmonte’s Broken Fountain, an ethnography of a poor Neapolitan neighborhood (or rather, palazzo complex), stands at the opposite pole that then inevitably makes contact with Hazzard’s. Belmonte performs a general indictment of poverty within a Marxist critique using Naples as his case study. His remarks on Neapolitan theatricality represent an at least partial misreading of Neapolitan collectivity: “The theatrical quality of life in the poor quarters, the loud, gesticulating style and the aggressive hubris of the individual, is the Neapolitans’ collective commentary on the instability of the socioeconomic and honorific settings upon which they must stage their lives” [42]. Following Fanon, Belmonte labels his subjects the “damned of the earth:” “The damned of Harlem and the South Bronx, the damned of Calcutta and Naples, the damned of Singapore and San Salvador and Manila...”[43]. Belmonte places the poor of Naples alongside the poor of other big cities, and he attends to the specificities of the Neapolitan situation. “In a cultural sense, they [the poor of Naples] are at once excluded and highly selective. By preference they speak and pass on to their children their own language and are content to learn some fragmentary standard Italian in a few years of primary school” [44]. Belmonte concludes his study as his subjects may have done: that at the end of the day, despite conditions and circumstances, they only have themselves to blame:

“At Fontana del Re in a corner strewn now with rubble, beneath the bruised, shattered visage of a lion, the eroded figure of a sculpted stone sea shell recedes into a wall. ‘This was our fountain,’ they told me. ‘Oh you should have seen it, Tommaso. The water played night and day. In summer, the children scampered in it. At night, falling asleep, you heard it, and it was like music.’ The young men told me it was they who had destroyed it. As children, many years before, with iron rods, they had gone every day to hammer and smash it, until they were satisfied and there was nothing left to break. Thereafter, whenever I passed that ruined corner, I tried to imagine what the fountain had once been like, and thought and wondered and sorrowed, the more as I understood how it came to be broken” [45].

Hazzard has spent a half century intermittently in Naples; Belmonte spent one year. The two writers represent the admirer of picturesque on the one hand, and the sorrower over the “ruined corner” on the other. De Jorio represents a middle way. But what do today’s Neapolitans think “siamo africani” means in the 21st century? I sent via email the following questions to several Neapolitan friends to find out [46]:

Quando abitavo a Napoli, sentivo spesso il commento, "noi napoletani siamo africani." Che significa questo secondo voi? Poi per quanto riguarda le serie di invasioni che fanno parte della storia di Napoli, siete d'accordo che i napoletani (voi, le vostre famiglie, i vostri amici, il popolo) si sentono (o si sentivano in qualche periodo storico specifico) sudditi della nazione italiana? Come descrivereste il concetto napoletano di cittadinanza, di un senso civico?

Marcello, who grew up in the Colli Aminei district of Naples, has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Naples, and moved to the US in his early 30s, responded at great length. He understands “siamo africani” in several ways: [1] as representing a certain historico-geographical truth that Naples “in the most authentic and original sense of being a true mediterranean city, belonging to the most ancient ‘cultural core’ of the mediterranean basin, an echo from a distant time where a North African could have said similarly, ‘I am a Greek’ or ‘I am a Roman’ and been telling the truth;” [2] a contemporary disparaging usage that “speaks of the deep cultural divide between Italy and its southern regions;" [3] a way for the northerner “to summarize everything that is ‘wrong’ with Naples, its being dirty, inefficient, corrupt and, above all, incorrigible;” and [4] a contemporary Neapolitan’s “last, desperate act of self-affirmation.”
Marcello’s fourth explanation relates to the central thesis of this paper, that contemporary Neapolitans wield “siamo africani” as a way to identify themselves as Neapolitan. Interestingly, Marcello extends this idea to all negatively construed traits, whether conceived of as circumstantially or culturally determined: “Being intelligent people, they know that they are ‘guilty on all counts, guilty of all the sins they are accused of and, as a last resort, many have chosen to ‘be proud of it’ whatever ‘it’ is and no matter how negative this ‘it’ is, just as an act of ‘sfregio.’” Like Belmonte, Marcello locates the blame for their circumstances with the Neapolitans themselves [47].

Marcello recognizes Neapolitan identity as embodying a mixture of disdain for their failings and pride over their accomplishments. Paradoxically, this pride also encompasses precisely that which they disdain. Marcello blames that undiscriminating pride for his people’s inability to improve their living conditions. Another friend, Diana, from Naples’ newer Zona Ospedaliera, said, “Even during the Neapolitan revolution, they couldn’t quite get it together to make a revolution.”

Gianni, 32 years old, grew up in the Fuorigrotta district, and currently lives in Pozzuoli, echoes Marcello’s idea of Naples as forming part of the larger Mediterranean world, and then offers this overtly polemical explanation:

“Noi napoletani siamo africani...cosa vorrebbe dire? Che siamo neri? Che siamo poveri? Siamo vittime di qualche carestia, di qualche pandemia? Oggi, A.D. 2009 questa espressione non ha ragione di esistere: la città è lo specchio della società cha la popola, almeno credo. Basta, quindi, col considerarsi cittadini di serie B, basta col considerarsi vittime e basta col trovare sempre un capro espiatorio cui addossare tutti gli atavici malanni della nostra città: il terremoto, il colera, la criminalità, la politica corrotta. Certo, sono problemi reali, gravissimi, che hanno tenuto e tengono tuttora la città sotto scacco, ma non devono essere una scusa per perpetuare ogni tipo di inciviltà, per rimanere seduti, immobili aspettando che qualcuno dal cielo ci faccia dono della sua celeste manna, guaritrice di ogni male, aspettando che da sola “l'Africa si avvicini all'Italia”.

Gianni’s exasperation, like Marcello’s and Belmonte’s, lies with this idea that Neapolitans are responsible for their politically, economically, and socially degraded situation, sharing Francesco Trinchera’s view: “I have always heard that a people gets more or less what it deserves” [48]. The content of the associations with Africa are by now well-known. But if one shifts the focus from sociopolitical reality to the realm of culture, this blame is converted into an affirmation of otherness that comprises the core of napoletanità. What I have been arguing is that is is precisely this alterity that matters in the iteration of “siamo africani.”

To my follow-up question about Neapolitan civic responsibility, Gianni replied:

“Per ciò che concerne il concetto di senso civico ho una mia particolare teoria. Credo infatti che tale concetto ci sia stato lasciato in eredità dai colonizzatori greci. Provo a spiegarmi costruendo un parallelismo tra la polis greca, nucleo fondamentale attorno a cui si è sviluppata la cultura ellenistica, e la casa, la famiglia napoletana. Per i napoletani la casa, la propria casa, la famiglia, la propria famiglia, ha il valore che per i greci aveva la polis:”il centro del mondo”, al di fuori di essa il nulla. Esempio, forse un po' azzardato, il “basso”: l'interno è quasi sempre pulitissimo, immacolato, ma basta mettere il naso appena fuori di casa per notare delle situazioni di totale degrado, anzi molto spesso lo spazio esterno alla casa-polis è una sorta di sversatoio. Tutto ciò che non faceva parte della polis non contava, tutto ciò che è al di fuori della casa, non conta.”

Somewhat like Banfield’s “amoral familism” and Belmonte’s adjustment of it, Gianni describes Neapolitan culture as bound up in the family unit with hardly a glance toward a broader sense of community. And like de Jorio, he traces this lifestyle to the Greeks. Gianni’s basso example functions as a spatial metaphor for my argument: whatever lies outside (the home, a sense of self) has nothing to do with the inside; it does not penetrate or, rather, whatever of it penetrates becomes immediately absorbed as already having been there. Marcello reminds me of the proverb, “Francia o Spagna, basta ca se magna:” whether struggling to put food on the table or sitting pretty on the piano nobile of a Vomero hill palazzo, whether provided for by the government, the camorra, or the family, one continues to live as a Neapolitan. “Stereotypes work in this way (synchronically, in contrasting pairs of good and bad images) as instructions in how to behave, or in how to expect people to behave: either one will be confronted by a happy Neapolitan mandolin player, or by a violent and duplicitous camorrista” [49]. In contemporary Neapolitan discourses of napoletanità, both extremes are in evidence. This absorption of every quality leveled at it, makes napoletanità paradoxically impenetrable; every external threat becomes an empty one. And it demonstrates its flexibility. Neapolitan culture is not a stagnant miasma, another accusation like those leveled at African cultures, but rather an extraordinarily adaptable one whose mode of adaptation is to enfold stereotypes into practices and make it all come out Neapolitan.

During my nearly four years on the ground in Naples, I heard Neapolitans from every walk of life complain about each other, about their neighbors or the general populace. They would complain about littering then throw their empty cigarette pack on the ground. They would curse an aggressive driver and then cut off a pedestrian. They would yell about about yelling. Sometimes this was maddening, sometimes it was charming, sometimes I hardly noticed. At a certain point I gave up trying to figure out why the Neapolitans acted in this apparently contradictory manner. What I became interested in is how this mixture of disdain and pride functions as a passive-aggressive mode of maintaining a culture always under threat, like any traditional culture, like any culture that has not been entirely seduced by an ideology of progress. All of Italy functions in this way to an extent, e.g. the notoriously draconian bureaucracy is a national phenomenon. In essence, I am arguing that regardless of the content or from where it is lodged, Neapolitan identity is based on an expression of pure difference: north, south, American, Italian, Vomero, zona ospedaliera, we are not like you. To offer a schema of this process: first, there is the simultaneous acceptance of foreign assessments of the popolo napoletano; second, the act of accepting itself becomes a performance of otherness; and third, the particular content of the otherness is reiterated until it becomes part of the culture, its folkways, like the images of Totò and Vesuvius that hang in every bar alongside Pulcinella figurines and various corne. So, “siamo africani” like “siamo zozzosi, brigandi, calorosi, pittoreschi” operates as a marker of difference, and difference punto e basta elides with napoletanità.

One example: In the film Totò’truffa 62, Neapolitan actor-legend Totò demonstrates how Neapolitans mobilize Africanness. In full blackface and with a giant nose ring, Totò pretends to be the Ambassador of Catongo and says into a telephone: “In casa bubu? In casa bubu? Mbutu? Mbutu? Non buttare niente. E’ peccato! Non buttare... Cosa vola, cosa buole? Ta ta ta bum bum zu, bubu bubu juju.” He then says to the object of his scam of his accomplice, played by Nino Taranto, also in blackface with nose ring, “Questo animalo da che sta in Italia ha imparato parlare in napoletano. Dice pure pommarola in gop. Nel catongo ce ne uno solo [people with the last name Rossi]. Tutti gli altri sono neri. Vedi lui e’ nero, tutto nero. Ci sono anche i gialli ma i gialli sono i peperoni,” In this scene, the juxtaposition of blackness/Africanness with napoletanità functions as a performance of shrewd otherness. When the “real” ambassador arrives with his adjutant (two black men without nose rings), Totò and Taranto escape dressed as Che Guevara and his wife. Totò has played Tarzan, a Turk, a Sheik: all of these representations of Otherness are folded into his Neapolitanness. Totò belongs to Naples—the clever fool who fools everyone.

The statement “siamo africani” speaks volumes about how Neapolitans deal with and iterate difference. They are Neapolitan because they are different from other Italians, north or south, even different from “Neapolitans” from the provinces or from the adjacent quartiere. The persistence of the dialect and gestural language, regardless of its roots in Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, or its physical necessity due to crowded, noisy streets, marks an anti-assimilatory move. Within the broader Italian national imaginary, napoletanità is a cultural commodity, it is “ours” even as the Neapolitans are “them.” Indeed, Neapolitans are taken as “us” for their art, their theater, and film and as “them” for their camorristi, garbage crises, scippi: un posto incantevole che fa schifo.

Andrea de Jorio’s La mimica defends Neapolitans against critiques of their backwardness as it recuperates ancient history and lodges it in the very bodies of everyday Neapolitans. What is reflected in Marcello’s and Gianni’s comments, on the other hand, is how everyday Neapolitans today engage in acts of reappropriation in defense of themselves and protection of their cultural heritage. And in this, they succeed. I would go as far as to say there is no city in the western world with as much resistant, local, cultural specificity as la bella Napoli.

32 De Jorio’s work, it may be said, straddles, “the valorization of nature and classical ruins that characterizes the picturesque in the late eighteenth century [as it] makes way for the valorization of natural man: the primitive, the savage, and above all the folk” (Moe, The View from Vesuvius, 66).
33 http://www.comune.napoli.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/EN/IDPagina/1345
34 Kendon, xcviii.
35 Kendon, footnote 60, xcviii.
36 Hazzard, Shirley, and Francis Steegmuller. The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008. (49).
37 Ibid, 50.
38 Ibid, 51.
39 Ibid, 52.
40 Ibid, 54.
41 Ibid, 57.
42 Belmonte, Thomas. The Broken Fountain. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. (135).
43 Ibid, 139. See also pages 107 and 124.
44 Ibid, 140.
45 Ibid, 144.
46 I am still receiving answers to these questions and here provide a hopelessly scant survey of two.
47 What I do not address in this paper but which begs mention is the fact that Marcello, and later Gianni, both enact this method of defining Neapolitan behavior as other to them. They position themselves as exceptional Neapolitans, which I would claim is part of the extreme othering move I have been describing: Marcello and Gianni would not say “siamo africani” in any context, but their distancing from a particular element of napoletanità produces yet another form of Neapolitan identity based on alterity.
48 Quoted from his “The Neapolitan Question: Ferdinand Bourbon and Lucien Murat” in Moe, The View from Vesuvius, 145.
49 Dickie, 21.

part IV

2009-06-23T22:39:00.001+01:00

Interlude: From de Jorio to Troisi

Massimo Troisi, the late Neapolitan actor devoted to napoletanità [27], makes comically explicit the synecdochic function of Neapolitan gesture:

“Veramente c’abbiamo un lavoretto. Allora mio marito ha detto, va bene. Se si tratta di lavorare di meno tanto di guadagnato. Chist’ ha detto no. Forse non ci siamo capiti. Ho detto che teng’ per voi un lavoretto. Mio marito ha detto, un lavoretto, scusate lo dice la stessa parola, lavoretto, si lavora di meno. Chist’ dice no, non ci siamo capiti. Teng’ per voi un lavore...Non guardate a me. Guardate ‘a mano” [28].

In this skit, Troisi is playing a Neapolitan woman, who talks about the trouble she has with her husband. In this scene, Troisi’s hand (open palm, palm down, moving in a circular motion as if polishing a table top) represents the nature of the job being offered to the husband (an under the table job). But in saying, “Don’t look at me. Look at my hand,” the hand becomes more than the truth behind the words; the hand is the gesturing person. Gesture scientist David McNeill writes that the hand that gestures is symbolic: “The hand is not a hand,”[29] but rather that which it is mobilized to express. I would argue that the Neapolitan hand that gestures is symbolic, not only of the thoughts or feelings of the gesturer, but also of the gesturer’s cultural identity: it is not just any hand, it is a Neapolitan hand, the “spokeshand” for Neapolitan selfhood.

Contemporary Neapolitan gestural practice and the use of the dialect continues to keep the outsider on the outside: “The Neapolitan dialect seems to be metaphor itself...Among street vendors, especially, metaphors are heard that are so witty and clever that not only foreigners, but even our own provincials do not understand anything”[30]. Everyone, even a provincial from one kilometer outside the city, is an outsider, and thus the Neapolitan “I” is never them. Private life may be lived in the public sphere on hot summer nights among the inhabitants of the bassi, and public fighting may be a theatricalization that serves to keep public order [31], but in my view, these practices serve primarily to keep the stranger estranged.

27 Troisi’s theater group was called La Smorfia after the Neapolitan book of numbers, as well as being a reference to making funny faces. In his films and interviews, he spoke in Neapolitan dialect and produced exaggerated (even for a Neapolitan) gestures. Troisi was absorbed into Italian culture as “one of us” even as he forcefully presented himself as Neapolitan.
28 Troisi, Massimo, Lello Arena, and Enzo Decaro. “L’annunciazione.” La Smorfia, 1977.
29 McNeill, David. Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal About Thought. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.
30 De Jorio, 271.
31 “De Jorio notes that, with the crucial participation of bystanders, quarrels often become transformed into an event which everyone enjoys, including the litigants themselves. This process may well have developed as a means of social control, keeping quarrels in check and preventing them from becoming dangerous.” Kendon, ciii.

"Francia o Spagna," Part III

2009-06-12T01:47:00.004+01:00

Andrea de Jorio’s Neapolitan Pride Project

In his chapter “L’Europe finit à Naples,” Nelson Moe devotes considerable space to a discussion of writings on Naples, characterizing them as swinging “between visions of Arcadia and the apocalypse” [18], between Europe and Africa. Between 1750 and 1885, Stendahl, Renan, Sade, Staël, Dickens, Goethe, as well as many Italians from the north and south, all weigh in on Naples, either demonizing it for its alleged barbarity or glorifying its picturesque quality.

Andrea de Jorio came from an elite family of the island of Procida and was Canon of the Cathedral of Naples. His interest in gesture, archaeology, and Neapolitan folklore developed during a period of strong philosophical interest in gesture (Diderot and Condillac in mid 18th century France, Engel in late 18th century Germany) and folkloristic-archaeological inquiry into Naples. De Jorio wrote in an atmosphere of support for archaeological research, support that initiated in the Napoleonic period and continued with the Bourbons once they were restored to the throne in 1816.

De Jorio became interested in compiling a detailed guide to Neapolitan gesture while acting as a tour guide for foreign visitors to Naples’ archaeological museums and sites. As a docent at the Real Museo Borbonico, de Jorio found that comparing the gestures of the ancients found on the Greek painted vases with those of modern day Neapolitans lent insight into how they should be interpreted. “For some years we have had the idea of describing the gesturing of the Neapolitans, so widely praised as it has always been, and of explaining, as well, its perfect resemblance to that of antiquity” [19]. The Neapolitans he refers to are the “commoners,” the street vendors and their clients whom he describes as characteristically vivacious. The “foreigners” are those on the Grand Tour, interested in antiquity and Neapolitan folklore.

“...the questions that foreigners are always asking we Neapolitans about the meaning of one behavior or another, as well as affection for our native land, has increased our determination to its fullest to illustrate, as far as we can, even the apparently disreputable aspects of the very interesting customs of our country that are, in reality, full of philosophy, and could be said to be Roman, Greek, Natural. Indeed, we remain very unhappy that our manner of expressing ourselves with gestures, so noble in its origin, so charming, joyful and pleasing in its performance, so useful and sometimes so necessary for its effects, should be unhonored and neglected still” [20].

Here, de Jorio works to transform or unmask the “apparently disreputable” as having noble roots and philosophical function. I regard this move as a precursor to the current strategy of Neapolitan identity formation, one that casts its net more widely to encompass any and every marker of difference.

As a member of the elite, de Jorio simultaneously recognizes and ignores class distinctions, mobilizing the “we” to confirm that there is one Neapolitan popolo. The commoner is noble, and we, the elite, are commoners [21]. Writing before the articulation of the Southern Question, but in conversation with travelers on the Grand Tour, de Jorio’s rhetoric does not fall neatly within either anti-southern discourses of southern elites nor glorifying discourses of the visitor to Naples. There is nothing of the Franchetti belief that southerners cannot help themselves; Neapolitans, from de Jorio’s point of view, do not appear to be in need of any help at all.

De Jorio completed La mimica in 1832. His study, a “close reading” of body position, orientation, direction, and dynamics, works under the contention that the common Neapolitan folk preserved ancient culture in their bodies; the human body ”as much a historical document as a charter or a diary or a parish register” [22]. Kendon writes that de Jorio’s book acts as a defensive treatise, one that aims to show that the common people of Naples “are worthy of respect” [23]. Kendon also notes that de Jorio “appears to have regarded gesture as a mode of expression shaped by local custom” [24]. In other words, the consistent, tenacious, and resilient gestural practice of everyday Neapolitans generates a positive identity and resists pressures to conform to Italian national and international codes of self-presentation.

Though de Jorio hoped his book would serve as a practical guide for archaeologists and artists, he appears to have been most interested in defending his popolo against accusations of barbarity. He writes,

“Finally, we have never intended to enter into quarrels with those superficial writers who too often like to impute ignorance to our low people. If they mean that they are ignorant of mathematics, astronomy, the dead languages, etc., they speak the truth; but if ever they maintain that our low people are lacking in natural philosophy, in talent, in spirit, they are in error. Therefore, in the course of the work, and as far as circumstances permit, in regard to the material itself, we have aimed to show the mistake for which they may be blamed” [25].

Again, it appears that de Jorio was committed to elevating the ordinary Neapolitan in the eyes of the dismissive, often repelled foreigner, because he recognized that the barbarism associated with such ordinary people blemished the image Naples in general (and might negatively affect the reception of his work as well). Schneider writes, “Having studied the classics in England, France and Germany, they [the Grand Tour travelers] made the journey to Southern Italy, as to Greece, in search of an unspoiled antiquity; but the recent histories and societies of the living peoples of these places marred the experience” [26]. This is precisely the circumstance that de Jorio sought to redress in his book. By tilting the perspective on the behavior of the lazzarone from barbaric to noble, he moves to transform the uninformed visitor’s scorn into educated respect.

But de Jorio is also making a proprietary move: by reading the gestural content of ancient images found in Naples and its surroundings, de Jorio was able to locate their value in the bodies and culture of everyday Neapolitans, stripping the foreign archaeologist of his expertise: only a native can understand; the outsider remains outside. By transmuting the barbarous into the noble, de Jorio’s ethnographic project insists upon a complexity of Neapolitan cultural practices that defies any accusations of primitivism.

De Jorio’s project was to redefine rather than deny foreign accusations of Neapolitan barbarity and backwardness. By tracing the gestures of the ancients forward to the bodies of his “street vendor” contemporaries, de Jorio, in a sense, reappropriates negative stereotypes to produce a positive version of Neapolitan identity.

¹⁸ Moe, The View from Vesuvius. 61.

¹⁹ De Jorio, 4.

²⁰ De Jorio, 6. It appears possible that de Jorio’s effort to elevate the Neapolitan masses by linking them to the ancient Greeks may amount to a cult of napoletanità, not entirely dissimilar to the later Fascist move to equate modern Italy with ancient Rome: “The cult of ‘romanita’’ remembered the glories of Ancient Rome through everyday practices such as the Roman salute and the omnipresence of Roman iconography on stamps, coins, and public buildings” (Andall, Jacqueline & Derek Duncan. “Memories and Legacies of Italian Colonialism.” Italian Colonialism: Legacy and Memory. J. Andall and D. Duncan, eds. Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2005, (10)). It is precisely the focus on “everyday practices,” whether salutes or idiosyncratic gestures, that leads me to this idea.

²¹ This reminds me of Marco Purpura’s recent discussion of Gianni Amelio’s comment, “siamo tutti albanesi.”

²² Thomas, Keith. “Introduction.” In A Cultural History of Gesture. Edited by Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, page 2.

²³ Kendon, lv.

²⁴ Ibid, lxv.

²⁵ de Jorio, 10. De Jorio performs a similar defense of the Neapolitan dialect. Under the section titled Dimunitivo, he writes, “Let us tolerate peacefully the contumely with which some foreigners believe they denigrate our language, calling it a language of children because of the copious number of diminutives with which it abounds. Rather, let us celebrate the glory of speaking an idiom that is so rich and capable of expressing with a single word both the object and its quantity” (183). He also cites Galiani’s Vocabolario delle parole del dialetto Napoletano, che piu’ si socostano dal dialetto Toscano, con alcune ricerche etimologiche sulle medesime degli Accademici Filopatridi. Opera postuma supplita, ed accresciuto notabilmente (96).

²⁶ Schneider, Jane. 4.

"Francia o Spagna," Part II

2009-05-22T04:48:00.010+01:00

The Southern Question...that is not the question!

Naples does not fit squarely either within discourses of Italian colonialism or of the Southern Question. As a stop on the Grand Tour, a repository of “Italian” culture and (Greco-Roman) history, as an urban capital, the Southern agrarian discourse of the likes of Franchetti and Villari noticeably omits Naples from its equations [9].

Although Neapolitans have been considered backward, superstitious, pagan, ignorant, villainous (like their Sicilian brethren), they do not seem to have been specifically targeted for immigration to Africa. Anthropologists of the southern Italy like Banfield and De Martino have focused on pastoral regions such as Lucania and the Salento, the most isolated areas untouched by external influences [10].

If anything, the relationship of Naples to Italian colonialism was as a cultural and psychological midway point between rational Italy and fantastical Africa, a sort of gateway to the dreamscape of the Red Sea [11].

Though a site for Italian colonial propaganda (e.g. La Mostra d’Oltremare), Naples was not re-dressed by the Fascists, and does not run parallel to the construction of the city of Asmara, for example, or of Eritrean identity vis-á-vis the Italian state [12].

The divisions in Naples run along class, not racial, lines in vertical patterns: the rich on the Vomero hill, the poor below; the privileged few on the top floor of a palazzo nobile, the indigent many in the illegal street-level bassi.

It might be possible, however, to address contemporary Neapolitan identity in terms of Jorge de Alva’s sense of postcoloniality: “subjectivity ‘after’ the colonial experience as a subjectivity of oppositionality to imperializing/colonizing (read: subordinating/subjectivizing) discourses and practices”13].

I am thinking specifically about a Neapolitan “subjectivity of oppositionality” in which the foreign tout court is considered a colonizing force. “Siamo africani,” in this sense, speaks to being the ultimate Other, which I seek to demonstrate as the fundamental content and structure of contemporary napoletanità. Jane Schneider writes, “Within the political economic tradition, there is a compelling argument that the difficulties of the South are rooted in a colonial or near-colonial past” [14].

However, I hesitate to push Schneider and de Alva further because I am quite sure that the colonial/postcolonial framework is ultimately unsuited to understanding contemporary Neapolitan identity construction.

In the broadest sense, Naples and urban centers in general are not the focus of the Southern Question architects, in particular in the intermingling of the question with the Italian colonial project. Franchetti et al. concentrate on the southern peasantry: “Within parliamentary discussions of ‘demographic colonialism,’ agriculture came into focus as both the target and the apparatus of Italian rule” [15].

The poor, unskilled laborers of Naples would probably have been the last on the list to be sent to settle Eritrea, seeing as they might have been perceived as a risk to the maintenance of Italian prestige and power in the colony [16].

Even those who sought to address the problems peculiar to Italy’s urban sites tended to produce Naples as unrepresentative or as a representative extreme. In “The Emergence of the Southern Question in Villari, Franchetti, and Sonnino,” Nelson Moe acknowledges Naples’ uneasy fit in the rhetoric of Villari’s Southern Letters: “In his first Southern Letter on the camorra, Villari thus raises not so much the ’question of the cities’ as the ‘question of Naples,’ unique and incomparable” [17].

9 Rhiannon Noel Welch is my preferred source on this subject. Welch, Rhiannon Noel. “Leopoldo Franchetti’s
(Re)productive Southern Bodies on the Colonial Front.” Unpublished paper, 2008.
10 Banfield, Edward C. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. New York: The Free Press, 1958; De Martino,
Ernesto. The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism. London: Free Association Books, 2005.
11 Pianavia Vivaldi, R. Tre anni in Eritrea. Milan: Cogliati, 1901. [Please forgive the absence of the quote and page
number: I lent my copy to a friend and he took it with him...to Naples!]
12 I am, of course, alluding to Fuller, Mia. ”Wherever You Go, There You Are: Fascist Plans for the Colonial City of
Addis Ababa and the Colonizing Suburb of EUR ’42.” Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 31 (1996), 397-418.
13 Quoted in Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London and New York: Routledge, 1998, (12).
14 Schneider, Jane. “Introduction: The Dynamics of Neo-orientalism in Italy (1848-1995).” Italy’s “Southern
Question:” Orientalism in One Country. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998. (12). 15 Welch, 3.
16 Barrera, Giulia. “Racial Hierarchies in Colonial Eritrea” in A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture
from Post-Unification to the Present, ed. Patrizia Palumbo, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
17 Moe, Nelson. “The Emergence of the Southern Question in Villari, Franchetti, and Sonnino.” Italy’s “Southern
Question:” Orientalism in One Country. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998, (56).

I've got Naples on my mind

2009-05-21T04:54:00.004+01:00

Ciao a tutti! I finished my papers, woohoo!, and am ready to share this, my first academic piece on Naples. Feedback appreciated! I am going to attach it in installments because it's twenty pages long. It will be like reading a serial novel or something except with some really annoying academic jargon. I'll start with the INTRODUCTION:

“Francia o Spagna, basta ca se magna:” Neapolitan Identity Formation in the 21st Century

I lived in Naples from 2004-2008, and in that time, on several occasions, I heard various Neapolitans say, “Noi napoletani siamo africani.” What does it mean when a 21st century Neapolitan says “siamo africani?” Is it a reference to Naples’ history of multiple, consecutive invasions and occupations? Is it a reiteration of northern stereotypes of the south, of supposed backwardness and lack of civiltà? Has it to do with Naples’ geographic proximity to Africa? Does it mean, “We are poor?” Oppressed? Have a closer relationship with the earth (and thus our volcanic nature)? None of the above? All of the above?

Depending on who is saying it and in the context of what discussion, “siamo africani” may indeed signify none, all or part of the above. When asked about the meaning of “siamo africani,” S., a 42-year-old hairdresser from the centro storico, said:

no coloniati per niente!!!!! sai il napoletano secondo me umile e del popolino!! ti posso dire che non sie mai sentito sudito del italia per niente !!! e neanche adesso !!! siamo un popolo che va avanti e anche in passato alla giornata sempre inventando ora l’inventare la dimenticato u po !!! ma vive per il giorno e stare bene la chi vuole bene !!! in qualunque stato sociale sai intende con forme diverse ma uguale ; e proprio per questo noi ci sentiamo africani e anche i siciliani sono un po come noi !! gli africani sono sempre stati sotto un dominio come noi !!! e s’intende che somigliamo agli africani per la sopravivenza e compromessi per saltare un altro giorno !!!![1]

Here, “siamo africani” is both rejected and accepted, enunciated as a grave expression of imagined solidarity with an undifferentiated mass of people from the “dark continent” as it is dismissed as an insult lodged at il popolino from the outside. [2]

This paper argues that “siamo africani”—the existence of multiple meanings of the phrase, its content at any given iteration, aside—operates as an Austinian performative [3], a speech act that produces a specific contemporary version of Neapolitan identity while it preserves traditional napoletanità. In the construction of this identity, “siamo africani” comes to mean extreme alterity [4],which in turn becomes the meaning of “siamo napoletani,” an all-encompassing identity based on the reappropriation of any and all positive and negative stereotypes leveled at common Neapolitans by both northerners and elite southerners, foreigners and natives. In 21st century Naples, “siamo africani” appears to function as an extreme version of “strategic essentialism” [5] through which napoletanità is protected against outside influence and corruption.

Methodologically, this paper intended to place “siamo africani” within contemporary anglophone discussions of the Southern Question and Italian colonialism. But what I discovered there forced me to swiftly remove it. This literature has largely ignored the specificities of Naples as a site of inquiry, often eliding it with a general notion of “the South,” and thus offers little insight into the function of deploying a phrase such as “siamo africani” today. [6]

So, in pursuit of a legacy for my claim that “siamo africani” generates Neapolitan identity as alterity and protects traditional napoletanità, I turn to Andrea de Jorio’s 1832 La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano [7]. I was introduced to de Jorio through my work on Neapolitan social and aesthetic gesture [8]. How de Jorio’s work and person might complicate some of the findings in Moe and Dickie cannot be addressed here. Rather, I examine how de Jorio’s work might shed light on the performative function of “siamo africani” as it manifests in contemporary Neapolitan society. The absence of de Jorio and La mimica from histories of the Southern Question is striking not only because de Jorio’s life spanned a large portion of the period under investigation (1769-1851), but also because the content of his text is a direct response to foreign images and interpretations of Neapolitan culture.

Following my discussion of de Jorio, I will address two fairly recent writings on Naples, a memoir and an ethnography, in conjunction with interviews I conducted in April 2009 with two Neapolitans. I hope these diverse methodological strategies will illuminate rather than obfuscate a complex process of Neapolitan identity formation.

¹ Email exchange with the author, April 2009.

² The presence of actual African immigrants—mainly visible along the main shopping thoroughfares with knock-off designer bags lined in neat rows on sheets spread out along the wide sidewalks, sheets whose corners may be deftly scooped up and heaved over shoulders to disappear into the sun-deprived vicoli of the Quartieri Spagnoli, or strolling through the neighborhood around the central train station—did not seem to trouble these associations. Comparisons between Naples and Africa historically have been grounded in ignorance of any particular African reality, not to mention the history of Italian colonialism. If people spoke to me about the Africans it was with a mixture of pity (for their precarious legal and economic status) and admiration (for their rapidly learned Neapolitan dialect). Never have I heard any specific reference to Eritreans, Libyans, Somalis, Ethiopians. These statements are never made in the context of a discussion of the history of Italian colonialism. In my experience, when Neapolitans want to make a generally racist statement they usually say “marocchini.”

³ Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.

⁴ “...there is no other way of imagining this land of lack than as Africa, the alterity of Europe.” Moe, Nelson. The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. (146).

⁵ Spivak, Gayatri. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. London: Methuen, 1987.

⁶ I am referring here mainly to: Dickie, John. Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860-1900. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999; and Nelson Moe’s The View from Vesuvius.

⁷ For this paper, I will be working from Adam Kendon’s translation of de Jorio’s text. All de Jorio quotes will be cited as de Jorio; quotes from Kendon’s introduction will be cited as Kendon. de Jorio, Andrea. Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity: A Translation of Andrea de Jorio’s La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano. Translated by Adam Kendon. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000.

⁸ De Jorio is mentioned in Luigi Barzini’s The Italians. In his section on Italian gesture, Barzini cites de Jorio and then proceeds to misread him quite thoroughly. For this paper, it is important to note that Barzini is writing critically of Italians as an Italian and may be understood as being part of a lineage that includes de Jorio, a Neapolitan writing about Neapolitans. Barzini’s tone, unlike de Jorio’s, is quite disparaging, but he nevertheless performs an Italian identity that is marked by a love-hate relationship with its own kind. See Barzini, Luigi. The Italians. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, (64-65).

Gestation

2009-05-16T05:19:00.002+01:00

I just noticed that it has been nine months since I last blogged. Wow. I could have had another baby in that time! Instead, I finished my first year of grad school. Well, almost. I still have two papers to finish.

The reason I am blogging now, when I should be writing papers, is that one of these papers is about Naples. So stay tuned because I'm going to append portions of it in the next couple of days.

I hope I haven't lost you all.

Oh, come on!/Maddai!

2008-07-27T16:51:00.005+01:00

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday. Actually, it was a gas tank cover sticker. It said, "$1.47 per gallon before Bush," or something to that effect. Now, I am as anti-Bush as the next gal, but if that is your argument against his administration, if rising gas prices are the worst thing he is responsible for in your opinion during his reign, if you honestly believe it is a basic human right to own and drive a car and that you should not have to pay much to do so regardless of its effect on the environment or just the simple common sense that there is no such thing as an unlimited resource, you've got some soul-searching to do.

And that, my friends, is as preachy as I hope to get on this blog.

Full disclosure: we are about to buy a car. We will drive the car and probably do so frivolously. We will do our best to be as unfrivolous as possible.

That sticker just really rankled my cockles or raised my hillcocks or whatever it is one says on these occasions.

Traduzione
Ieri ho visto un adesivo per il paraurti posteriore. Non era sul paraurti posteriore di questa macchia ma invece sul coperchio del serbatoio del gas. Disse: "Un gallone costava $1.47 prima di Bush." Io sono totalmente contro Bush ma questo adesivo mi ha rotto o' cazz', se la posso dire cosi'. Che tipo di persona si lamenta del fatto dei prezzi alti della benzina ignorando tutta la violenza e crudelta' dell'amminstrazione Bush? Vi dico chi: una persona che crede che sia un diritto umano basilare di avere una macchina e guidarla tanto quanto vuole e per un costo basso, una persona che non capisce la realta' di risorse naturali limitate. Che vergogna.

Noi stiamo per comprare una macchina e sicuramente la guideremo quando non e' necessario, quando ci sentiamo pigri. Spero di resistere quanto possibile. E spero di ricordarmi sempre che avere una macchina e' un lusso e gli americani pagano da sempre molto di meno per la benzina paragonata a quanto pagate voi, carissimi europei.

Scusate, vado un'attimo a comprarmi una bici!

Notes on Newness

2008-07-13T22:44:00.003+01:00

Today The Husband and I celebrate three years of marriage. And we still have no idea what the other one is talking about. Always refreshing!

I was in the elevator of a parking garage with La Bimba and a couple of women got on and one said, "I've been feeling kind of apprehentious about it."

La Bimba took an actual dump in the potty. When she saw her masterpiece she said, "Whoa."

La Bimba is hitting and screaming a lot. The Husband has also begun teaching her how to box. You know, just to take it up a notch. She slugged him just yesterday.

The moms in the parks in Berkeley wear the same taxi driver/rasta hats and their kids are dirty and barefoot ragamuffins. I can hear the napoletana mamma saying, "NON TI SPORCARE!"

We still eat a lot of pasta. The Husband is simply not culinarily adventurous. I sneak burritos and thai iced teas whenever I find myself out and about without him. I am experiencing some facial acne either as a response to the hormone-full milk in my iced caffe lattes or because I am allergic to wide open spaces.

La Bimba says, "Oh man." She calls Pinocchio "Cocolo." She is very expressive. Especially with her hands, shoulders, and chin. Napoletana DOC. The Husband has been speaking more napoletano and less italiano with me, so now I will lose my Italian and I won't know what he's talking about ever. Managgia la miseria.

I've been dancing and it is hard. I saw one dance performance and it was great. In the old Sunshine Biscuit Factory in Oakland. Totally groovy arty bay area fun. Lots of tattoos and piercings and lesbians. As it should be!

Big shout out to Napoli. Mi manca assai.

Stasera mi butto

2008-07-09T06:24:00.002+01:00

Allora il mio primo post in italiano. Speriamo bene.

Stiamo sistemando la nostra nuova vita Berkeleyana. Piano piano. Oggi ho rinnovato la patente. Ho dato l'esame scritto...cento percento! Meno male che non ho bisogno di fare l'esame di guida. Il Marito pero' deve dare tutti e due. Poverino. Lui lo puo' fare in italiano pero' non esiste il libretto in italiano quindi non puo' studiare. Pure deve rispondere a 36 domande e ne puo' sbagliare solo sei. Forza Coraggio Marito!

Al parco l'altro giorno con La Bimba ho sentito un tipo dire, Vincenzo! Filippo! Ho subito chiesto al tipo se i bambini fossero (Oddio...non mi ricordo quale forma del verbo ci occorre qua!) italiani. Si! Gemellini italiani. La mamma e' peruviana (il tipo e' lo zio peruviano) e il papa' e'...napoletano!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Il peruviano ha pure un'altra sorella sposata con un napoletano e hanno figli. Che fortuna!

Altre notizie importantissime...Io ed Il Marito abbiamo sentito La Bimba che stava nel bagno dire, Cacca! Cacca! Quando siamo entrati abbiamo trovato una cacca enorme sul tappetto davanti il vasino. Abbiamo domandato, Hai fatto la cacca sul tappetto? e La Bimba ha risposto, No! Doggie! Doggie! La Bimba non sa bene dire le bugie...non abbiamo un cane quindi la colpa indubitamente (questa e' una parola?) resta con La Bella Bimba. Cosi' vicino al vasino!!!

Vabbe', vabbuo', e' doloroso scrivere in italiano. Mi sento di essere a scuola. Magari se pratico spesso migliorero'. Magari.

Un bacio a tutti quanti ed a presto!

Ci siamo arrivati!

2008-06-22T14:51:00.004+01:00

It's not quite 7am on a sunny Sunday morning. I am sitting in my friend's office, looking out the window at copious amounts of foliage and brown-shingle Craftsman houses. This is Berkeley. We have arrived.

Brooklyn was a good transitional spot between Napoli and Berkeley. We are happy to be on the left coast, driving by anti-war protests and tree-sitters and arthouse movie theaters. The Husband is adjusting quickly. He has even nearly ceased to curse over his breath every time he has to come to a full stop at a four-way stop when there is no one coming for miles from any direction. Che sfacimm'... He had one espresso in one cafe, and there are thousands of cafes in this town, and now he insists on always returning to that cafe for the espresso, which he felt was up to snuff. I catch him watching Spanish television and chatting up guys from Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador. We are house hunting and though it is not a piece of cake -- high rents, competitive market -- it is a breeze compared to dealing with Neapolitan landlords or, in our case, landladies. You had to see my American gal pals and me hiding in the bathroom of our last apartment in Naples while The Husband and La Signora screamed bloody murder at each other over last minute costs. I thought La Signora, 87 years old, was going to keel over right there in the majolica-tiled ingresso. We heard her screaming, "Madonna mia! Mi sento male! Mi sento maaaaaleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," and heard from witnesses that she was clutching her chest and collapsed into one of her dining room chairs, the one with the springs poking out from the bottom.

My adjustment has been easy. I feel as though I'd never left. I even took at dance class and am now in such agony that I can't wait to go back for more. La Bimba is struggling a bit. All these changes of environments, beds (though she likes her "piccolo bed," as she calls it, here at B & M's house. She has already danced around the dance studio, eaten American gelato, made friends at the park. The Husband keeps her feeling safe by cooking one delicious pasta dish after another, including one with calamaretti. She eats those little tentacled buggers like popcorn and says, "Oddodus, oddodus" all th while. (She even says, "Oddodus, yum, yum" when we are at the acquarium, frightening the fish-loving workers). La Bimba is a champ. I have a great foto to upload here, but it's on another computer. It was taken by Zia Baba and features La Bimba at the Villa Comunale holding a mini daisy in each hand.

I miss Napoli, but not the smog-choked vicoli. I miss our friends desperately. La Bimba occasionally asks for an amichetta or a cousin. Breaks my heart. But thanks to technology we can stay in close touch. I am excited to fill my loyal readership with stories of The Husband's collision with California culture. To recount his observations (All the landlords are Chinese! Everyone is voting for Obama! Why is everyone looking at me funny?).

And, I promised some friends in Naples that I would also blog in Italian. Il prossimo post faro' il mio meglio. Un bacione a tutti quanti!

T minus 4 hours

2008-06-05T10:37:00.002+01:00

We leave Naples today and we don't know when we'll be back, but we'll be back. So much to say. I've shed copious amounts of tears over the last few days, slept little (the classic 3-5am grief wake-up), and realized how many amazing, truly phenomenal people I've gotten to know here. We said good-bye to the apartment -- after a knock-down, drag-out fight between The Husband and The Landlady (85 years old and can hold her own against an ex-boxer!) -- to our family and friends. The Husband's family has been so good to me. I feel truly blessed.

Then there are all the hilarious only-in-Naples moments to recount. Like the tour bus parked outside the Villa Comunale that had a naked lady, like the one on truckers' mud flaps, on the side along with the phrase, "pleasure on wheels," a bus hired by a school group from the provinces. Eight-year-olds on a bus meant for Russian businessmen! Or the insanity with the post office, the mixed messages that led to us mailing absolutely nothing back to the States. Saying good-bye to Don Pasquale, to Salvatore the Jehovah's Witness doorman and Gianni the Jehovah's Witness salumiere (prosciutto sandwiches in the carry-on luggage!).

There is a lot I'm forgetting, but I imagine it will all come back to me. For now, loyal readership, arrivederci e a presto. Ci sentiamo dal nuovo mondo.

Pasqua, Pasquale, and Pass the Schmaltz

2008-05-05T11:03:00.003+01:00

Rode the elevator up with Don Pasquale (of "poor Hitler" fame). He said, "You're leaving soon!" I replied, "Yep. One month from today." Don Pasquale's eyes welled up with tears: "I am truly, truly sorry. I am not just saying that. You and your husband and daughter are truly loveable people. You must find me before you go to say good-bye." Then he kissed me on both cheeks, and released the vice grip he had had on my forearm.

The other day I said hi to one of the little kids who lives on my street. He really lives on the street. He is always running up and down, with or without ball, with or without older brother, never with parent, sometimes dragging littler sister around. He is about 4 years old. I said, "Hi," and he gave me the finger. I thought that was hilarious (and sad, of course), so imagine my surprise when The Husband got all mad at me for talking to the kid in the first place. I couldn't figure out why he was shouting at me, "Don't talk to those people! You don't know those people, what they say about you to their kids!" He thinks his parents taught him to flip people off. Perhaps. More likely his older brothers, but then again, I really don't know those people and The Husband knows better than I do what is and isn't possible here.

Ya think Berkeley will be different?

Passover is long over, but it is worth recapping a bit here. We all enjoyed my mother's denunciation of the Torah and her discourse on Lillith, Adam, and the missionary position. D's charoset was delicious, and at the risk of tooting my own horn too loudly, my brisket and chicken soup were divine. My mom made chopped liver, all the while exclaiming, "These are the biggest chicken livers I've ever seen. I can't imagine the size of the chickens!" (She and my father call Neapolitan turkey legs "dinosaur legs" because they too are rather oversized). Another nonno neighbor, who always greets La Bimba, but not me, had a full volume conversation with me in the salumeria about Passover when he overheard me asking if they carried matzah (pane azzimo). He wanted to know what The Husband did during Passover (particpated, just like I did during Easter), what La Bimba was (Catholic, Jewish, Italian, American, I said, to which he cried, "Basta! Basta! That's too much!"). Classically, he started the interrogation stating, "Don't get me wrong. I am a big fan of the Jews. I love the Jews," always a red flag (with a little swastika on it?). This same man cornered me in the elevator to ask about the orthodox and then cornered my mother to ask about something else (see, I waited too long and now I can't remember all the details). My mother totally iced him saying, "We are all the same. All equal." THEN he cornered my American gal pal neighbor, asking, "Are you celebrating Passover?" Do you think he thinks all Americans are Jews?

I am bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by this interest in things Judaica here in Naples.

In other news...

...nap time.

Dance Anywhere!

2008-04-21T20:43:00.003+01:00

Hey everyone, just a reminder that Dance Anywhere takes place on Friday, April 25th at noon Pacific Time (9pm for us in Italy). Drop what your doing (but not your pants!) and boogie down for a dance party across time zones and the international date line. Don't forget to take a picture or video of your choreography/improvisation/hustle. For details check out the Dance Anywhere website.

More soon...about Passover and my status as Town Jew....

Coincidence?

2008-04-14T20:36:00.002+01:00

Berlusconi is President again and I flushed my keys down the toilet today.

It was an accident. I had the keys in my hand while hurrying to do my business (number one), La Bimba waiting patiently in her stroller. When I got up to press the flusher button above the bowl, the keys just fell out of my hand and into the spiraling waters.

By the time I found the extra set of keys, my keys had resurfaced.

Much like...

o-RAY-o

2008-04-12T16:40:00.002+01:00

That's how you pronounce Oreo in Italian, accent on the second syllable, and these delectable hydrogenated treats are making a comeback here in Italy. Or a "come" -- not sure if they've been here before. I bought a box from the fruit guy on the Corso -- after rejecting his raisins because they had hydrogenated vegetable oil as one of the two ingredients...the other being, thankfully, raisins...do all raisins come with oil? Anyway, the guy, who has long flowing black locks said, "Those are good. I ate a whole one and it gave me a stomach ache." Oh, the sensitive Italian tummy! La Bimba enjoyed the Oreos, though not as much as The Husband did.

The Husband and La Bimba are visiting the relatives WITHOUT ME. Glory days! I have to say, it is a relief to just be free. Of course, within 10 minutes of being free, I realize how lucky I am to be shackled to La Bimba and The Husband. Especially when La Bimba shouts, "Leh loh teloh!" when she sees a police helicopter flying over the gulf on its way to or from a drug bust.

La Bimba is obsessed with Peter Pan, Trilli (Tinkerbell), and Baby Michele (Michael). She runs around screaming, "Peter Pao flies! Baby flies!" So cute.

I hung out in Feltrinelli today, read a couple of essays by Coetzee -- on Gordimer, on Roth. Gordimer was on that talk show on Rai 3 (?) that always features that fabulous maniac La Littizzetto. I was so happy to catch her, hear her South African accent muffled under the blaring Italian translator. I bought La Bimba a "Heidi" book. She really digs the whole barefoot freedom across the Alps thing. So much like her Neapolitan life!

I nonni are in Germany, getting the Baden Baden spa treatments before heading down to Naples for what will be their last southern Italian trip for a long time. We are leaving so soon. I was really sad about it the other day, waxing tearful over a pink bed sheet flapping in the breeze. As I walked along the sea today, an old jogger said, "Ciao bella! Corre con me!" I smiled and kept walking (I don't run. Bad for the knees). My Neapolitan experience, just barely begun and hardly annotated in this blog, is coming to a halt. Not really. As it has been pointed out, I remain under the Neapolitan son. But now it's going to be all about The Husband's confrontation with scent-sensitive, gluten-free, smoke-free, organic, birkenstocking, whole grain, traffic law-abiding, I'm-doing-my-own-thing-spouting Berkeleyans. God, I miss those folks!

Thanks Easter Bunny!

2008-03-25T13:02:00.003+01:00

I am still chomping on the giant chocolate eggs La Bimba received for Easter.

Last night I dreamed a woman in a store? in a hospital? had Pasquetta written on her name tag.

We went to The Husband's sister's house for Easter dinner, a fifty course meal that included fettucine al brodo (pasta made by the nuns), pasta al forno, grilled lamb, veal, pork, ribs, sausage, and wild boar, lamb with peas, various cold cuts and cheeses, hard boiled eggs and ricotta, bread, lettuce and fennel salad, sautéed mushrooms, peppers, ricotta pear cake, mixed pastries (made by the nuns...no I don't know which nuns), wine, Pepsi, many liqueurs including artichoke...are you feeling full yet?

During the blessing of the table (a palm dipped in holy water and then flicked at everyone at the table), we were asked to stand. I had a forkful of fettucine moving toward La Bimba's mouth, so I hesitated a moment. In that moment of hesitation, the father of The Husband's sister's husband, a man of about 78, began to cry and sat back down next to his wife, who had not stood up due to her age (kind of like when my great aunts pleaded elderly so as to avoid sitting on boxes during shivah). I looked at the nonno, then at the nonna, who looked back at me shaking her head, shrugging her shoulders, and rolling her eyes as if to say, "There he goes again. What a putz!" One of the nonno's sons was sitting next to him and didn't give him the time of day. I was sort of paralyzed by the event, and had not yet stood up. Then The Husband nudged me and said, "Alzati" and I realized I should really stand up because otherwise the whole family was going to think I killed Jesus personally. I stood up, I got a drop of holy water in my eye, and then we all sat back down and set to eating. The nonno just whimpered away until a nice piece of grilled lamb was placed in front of him. He seemed better after that.

La Bimba had a blast playing with her cousins, eating chocolate, and finding surprises in the bowels of her cavernous eggs. "Eggies!" she cried every time another one, wrapped in colorful cellophane, came her way. I am already planning for her second birthday in April. La Bimba is nothing if not a party girl.

Special Report

2008-03-17T17:16:00.006+01:00

I was stretched out on the sofabed next to La Bimba, reading about binary genders and the heterosexual contract while La Bimba watched Elmo learn how to get ready for school, when it occurred to me that I had not shared one of the jaw-droppingly yowsa Neapolitan stories ever!

The Husband likes to watch a program called Report. It's a news program that devotes each episode to some Italian cultural/political/social/economic lunacy like the southern Italian garbage crisis or slave labor and the Italian fashion industry. Most episodes end as cliffhangers, e.g. did they resolve the garbage crisis? The folks at Report know how important it is to provide follow-up information, if not closure, so they have a section called "Com'è andata a finire?" or "How did it turn out?"

The other evening, The Husband was watching Report and I decided to watch it with him instead of popping in my ear plugs and reading about liminality and communitas. And boy was I psyched that I did! I caught the "Com'è andata a finire?" of an episode first aired in 1999. The story, insomma, is that the Comune di Napoli built a freeway that ends smack in front of a three-story apartment house.

(Insert baffled emoticon here).

(Insert baffled emoticon with smoke coming out of its ears here).

(Insert baffled emoticon with Tickle-Me-Elmo rolling around on the floor hysterically laughing here).

Try to picture it: a stretch of freeway that just drops off, as if for a Mission Impossible 12 car stunt, and right in front of it, eye-level with Tom Cruise's scientological smirk, the third floor apartment of a Neapolitan family.

No way! Si invece!

The comune claimed that they thought the building was unoccupied. How they thought this when the ground floor electronics store was open for business and all the apartments had moms and dads and grandpas and grandmas, aunts, uncles, dogs, living in them, BOH, I can't fathom. So years go by and deals are offered (moving costs, evacuation packages, whatever), and in 2008 we find everyone gone except the businessman, who is just waiting for his money and will then move shop across the street, and an elderly woman, who keeps repeating, "How am I supposed to move if I can't find another house to live in?" The engineers, who looked like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb and Dumber, could only giggle, like Elmo.

BECAUSE IT'S SO ABSURD!

I was just so pleased to discover, once again, that Naples will never EVER cease to amaze me.

You just had to see the view from that third floor window.

Here is the link to the report. If you would like me to translate anything...it'll cost ya.

It's SO easy being green!

2008-03-14T20:44:00.002+01:00

First of all, a shout out to Madgic! Hey, Madge, I miss you, and now I miss Ed because of your comment!

Second of all, The Husband is the proud owner of a shiny new immigrant visa to the US. Go, Husband! If any of you expats are about to embark on the green card path for your mates, I've got the skinny AND the lowdown on the process, so feel free to ask. We met all sorts of nice people at the consulate, lots of military married to foreigners, and foreigners married to civilians, and some random single people from Spain. The interview consisted of a jovial fellow asking The Husband to hold up his right hand and swear that everything he wrote on his application was the truth. So, that whole Andie MacDowell/Gerard Depardieu movie was just bullshit?

Anyway, we need to celebrate...and right now La Bimba needs her ciuccio, so until next time!

Oh, and I am so pleased that my readers are getting to know each other and sharing best bakery secrets!

He's a piece of bread

2008-03-11T11:25:00.003+01:00

Lui è un pezzo di pane. This is a great compliment here in Naples, maybe all over Italy, but I wouldn't know anything about the rest of this lovely wacky country. If someone calls you a piece of bread it means you're simple, and being simple is also a compliment. It doesn't mean you're a little slow. Simple like unpretentious. Wholesome like a piece of bread. Given the very large number of bread types in Naples -- palatone, cafone, mezzaluna, sfilatina -- I wonder if each person who is like a piece of bread is like a very specific piece of bread. Like maybe I am hard on the outside and squishy on the inside. Or maybe you are a little sour and flecked with sunflower seeds. Perhaps you are simply round or semi-circular.

I have been having lengthy conversations about Neapolitan gesture these days, and also about Italian grammar, now that our departure date is visibly on the horizon. I see it! Right over there next to that catamaran! The Husband was trying to explain when he chooses to just use words, to use words and gesture, or just use gesture to make a point. He was trying really hard and failing because the decisions are automatic and unconscious. I gleaned from his various chin thrusts, shoulder shrugs, finger pointing, and tongue clucking that sometimes it's about emphasis, sometimes it's about directing a remark to the person looking at you (thus away from those not looking at you), other times it's about being scary, occasionally it's to show great chumminess. I still have so much to learn.

You should hear me throw the subjunctive around these days. I am like an Italian grammar rock star, the Italian grammar lady pope. Penso che sia troppo forte con l'uso del congiuntivo, devo dire la verità.

Comunque, comunque. I am happy to report that the Bay Area offers more than one Italian language play group! I am thrilled that La Bimba will have little compatriots to speak in code with. She has started translating like a fiend -- palla/ball! tree/albero! kiss/NOOOOO! She is going to love all the Berkeley foliage, but she is going to be quite disappointed when she realizes that not every American who passes her on the street is going to stop and marvel. For her, everyone in Naples is some kind of relative. Here she is with her bilingual buddy Tilda.

Don't worry, Bimba! We will find plenty of folks to coo over you. Non ti preoccupare!

My Bologna has a First Name...

2008-02-24T22:25:00.003+01:00

Greetings from Bologna, pretty city, even if it is named after a lunch meat.

La Bimba and I are here visiting our lovely friends V & A in their lovely apartment with 360 degree views of red brick, rooftops, towers, and domes. I nonni are here too, and everything is great except Il Nonno is sick as a dawg. We actually had a doctor make a house call. My first house call! Little black bag and everything. He was great, born and raised in New Jersey, so speaks perfect American, great bedside manner (and was actually beside a bed!), a mentsch. Nonno is feeling better already. What American wouldn't feel good after a house call that cost only 100 euro and antibiotics for only 10 euro?

So, if anyone is ever in need of an English-speaking doctor in Bologna, I've got the guy and would be happy to pass on his name.

I have been storing up stories to blogshare with you. Like the showdown at the park between a mamma and a nonna, and La Bimba's new words like "More!" and "Akka" (acqua), and her marvelous (T)UFFO KALAH, which she says at the sight of any body of water, particularly the tub. Tuffo means dive in Italian. Kalah is her own invention.

Alas, the showdown will have to wait until when my head is not falling onto the keyboard. Buona notte e spero a presto.

Get Set...

2008-01-29T13:09:00.000+01:00

...Go!

We went back to the Comune and went straight to the Dirigente (director) as per the suggestion of La Signora (last name Starita, henceforth, La Starita). The Dirigente greeted us nicely and then turned foul. "What are you doing? What am I supposed to do about this? Oh, you were here on Thursday? And you spoke with La Dottoressa (Starita) and Roberto? No one told me you've already been here. They should have resolved this by themselves. What can I do? You, Signora, screwed up when you didn't put your daughter on your residency. You should have known that. Yes, the child follows the mother anagraficamente, follows her residency, but how I am I supposed to know she hasn't been living with the father all this time, hm? And how could you have known to tell the people at the Comune di Chiaia that you had a daughter? They should have asked you. Ah, Roberto, yes come in. Roberto, we shouldn't be arguing about this in front of the public. This is a question of immigration. No, Signora, not in terms of nationality or citizenship, immigration in terms of residency. Yes, I know, the term is used differently in this case. Go downstairs with Roberto. Go. Work this out amongst yourselves. Good-bye."

Got that?

So we follow Roberto, who has a limp and can't run, so wait up! and he sits behind his desk and he moans about the bureaucracy and he asks me which are left and which are right between the democrats and the republicans and do you think they are going to vote for that one with the black face (faccia nera, swear to Gesù) and see here, see this on my computer, this is an American woman born in Newport Beach and here is her son also born in Newport Beach but with residency in Naples because he's my grandson and I didn't want any bureaucratic problems for him so I entered them in the database, così, and where were you born? New York City? Brooklyn? But Brooklyn isn't a city, right? It's a quartiere, so how can you have been born there? I'll put New York, like on your carta d'identità, type type type, here you go, now all three of you have the same residency, the baby is part of your stato di familia, find me a basso to live in in New York, won't you? Ciao!

So, lovely readers, who share my pain over this bureaucratic song and dance, it was all a charade, a cabaret, old chum, all to cover asses. When he felt he could do so without getting chewed out, Roberto simply changed the data in the computer and, Ecco fatto!

The Husband and I uncorked a bottle of prosecco after that vittoria. Whew!

Get ready...

2008-01-24T13:33:00.001+01:00

Today we went to the Immigration Office in Via Epomeo in the Soccavo district. We went there because we had received a blue postcard in October, asking us to come. We were invited. I called in October to find out what it was about, what papers we should bring, etc. and the guy on the other end of the line said, "What's it about?" I said that the card didn't specify, so he said, "How should I know? Bring everything you have." This put us off going, of course, and then we went to NYC and then it was Xmas, New Year's, Epiphany, flu season, and so on.

So I coaxed The Husband into going today. Two different gas station attendants pointed us in the correct direction of the office and we still had to turn around and go up a one-way street the wrong way. Nevertheless, we arrived, parked in front of several miraculously empty dumpsters, and went inside. The first man we asked for information from told us to ask someone who knew better. (The Husband had asked him, "You are with the Comune, right?" "Si." Still, he didn't know jackshit). The second man we asked told us to go to the first floor, last door on the left. We took the stairs. At the top of the stairs we saw a door marked Immigration Office, so we went in there. We showed our postcard to a guy seated at a desk in what looked like a recently rented office -- bare and in shambles (not at all recently rented, just bare and in shambles) -- and he said, "I didn't invite you here. Go to the office down the hall on the left." So far, everyone was male, graying or balding, wearing sweater vests, and CRANKY.

At the office at the end of the hall on the left we were met by Roberto, a burly man (graying, sweater vest though of fleece), who said, "Vi voglio bene ma che ci fate qui?" ("I love you, but what are you doing here?"). We showed him the card and he found our file right away. Great sign! Right?

Wrong. After some chitchat about Italy being a fifth world (Robero's words) country in terms of services and first world in terms of taxes, Roberto explained...well, he explained...I mean...he said,

I HAVE NO FRICKIN IDEA WHAT HE SAID! Not because I didn't understand the half-Italian, half-Neapolitan he was speaking, but because he never said anything. After many questions put by me and unanswered by Roberto, a signora came in to help. She was nice and pleasant-looking, but she was no help either. Both Roberto and La Signora were evidently on our side, wanted to help, but their hands were tied because of Le Veline (Roberto's words, remember the TV dancing girls? That's what he calls the two women above him who are responsible for our as-yet-undefined bureaucratic mess). Le Veline were the ones making the mess, not the officials at the Comune di Chiaia (our comune, where La Bimba was born), and certainly not Roberto and La Signora.

I asked very clearly, "What exactly is the problem? Why were we called here? I still don't understand what we are doing here." Finally, as we left the building (with an appointment to return on Monday, so stay tuned), The Husband explained:

I don't know if you, fair readership, gentle, innocent, all-trusting, law-abiding readership will be able to handle this explanation The Husband gave according to the explanation given to him by La Signora.

If you are squeamish about the creative logic of Italians, do not read on. Rent a gory horror flick instead.

Okay. Deep Breath. Here goes.

La Bimba was born in Naples. Her birth was recorded in Naples. She has an Italian passport. The fact that she is my daughter and The Husband's daughter is on record. She is an Italian citizen by birth. However, when she was born, I was still officially a resident of New York. Thus, her birth was recorded as "occasionale" (in bureaucratese this means something like, "oops, an American had a baby on Italian soil"). I did not become an official resident of Naples until 14 months after her birth and since the baby follows the mommy, bureaucratically speaking, the Comune di Chiaia recorded her as having her residence in NY. From the Italian perspective, La Bimba was born in Naples and then took the next Alitalia flight to NY and has lived there ever since. She never "followed me" back to Naples.

What does this mean? It should mean that all we have to do is declare that she lives with us in Naples. Then the Comune will change her residency and basta così. Simple. Logical. A tiny glitch in the bureaucratic chain. But because of Le Veline, according to Roberto and La Signora, we can't do that because Le Veline say that La Bimba has to IMMIGRATE TO ITALY.

I'm sorry, I need to repeat that with the requisite caps.

LA BIMBA IS AN ITALIAN CITIZEN WITH AN ITALIAN PASSPORT AND THERE ARE TWO STRONZE IN THE IMMIGRATION OFFICE IN NAPLES WHO ARE SAYING SHE HAS TO IMMIGRATE TO ITALY.

This is by far and away the apex, the tops, the Coliseum of Italian bureaucratic insanity. I have never heard of anything so jaw-droppingly absurd in my life. I am hoping for a serious shakedown with Le Veline on Monday. I am banking on jumping up and down on their desks, scattering their crumbling files hither and thither, and making such a scene that the crumbling, shabby, everyone-smoking-at-their-desks Comune on Via Epomeo kick back over espressos in tiny plastic cups, the frosted tin foil pieces blowing out the window, and remember the time L'Americana threw a hissy fit in the office of Le Veline.

I'll probably let The Husband do the talking.

We are doing this so that everything is regolare when we leave. Roberto's advice, "Leave now. Go to the US," said only with a hand gesture.

I will miss this, oh yes, very much.

Napologic

2008-01-21T12:59:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, The Husband, La Bimba, and I were in the car on our way to Capodimonte to hang out in the sun. Because of the traffic on Via Roma, The Husband decided to go through the Sanità, a Neapolitan neighborhood like no other. People think the Quartieri Spagnoli is deep space Napoli, with its tight vicoli and videogame-speed motorino traffic. But the Sanità is a world apart, a neighborhood lost in time. It's hard to give words to the feeling one gets in the Sanità. You have to take a stroll or a drive through it. Anyay, yesterday was a sunny Sunday and the inhabitants of the Sanità were barbecuing in the square, hanging out the wash, standing around, sweeping their steps. A couple of motorinos driven by 10-year-olds whizzed past. The streets are steep, narrow, and wind up and over the city. Some apartments have amazing views of the Gulf of Naples and the trash-besieged city that curves around it. More than once, a car came toward us along an unmarked one-way street. Sometimes the other car backed up to let us pass, sometimes we hugged a crumbling wall to give way. At one point, The Husband asked a local, an older man who was holding back his young grandson, a cutie pie on a little trike, dying to cruise into oncoming traffic, "Is this a one-way street going up or going down?" The man replied, "It's one-way going up if you're going up and one-way going down if you're going down."

Free Association

2008-01-15T19:26:00.000+01:00

Today La Bimba did not take a nap. Thus, she fell asleep in her high chair in the middle of her dinner of tortellini and veggie meat balls. Why, oh, why didn't I take a picture?

The garbage is piling up in certain spots in Naples, though the real crisis is in the provinces. There is a sad dumpster on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, piled high and overflowing with trash, and at the top, row upon row of wilted friarielli (more or less broccoli rabe), like lifeless bodies in a yet to be covered mass grave. I don't like passing that dumpster on my way home from the sundries shop.

Observation: many, many female academics, at least in the field of performance studies, are named Barbara. I have a good friend here in Naples named Barbara. She is The Husband's ex-girlfriend. I tell you this to show you how evolved I am. La Bimba calls her Ba-Ba. When I lived in San Francisco, I threw a Barbra-Q, a Barbra Streisand-themed barbecue. I had five of her CDs rotating in the player and her films playing on the TV. Great voice, that Babs. But after a few hours, I thought about hurling both the CD player and the VCR out the window onto Cesar Chavez Street.

Cesar Chavez Street used to be called Army Street. When they were planning to change the name, certain nostalgic? miltaristic? residents put posters in their windows that read, "It will always be Army." If you check a current SF map, you will find that those residents were wrong.

Now that we have but a few months left living in the city by the Gulf, I have promised myself to visit at least one Neapolitan cultural monument every week. So far, La Bimba and I have seen Chinese contemporary art at the PAN (she particularly liked the video of the naked man walking the Great Wall), the wonderful collection from Pompeii and Egypt at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, and the chiostro at Santa Chiara. We are three for three! I hope we get to the Capodimonte before the Carvaggio-to-Picasso exhibit closes on the 20th of this month.

The Husband turned 41 yesterday. Auguri vecchietto!

Striscia La Notizia, a satirical news program, gives Golden Tapirs (my favorite animal as a child!) to people in the news who are acting like bozos. Today they gave one to the mayor of Naples, Rosa Russo Iervolino, whose voice is eerily reminiscent of the muppet Grover's. She said she was not responsible for the garbage crisis in Naples, that no one listens to her, that the best laid plans keep getting foiled, and that "tutto l'ambiente" is to blame, not one single person. Bozo.

I sing La Bimba to sleep every night (except tonight when the tortellini understudied for me). Since this blog is going to be the way I remember little stories about the little one, I will record her playlist here, adding to it as I remember tunes:

Most Played:

Time After Time (with Eva Cassidy's version in mind)

Fire and Rain, James Taylor

You've Got a Friend, James Taylor

Landslide, Stevie Nicks

Corner of the Sky, Pippin soundtrack (don't laugh!)

I'm Still in Love with You, Steve Earle

If still not asleep, repeating, "yeah, yeah" (her way of saying "again"):

Reason for Waiting, Jethro Tull

Killing Me Softly (with Fugees version in mind)

American Medley: I've Been Working on the Railroad, Home on the Range, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, You Are My Sunshine

Out Here On My Own, Irene Cara

Sing a Song (according to internet, written by Joe Raposo)

Grazie assai

2008-01-03T20:29:00.001+01:00

Just a quick entry to note how much I am enjoying the kindness of the strangers who comment on my blog. It warms the lupini of my heart. Thank you!

Dear New Yorker with Neapolian Husband in the Bronx,
Are you living in the Morris Park area? I just read about it in the Times. Who knows? Perhaps we'll be neighbors?

La Bimba is still sick though seemingly on the mend. Did I mention that she now says GARBAGE? How fitting for the ongoing crisis in Campania.

We haven't been out of the house since New Year's Eve day. I am beginning to lose it. We did get to see The Wizard of Oz in Italian. Lions and Tigers and Panthers?! Why panthers? It doesn't even sing better that way in Italian. Orsi would have worked just as well. We also watched Madagascar in Italian and then again in English. The Husband should be trilingual by now...

Augurissimi

2007-12-31T12:35:00.000+01:00

It's New Year's Eve here in Naples and but for a few practice fireworks, all is calm. It is sunny and warm and our doorman has posted a sign on the elevator that states, "Happy New Year. Beware of fireworks. Even the stupidest people can cause a disaster."

La Bimba is sickie, so I'm making some chicken soup. The Husband is out catching our New Year's dinner. He wishes he were fishing right now! Hah! No, he's just at the fish market.

I am a little sad, a little cranky. End of the year blues, perhaps.

It is good to be back in Naples after 24 wide-sidewalked days in Brooklyn. Though I had already called a motorist an asshole within 2 minutes after leaving the apartment, I am feeling fond of the city and its rowdy inhabitants. It will be sad to leave in June, but we are so ready.

Anyway, auguri, happy new year, and hope to be blogging in a big way in 2008. Baci!

In da house

2007-12-10T18:51:00.000+01:00

Greetings from Brooklyn and from an American keyboard, where you find the @ sign above the 2, a mere pressing of the shift key rather than the digital gymnastics required to effect it on an Italian keyboard, like those crazy chords on the piano, always too big for my 9-year-old hands.

Now La Bimba is tinkling the ivories here at the nonni's house. Boy, is that piano out of tune.

I have already gaine a kilo being here, stuffing myself with stuffed derma, corned beef and pastrami, Thai food, Vietnamese food, chicken feet. Though it is refreshing to be tasting spices other than basil and oregano, I am going to let you in on a little secret: having access to unlimited food variety is not required for happiness. It is possible to live a totally fulfilling and fully filling life eating only Neapolitan cuisine. In fact, it is nice not having to have that horribly annoying conversation every night:

mom: what do you want for dinner?

dad: I don't know. What do you want, S?

me: I don't care. Let mom decide.

mom: I can't decide.

me: okay, Japanese.

mom: I don't care much for Japanese.

me: Chinese

dad: we had Chinese last night.

I will spare you the rest. It more or less continues in that vein for about 20 minutes until my father decides to order pizza.

So, I took the GRE and almost fell asleep doing so. What a boring exam! And with jet lag...mamma mia. You are not allowed to bring anything into the test with you, including your scarf. They wouldn't tell me why the scarf was prohibited, something, perhaps, about crocheting crib notes. The new, computerized test sucks because you can't check your answers or skip questions and go back to them. So, you sit there staring at a parallelogram for 20 minutes and then realize you only have 5 minutes left to do the remaining 25 math questions.

My friend's 15-year-old daughter came over to tutor me in math the night before the test. She brought over waffles, bacon, cookies, and a calculator, none of which you can bring with you to the test. She was great. I would say, "I can't do it. Forget it. Let's skip this question and move on," and she would make me understand. My score went up 100 points due to her endless patience. We also had a nice conversation about maple syrup:

Teenager: You eat the waffles without syrup?

Me: I don't like the syrup my father buys. Aunt Jemima.

Teenager: I love Aunt Jemima!

Me: It's not maple syrup. It's sugar syrup.

Teenager: What, you like that stuff that comes out of the tree? Gross!

La Bimba is having a blast with the nonni. She loves her new toys and books, all the music boxes and Russian matrioshka dolls, and goldfish, the cracker, not the animal. She likes roast beef, but not sour pickles. She likes corned beef, but not pastrami. Mostly, she wants pasta. She already knows that the key to happiness has nothing to do with food variety. She's so smart.

p.s. I have no idea what that blue car is doing in the upper left corner of this post. I meant to upload a picture of La Bimba, but this is what came up. If you have an idea of what this might mean, please let me know.

Which way did he go?

2007-11-28T13:02:00.001+01:00

They have banned smoking in the Villa Comunale, Naples' Central Park. Two cops on horses stopped a guy and told him to put out his cigarette. The guy complied, though I imagine he lit up when he saw that the horsies were out of sight. I was interviewed by a local TV station on the subject, but I neglected to ask which station, so I don't know if my thoughts and my face appeared on Neapolitan TV. I might have missed my chance at fame! I haven't given up hope though. I am still waiting for Woody Allen to discover me. He never did find the best replacement for Julie Kavner.

It is gloriously sunny albeit windy. La Bimba now says ET for wet, and she says glasses and eyes.

The Husband, La Bimba, three friends, and I went to Avellino on Sunday to eat some meat. We went to a place called La Bussola in Serino. We got lost, of course, so it tooks us forever to get there, but it was worth the trip. Great warm vegetable dishes (escarole, potatoes), pasta (pappardelle con funghi porcini, ravioli, and MEAT. Lamb, veal, pork, the works...with fries!

Part of the reason we got so lost is the La Bussola folks had told us on the phone that there were tons of signs on the way, so we couldn't miss it. There was not...one...sign, until the entrance to the place, and that one was facing in the opposite direction we were coming from. And the great great fantastic Neapolitan fabulous thing about this story? La bussola means compass.

Italian road signage is notoriously bad. Every time we go to visit The Husband's sister in Aversa, we get lost (except for last time; Go Husband!). This is because there are a zillion signs for Aversa sud, we need Aversa nord (there is one), there are several for Aversa, just plain Aversa, and the crucial signs are hidden behind other signs, so you only see them once you're past them.

E' da una vita....

2007-11-23T16:30:00.001+01:00

I will not bore you hear with the myriad excuses for why I haven't been blogging. I fear I have lost you, dear readership. It's November 23rd, more than a month since my last post. Will UTNS have to be considered a do-over?

Perhaps. But not before I tell you that my neighbor C., her husband, her two kids, her friend from Denmark with 3-month-old baby, La Bimba, and I took the funicolare to the Vomero for Thanksgiving dinner at another expat American's home. This would have been nothing special had it not been for the fact that C. was carrying the turkey -- the cooked and stuffed turkey -- in an Ikea bag. The bird was really stinking up the joint and C. was mortified. Luckily, I was yabbering in Italian to a Spanish friend about the turkey and Thanksgiving and so on, so the Neapolitans all breathed a collective sigh of relief that signified, "Meno male! E' il tacchino che puzza, non gli americani!"

La Bimba is growing up fast, throwing mini tantrums, shouting "mio mio mio," refusing foods she once loved, calling me mamma instead of mommy after having spent all of 5 hours with her Neapolitan cousin (just goes to show how many times an hour a Neapolitan child says "mamma"), saying new words like bapf (which means bat) and otch (watch) and ox (socks). We head to NYC next week for a long stay and I am looking forward to showing her the lights and riding the subway and seeing friends and family and just being New Yorkese.

Hope to be blogging again soon.

Don Pasquale Redux

2007-10-18T07:38:00.000+01:00

Goshdarnit, dagburnit, it is impossible for me to get blogging these days. I nonni were here, I've still got to finish these dang grad school applications, and one has to keep an eye on La Bimba now that she likes to balance herself on the narrow end of a yoga block in the middle of the room that has no rug, just skull-cracking tile floors. Every time she is out of sight and I hear her rendition of, "uh-oh, spaghetti-o's," which sounds like, "uh-oh, doh dee doh" or "uh-oh, guaglio," I know something has been dropped, shredded or destroyed.

Well, I guess I have to begrudgingly admit that The Husband was right...again: I probably shouldn't have broadcast my Jewishness to Don Pasquale. Here's why...

A few days after his offer of sympathy for the Jewish experience of WWII, Don Pasquale and I got to talking again. The conversation went a little something like this (give me a beat!):

DP: Terrible, what happened to the Jews. But what else could he have done?
Me: Who?
DP: Hitler.
Me: What?
DP: I mean, killing 8 million (sic) was too much, but he had to do something to stop the Jewish takeover of the world.
Me: Um, Don Paquale, now you're being offensive.
DP: Ma quando mai! Don't get me wrong. I have great respect for your people, but you have to admit that they have economic control over the world and that before WWII they were ruining Germany and Hitler had to do something.
Me: Sorry, Don Pasquale, I don't see it that way. Gotta go. Say, "ciao ciao, bimba"

The next day my parents arrived in Naples. One morning during their visit they stepped out with La Bimba and I went to take a dance class. On my return, Ciro the garage attendent stopped me.

Ciro: Don Pasquale told me you were Jewish...
Me: (Hoo boy).
Ciro: ...and I'm afraid I offended your father.
Me: What? Why? (Did you scream Raus Juden in his face?)
Ciro: I saw that he was carrying a Leica and I was a photographer, you know, took pictures for a sports newspaper, and I have a Leica too...from the German invasion. It has a swastika on it. I told your father all about it. I love the camera, not the swastika.
Me: Oh, I'm sure he under...
Ciro: Then I told him about my watch. I have a watch that belonged to an Italian Jew. In 1938 he told a friend that he had to escape from Italy, to hold the watch for him, that he would be back. The friend waited 60 years. When he died, his son sold the watch. Now it's mine.
Me: Senti, Ciro, my father doesn't speak Italian. I'm sure he didn't understand a word you said.
Ciro: But he kept saying, "mia figlia, mia figlia," and I'm sure I offended him!
Me: He probably just wanted you to tell me what you had to say so that I could translate. Don't worry, I'll explain everything.
Ciro: Thank you. And if he wants to come over to see my Leica, I live on the first floor.

Of course, my father didn't understand a thing. When I told him what it had been all about, he said, "I didn't know what he was talking about and Nazis were the last thing I could have imagined."

Now an update on the offended signora from the basso on the steps, whose grandson's picture I refused to look at. I saw her husband. I said hello. He sneered at me and turned away. And he doesn't even know I'm Jewish!

And I found out where J-Dub comes from: it is the letter J and an abbreviation of the letter W from the word Jew. Isn't that bizarre? So the Sephardic term for an Ashkenazi Jew just means Jew. Now I'm confused. I guess all that hurt and feelings of being a pariah were for nothing. I learned about it here.

La Bimba update

2007-10-07T11:54:00.000+01:00

La Bimba has taken to putting the letter T at the end of different words, so now we have babbot (sounds like bah-boat), mammit (mah-meat), baby-t (bay-beet), ballt. This must be an already documented toddler linguistic phenomenon.

La Bimba has also become a terrible two and she's only just shy of her 1.5 birthday. She says NO constantly, sometimes with force, sometimes accompanied by crying and plopping down on her butt and putting her forehead on the floor, sometimes quietly to herself with a quasi imperceptible shake of the head.

She has some advanced dance moves including arabesque and attitude, marching with her legs wide apart, spinning, a version of flamenco stomping and hand clapping. She also sings her ABCs like this, "c c c c c c c."

Okay, back to me. Yesterday, The Husband, La Bimba, two friends, and I were having lunch in a little trattoria in the Vomero (four primi, four secondi, wine, water, salad, fried algae, that's right, fried algae, bread, two potato crochettes, 40 euro), when a woman with jet black hair blow dried straight to the texture of straw, lots of eyeliner and frosted pink lipstick came up to us. The Husband said to her, "Ti presento mia moglie." She said, "Piacere. Cristina" took my extended hand and CRUSHED IT. I mean, I have experienced more than my fair share of firm handshakes, but this one actual made me yelp. I YELPED and sort of keeled over (good thing I was sitting down), and my dining companions all said in unison, "Ma che è successo? Ti sei spaventata?" No, I wasn't afraid, I was wounded. Cristina said, "Scusami" and shrugged her shoulders. I just sat there shaking out my contorted fingers.

One of our dining companions, M., slept over at our house the night before. In the middle of the night, I heard some shuffling and some banging around, and suddenly M. was standing at the foot of our bed. I said, "M.! What are you doing?" M. answered, "Scusami, non mi trovo bene. Mi serve solo questo cuscino" (Excuse me, I'm not comfortable. I just need this pillow). Then he pulled our duvet off of me and The Husband and dragged it into the living room. There we were, lying clothed but without our cover! Then we heard more doors slamming and general mayhem, so The Husband went out and settled M. down. The next day M. remembered nothing.

I had a very good friend from Junior High who was a sleepwalker-talker. She would sit up in the middle of the night and talk to imaginary people, usually in a very urgent way. Once I found her sitting up with her eyes closed saying, "We have to get out of here! We can do it! Come on!" When I asked her who she was talking to she said, "Her." When I pressed on, asking, "Who?" She said, "Fuck you" and lay back down. Another time she jumped up and started screaming at me that the asteroids were coming and how could I just lie there and do nothing. When I said, "You're sleeping. Go back to sleep," she said, "Fuck you."

Don Pasquale

2007-10-06T10:23:00.001+01:00

There is an 80-year-old man who lives in our building. Don Pasquale can usually found either leaning on his cane in front of the tabacchaio in Piazzetta San Carlo alle Mortelle or sitting on a chair at the top of the ramp that leads down to our building's underground parking garage. Don Pasquale likes to talk about the good old days, about how there is no morality left in the world. I'm not sure how morality was faring in his youth, but I don't argue. If I did, I would never get to the grocery store. Don Pasquale's monologues go on and on and on.

When Don Pasquale sees La Bimba, he says, "Dai un bacio a nonno, Lucia!" She doesn't comply, but she lets him kiss her pudgy cheek. Recently, Don Pasquale found out I was Jewish. It wasn't a rumor that spent some time swirling around the neighborhood until it reached his fuzzy ear, but rather information that leaks out as it always does:

Don Pasqule or any other napoletano: Are you Italian American?
Me: No.
DP: So you're American American.
Me: No.
DP: quizzical look
Me: My relatives are from Russia, Moldova, Poland, Austria.
DP: knowing look
Me: Yeah, we're Jews.

This exchange sent Don Pasquale into a reverie -- spoken out loud, of course -- about WWII and what the Fascists and the Germans did to the Jews. He must have pointed at me saying, "Your race has suffered so!" about ten times before I extricated myself from the maudlin chat.

The next day, La Bimba and I were beckoned by Don Pasquale from his perch in the garage. Next to him, on a motorcycle, sat a younger man, un napoletano DOC with greasy, curly hair and a tight black t-shirt, smoking a cigarette. Don Pasquale introduced the man as Ciro and proceeded to say, "Her race has suffered so!" La Bimba and I beat a hasty retreat, backing out of the garage, nodding and smiling and saying, "Sorry, we're in such a hurry!"

I told The Husband about the conversations with Don Pasquale and he said, "You shouldn't spread that around."

Me: That I'm Jewish?
Hubby: Yeah. You never know what the landlady will do.

So now we're probably going to get evicted because I let out my dirty little secret. No, dai, sto scherzando.

The only time I ever felt that I was experiencing anti-Semitism was from other Jews. I am an Ashkenazi (a Jew from Eastern Europe, insomma), but grew up around a lot of Sephardic Jews (from the Middle East via the Iberian peninsula). These kids grow up very wealthy and very cloistered in Brooklyn, a subculture within a subculture. Their traditions are not those of the Hasidim, no one is wearing a wig or a yarmulke, no black overcoats or furry hats, but they do go to synagogue regularly and consider themselves orthodox. They marry young, have tons of kids, and most of the girls don't study beyond high school. They live in enormous houses off Ocean Parkway and in Deal, New Jersey, and spend tens of thousands of dollars on wedding dresses. I was coming from a very different Jewdom, one obsessed with study and free-thinking and marrying late and being an only child and being frugal. These kids called me J-Dub. It sounds like a rapper's name and I don't know what it means or where it comes from, but it hurt to be called names and to feel outside and all that. They weren't exactly cruel but they were discriminating. Gives a whole new edge to that prejudice commercial, huh Curry Muncher?

Once in Madison, Wisconsin, a guy from a small town said to me, "You're Jewish? You don't act Jewish." I never figured out what he meant by that. I was 17 and just wanted to party.

Così si offende

2007-09-24T21:04:00.001+01:00

I am so wretchedly behind in my blogging. That's because I am applying to doctoral programs in Performance Studies and that's because I am a glutton for punishment.

The other day I was walking down the 80-plus stairs that lead from my street to the Chiaia district, bouncing La Bimba along in her stroller. A woman, who I've chatted with before (her husband likes to try to speak English with me; she, mysteriously, tries French), came out of her basso with her broom. She started blabbing at me in napoletano and then said something about La Bimba looking like someone and that she had a picture of that someone, wait a second, I have it right here, I'll be right back. I wasn't really paying attention (I try not to stop moving when confronted with chatty Caterinas), so I thought she was saying, as many a napoletano has said before to me, that La Bimba looks like one of the kids that was kidnapped in Sardegna or went missing in Portugal. I did not feel like seeing a photo that would then haunt me for the next 24 hours, at least, so I mumbled something about being in a rush, maybe next time, ciao, ciao ciao, ciao ciao ciao.

A few days later, I'm hanging out with my American friend C. and she says, "You really offended that lady the other day, huh?" "What lady?" I replied, not having a clue what she was talking about. "She wanted to show you a picture of her grandson and she said you wouldn't look at it and that she couldn't understand it because usually you are so nice and next time, if you ask to see the picture, she is not going to show it to you."

Wow.

I consulted with The Husband on this one. He said I should apologize, say I had an appointment and that I was late, that I don't always understand the language, but don't ask to see the picture, ma che te ne frega. I haven't seen the woman since, but I guess I'll apologize even though I don't know her really and I can't believe how sensitive people are.

Which leads me to admit: I am the most sensitive person I know. Every time The Husband makes a comment about what I'm feeding La Bimba, how I'm cleaning something, the expression on my face, anything, and he comments frequently because it's a napoletano habit, he doesn't even know he's doing it, I crumble. I really need to relax. At least that's what everyone keeps telling me. The other day I made spaghetti al pomodoro con ricotta and The Husband, chewing, said, "Ottimo." I usually get "non c'è male" or "buono," but Ottimo! Ottimo is like I have arrived as a napoletana in the kitchen.

The next night I made penne with lox (yeah, let's call it lox!), peas, onions, and cream, and The Husband said, "E' ok." I arrived, and then I left.

In the public elevator that runs from Via Nicotera down to Via Chiaia, a woman told me La Bimba was beautiful and that she no longer watches the news on TV because she can't take it anymore, troppi guai. Non sequitur?

You'd Know Better than Me

2007-09-24T12:30:00.000+01:00

Follow-up to the veline entry. Interesting piece by an American or English (not clear) man about women in Italy. Conveniently leaves out some details (like the fact that Michelle Hunziker frequently co-hosts Striscia La Notizia). Interesting paragraph about Milan and childbirth (for you michellanea). Many of the "what the f---?" reactions we expats frequently have to certain Italian habits are addressed. What came through for me is what Luigi Barzini says over and over again in The Italians: for the most part, whatever it is that is shocking us or appalling us, Italians like it that way. It's so hard not to pass judgement though!

I am reading Barzini and Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare together. They are totally different in terms of style, but both men were trying to make sense of their homelands and both are very critical. I am trying to balance out and clarify my opinions and experiences in my homeland and in my adoptive country. So far I've concluded that both places are wonderful and totally fucked up.

Mudra, the dance-fitness-turkish bath center where I was teaching yoga last spring, has reopened. I know this because there a posters everywhere, slapped over other posters that have information not yet expired. The posters are black-and-white and feature a black man, head only, with a white Barbie ballerina doll clenched between his teeth. The doll's expression is one of pleasure, I must say. Do we think the Mudra folks are paying homage to Arthur Mitchell in Balanchine's Agon? I would pass along their website address, but the site is under construction.

I saw a pharmacist smoking in the doorway of a pharmacy today. Remember when American doctors used to prescribe cigarettes for weight loss?

La Bimba and I sat on a bench next to a group of old men today. We were eating ice cream. One of the men, the only one standing, said, "Mamma mia! Che bella! Sembra un'inglese!" I told him she was actually half American. Then he told me he had been to Boston. He has an aunt that has been living there for 60 years. Then he said, "Can I ask you something? Now you'd know better than me, but why is it that American is such a vulgar language? I mean, the way they talk in those films!"

Me: Not all Americans talk like they do in films.
Him: But so vulgar! Even on the streets of Boston, that's all I heard.
Me: And they don't talk like that here?
Him: Of course, of course, but it's just a way of speaking (un modo di dire), not a language.
Me: Sigh.

The old man continued on and on about his aunt in Boston, her father the tailor, La Bimba's remarkable blue eyes (the guy sitting next to me, a vero napoletano, had occhi blu blu blu). Then he asked, "Now you'd know better than me, but why do Americans give their children Coca Cola for a fever? Not with the bubbles. Flat."

Me: They do not! Maybe for a stomach ache...
Him: For a fever! Instead of aspirin! Coca Cola in a baby bottle!
Other old guy: That's crazy! How can they do that?
Yet another old guy: That's just wrong!
Me: Sigh.

I saw the saddest woman, girl really, on the funicolare today. She was pushing a newborn baby girl in a carriage. The baby was not strapped in. She looked totally miserable, no sign of joy on her face. The woman, maybe 19 years old, wore a leopard-pring shirt and pants ensemble, big cutouts in the back revealing a dark fuzzy lumbar section and some stretchmarks. She wore high heeled slip on shoes. She probably had post-partum depression. I know the feeling. I wanted to reach out to her, but knew better. Even with our evident solidarity as moms, and our proximity on the funicolare platform steps, we stood worlds apart.

Wonder of Wonder, Miracle of Miracles...

2007-09-19T11:26:00.000+01:00

...God took the tailor by the hand...

Everybody! Sing-a-long!

Today is the Festa di San Gennaro. San Gennaro is the patron saint of Naples and twice a year, the Neapolitans expect his blood, which is kept in a container the looks a bit like a carpenter's level only gold, to liquefy. If it does, miracolo! No earthquakes, Vesuvius won't erupt. If it doesn't, batten down the hatches!

Luckily, it liquefied. Tuttapost. My friends and I missed the actual liquefication, which happened at 9:30am, but we got to see the Cardinal turn the level/lava lamp upside down and back again to show us that the miracle did indeed occur. The Cardinal looks like a panda bear and he had such an innocent smile on his face as he held the blood above our heads, to the music of our applauding hands. He looked like a little boy showing his family the new toy Santa brought him for Christmas.

I, Jewess-cynic, of course, cried. Then I took pictures, which I rarely do because I am a photographer's daughter. Here are two guys selling San Gennaro bracelets.

And some of the TV crew.

And some officials.

And a guy selling tooty things.

Accentuate the Positive

2007-09-13T11:47:00.000+01:00

Today an old woman got out of the way of La Bimba's stroller without my having to screech "Permesso!" first.

The young woman who works at the housewares store told me that the reason why Italians think English from England and English from the USA are two different languages is because that's what the English teachers in school tell them.

It is cool and breezy and I am sipping a Coca Cola, che vergogna!, while I type this post. My online fiction writing class started on Tuesday, September 11th and I am already procrastinating.

Speaking of September 11th, I haven't blogged about it at all. I woke up in Berkeley that morning six years ago. My mother and her younger sister were on their way to visit me and their older sister. They were on a Jet Blue flight that left JFK at around 7:30am Eastern time. I got up at around 8:30am west coast time, three hours after the first plane hit. I don't know why I turned on the TV, it was not something I normally did at that hour, perhaps someone called to tell me to turn it on, I don't remember. I saw the two towers burning. Then I saw a man in a business suit falling through the sky. He was bicycling the air, his tie and jacket flapping in the free fall. That image stays with me still. The networks stopped airing it shortly after I saw it. Too traumatic, they later said.

When I finally wrapped my mind around the reality -- this isn't a film trailer -- I lost it. I tried to call my father in Brooklyn, but the lines were in tilt. I called the dance studio where I was supposed to teach that morning and told them I couldn't come in. Someone subbed for me and the dancing people did that morning was healing. I had to stay by the phone (I never went cellular in my American life). My mother called from Kansas City, where her flight was grounded. She and her sister were planning to continue their journey west until they found out that flights would be grounded indefinitely. After a couple of nights in an airport motel, they rented a car and drove back to NY. They had seen all the footage, the first plane, the second plane, the melting towers, on board. Jet Blue has direct TV.

"I *heart* NY" posters started cropping up in Berkeley. My first thought when I saw the news that morning was, "This is only the beginning of serious bloodshed." There were those of us who hoped a lesson of peace would come of the tragedy. There were those who lost people and stayed committed to cultivating peace. Unfortunately, the road taken since that awful day has led to bombs bursting in air.

What I remember the most from that day and those that followed is the silence. With no airplanes in the air the world around me got very quiet. I have a friend who was in the back country that week. He couldn't understand why that trip was so much quieter than previous ones. He didn't find out about what happened until her emerged a few days later.

With Bush's "you're either with us or against us" stand, it is never easy writing honestly about 9/11, not because I give a rats ass what that man thinks, but because it has become too easy to offend people who were directly affected by the events of that day. Americans have had little experience with a massacre of that nature on their own soil and its cinematic quality, the spectacle of it, made it such that it seemed bigger and worse than anything in history. Of course it wasn't.

I don't do anything special when September 11th comes around. I just try to remember all the suffering in the world and make a wish for it to cease.

Assurdità

2007-09-09T16:49:00.000+01:00

Last night, for the Piedigrotta Festival, Naples set off fireworks over the sea for an hour, from midnight to 1 a.m. It looked and sounded like war footage. It woke up La Bimba, who then had to sleep with us, her heels digging into my ribs all night. She likes to form the letter H with us.

I woke up, blew my nose, and got a nosebleed. The only downside to less humidity.

Later, La Bimba, The Husband and I went for a walk in the Villa Comunale. Packed with kids and dogs, it was hard to navigate, so we walked along the sea instead, pausing to let La Bimba have her weekly pony ride.

Then we went to The Husband's ex-girlfriend Barbara's house for lunch. On the way, The Husband found some keys sitting in a potted plant on the street. He took them because it brings good luck, finding keys. We found our friend Fanta at Barbara's (that's a direct translation from the Italian, "Abbiamo trovato Fanta da Barbara"). Fanta is from Ethiopia. La Bimba always cries when she first sees him, and The Husband jokes about Fanta being the scary Uomo Nero.

On our way home, we needed a one-euro coin to get a ticket from the machines for the funicolare. The newsstands were closed and we only had a two-euro coin, which the machines do not accept. The Husband went into the bar on the corner and asked for change, but the guy said he didn't have any. Then I went in and he told me the same thing, adding that it was off-hour for change, whatever the cazzo that means. I stormed out and then stormed back in and asked to buy a coffee. He looked at me with scorn and said, "This is absurd." And I said, "No, what's absurd is a bar not having change in its register. And what's also absurd is a bar refusing to sell someone an espresso." He took my 2 euro coin and begrudgingly gave me the euro coin change. The espresso was nasty.

I was livid. I had arrived at my limit. I scowled for about an hour afterwards. Who the fuck do these people think they are? The lying, the miserliness, the rudeness. I lost all cultural sensitivity in that one moment. The man called me absurd!

I don't like when smoke comes out of my ears, when venom threatens to spew forth from my unforked tongue, when I want to cry from frustration. It reminds me of the road rage I used to experience in the Bay Area. I would pound the steering wheel and curse the gods and all the people in their SUVs and I would cry real tears. Not worth it.

I have been thinking a lot about how to live a sane life. With all the fast pace, the technology, the crowds, the fumes, the noise...it's too much. I know a life in the country or in a small town would provide its challenges, but I don't think I can do this big city thing anymore. Is there somewhere I can turn in my Urban Girl card? I want to denounce my cosmopolitan, metropolitan citizenship and become a bumpkin.

It wouldn't be too hard. There's always the internet.

Picture This...

2007-09-08T12:41:00.000+01:00

La Bimba and I sitting on a bench on a pedestrian street. We are sitting next to an old man. We are eating ice cream. The old man says, "Don't feed it to her too fast it's too cold!" Then he says, "What are you giving her?" I say, "A blueberry." He says, "Don't feed her that stuff. It's all processed!" Then he says, "Watch out! She's eating the cone! She can choke." I say, "It's okay. Look, she's chewing." Turning away (literally turning his back toward me) he says, "I can't look. Too scary!"

La Bimba and I sitting on the funicolare. La Bimba is wearing orange pants, a navy blue sweatshirt, and her new navy blue sneakers. An elderly woman says, "You should put her in a dress!"

I am chasing La Bimba around the field in the Villa Floridiana. It is packed with kids of all ages, including teenagers getting it on. Several groups are kicking balls around. One group of young boys have a regulation soccer ball, not one of the lightweight beach balls that everyone else has. I navigate La Bimba through the play, careful to prevent her from being knocked unconscious by her first inadvertent header. We approach a couple of women sitting on picnic blankets at the same time that a pair of men approach. The men, one elderly, one maybe in his early 40s, say to the women, "Are those your boys? They are not supposed to be playing soccer here, especially with a ball like that. Double rubber. It can hurt a little kid like this one (pointing at La Bimba)." I notice that he men are wearing Vigili dei Parchi armbands, Park Police. Neapolitan Rangers. They proceed to explain to me that it is forbidden to play soccer or ride bikes in the park. I say, "But there is so little green space in Naples. Maybe there can be a set time when kids can play soccer and another time for toddlers to run free." They look at me like I am deranged and a threat to the well-being of my baby. They say in unison, "No signora, it's too dangerous. The park has to be safe for little ones like her (pointing at La Bimba)." They walk away and I sayto the women, "Just want you to know that I had know idea that there were such rules and I think it's a little crazy." They agree saying, "How can they expect young boys not to play soccer?" Then I say, "And it's funny how the Park Police are all up in our faces when the regular police and the carabinieri let all sorts of criminal activity go on uninterrupted." To this they look at me blankly and go back to talking among themselves.

Pre-emptive Nostalgia

2007-09-06T14:25:00.000+01:00

In response to Gayle's comment about it being funny the whole pre-emptive nostalgia thing, I think it is easy to have pre-emptive nostalgia in a place like Naples, like Italy, because they entire populace is always already nostalgic both for what was and what could have been. I too usually feel nostalgic for a place after having it left it some time ago, like a normal person, but a normal person one cannot be when one lives in Naples.

"Potrebbe essere" means "it could be" in Italian and it is a phrase applied to Naples as often as blond highlights are applied to dark hair in this town, i.e. constantly. Naples potrebbe essere so many things: clean, safe, thriving, like Barcelona. But it's not and they are few and far between those folks trying to make it so.

After an hour of dusty play in the Villa Comunale, La Bimba and I headed for a trattoria. We took a detour and ate instead in a place called Orange in Piazza Rodinò in the Chiaia district. There was one table for two left in the little outdoor seating area and we nabbed it. At all the other tables sat the Neapolitan jet set, very tan men and women with their Jack Russells and dachsunds stiffing around at their ankles, eating hamburgers sans bun with french fries smothered in mayonnaise and ketchup that tastes like vinegar, ever careful not to drip anything onto their Diesel leather jackets, Prada blouses or, San Gennaro forbid, into their cleavages. There were women with bottle blond hair, nose jobs, and french manicures. One young woman's entire butt was showing, not just the crack, spilling over her low rise jeans. One middle-aged guy had his white linen shirt unbuttoned to below his solar plexus. I was only disappointed he wasn't wearing a big gold crucifix...or a chai.

Speaking of chais, I saw the orthodox Jewish man with his two kids at the Villa today. He smiled at me and La Bimba when his elder son, perhaps 2 and a half?, came over and babbled at us in what sounded like Hebrew Italian. I wanted to ask him what in the name of Yahweh he was doing in Naples, but I got shy. I have seen him and his family around Piazza Santa Maria La Nova in the past, but I have never had such an open opportunity to interrogate. If I am given another chance, I won't let it pass me by.

So, back to Orange. The Orange People eating at Orange. Orange is a groovy name that has no relationship to the place or its menu. There are some orange lights, but no Orange Julius. There are wurstels but no Gray's Papaya hot dogs. The women tended to hold their faces in positions of coolness that looked like they were suffering cramps. The men flipped their Farrah hair around. They were friendly toward La Bimba. They tolerated me and my unwashed hair, my out of fashion fashion (I was wearing my Blue Dot pants, however), my lack of make-up. They probably thought I was La Bimba's Ukrainian nanny.

La Bimba rejected the eggplant parmigiana, friarielli, peppers and mushrooms, and ate only french fries with neither mayo nor ketchup. She has gotten hella (nod to the Bay Area) feisty in the last couple of days, a delayed reaction to the weaning I suppose. I might have caved in last night or this morning and let her have a swig, but I'm all dried up, not quite the grey sunken cunt of the world (sounds crude, but it's Joyce, so it's okay), but milk-free. Poor little bunny.

Now we are home, La Bimba is sleeping, I am blogging WIRELESSLY, hooray, and it is still freschetto fuori. A good day.

Mixed Feelings

2007-09-05T18:36:00.000+01:00

The Husband and I are watching the local news, TG3-Campania, as I type this post. They are reporting on a camorra hit that occurred in Naples today, a shoot-em-up in broad daylight at a gas station in the center. No innocent bystanders were hit, but they could have been.

Right before I sat down to blog and watch the news, I was standing on our terrace gazing at the view: Capri, the Gulf of Naples, Mergellina, building on top of building, headlights, brake lights, a cloud bank, an incoming airplane. It is mercifully cool out, chilly enough for long sleeves, and as I leaned on the railing, breathing in the sea air, I felt a tinge of regret that we will be leaving this place.

Our 85-year-old landlady and The Husband do not get along. According to Salvatore, our Jehovah's Witness, ballroom dancing door man, no one gets along with la signora Ciliberti. She is a widow with one son, Bruno, for whom she has only unveiled disdain. She looks like she's just bit into a rotten clam when she mentions his name. I have only met Bruno once. I let him into the apartment to go through some things in the storage space that sits on the far end of the terrace, the one with the view of Castel Sant'Elmo. As he was rummaging he said, "She has got to go through this stuff." I offered, "She is waiting for you..." and before I finished he said, "To die?"

Now this only makes sense in Italian. I said, "Lei sta aspettando..." and Bruno understood that "Lei" to mean "You," Lei with a capital L being the formal form of you in Italian. So Bruno heard, "You are waiting for..." and he evidently thought I was going to say, "You are waiting for her to die before you will throw her stuff out."

I was using the "lei," lower case L, as in "she" and wanted to say, "She is waiting for you to go through the stuff." I should have said, "La signora sta aspettando che lo fa Lei." That would have been clear, though potentially in need of the subjunctive, but why mince grammar.

When The Husband went to pay the rent, the landlady said she wanted us out by next September. The Husband and I both hope to be living outside of Naples, far outside, before then, so the deadline is not a problem. But I have to admit to having felt a pang of pre-emptive nostalgia for this place. I have been lamenting Naples ever since I got here and never more than in the last few weeks when it has been over 100 degrees and devoid of people, hot and lonely. I get anxious in the extreme heat and act like a 2-year-old. I have been so negative about Naples.

Until today. The cool air and the return of the students and working people, a violin player in front of Santa Chiara, sitting with his amplifier across the street from where two very short stout women, one in a baker's uniform -- white dress, white hat, red and white apron -- stood chatting, a couple of encounters with people I know in the center, the "how was your vacation?" variety conversation, with the woman who works at the Gay Odin chocolate and ice cream shop on Spaccanapoli, with one of the hot computer geek twins, either Luigi or Salvatore, I am never sure which, with Gianni the Salumiere and his Sri Lankan helper, Joseph...all of this made me fall in love with Naples again, to walk with a spring in my step. And I only called one guy in a car a dick and two kids on a motorino assholes. That's nothing!

My dear dear friend N. was here for a few days and it was so lovely I could just collapse thinking about how much I wish we lived near each other. She had just come from Israel and when I asked her how she felt walking around Naples, negotiating the traffic and bumpy streets with La Bimba and me, she said it was way less chaotic than Tel Aviv. So now we have to go to Israel and then come back and see Naples with mellow goggles on.

I don't think there is another place in the Western world that will inspire me to think and write and marvel like Naples does. But that is not enough of a reason to stick around. We are not leaving tomorrow, but someday soon and I will mourn.

Bye Bye Boobie

2007-09-02T22:20:00.000+01:00

Today is the first time since her birth that La Bimba has not breastfed at all. I believe she might be weaned. Mixed feelings? Not a one. Go, individuation, go!

Random

2007-09-01T08:49:00.001+01:00

La Bimba likes to have things attached to her -- a purse over her arm, a necklace around her neck, a pair of shorts on her head -- and then walk around with proud appendage. I guess it will not faze her when someone tapes a "Kick me" sign to her pants when she is in Junior High School.

Here she is with a diaper on her head. Classy.

Stating the Obvious

2007-08-30T11:46:00.000+01:00

A young grandmother was holding her 24-day old grandson in the crook of her arm. With her free hand, she smoked a cigarette. They were standing with other relatives on one of the few real sidewalks in Naples. I approached with La Bimba in the stroller, planning to say, "You couldn't at least hand him over to one of his uncles while you got your nicotine fix?" but said instead, "Vedi il bimbo, Lucia! Quant'è bello!" Sometimes it's better to let things be.

Yesterday La Bimba and I were hanging out in Piazza Plebiscito (a massive piazza with no shade, in case you've never been...avoid at high noon), when I noticed a group of people marking movement in the center of the square. One was barefoot. I asked someone what was going on and she said that they were filming a dance for a video art exhibit to take place at MADRE, Naples's fabulous contemporary art museum. She pointed to the filmmaker, a chubby gal in black standing behind a videocamera at the far end of the square. When I approached the filmmaker, she was ordering a lackey around, telling him to prevent passersby from walking into the frame. He was running back and forth like a caged animal, begging ice cream eaters and balloon salesmen to walk around the shot. Not an easy job.

The group of dancers, mostly unprofessional, some kids, began to mark the piece, to do a run-through. After some random milling about, they formed lines and began to follow a leader through a series of movements, basic, simple movements from modern choreography. I assumed the leader was the choreographer and wanted to know his name, so I asked the filmmaker.

Me: Is that the choreographer in front?

Her: Excuse me?

Me: Is there a choreographer for this dance?

Her: It's a film.

Me: Yes, but did someone choreograph the movement?

Her: Yeah.

Me: What's his name?

Her: Guido something.

Woe is me! Woe is dance! A video art project based entirely on movement and the filmmaker doesn't even know the choreographer's name. I wanted to say, "Nice way to treat other artists" but said instead, "Guido something. I see."

Am I being wise or cowardly with all these unspoken sentiments?

Follow Through

2007-08-29T10:58:00.000+01:00

When I was in Switzerland, I told my friend G. that I had to remember to write about something on my blog, something I mentioned briefly in the past and she said something like, "You never go back to old posts." She is right! I have signed off posts on more than one occasion with a lame excuse like being tired or lazy and leave my readership in suspense! Yes, that's wishful thinking, but at the very least I should follow through like every tennis instructor tells us.

So, I've been going back to old posts and plan to pry the fingers of every cliffhanger off its boulder.

On February 25, 2007 I wrote: "I've taken a small, insider's poll and have discovered that no one gets the "kicked in the shin" part of my blog's subtitle. I am now offering my vast, ahem, readership the opportunity to guess what I'm after with that subtle bit of brilliance. Hint: it does not merely refer to the frequent agony I experience walking out my door every morning..."

Naples is located on the shin of the boot of Italy. It is a city that has been getting kicked and has been kicking itself in the shin since its founding. I suppose "shoot yourself in the foot" is more accurate for what goes on here on a day to day basis, but Naples is not on the foot of Italy and Italy is definitely winding up for a calcio di rigore and not cocking a pistol. On my darker days, I like to imagine Italy, the boot, kicking Sicily, which, like a three-pointed Chinese star, spins in the air and, like an Australian boomerang, comes flying back and lodges itself in Naples, the shin. Ouch!

But for every kick that doubles them over, the Neapolitans get back up again. How do they do it?

So, G., I am on task and will be fleshing out my skeletal posts one day at a time.

Grazie mille genitori miei

2007-08-26T19:06:00.001+01:00

It dawned on me today while I was lying on the floor in our sauna of a living room, the hot air from our new fan blowing on my sweaty brow, that I have never lived in Naples when I wasn't either recovering from a miscarriage, pregnant or a new mom (I will consider myself a new mom until I have another baby, i.e. I will probably consider myself a new mom forever, though you never know).

My mother told me not to make any decisions in the heat. That is very good advice and I have decided to share it with you here.

I just watched the worst movie ever, Man of the Year starring Robin Williams with Laura Linney, Christopher Walken and Jeff Goldblum. Oh, the agony of seeing great actors try to come up for air as they sink over and over again under the quicksand of bad writing.

Thirteen million Italians are supposed to come home from vacation today. I am reading Luigi Barzini's The Italians, which I recommend for an honest view of Italians by an Italian. He wrote the book in the 60s and a lot has changed, nothing fundamental, that never seems to change, but lots of superficial things, above all the cost of living. Anyway, check it out.

We tried and failed to buy an air conditioner today. My dad gave me some advice about how to try and succeed next time, so maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow we are supposed to go to Zoo Marine, Italy's Marine World, but we may not go. I am so tired of all this Vediamo-ing.

La Bimba, when very, very angry, makes this horrible squealing sound. When she does, I call out to her, "What's the matter my lovely stuck pig?" She has also officially entered NO land and is adjusting nicely. She even says NO when she means yes.

Comunque, thanks to both of you, mom and dad, for the good advice this evening. I am still sweating like the hormonal beast that I am, but I feel better.

Land of the Orange People

2007-08-23T12:25:00.000+01:00

Summer is winding down, but the heat is rising and there is no foreseeable end to the Italian tanning craze. Like their relationship to cigarette smoking, the Italian people live in a state of denial when it comes to sun damage. They expose their skin to both UVA and UVB rays, from 10am to 2pm, using shiny silver reflectors, forgoing sunscreen with an SPF higher than 4, and though they begin to resemble their alligator bags and snakeskin shoes by the age of 22, they don't seem to mind.

I used to tan. And I turned a lovely brown. Now I have freckles and age spots and those white dots that signify mini melanin deaths to prove it. I avoid the sun, but even with Neutrogena Skin Defense or Age Defying Lotion or whatever it's called with an SPF of 45 and sitting under a giant umbrella, I am still changing color. Even La Bimba who is subject to multiple Water Babies latherings every day has a bit of a tan. (Not enough, according to our Neapolitan neighbors, who shout, "Put that baby in the sun! Get her some color!").

But at least I am not orange. These people, these blissfully unaware Italians, are orange. It's not pretty.

The worst place for sun damage is the female chest. There is nothing more frightening than when an overly tanned woman of a certain age leans over causing her boobs to converge resulting in the accordion effect of the chest skin. Here it is over the entire body:

Do you think that image has been air brushed?

There are so many things I fear for La Bimba if we remain in Napoli: smoking, tanning, helmetless motorino riding, coffee addiction, no fiber in her diet, butt crack exposure fashion, cutting in front of old people in line... I suppose I just have to keep working on leaving town. But where oh where should we go?

Competitive Streak

2007-08-21T12:53:00.000+01:00

It is two-nothing on the me vs. the Italian bureaucracy scorecard. I am kicking ass! Today I got my carta d'identità no questions asked. La Bimba wore pigtails and was called Pippi Calzelunghe by every passerby.

Those are today's highlights.

Welcome Back!

2007-08-20T13:21:00.001+01:00

I succeeded in updating the address associated with my codice fiscale today after a 1.5 hour wait and a brief argument with the clerk. The clerk, a woman with long fingernails painted red and dotted with rhinestones, a woman with eyeshadow the colors of the aurora borealis, was actually fairly nice given that I was her last customer and her helping me was biting into her lunch hour. I wanted a copy of my codice fiscale for my carta di soggiorno file and I wanted to update my address. I mistakenly made latter request after asking for the copy, really tickin her off. She said, "You made me think you wanted a duplicate copy! Now you want to change your address and I can't do that now!" I asked, "Why not?" She replied, "Because the system won't let me now." I asked, "Why? Because it's after hours?" She answered, "No! Because I just did an operation and it won't let me do another one. Fine, fine, let's see if it will let me." And, of course, it did because computers are like that, they let people do an operation after the last operation. They don't punish people for making them have to work after they are supposed to be having a panino. I wanted to tell the woman that making up bogus arguments was actually delaying her break time even more, that efficiency was the key to a leisurely post-pranzo fag, but I said nothing more than, "Grazie tante. Gentilissima."

La Bimba and I were delayed three hours in Milan and she took it like a champ. She practiced walking, she talked to babies and doggies, she made a friend, Carolina, 7, she rested, she snacked, and then she slept on the plane. Do they make a better baby than that? I don't think so.

Everyone was annoyed at the gate, but no one complained much. I am used to at least one person shouting and shaking a fist in the face of the gate agent, we Americans can get pretty fussy when expected timetables and assumed conveniences get disrupted. The Italians are so used to things not working efficiently that they take delays and such irritations in stride. One older woman in a blouse and cardigan did say at one point, "They don't even turn up the air conditioning. Non ce la faccio più," but she said it to her husband and only I overheard it, so it could hardly be called an outburst.

So, we are back in Naples where it is blissfully breezy and most folks are still on vacation, so the streets are less crowded, the traffic less hideous. Switzerland is already a receding memory, an increasingly blurry and ever more wistful memory of cool, green valley relaxation. I really relaxified there, that is, I relaxed myself into a sort of calcified state of relaxation. I am trying to maintain the sensation. And I am trying to forget that the Divine Miss M. said to her mommy after seeing me after a shower, "Her nipples are like yours except more downer."

Ave Maria

2007-08-16T18:24:00.000+01:00

It's raining gatti e cani, chats et chiens, Katze und Hunde here in Switzerland. And there was just a wonderful crack of thunder that scared G. because she grew up in Davis, California where there weren't ever any thunderstorms. We went to Locarno today, a fairly sweet town on Lake Maggiore, a precise 14-minute train ride from my friends' little town of Verscio. Swiss trains, swiss watches.

I have been enjoying the service here in Switz. Lots of friendly, smiling, helpful people behind the counters. None of that sullen Italian treatment, the deigning to look up from the paper, the look of total confusion when you ask for something in not perfectly accented, but decent enough Italian. "Cosa? Non ho capito." It's not always like that, but it is often enough to warrant a little moan.

Yesterday was Ferragosto, the Feast of the Assumption, no, not a giant collective assumption that, say, everyone makes their train that day, but rather, the Virgin Mary's assumption, body and soul, into heaven. I like to picture her in her casual blue dress with white wimple, head cocked slightly to the right, hands extended low at her sides, palms forward, sailing up and out into the Great Blue Yonder.

My friends are nominally, their word, raising their kids in the Shin Buddhist tradition, and I thought it was important for them to know why all the stores were closed yesterday, so that they wouldn't get teased mercilessly for not knowing, like, duh!, every Catholic knows about Mary and her blue outfit and how she was Jesus's mom, though Joseph could never be sure, etc. So, I sat down in front of the computer with nearly 5-year-old Divine Miss M. and her heading toward 3 years old little brother L. and took the information superhighway to www.catholic.org. There we learned all about the Assumption as well as about various saints, their feast days, what they are patrons over, how gruesomely they died.

What the Divine Miss M. got out of it was that Mary, body and spirit, was in the sky yesterday. When her father left for work that evening she shouted to him, "Don't forget, Pa! Mary's in the sky!!!" Her mom is a bit worried and somewhat confused that her Jewish friend from Brooklyn is teaching her children about Catholicism. I also taught the children that the current Pope's favorite color is hot pink and that Paul means small.

All in all I think it was a very edifying day. Hallelujah!

Swiss Miss

2007-08-14T18:43:00.000+01:00

I am blogging to you from Ticino, Switzerland in the half hour I have before the start of my phone appointment with my shrink in Oakland, California. I am surrounded by mountains, vineyards, red flags with white crosses, mountainside churches, beaming, healthy children, and a dialect that comes as much through the nose as napoletano bursts from the gut.

My friends, their kids, La Bimba and I have been playing, strolling, cooking, eating, and when the kids go to sleep, my friend and I talk each others' ears off. It's great. We've even done some yoga together.

On a lovely walk through the village, we came across a handmade sign posted above a doorway. The sign went something like this (my translation from the Italian): "That ba___rd who stole my boring machine (1900 Swiss francs) knows I know who he is, so he had better come clean because if I find him myself I am going to put that boring machine up his a__." Yes, stronzo and culo did not have all their letters, though they were written in red while the rest of the sign was in black. My friend said, "I have never seen anything like that here."

Then, up the ways a bit, maybe two or three doors down, past the water fountain with the freshest tasting water pouring from it, we found another door with a sign on it. This was a simple white sheet of paper with a typewritten message (again, from the Italian): "There is a man walking around town pretending to be looking for an apartment to rent. He tests doors and enters through open ones and then, if caught, makes vague excuses and then hightails it. His distinguishing features are: a rather strong southern Italian accent, around 5'10", dark hair, green eyes. If you see him, contact the authorities."

They could have been describing The Husband. But, of course, he is taller than that and we are here without him. I loved that first, and it was first, description about the accent. For those of you who understand Italian, it read: "Ha un accento piuttosto italiano meridionale." I just love that piuttosto!

I turned to my friend and said, "Not the peaceful, idyllic village it's cracked up to be, huh?"

But actually, it is. It is fabulous. And now I want to live here, let La Bimba grow up waving to the two-car trains that go by, eating raspberries she picks off the vine, sniffing the odor of ripening grapes on her way to school. The Husband could open a trattoria napoletana and get a horse and a bunch of doggies. I can be near great friends and a circus school and curse less. Who knows. Vediamo.

Arrivals and Departures

2007-08-12T09:01:00.001+01:00

Today is my anniversary, three years in Italy. I arrived in Rome on August 12, 2004 and, well, the rest is history in the making.

La Bimba and I leave for Switzerland soon. I hope to get a chance to blog from the alpine freshness.

A prestissimo!

Art Work

2007-08-09T16:59:00.001+01:00

La Bimba is doing her Jackson Pollock routine, sitting on top of a giant piece of drawing paper and making random squiggles with her crayons.

She is getting better and better at walking and is on her way to standing up from sitting without having to use props. I particularly like how she changes direction: she kind of lists in the direction she wants to go and then tips into it without stopping her forward motion. And she likes keys. And cheese and peas, which makes her random "Eeez" sound sometimes hard to interpret.

That's all for now.

Road trip, Mind trip

2007-08-08T11:00:00.000+01:00

La Bimba and I are going on our first trip without The Husband on Sunday. We are flying to Milan where our friend P. is coming to pick us up and bring us to Ticino, Switzerland. Six days in the green valley. Sounds like good medicine.

I used to travel a lot and usually sola. I criss-crossed the US by car many, many times, taking in national parks and burger joints and roadside peach stands. I bumped into people I knew in the middle of nowhere New Mexico, visited close friends, walked through cool rivers, sweated in suffocating deserts, slept in Motel 6s and tents, in lightening storms and sweltering heat. I have been through 45 of the the 50 states. Who wouldn't save Hawaii and Alaska (and Alabama, Oklahoma and Arkansas) for last?

I started romances on road trips and also watched them die. I ate tacos and corn dogs and continental breakfasts (remember R.? watching you sleep, willing you to wake up so we could hit the road and pose for photos with the Cheyenne High football team on green John Deere tractors?). I sang very loudly with a Camel Light hanging out of my lips on Route 66, and wailed like a maniac at Four Corners. I made a fate-altering call from Bluff, Utah, got pulled over in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for driving with too much joy, watched a lightening bolt start in the heavens and hit the dirt in the middle of nowhere Kansas. That's when I learned that a single tree bent over a still pond surrounded by nothing Kansas can be more majestic than the red rock Utah. Abe's Grocery breakfast burritos in Taos, New Mexico. Root beer float somewhere in Arizona. The Baghdad Cafe ostrich burger in Newberry Springs, California, and a buffalo burger in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Geysers. Waterfalls. Stalactites. Mudbugs and beer in a pre-Katrina New Orleans. The life-size replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. Graceland, of course. And the home for wayward men in Memphis that stood next door to our B&B.

There was the wedding in Eugene, Oregon where I almost fainted holding up the chuppah ("Excuse me, could you hold this for a second?"), and waking up in an enchanted forest outside Bristol, a town that shares a border with Tennessee and Virginia. We had arrived at night, set up camp by flashlight, and woke up under a canopy of dark green by the side of a crystalline lake...I've got to learn the names of some trees.

On a totally unrelated Neapolitan note, The Husband, La Bimba and I went to the comune to get a copy of my residenza, and La Bimba was missing from it. I hadn't thought to "declare" her because I assumed her name would pop up wherever mine did. Instead, because she was born in Naples when I was still a resident in Brooklyn, she was considered una nascità occasionale, which more or less means that the comune di Napoli assumed a New Yorker decided to have her baby in Naples just for kicks. According to Italian law, a baby follows the mother, i.e. takes on her domicile, thus, according to the comune di Napoli and Italia as a whole, The Husband and I live in Naples and La Bimba is holed up in a bachelorette flat in New York.

I hope she'll let us visit now and then. Do you think we should call first?

Frigid Air

2007-08-02T18:35:00.000+01:00

The lady with the white hair at whom La Bimba is gazing in the photo of the Catanian market is my mother. And if it weren't for the shorts and t-shirt, you would mistake her for a Sicilian grandma.

La Bimba napped for only 45 minutes today and I was a wreck. I need that afternoon break. I hope this is just a phase. She is getting rather saucy as well. At least she ate an entire fish today, una bella sogliola, so The Husband is happy.

We are getting a new refrigerator tomorrow because the one that came with the apartment is on the fritz. Fridge on the fritz! Putting on the ritz! We will not miss its faux wood paneling either.

I bought the new fridge at Eldo, an electronics chain that I prefer not to give my money to. I like to support mom and pop shops, but you know how Neapolitan moms and pops can be, so sometimes, with larger purchases, I go with the places whose credit card machines actually work, i.e. they pay for the service.

I don't know if I will stand by this stand, however. I bought an A+ fridge, one that saves energy. It is supposed to come with a 20 percent rebate from the government, for being environmentally correct. To get the check you have to have ASIA pick up your old fridge and give you a document, which you then give to Eldo, which then does something involving a top hat, a wand and a bunny, and you get your dough. ASIA, in this case, is not the continent, though I wouldn't be surprised if Italy were dumping its rotten appliances in Bangladesh. It is the sanitation department and they told me I had to hire a private company to put down my ailing fridge and give me the necessary documents. I couldn't get through to a private company today, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they will charge me more than the rebate.

Truffo!

And the pendulum swings again

2007-08-01T17:45:00.000+01:00

I have GOT to get some things off my chest. First of all, it's hot. I know, it could be hotter, it has been hotter, and there is a nice breeze blowing through our apartment giving us all stiff necks, but it is nevertheless hot. And sticky.

Second of all, I miss my friends. The ones on the East coast, the ones on the West coast, the ones in the middle, the ones in other European countries, the ones who miss me, the ones who don't, the ones I don't speak to any longer, the ones I haven't spoken to since I was twelve, the ones I met this year, the ones with whom I have nothing in common, the ones who know everything about me, the ones who hardly know me at all.

Thirdly, I am making myself ill watching episode after episode of Desperate Housewives. I feel like a desperate housewife and I hardly ever cook or clean. The thing that starts to make me sick about DH and other series that I have been addicted to in the past is the first unconscious feeling then nauseating awareness that the characters are not growing. They never change. They repeat their mistakes over and over again, for if they were to stop, the series would be over...or at least the title would have to change, in this case to Satisfied Empowered Women of the Home.

Fourth, I hate my hair.

In sum, it's August in Naples. Not a good time to reflect on life. There is too much glare and too little shade.

Puddle of Love

2007-07-30T20:14:00.000+01:00

La Bimba did something that so thoroughly melted my heart-self, it lay in a puddle at her chubby little feet. She was playing by herself while I did some emailing, both of us in the same room, my pediatrician friend E. told me this was not ignoring her, it was giving her the space to learn on her own, never interrupt a child's play!, he told me, okay, okay, we get it, you're not neglecting your child, move on. She was having little bursts of cranky whines, mini frustrations, so I went over and sat a few paces from her. She put down the bolts she was playing with, crawled over to me, stood up with the help of first my knees, then a boob, ouch, then my shoulders, and wrapped her arms around my neck, resting her head on my shoulder. We sat there for a few moments, just hugging and breathing. La Bimba popped her head up a couple of times to look at me, to touch her forehead to mine, and then snuggled back down. Then she unhooked her arms, plopped down on her butt, and crawled back to the bolts.

I felt so loved and so much love, and so needed and so capable of being there, something I don't always feel, something I suppose every mother worries they won't be able to be, there, just there. And then let go.

Non mi hai visto my ass

2007-07-30T12:18:00.001+01:00

Well, back in Naples, back to fuming at the absolutely normal behavior exhibited by the natives on the funicolare. They cut in front of me and La Bimba then they turn to coo at La Bimba. I loathe them at those moments.

Us, them, me, them, me against them, will it never end?

I found the Sicilians, since we're generalizing here without fear or shame, very friendly, their cities clean, their food an overwhelming disappointment. I kept hearing that I was going to go wild for the food, that Neapolitan cuisine is one step below Sicilian, but instead I found the food too heavy, too salty, too extra virgin olive oily. There were some interesting combinations like oranges with sardines and pepper, and some frightening things like pig lip salad, oh yes, but overall la cucian siciliana did not hold a candle to quella napoletana. Or maybe we just ate at all the wrong places.

I want to return to Palermo and explore it and I want to return to Catania when it's not over 100 degrees F. It was 113 in Modica, a town just southeast of Ragusa that is so gorgeous, so Euro Arabo fantastic, that it was pity we couldn't stand outside for more than one nanosecond before becoming dust. We also had our best meal there, pasta with puree of fava beans, ravioli with the sweetest, gentlest ricotta, veal steak, and lemon granita.

On an unrelated note, I am winning the word race! La Bimba currently has more words in English than in Italian: baby, horse, fish, cheese, hello, ball, bubbles, vs. babbo, cane, grazie, ciao, and one other in Italian I can't remember. As for what she calls me, it's a cross between the Neapolitan mamma and the American mommy, so no one can claim it yet. It sounds kind of like mahmei. The point is I am winning.

How pathetic do I sound?

We were in Palermo for only a few hours, but we got to visit the Capella Palatina in all its mosaic glory...well, almost all...it was under quite a bit of construction. Then we got roped into a guided tour of the royal palace where the government officials work and The Husband commented in room after room how the politicians suck our blood. Other Italians on the tour agreed. When we got to the top of a flight of stairs where sat a middle-aged gentleman, a guard of sorts, The Husband said, "Are you one of the antiques?" The guard liked that. How does The Husband do it? He teases people and they laugh instead of punching him. It's quite a talent.

It's nice and breezy outside, even a bit of cloud cover. The wind is blowing our plastic furniture around the terrace. A lovely scraping sound. La Bimba sleeps. I try to tap into my writerly side. And as soon as I digest my cotoletta and fries, I will do some yoga...or maybe just take a nap. A prestissimo!

Back in the Saddle and it's so hot my butt's stuck to it

2007-07-29T11:51:00.000+01:00

We are just back from Sicily and I have much to report. Of course, now is not the time to report it, but I didn't want to go too long without giving a shout out to my wide, wide readership. Wouldn't want y'all to think I'd left the blogosphere permanently. Wild horses couldn't keep me away.

Naples is nice and empty, hot and sticky, and our floors are so dirty that La Bimba's knees look like they are performing in a minstrel show. The Husband and she are out and about, and when they return and sweet baby girl takes a nap, it is frenzied clean-up time.

La Bimba traveled beautifully, partied hard, met lots of adoring fans, didn't learn to walk. My father was hoping she'd take her first solo steps before his very eyes, but no such luck. She is doing great holding one hand now. The above picture is of her on the dance floor at Club Med. Club Med really knows how to take the Sicilian out of Sicily. More on that later...or tomorrow.

p.s. La Bimba walked just moments after I published this post. The funniest drunken sailor walk I have ever seen. We are so proud though not as proud as she is of her own bad self!

Free mints? Toothpicks? Cell phones?

2007-07-11T13:55:00.000+01:00

The Husband, La Bimba and I were having lunch at Zi' Carmela, a pizzeria-trattoria near the sea that is sometimes fabulous, sometimes mediocre, and always overpriced, when The Husband got to chatting with the table next to us. The table didn't actually speak, that would have been interesting...oh the stories! The spills! The cigarette burns!..., no, the three diners, a woman and two men spoke. One man in particular was quite the chatty cathy. He had tattoos and a few mismatched teeth, was very thin and tan, and looked like a feisty old man with a sordid past. He and The Husband talked about Naples, the quartieri where they both grew up, the man's fruttivendolo father, the man's grandchildren, the fact that the waitstaff at Zi' Carmela's wasn't treating them right. The man is a friend of Don Antonio, the kindly ex-waiter of Zi' Carmela's. Don Antonio had a shock of white hair and gave the joint a hint of class. His replacement is a tall, thin, pimply kid who gives the joint a hint of cluelessness. Anyway, it was a warm and friendly dining experience and my sfilatina, a calzone-type thing with prosciutto, mushrooms, ricotta, pepper and mozzarella was worth the 7 euros.

Shortly after the trio left the table and headed up the street, The Husband noticed a cell phone left behind, right where the old man's half-eaten frittura had been just a moment before. He was holding La Bimba, so I took the phone and ran up the street to return it to the man. When I caught up to the group I said, "Hey! You left your phone." The woman looked at it and said, "That's not mine," and turning to the man, "Is it yours?" The man gave the phone a classic Neapolitan chin-thrust, lip-jut and after a pause said, "Yeah. That's mine." He took the phone and without saying Grazie, tucked it away and got in his car.

I returned to our table to find the chef asking his 7-year-old son whether he had seen his cell phone. "Is it silver?" The Husband asked. "Si." "Is it a 3?" I asked. "Si." Ohmigod! "We thought it belonged to the dude who was sitting there!" "Did he say it was his?" the chef asked. "Si."

Che gente di merda!

Che schifo!

Lui aveva una faccia brutta!

And on and on and on. Everyone stood around marveling at the fact that a GRANDPA would knowingly take a cell phone that didn't belong to him. That's a teenager manoeuver. I suppose the guy figured the americana was a bozo...which she was...and that her bozoness gave him the right to make off with a free phone. The chef was very understanding...Zi' Carmela a bit less so...the 7-year-old just shrugged. The Husband and I howled with laughter when we were out of earshot.

We apologized up and down. The chef said he was glad to know what happened to the phone, to not have to live with the mystery. He called Don Antonio to let him know what happened. He may or may not get his phone back.

Reflecting on the man's delay in taking the phone, his expression that lacked recognition of the object, his failure to thank me, it became blaringly obvious that he was bullshitting. The Husband would have figured that out immediately, given the guy a friendly chuck on the shoulder, and taken the phone back to the restaurant. I might have also caught on had I either just moved to Naples or had I been living here for longer. I have become accustomed to bizarre responses to actions, to a lack of grace when it seems to be required, to an outpouring of kindness when it is least expected, so the man's oddness didn't seem suspicious to me until after the fact. Neapolitans are known for cunning, they tell you themselves not to trust them, but for an American girl, even one from Brooklyn, it is hard to get the signals straight. And this is what makes it a neverending mystery for me. And so fun. And so annoying. And so great.

Il pranzo della domenica alla napoletana.

2007-07-09T11:53:00.000+01:00

Why can't I enter a title anymore? Yesterday and today...I don't understand Blogger.

Finally, someone was brutally honest today. A woman in the department store where La Bimba and I were shopping said, "What a beautiful baby? Are you the mother?" to which I replied, "Yes." The woman looked at me and said, "She is more beautiful than you" to which I replied, "Much."

Finally, what they are all thinking has been spoken. I feel so relieved.

2007-07-07T08:40:00.001+01:00

Lots of people smoke while driving their mopeds here in Naples. When I smoked -- I was never "a smoker," too inconsistent to warrant the sobriquet -- I liked to do so above all in a bar with a beer. I didn't even like smoking outside because the second-hand smoke I needed to enjoy smokng first-hand is too diluted in the great outdoors (though I did take some pleasure smoking around a campfire...a different sort of second-hand smoke). Smoking with coffee was okay, but too early in the morning. Smoking between courses in a restaurant in Italy before the smoking ban felt so naughty after not being able to smoke within fifty feet of outdoor tables in Berkeley, it made every smoke that much tastier.

The last cigarettes I was smoking were Gauloises reds. The last cigarette I smoked was in July 2005. I am still breastfeeding La Bimba, so no smoking...yet. I cannot say with conviction that I will never smoke again, but I hope I don't because it is a disgusting habit and my teeth are already yellower since my coffee addiction. I had never had a cup of coffee in my life before I moved to Italy, something I was annoyingly proud of. Now I can't wait for that cappuccino freddo. With a brioche. I had stopped eating wheat in California. The intestinal tract is a fickle friend.

Smoking on the beach always made me feel ill. I once took a drag off a Russian cigarette and had to immediately find a toilet. Who needs Miralax? I smoked Camel Lights in Madison, Wisconsin because that's what my friend S. smoked. I smoked Winstons, not lights, in Seaside Heights, New Jersey and lost about 15 pounds that summer since I paired those fags with Seabreezes and no dinner. Or lunch. I don't mind Marlboro Reds, but the Lights are gross. The Husband smokes Pall Malls, sometimes Blue (lights), mostly Red, when he runs out of the Marlboros my parents and other Americans bring him through the Duty Free.

In college, Colleen smoked Benson & Hedges. I don't like 100s, too long, can't balance them between my fingers. I can't blow smoke rings or french inhale. I never understood why people smoked menthols. Do they really have fiberglass particles in them? And why are they marketed to black people? My mom used to smoke L&Ms. Z's parents won washing machines and other large appliances by being faithful to Viceroys. Philip Morris is a huge supporter of concert dance. My grandpa Jack couldn't talk on the phone without smoking. My grandma Daurcy smoked on the couch in the den, in front of Tom & Jerry and a plate of Sara Lee pound cake that rested on the small, square, dark blue and green tiled table. The door from the den to the garden was sealed shut by then, Papa Myer's tomato plants a distant, juicy memory. Their house is a vacant lot today.

Huber beer cost $5 a case in Madison in 1990. Those went well with smoking. Wine, preferably, red goes great with smoking.

I hope La Bimba never smokes.

Cultural Ransom Note

2007-06-28T16:23:00.001+01:00

Today, while waiting for the funicolare in the cool of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele station, an elderly woman stood over La Bimba and said, "She looks just like that little girl they kidnapped from that resort." Then, evidently to make me feel less like running screaming home from the station and locking us in for good, she said, "But that little girl was like four years old."

I grew up in Brooklyn and have lived most of my life in bustling, multiethnic metropoli, mostly in the USA. Naples, despite its growing immigrant population, is a homogenous society. The aspect of its homogenity that continues to be a bitch to get used to is the uniform way the Neapolitan people respond to various stimuli and situations, give or take more or less exaggerated versions.

If it were, say, noon and windy in Manhattan, and I were strolling along with La Bimba, it is unlikely that anyone would stop to say anything about it. If a cross-section of the population at Bleecker and Sullivan or 59th and Lex were to stop and talk to me, I could hardly guess what each would have to say. Take the same scene to Naples and I could guarantee, would bet a lot of money, should find a sucker to take me up on the bet, that a large number of people of different ages and sizes would say, "Shouldn't she be home for lunch? And she's going to get bronchitis! She should be wearing a scarf!"

The woman who told me that La Bimba resembled the little kidnapped girl is just an hyperbolic version of the usual comment, "She is so cute! How can anyone hurt children? Why do they abuse children?"

I'm sorry, I just don't follow, and I doubt I ever will.

I'll Get You My Pretty

2007-06-20T13:11:00.001+01:00

Today, sitting under a tree in the Villa Comunale, La Bimba and I were approached by a grandma and grandchild. The grandchild was having a fit,kicking and screaming, and the grandma was actually doing a pretty good job of keeping it together. They had been by the swings, but when the grandchild started really flipping out, they approached our spot of lawn. Grandma parked her stroller a few feet away, turned to me while the grandchild dangled from one wrist, furiously bicycling the air, and asked, "Do you mind if I leave her here for a minute?"

Me, mouth gaping open: "Uh, where are you going?"

Granma, mouth revealing very bad, very few teeth: "Just to get some water."

Me: "Uh, no."

So, grandma dragged screaming grandchild to the nearby fountain and got some water. They came back, smiling, no hard feelings. The grandchild, named Petra, came onto our sheet, tried to caress/whack La Bimba's cheeks, tried to grab La Bimba's water then my water; the grandma just grinned her broken piano keys grin and asked various innocuous questions: "Do you know my granddaughter? Because my daughter comes here often. What's her name? My she is pretty."

I have to admit that I was afraid of grandma, and not just because she resembled the Wicked Witch of the West in need of a good hair washing. She wanted to leave her granddaughter with a total stranger! I don't care if it was for 10 seconds and that we would have remained in her line of vision! She evidently has not been reading about kidnappings. I was afraid she wouldn't come back. I was afraid she'd want La Bimba and petulant Petra to be friends.

Thus, the snobbery begins or, rather, takes on a new maternal form. I hope I like La Bimba's friends. My parents were always so good to my friends. Like the time my mom took J. and me to Atlantic City and gave us both a bunch of cash to burn. And burned it we did.

Which reminds me of when J., her sister M., and I were in Vegas, and J. had run out of money, so she sat herself at a slot machine and said, "I have to win to have some cash for the rest of the trip" (we were headed to LA, then SF after having been through DC, Virginia, Tennessee -- Graceland! Nashville's Parthenon!, Mississippi, where the cops "hid" under the overpasses to stay out of the heat...you always had enough time to slow down, Louisiana, before Katrina, J. took Benedryl to eat mudbugs and then drove in a drowsy haze over the 24 mile Lake Pontchartrain bridge), Texas, New Mexico, where a magical painting of Jesus reached out and grabbed my nose, Arizona, Grand Canyon, Brice Canyon, Zion, America can really be The Beautiful). J. pulled the arm and bing bing bing flashing lights and happy matching fruit and bars, a couple of hundred dollars in quarters came flying out. Nice job, J.!

Friends. I miss mine in CA and NY and points in between terribly, terribly.

Buckle Your Head

2007-06-17T18:52:00.000+01:00

The Husband asked me if I was ever going to stop marvelling at the sight of tiny children being toted around helmetless on mopeds. I told him to shoot me if I did.

Going Postal II

2007-06-15T10:12:00.000+01:00

Our local post office is a piece of work. Nothing ever works, e.g. the ATM, the machine that spits out numbers, they are always running out of forms, they don't know the price of postage (see Going Postal), the workers are slow and morose (when they are not laughing at their own jokes, that is), the lines are long, it's hot and small, there aren't enough seats, M, N, O, P, I could go on all day.

The other day, most of the things wrong with our local branch went wronger, causing a conflagration of tempers that made La Bimba's head spin. A large man, probably in his late 30s, early 40s, started having a mild fit over the fact that the ATM wasn't working, forcing him to pay for his mailings in cash, and that the office had run out of return receipt forms. It was a hot day, and though there were few people on line, the proceedings were moving at snail-on-ludes's pace. The young male postal worker was handling a woman's mailings, stamping and scanning and typing, while chatting up the middle-aged lady-troll postal worker, who was sitting at the adjacent window, helping no one. The constant drolleries issuing forth from the male postal worker lit the end of the pissed off man's tether, sending the spark up through his ass and out the top of his head in a burst of venom and bile.

"This country is an embarrassment! You don't know how to work! All you do is talk! How are you supposed to work, when all you do is talk! Che vergogna! Che vergogna!"

An American postal worker, would probably ignore the man's tirade, out of the sheer commonplaceness of having a maniac on line, or out of fear that said maniac might be toting a firearm. The Neapolitan postal worker, rather, got into it with the guy, saying, "Don't tell me how to do my job. I know how to do my job," etc. The angry fellow got even angrier, raising his voice and pumping his fist. The lady-troll worker was now helping an elderly gentleman, who starting screaming, "I can't hear what she's saying with you screaming like that!" Now the original lunatic starting calling the old man a sheep (a chicken, for you Anglophones), among other things. Surprisingly, the old man got all up in the younger, bigger guy's face, saying, "I'm not afraid of you! YOU WANNA PIECE OF ME!" Thankfully, the bigger, younger guy backed up, saying, "Stai calmo! Stai calmo!"

I was exchanging glances with the Sri Lankan guy, who works at the nearby salumeria, shaking my head, whispering to La Bimba to just ignore the purgatories. I was afraid she would start clapping like she does when two toddlers are pulling each others' hair and biting each other. She loves a good brawl! I finally made it to the window of the male postal worker, but since I had to fill out a form, I let the raging man go ahead of me, where he continued to berate the postal worker, but only until it seemed like the guy might stop processing his requests. Then he backed off. He wanted his letters mailed like the rest of us.

When he finally left, those who remained let out a collective sigh of relief and agreed that the guy had some problems, maybe at home, maybe at work. Or maybe it just gets to be too much, when it's hot and humid and the simplest systems don't function. I would feel for the guy if I weren't convinced he was part of the problem.

Another obnoxious observation obnoxiously observed: another elevator that ends in a flight of steps. The elevator that goes from Via Acton up to Piazza Plebiscito ends in a flight of steps. It has an electric wheelchair lift, but I can't see putting the stroller on it. The day I had to carry La Bimba in her stroller up those stairs, a stream, a river, a torrent of pensioners finishing up a protest march came down the stairs. After letting a couple of dozen old folks with flags pass, I decided I would probably be there all day if I didn't go up immediately. So, I gave them my best, "Permesso! Attenzione! Non c'è spazio per una doppia fila!" (single file please!), and fought my way through. They were actually very kind about it, still wearing the glow of solidarity, 15,000 strong.

Lastly, did I mention that when La Bimba speaks her language, her very own babble-yodel, to people on the funicolare or on the street, many, many of her addressees ask me, "Is she speaking English?"

Look it up!

2007-06-08T17:31:00.000+01:00

I saw Friar Tuck doing whippets in front of Chiesa Santa Chiara today.

Actually, it was just your average Franciscan monk pulling on his inhaler. Naples must really aggravate his asthma.

You can understand my mistake. Check out those friars on the left, downing brewskis with a couple of frat boys. Ah, brotherhoods. Brothers with hoods. Brothers in the hood with hoods. Those low-slung cord belts are kind of in now.

Yesterday, C. and I were exiting the funicolare when we witnessed some egregious butt crackage. A youngish man was walking up the steps in a pair of not-particularly-low-cut jeans and his hairy butt crack was in full view. He wasn't even bending down. If he were, I think we'd have been privy to full frontal perineum.

In trying to avoid spelling mistakes, I often consult dictionary.com. In so doing, I occasionally stumble upon interesting, anzi, startling information, such as the first definition of perineum:

1. the area in front of the anus extending to the fourchette of the vulva in the female and to the scrotum in the male.

Sounds reasonable, until you ask yourself what the vulva is a fourchette. My high school French reminds me that it is a fork. What is a fork doing near my vulva? Dic.com tells me:
1. Anatomy. the fold of skin that forms the posterior margin of the vulva.
2. Ornithology. furcula; wishbone.
3. Zoology. the frog of an animal's foot.
4. a strip of leather or fabric joining the front and back sections of a glove finger.
5. Chiefly Bridge. a tenace.

Never knew that. And now what is the frog of an animal's foot? Did they mean the foot of a frog? Um, no:
1. Any of numerous tailless, aquatic, semiaquatic, or terrestrial amphibians of the order Anura and especially of the family Ranidae, characteristically having a smooth moist skin, webbed feet, and long hind legs adapted for leaping.
2. A wedge-shaped, horny prominence in the sole of a horse's hoof.
3. A loop fastened to a belt to hold a tool or weapon.
4. An ornamental looped braid or cord with a button or knot for fastening the front of a garment.
5. A device on intersecting railroad tracks that permits wheels to cross the junction.
6. A spiked or perforated device used to support stems in a flower arrangement.
7. The nut of a violin bow.
8. Informal Hoarseness or phlegm in the throat.
9. Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a French person.

NINE different defintions for frog. And you thought it was just numbers 1, 8, and 9! I think the dictionary is the key to feeling one with the universe. Look how perineum led to fourchette led to French then to frog, which leads in turn to French and back to being horny and wedge-shaped? You will be pleased to know that I am exhibiting a motherlode of self-control by not continuing my quest for wholeness and union through the exploration of the nut of a violin bow. (Let's leave it at 16 definitions for nut, number 9, a testis. Bet you never wrote the singular of that word before!).

The internet is such a lovely place to follow tangents. My father always said his mother used to talk in a circle. Not in circles, but in one circle, beginning with a point, following a series of tangents, and then returning to that point. A sort of hermeutic circle, Hermaneutic, Herman being a nice Jewish name. Not really. I'm reaching, aren't I?

"...the selfishness of those who hate themselves" (Joan Acocella on why Dorothy Parker's stories were mostly a disappointment). I don't think I hate myself -- that would be mean -- but I definitely feel the most self-involved, self-obsessed if you must, when I am imagining that other people hate me.

I did stand-up comedy once. I think it was 1992. I took a stand-up class at the New School of Social Research, which culminated in five minutes of fame at some comedy club in NY, I can't even remember which one. I mostly talked about my late gynecologist...and a bit about being in Japan. We students were interspersed with professional comedians. I fondly remember one comedienne (is it un-pc to use the feminine suffix?) who said, and I misquote, "Willard Scott was calling out to Bryant Gumbel in the NBC offices, calling 'Bry! Bry!' and Gumbel turned to him and said, 'My name is Bryant. Call me by my name, Bryant." Here she added a pregnant pause and then birthed, "If I was making as much money as Bryant Gumbel, you could call me dickfatfuckface."

My Brooklyn gynecologist, Dr. Alvin Weiner, deserves a post of his own. And you shall have one, Al. Not tonight, but some day soon, and for the rest of your heavenly days...or daily heavens...

They Went Thataway

2007-06-07T19:25:00.001+01:00

Why doesn't Blogger ever remember me when I check the "remember me" box? I always thought I was unforgettable.

La Bimba has changed. She is entering the terrible twos about a year early. Little tantrums. Food flinging. Flailing, particularly when being taken out of the tub. Slippery little bugger.

The anglophonic moms group met at the Villa Floridiana today, and it was a blast. Lots of running and crawling and ball-throwing, bubble-blowing, bubble-chasing, bubble-eating. The park has a great lawn in front of the ceramics museum and our little group of bilinguals found lots of mini Italians to mingle with...with which to mingle. Bilingual Mingle. I bet there's an online dating service called that. Bilingual Singles Mingle. Mingling Bilingual Singles eating Pringles.

I was led to believe as a small child that Pringles potato chips were worse for you than any other potato chip. I don't know who told me that or what the claim is based on, but I will say that though they are tasty, they do look like someone chewed up a Lays chip, spit it out, rolled it with a rolling pin, and refried it. There is something reconstituted about a Pringles potato chip. They don't even taste like potatoes. But it is what they sell on Italian trains. And I get deep satisfaction from the vacuum suck sound the container makes upon opening.

I got my Permesso di Soggiorno! Yesterday! And I almost forgot to mention it. It's the new electronic kind, looks like a driver's license. My photo is awful, but who cares? I am legal for the first time in Italy since arriving nearly three years ago. I tried to be legal from the get-go, but the cops at the Rome questura were rompipalli industriali, so they never gave me the permit, even though it was all ready. They were punishing me for moving from Parioli to Flaminio without telling them. This was before The Husband and La Bimba.

Now I can dive into all the bureaucratic nightmares Italy has to offer: getting residency, a public health doctor, a driver's license. Should be fun. My friend L. just gave me the guide to the written driving test. It is hilarious! They give you true or false questions, but not ones someone who was raised in the American public school system would recognize. There are several true answers to each question. You have to choose which are true and which are false. As L. pointed out to me, and I confirmed while reading the book (and it is a BOOK not a leaflet or pamplet or booklet), one of the questions is, What is a street? There are five true answers:

1. open to circulating pedestrians, animals and vehicles

2. might be one-way

3. might be two-way

4. might be subdivided into roadways (confused? see below)

5. might have bicycle lanes

It is not surprising that the answers did not include, NOT A SIDEWALK. This is Naples, after all.

Answer 4 in Italian is as follows: può essere suddivisa in carreggiate. A carreggiata is defined as a carriageway or roadway. Thank heavens the exam also asks, What is a roadway?

1. the part of the street designated for vehicle transit

2. may be divided into lanes

3. may be one-way

4. may be two-way

5. are marked by special beginning and end signs

6. have special parking areas

7. are reserved for the circulation of any category of motorized vehicle

I could go on all day. The book is so entertaining. But not nearly as entertaining as this:

I think that is going to really help me pass the test.

Sweat, Swedes and Swenanigans

2007-05-31T11:59:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, when the Questura refused to give me my totally ready Permesso di Soggiorno for the umpteenth time (how many is "ump," you ask? I don't know, but I'm thinking enough to exasperate), I got back in the car where The Husband was waiting and La Bimba was sleeping and cried. We started to drive off and The Husband closed the windows. I reopened mine because it was sweltering and he shouted, "But she is sweating!" I shouted back, "I need air!" He shouted more loudly, "You want her to get bronchitis?!" I shouted from the bottom to the top of my lungs, "YOU DON'T GET BRONCHITIS FROM SWEATING IN THE HEAT AND THEN HAVING A WARM BREEZE WASH OVER YOU! BASTA!!!!"

The Husband let me leave my window open.

Sometimes you just reach your limit, you know?

There has been a lot of wind lately, lovely breezy days, which send the Neapolitans to take cover in doorways. They are offering constant fear-of-bronchitis comments to me and La Bimba and I have changed my response tactics. I used to either agree and assure them I would wrap a wool boa around her neck asap or disagree and lecture them briefly on the error of their logic. Now I stare blankly and walk away. Feels great!

La Bimba often gets called "la svedese," the Swede. I was at the park the other day and there a little blond boy with clear blue eyes wearing a white and navy blue sailor suit. I said to his mom, "Now this one really does look like a Swede."

He was actually a Swede. The "mom" was his Neapolitan babysitter.

I was thinking about starting to call Neapolitans "Naps" in this blog, but that got me thinking about JAPS, not the derogatory term for Japanese people, but the acronym for Jewish American Princess. We used to throw that term around like freshly blow-dried hair over our Jappy shoulders. It eventually became politcally incorrect to do so, so we stopped.

You can still find Italian American Princess t-shirts in Little Italy.

I was having a massive pity party the other day because none of my non-mommy friends call me anymore. Then I saw some of them and it turns out they are all having crises of varying degrees and they don't hate me. I felt like a heel. Why is it always so easy to imagine the worst?

Folks are gearing up for the Great Disappearing Act that is summer vacation in Italy. The Ghost Town effect doesn't hit until August, but the Slow Trickle Into Loneliness begins in June. We have about 50 ideas of where we want to go and when, but nothing planned except for a week in Sicily with the Nonni. I am really looking forward to some long floats in the Mediterranean.

I have been reading the expats in Italy blogs a lot lately and wishing I had the time and energy to comment, join some discussions, meet some challenges like the "____Needs" challenge posted by Sognatrice. I'll do a bit here:

1. Sima needs a really good immigration lawyer.

2. Sima needs to diversify support via partnerships.

3. Sima needs to be amended to restore that balance.
4. Sima needs you.

I do need you, I really do...and a good immigration lawyer.

Dems the Breaks

2007-05-25T18:41:00.001+01:00

I am feeling wildly grateful for my apartment at this moment. It is cool and breezy when it's hot and sticky on the ground. It's a mekhaye...that's Yiddish for pleasure.

I am rarely wont to write about politics, mostly because, though my instincts are in the right place, I don't consider myself articulate enough on the subject. My leanings leak out here and there, for sure, mostly as snide asides, as asnides, if you will, but I prefer writing about Naples and that time at sleepaway camp when I dressed up as Boy George and looked EXACTLY like him. Plus, I am not all that well-read or, rather, I don't remember what I read when I read about politics. When I was living in the Bay Area, I spent a lot of time listening to KPFA and reading The Nation. My then-not-ex and I got pretty obsessed for a while there, him more than me since, you know, he is worse than me in all ways, and it started to feel awful, hearing about all the news that doesn't appear to be fit to print in the mainstream media and then going about our driving, water wasting, 12-dollar margarita swilling ways. We composted and (mostly after we broke up) I rode my bike, but I was still most definitely part of the problem. Now moreso than ever here in Naples, home of burning garbage and diesel fumes. Not that I burn garbage or ride a moped, but you get the point. I am contributing to the downfall of humankind. Sorry folks.

I am working on it, however.

All that said, the caving of the Democrats on the Iraq spending, no pullout timeline meshugas (more Yiddish...this time meaning madness) is something I need to write a bit about. Firstly, no surprise. In the 2000 and 2004 election years, to say the Democrats and the Republicans are basically the same at the end of the day and it was better to vote your conscience than for the lesser of two evils was to commit heresy. Nader voters were blamed for Bush's first win (instead of the Florida Supreme Court and myriad other imbrogli). Abortion was a hot topic as in, "If you don't vote for Gore/Kerry, abortion will be banned!"

This is what I think: high level Democrats and the Republicans are basically the same (not all of them, e.g. the late Paul Wellstone, Kucinich, Barbara Lee) in that they are career politicians out to keep their jobs at best and to make a killing on killing at worst. They all lie, they all cheat, they all look out for number one (and that is not the homeless shelter or the women's clinic in your neighborhood, in case you were wondering). They represent the political status quo and the economic elite, so the far left and far right who vote for them are hardly being represented. Still, we fear the extremes, so we vote center. Now I am a bit lost. Please clarify my point...Doug! Oh wait, you already have, here.

As for the fear of the illegalization of abortion. Note that, yes, Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act into law, but it is unlikely that he will get around to banning abortion completely with all that fun, I mean, work to be done in Iraq. I am not being flip here. I am vehemently pro-choice, but am currently way more afraid of how evil and/or numbed out the US government officials are over the daily carnage in Iraq. And the widening gap between teeny tiny group of super rich and mega jumbo group of poor. And our schools. And so many other things.

My point here, foggy as it must read, is that I am disgusted by the rollover and play dead Dems, the roll them over and make them dead Republicans, and sad for all Americans, those who feel like me and those who don't (and sad for everyone the world over). We all have to live with the legacy of this administration and the repercussions of a western world gone completely mad. If someone cannot tell the difference between the right to free speech and the right to own an SUV, we are in way way lots of much oodley trouble.

Memory Strada

2007-05-24T18:30:00.000+01:00

I have figured out the source of my hand/wrist/forearm pain: bouncing La Bimba in the stroller up and down the 80-plus stairs that lead to the park and the sea from my house. I flex and jam my wrist with every step. This is Neapolitan carpal tunnel. None of the other moms who take these stairs have complained about this particular pain, but that is probably because they don't try to do handstands every couple of days. I used to love handstands. Now I avoid them like push-ups.

I was going to say "like the plague," but since that poor monkey died of it I thought it would be crass. If you take Pepto Bismol, your tongue may turn black. This happened to a friend and she didn't know about this side effect, so panicked, she looked up "black tongue" in a medical reference book. As luck should have it for this poor hypochondriac, black tongue is a symptom of bubonic plague. (I just looked at Pepto pictures on the web and sure enough, there is a photo of a black tongue. I have elected not to post the photo because it is schifosissima).

The word for handstand in Italian is verticale. I learned that from The Husband when I did a handstand at the top of Castel Sant'Elmo. This was the second day of our acquaintance. We were up there with my friend from California, doing handstands, and when we asked how to say handstand in Italian, he said, "verticale." We didn't believe him. We said things like, "We know it's vertical, but it's also upside down!" How obnoxious were we? As if we knew his language better than he did.

What is a natural career for a person who is good at algebra?

In college, I took a career test and the results showed that I should have become a priest or a rabbi. There was no parenthetical about it being a good idea to believe in God, preferably the meanie in the Old Testament for rabbi or the meanie plus his polite son plus a holy specter for priest. Do you think it's too late for me? I could be like Ben Stiller in the film Keeping the Faith. I could marry Jenna Elfman! Whatever happened to her? She's fabulous! I almost named La Bimba Dharma after her. (Hold it! Hold it! Stop the presses! I just discovered that Elfman is a Scientologist. Che delusione!).

Actually, I wanted to name La Bimba Partenope, Naples's other name, la città partenopea. But then I did a little research and discovered that Partenope was a siren who, after Ulysses dissed her, killed herself, her body washing up on the shores of Naples. I didn't think that would be a good story for La Bimba to hear about her name. Plus, a good friend pointed out that she would be nicknamed "party animal" and we mustn't make assumptions about La Bimba's sordid ways this early on in her life.

I cursed out a man in a Smart car today because he almost ran over my friend and her baby. Stupid people are allowed to drive Smart cars. He was shaking his head as if to say, "Stupid woman! You almost rolled your baby under my car!" So I told him we had the right of way and that he was in asshole, the first part in Italian, the second in English. I often curse rude Neapolitans in English. When La Bimba is with me, which is nearly always, I sing the curses to a child-friendly melody like, say, Old MacDonald, as in: "He's a big fat ass hole man, ee ai ee ai oh. And there's a mother fucker there, ee ai ee ai oh." This way she thinks I love everyone. I also like ABC/Twinkle Twinkle: "I hate ev'ry one I see -- they are evil, you agree -- make me want to punch them all -- throw them through a plywood wall -- what a bunch of dorky schmucks -- dickheads, morons, total fucks." Isn't that lovely! I should make a CD. Look out Raffi!

I am starting a list of places La Bimba has lived, so she can one day go off on her own personal Bloomsday walk.

French class. I have some things I'd like to say about French class. Cunningham Junior High School, Brooklyn, NY: Madame Karney. We had a girl with Tourette's Syndrome in the class. We were told to be kind to her, that she had a disease that caused her to say inappropriate things at inappropriate times. Did I say we were in Junior High? Could we have possibly resisted taking advantage of that poor girl? Did we? NOOOOO. We would pass her notes with "fuck" and "shit" written on them and she would say those words out loud over and over again during Madame Karney's lesson: Je suis, tu es, il est, fuck! Nous sommes, vous etes, ils sont, shit!

John Dewey High School, Brooklyn, NY: don't remember the teacher's name, also a woman. We gave all the answers to William Hunter because he was cute, a rare WASP in a sea of Italians, Jews, Latinos.

University of Wisconsin-Madison, freshman year, first class of my first semester. The TA was blind. She would always be about to write over what she had already written on the board, so we would shout, "A gauche! A gauche! A droit! A gauche." It was exhausting. I got a B, which Anne Lamott says is a very good grade. I wish I had known that then. I might not have dropped French after that.

I don't know where all these memories are coming from. I lie next to La Bimba while she drifts off to sleep and one memory after another comes racing across the finish line of my conscious mind, crashing into one another like yesterday's Giro d'Italia pile-up. I am grateful Blogger now automatically saves these drafts.

Holy Water

2007-05-23T16:06:00.000+01:00

An old man on the funicolare centrale smelled like sauerkraut, and since no one eats sauerkraut in Naples, I fear the source of the odor. Still made me want to have a hot dog.

A young man in the Villa Floridiana was wearing a t-shirt that said, "Gigolo Latino. 500 $. First night free."

I went to my neighbor's baby's baptism on Sunday. It was my first baptism and it was fascinating. Many things did not meet my expectations. I expected:

1. To see the baby dunked into the little birdbath. Instead, she was shpritzed. I missed that, too, since the parents and godparents were blocking the view.

2. To see the baby in a long white baptism gown. She was decked out in a cute little summer number. Later the priest draped a white smock over her, representing purity, I think.

3. To see the napoletani dressed to the nines. It was actually a very casual affair. My neighbor and her mom looked smashing though! Great necklace, C.!

What I didn't expect was:

1. A live guitarist and hymns sung with accompanying hand gestures, like the Macarena. It had a real hippie California flavor, like being in a Berkeley reform synagogue but with Jesus.

2. Better informed children. This was the children's mass (thus the Electric Slide versions of the songs), so the priest spent some time addressing the kids in the front rows. He asked them all sorts of questions, leading questions, and they got them all wrong. I remember one question, "What do these babies become after they are baptized?" One eager ragazzino said, "Christians!" The priest shook his head and said, "Well, yes they are Christians, but no. They become part of Christ." I didn't know that after a Catholic baptism the baptee becomes a piece of flesh and blood Jesus. I love that. Transfiguration? Or does that just apply to the host and the wine?

I hope I am not sounding sarcastic. It was so nice and I felt so honored to be there. It's always a little funky for a Jew being in church, particularly at a mass. Like the time I went to a Catholic wedding in St. Paul, Minnesota, and when it was time to take communion, I was the ONLY person left twiddling her thumbs in the pews. Talk about pariah, Ms. Arendt! Or like when a friend and I got into a fit of giggles in St. Peter's after she walked in and said, "Wow! That's one big chuppah!"

It was great being in the back of the church because I got to hang out with the altar kids (boys and girls!). They were all giggly and fidgetty. I was afraid they were going to drop the host. The didn't. An Italian-American friend who was recently visiting Naples told me about when he was an altar boy back in New Jersey. He was the shortest, so he had to lead the line up to the counter, no that's not it, where are my English words, dais, no, crap, anyway, he led the boys up to where the priest stands, but was blocked by an overweight choir girl. He tried to go around the other side, but it too was blocked. So, he led the line of boys out the door, around the church, and back in another entrance. Through the snow. Their white robes were drenched and Sister Angelina (was that her name?) mouthed to the mortified 8-year-old, "Where were you?"

At the St. Paul wedding, the host-bearer tripped on the carpet, sending the host flying. An altar boy, who was standing near the priest did an amazing dive off the platform, no that's not the word, and caught it. I wonder if the 2-second rule applies to host that touches the floor.

So, my neighbor's gorgeous little baby is washed free of original sin. I had told The Husband when La Bimba was born that if it was important to him, we could baptize her. After having been to a baptism, however, I realize I could never have gone through with it. I am very sensitive to rites and rituals and the holy, whether or not they are my rites, rituals, holy molies. I would never have been able to let the believers believe and pretend it didn't matter, didn't count.

Reading Alice Steinbach's "Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman." Steinbach is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, formerly of the Baltimore sun, who took about a year off to travel, choosing Paris, London, Oxford, and various places in Italy. I am enjoying the book, though her tone is a little marmy for me and her awareness of clothes and the various shades they come in annoying. Annoying because I am wearing the same clothes I wore in high school? Perhaps.

Ahhhhhh, it feels good to be back. It was difficult typing without my J and K keys. My fingers are back to doing the walking and talking.

I heart Bucky

2007-05-17T18:35:00.000+01:00

We checked out some properties -- wild, roofless, overgrown -- on the Amalfi coast today. Got me fantasizing all over again about that 8-sided barn. Carl Djerassi, inventor of the birth control pill (I personally thanked him at a conference at Stanford...that was before I decided it was not such a good idea to play funky with your hormones for ten years...with my hormones, that is), has a gorgeous estate in Woodside, California, that is home to the Djerassi arts residency program. An 8-sided barn houses the 8 artists -- choreographers, painters, poets, sculptors, musicians -- who come for a month to explore the terrain (gawgeous) and have a quiet place to make art, share it with each other, collaborate. Many choreographers I know have benefitted wildly from this and other residencies. I would love to provide something like that for artists. So I am looking to build an 8-sided barn in Italy.

Just thought I'd put that out there.

Lately, I have been rather nostalgic for Wisconsin of all places. I did my undergrad degree at Madison and my MFA in Milwaukee, so I've spent a fair amount of time in that great midwestern state. I would love to show The Husband and La Bimba all the beauty and tranquility, eat some brats, drink some beers. Too bad The Husband would never consent to live there. He would freeze his nookie tookie off. He is an ectomorph, who has to wear a wool shirt under a t-shirt under a long sleeve t-shirt under a sweater under a leather jacket when it dips below 60 degrees outside. I used to be chillier, but since pregnancy and motherhood I am always hot. Hot, hot, hot to trot.

I need to ask Bleeding Espresso lady to devote a special entry to all the pros and all the cons about living in Calabria. Maybe we'll move there and build the 8-sided barn. Hey BEL (bleeding espresso lady), if you're reading, hook me up! (And I love your food photos by the way. They are sexy).

Alas, poor Yorick, it's time to put the skull, I mean, you, down and watch some TV.

These Are the Days

2007-05-16T20:10:00.000+01:00

La Bimba fell asleep on my chest this evening. She was doing her usual switch-hitting (boob, pacifier, boob, pacifier), tossing herself from side to side, rolling over to sit up and then crawl when, before I could flip her over AGAIN onto her back, she crawled over to me and set her little keppie on my chest. She usually pops up right away and goes back to her marathonic sleep avoidance techniques, but this time she let me gather her whole self onto my torso and she fell asleep just like when she was a teeny tiny newborn. I was singing "Landslide" when I started to tear up.

I was one cranky mofo today and demanded lots of cuddling from The Husband. Demanding cuddling is tricky: you have to manage to be cuddlable while being bossy. I haven't mastered it yet.

La Bimba and I shared some peach and fior di latte ice cream today. She's not that into ice cream. I told you, she loves her greens. Sometimes I look into her giant baby blues, at her jubilant beaming smile and think, I can't believe she's Neapolitan. There are actually plenty of blue-eyed Neapolitans. It's the smiling that is so out of character.

She now looks at The Husband and clearly states, "Babbo." I am still mamma only when she is complaining as in, "mamamamamamamamamamamamma give me back that piece of The New Yorker I was shredding!"

I am still actively avoiding writing what I need to write about. I would say I am proactively avoiding it. I have a real problem with follow-through and not just with my backhand. I also feel a bit cursed with choices, too many choices. How does one decide? Rather than decide tonight (where to move, what to focus on beyond La Bimba -- dance? writing? teaching?), I baked cookies.

Commit Random Acts of Randomness

2007-05-15T18:07:00.000+01:00

When I told my aunt and uncle that I was afraid to show them some of my writing because I didn't want them to think I was an asshole, they told me they already knew I was an asshole, and that helped a lot.

It's always good to know that the people who love you know you are an asshole. I think that is the definition of unconditional love.

No one is an asshole all of the time and in every way. Also good to know.

I found a flier from the gas company in our last Naples apartment. It was a flier about a program to conserve energy or something and the slogan was, "Pass Gas." Need I say more? I explained to The Husband why tears of laughter were streaming down my face when I saw the flier and now "to pass gas" is part of his limited albeit growing English vocabulary.

I am pretty sure The Husband can finally hear the difference between "hungry" and "angry." Sure, you think it's easy, but put yourself in the shoes of someone who has never had to aspirate his Hs.

My mother has told me on more than one occasion that one of the reasons we never moved out of Brooklyn to go live in Lawnguyland or Joisey was because she wanted me to grow up to be a street kid. Instead, I married one.

I did not play stick ball or stoop ball or box ball or ringolevio with the kids on my block. I did learn to ride a bicycle on my street, my encouraging father running alongside my yellow banana seated two-wheeler, that exhilirating feeling of realizing that he had let go many seconds ago and I was riding by myself. I might have written on the asphalt in chalk once or twice, jumped some rope, maybe a bit of hopscotch, but I was definitely more comfortable inside playing jacks or creating elaborate soap opera fantasies for my dolls. I also enjoyed dragging my mattress downstairs to the living room and running from the kitchen through the dining room and hall to do flips onto it. Pretending to be a weatherman was also fun, as was singing along to the Evita soundtrack. I memorized all the songs, played all the parts. It took years before I could rent Madonna's version. She ain't no Patti Lupone.

The Husband was definitely a street kid, a scugnizzo (napoletano for "street urchin"). I don't know if his father ran up the steep, cobblestone streets with him as he attempted to ride a bicycle, but it's unlikely since he had a motorino by the time he was probably 8 or 9. According to The Husband, without going into detail, he was a holy terror as a kid. We often stare at La Bimba while she is playing or sleeping to see if she is showing any signs of future hooliganism. So far she is very brava. Did I mention that her favorite foods are green vegetables?

La Bimba is heavily into pulling herself up to standing and chucking her pacifier overboard when in the crib. She hurls it onto the floor and then points at it and says, "Oooooh!" She has also begun doing yoga. She did downward dog today in addition to her usual happy baby pose.

My yoga class ends at the end of the month. I've had low enrollment but those who have been coming have been blessedly commited and focused. And my how they have improved! Brave! (That's brah-vay, as in Good Work Ladies! as opposed to brave as in, well, you speak English, you know what brave means).

I am reading Anne Lamott's novel All New People. Because I read all her non-fiction first (Travelling Mercies almost made me want to believe in Jesus in spite of childhood trauma), I can pick out all the autobiographical stuff in the novel and see how she manipulated it and shifted it and made it art. She rocks da house.

Sunday we went to the Amalfi Coast to try to find a broken down farmhouse to buy and turn it into a solar energy, B&B, home, organic vegetable garden paradise. We didn't find anything up in the hills, but it was a lovely day and La Bimba loved playing in the sand at Atrani. She does not like cold water though. Every time I tried to dip her feeties in the sea she retracted them up to her ears. I think she is going to grow up to be a spa lady like her grandma.

Excuses, excuse me

2007-05-12T19:12:00.000+01:00

I have a lot of excuses for not blogging these days and having guests is no longer one of them. Everyone was gone by this past Tuesday. It was a very intense time, lots of emotional tilt-a-whirling, psychological bumper cars, and neurotic flumes. Yes, I spent a lot of time in amusement parks growing up. I am particularly fond of the water park in the sausage capital of Texas, New Braunfels.

I love water parks because I love water. There is nothing like swinging Tarzan-like from a rope into a deep pool, slipping speedily down a multi-bump water slide, walking through sprinklers, bobbing in a wave pool. Sure real ocean waves are better (and saltier!), but I spent many a thrilled summer day during my childhood running around in flipflops and a bathing suit with a couple of good friends and a floppy blue foam mat.

I had no intention of writing about water parks on this my first day back blogging. I am trying to get out of my own way here, to let all the hard stuff come up and out, to process a bit of the parental visit and face a few demons, but I've got nothing but water parks.

Naples has been suspiciously tame these days. Or is it that I have become so used to Neapolitan madness that it no longer seems mad to me? I told a cabbie, who was honking like a duck in heat in an effort to get the standstill traffic to move an inch, that it was useless to honk ("non serve!") and he shot back, "Non serve? Non serve." From his tone I do believe he was in disagreement with me. From the amount his cab moved forward after honking (not one millimeter -- check me out! I'm metric!), I do believe I was right.

It is really summer now, windy, so the air seems fresher, cool sea air. La Bimba is enjoying wearing capri pants and t-shirts. I slathered her with sunscreen, but she still appears to be getting tan, just a bit, above the sock line. If a t-shirt tan is a farmer tan, what's a sock tan? A retiree tan? A tennis bum tan? A look-it's-my-uncle-Irving tan?

I am worried that if Naples begins to feel like any other city to me, I will have to change the name of my blog. Or I will have to further exploit The Husband. The problem there is that he is learning English. He told me today he would like to read my blog. Caspita!

The Husband, La Bimba and I were walking along the street yesterday, when I decided to run ahead, hide behind a wall, and jump out to make La Bimba laugh. She laughed, but The Husband said, "This is not the time for that kind of behavior. We are still depressed." I liked that one. I told him I wasn't feeling depressed, that I was in fact feeling liberated and gay, thus the jumping around and other public displays of mirth. But he was adamant. No fun until the weight of the past few weeks passes. Still waiting for weightlessness.

I was at a lovely party this afternoon. The hosts are a couple from the US -- she full-time mom, he foreign service. I thought about joining the foreign service -- I like moving around, I'm good at languages, I know who Andy Warhol is (one of the questions on the exam according to the dude) -- but then I remembered my aversion to being inside US government buildings. Too much armed protection on the outside, not enough good politics on the inside. The first time I walked into the American consulate here in Naples and saw that grinning fool's portrait I nearly upchucked my gnocchi. Maybe once Kucinich is president I'll reconsider. Guess I have some time. Like forever. And I'm sure this blog entry alone has ruined my chances.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I bid you anon.

Don't Give Up On Me

2007-05-05T19:29:00.000+01:00

I am bereft without blogging. My blog is like a phantom limb, itching me when it's not there. Or something like that.

I didn't enter the contest after all. The contest organizer censored me because of too much f-word. She had good reasons (kid readers, living in Texas), and she was kind enough to write to me and confess to being in a bog, a blog bog, an oily Texas bloggy bog. My uncle made a good point about using the f-word (and the a-, s-, m-f- words): he said they have a place in writing, but sometimes serve as a way to avoid finding a more acute word. In other words, they can be cop outs. So, I am going to try to see what happens to my writing if I try to express my disdain, scorn, hatred, frustration, angst, disbelief, joy in other way.

I can't get my blog juices flowing under all this guestiness. Gustiness. Justice. So, I will keep watching the Colbert Report and reading Cusk (almost through; don't know what to read next, having, blessedly, so much to choose from due to great book windfall from Brooklyn). Tune in about a week from now, when freedom will ring again. Ding dong hot diggety dog dong...I think I just potty-mouthed again. Dang!

It's the Cheesiest

2007-05-01T18:22:00.000+01:00

I saw a bottle of Revlon Flex shampoo in a store window today. I used to use Flex. Do they still sell that stuff in Americuh?

La Bimba turned one and changed from a mellow, chipper soul to a backflipping, moody bugger. All part of the developmental process, lo so, lo so. She is also teething again. Last night she just had to sleep in bed with us. She simply refused to sleep in the crib. I am reading Rachel Cusk's "A Life's Work" to help me cope.

My dad is on the floor playing with La Bimba and singing songs (all the wrong words, but at least he can carry a tune; he just sang, "By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea; you and I, you and I, oh how happy we'll be," evidently unaware that "I," though grammatically correct, does not rhyme with "sea").

Which reminds me of the painful English lesson I gave to a couple of execs at Kraft Foods International (I thanked them for all those happy years in front of the TV with Mac and Cheese). The topic was double negatives and how they are not used in proper English. The elder exec, Giuseppe, said, "Wait a minute! What about, I can't get no satisfaction?" I tried to explain poetic license and lots of late coked up nights partying with supermodels, but he just insisted that if Mick would sing it, Mick being English, thus speaking the real English, not the bastardized pidgin American I speak, it must be correct. Bloody Kraft exec.

I have so much more to share with you, but La Bimba is doing her stuck pig whine, so I have to go. A prestissimo.

Oh, and I've entered a contest, the This Blog "Blows My Dress Up" Contest organized by Shelly Tucker at her blog This Eclectic Life. Tomorrow is the last day to enter, so be sure to forget about it so my competition isn't too stiff.

Latin for "it does not follow"

2007-04-26T19:49:00.000+01:00

We just got back from two less than relaxing nights in Procida. I learned that it is perhaps true that I would go stark raving mad if I lived on an island and that La Bimba needs her naps and to get to bed at a reasonable hour. She is a-changin'!

La Bimba's mega birthday bash was a success. I held it together for three parties, Neapolitan relatives who never leave (they are lovely, but I was so so tired) and a baby girl not willing to go to bed before 10pm. My parents arrived in tact, but without their luggage. It came the next day, giving my father just enough time to panic and pace and ask every 20 seconds, "Is it time to check with the airport again?" La Bimba smeared (or maybe schmeared) white and pink cake cream all over her face and I observed the effects of giving a baby (not mine!) coke in his bottle. Not pretty.

The other day at the park a bald father walked up to a trash can to throw out his empty Pall Mall cigarette pack. He tossed the pack and missed the can. He looked down at his debris, walked back to his wife, and scolded his kid for crying. I was sitting on a nearby bench feeding La Bimba, fuming and scheming, trying to figure out what to do. Littering is one disgusting thing; littering in the park where your own kid plays is another foul thing; littering in the park where your kid plays and where there is a trash can a wrist flick's distance from you is disgusting, foul and causes witnesses to have homicidal thoughts. I wiped La Bimba's face, picked up the empty pack of cigs, brought it over to the asshole and said, "Excuse me, but I believe this is yours." The wife immediately thanked me, not realizing it was her husband's trash, and as I walked away I overheard the husband say, "No, no, it's empty." I did not turn around to see if the pack made it into the can or rather fell like a coy damsel's hankie back to the earth.

I want to reflect on my first year as a mom. But as Totò said in one of his films that I catch parts of but never the whole on TV, "Voglio ma non posso." I am in a blogging holding pattern, catching moments like this one when my folks are out eating chinese (don't tell The Husband!). My aunt and uncle arrive on Saturday, German friends on Wednesday, California friends on Thursday, so it's going to be hard to get my blogger brain in order.

Writing "German friends" reminds me of a anti-prejudice ad that was on TV in the 70s (this was before we starting saying "racism"). There was a boy and his grandfather in a boat fishing. The grandfather was wearing one of those fishing hats, the one with holes in it to hold hooks and bait and stuff. The boy is talking about his friend and says, "Tommy's my Jewish friend." The grandfather kindly but sternly replies, "That's prejudice."

Does anyone else remember that ad? That ad really fucked me up. It left me thinking having a Jewish friend was a problem, maybe even a sin (I was watching "Davy and Goliath" too, you know). Had the boy said, "Tommy's my Jewish friend" and the grandfather said, "How do you know he's Jewish?" and the boy said, "Because he has a huge schnoz, is tight with his candy money, and his penis has no place to hide from the cold," that would be prejudice.

I was reminiscing about TV shows and commercials with a woman from Queens the other day. We sang the pill song ("This is serious, serious, we can make you delirious, delirious, you should have a healthy fear of us, fear of us, too much of us can be dangerous...) and waxed nostalgic over various Little House on the Prairie episodes. She still has a crush on Almanzo. I still get teary over the old Jew who died after scaring Nellie with his fake horns. Prejudice conquered on Little House! Who needs public service ads!

Wow, it's after 9pm. I should lie down with Yehoshua. "A Woman in Jerusalem." It took me a while to get into it, but now I'm hooked. "The Liberated Bride" is better. Good night!

Ding Dong

2007-04-20T19:02:00.000+01:00

Napoli, Napoli, how I have neglected dissing you! Yesterday, I was "in line" to order a cappuccino when this woman cut in front of me (I had La Bimba in the stroller and was politely, i.e. stupidly, trying to keep her out of the way of the counter sippers). I said, "Excuse me!" And she said, "Well, I have to order." I said, "So, do I" (subtext: what the fuck else am I doing here, studying to be a barista?), and she said, "I didn't see you." I got to order first, but I missed my chance to say, "What am I transparent?"

Then I went to by a coffee pot, una caffetiera, from the appliance-toiletrees-women's clothing-toy shop on the Corso. There was one in the window for 6.50 euro. I walked in and the old man behind the counter said, "Ask her," pointing to the woman sewing in the corner. This old man (he played one...) just the other day was "gentilissimo" with me, asking me if I lived in the neighborhood (yes) and saying he is at my service, anything I need, just ask. Now I get, "Ask her," grunted at me with no eye contact. So I ask the lady for the 6.50 caffetiera and she says, "Just a moment," and keeps sewing. A few minutes pass and then the man walks to the back and brings me the pot. He turns over the box and underneath is written 10 euro. Uh-oh. He starts snapping at the woman, "This pot costs 10 euro. This is better brand. We are out of the other one? We are so disorganized here! I could sell it to the lady for 8 or 9 euro but we'll lost money!" No eye contact, referring to me in the third person, talking a bunch of smack-ass bullshit. Before things get out of hand, I say, "I'll take it for 8 euro," knowing full well that it is the 6.50 pot and that these people are scum. He really wanted me to take it for 10, so I felt okay, though The Husband said I shouldn't have bought it. (He was right: it works, but I saw a Bialetti, the good brand, for just 13 euro in Piazza Carolina).

I don't think the couple were snickering behind my back once I left, joyful in the face of their semi-successful scam. I don't think they or any other similarly-minded Neapolitan-style capitalists think they are doing anything wrong. Just business.

Today The Husband, La Bimba and I had lunch with two friends, a Spanish woman living in Naples (happy birthday!) and an American man living in Berkeley. We ate at Trattoria San Ferdinando, where the waiter and busboy are dicks to all until they see La Bimba. Then they are nice-ish. I am amazed at how a person can flash a big smile at La Bimba and me, ask after her, say, "complimenti" and then turn dark and try to scam me. How do they do it? It's a skill, a talent. The American man told me that last time the waiter brought them smaller wine glasses than he had done for all the other tables that had ordered bottled wine (my friends ordered house wine), glasses so small La Spagnola bumped her nose in them and had to tip her head all the way back to drink, like taking a shot of cough syrup. Sure enough the same glasses came out this time and if you know me you know my nose is going to be barred from entry. So we asked for and received bigger glasses.

This trattoria, which is a bit upscale and quite good, has one of the best mistranslations I've seen in Italy. Italian menus and signs are notorious for side-splittingly funny English translations (spaghetti with octopussy is one of my favorites from a Roman restaurant...will James Bond be swinging from the strands?). Under the Italian for "ring the bell" (because this Trattoria buzzes its clients in...for fear of having their octopi robbed?), it said, "To Beat the Bell." Bussare means to knock but it is used for doors and bells. They don't say ring the bell. Next time I go to that place I am going to bring a baseball bat and beat the shit out of that bell.

I have been meaning to give my readers a heads up that today is Dance Anywhere. People around the world are going to dance at noon Pacific time (9pm here in Naples, 3pm in NYC), take a video or photograph, send it to my friend Beth, and she will make a multimedia presentation of the event. You have 37 minutes to get ready and shake that thang! The link for Dance Anywhere is on my sidebar. You should be dancing...yeah!

Vanilla and "Chocolate"

2007-04-19T15:59:00.000+01:00

The friend in Rome is doing better, miraculously. Thanks to all for your calls, emails, listening.

La Bimba has been a bit, shall we say, backed up. But as I type this I can hear her grunting in her crib. I am hoping to find a brown parcel waiting for me.

Ewwwww, poop talk...again.

Countdown to the first birthday bash, this Sunday. We are having a three-tiered event: morning with moms and babies, afternoon lunch with La Famiglia, evening with the party animals. My parents arrive in the midst of all this. They are bringing me vanilla, but I need vanilla NOW, so once La Bimba finishes her work in there, we are off on a vanilla-finding mission. I found some for 6 euro this morning, but I only had 5 euro in my pocket. Managgia. Porca La Miseria.

The vanilla I found was not like the vanilla I am familiar with. It was Euro Vanilla, bean flecks visible (like Breyer's ice cream!) and with added sugar. Double porca la miseria.

I think I paid 9 euro for a small jar of organic almond butter yesterday. I think I won't be doing that again, ever.

La Bimba had a wee allergic reaction to tomato sauce today. She was begging for the pizzetta I was eating, so I tore off a corner and even licked off the sauce (they say to wait until babies are one to give them tomato, so I was being diligent). Evidently, she got some on her sensitive little cheekies, however. It cleared right up, but as my friend C. said, it is vital to kick any tomato, white flour, and cheese allergy out of kids being raised in Naples. These are staple foods. C. asked if I've gone a day without eating all three of these things in some form or other. I have to say, I think not.

La Bimba is doing her Tarzan imitation -- the yodel, not the vine-swinging -- so I best be going. I've got some poop to scoop.

Leaving it blank

2007-04-17T19:52:00.000+01:00

My blog is not my journal. It is not where I write about my most difficult times, most neurotic thoughts (I know, I know, you can't believe I get more neurotic, but I do!), saddest sadnesses. So, I am a little stuck on how to continue blogging when a tragedy befalls my little world. La Bimba, The Husband, and I, we are all fine. A friend in Rome is not. Let's just leave it at that for now.

Of course, there is plenty of tragedy to choose from in the big world out there. Virginia Tech. The Husband's response to that particular massacre was, "And they say Naples is violent." Iraq...

I don't need to go on. I can't go on. La Bimba will learn about these global messes soon enough. For now we put yogurt in our hair, play catch with the remote control, talk to pigeons, rock out to Neapolitan music.

I just downloaded some Daily Show and some Colbert Report, hoping to get caught up on fake news. I am happy to announce that I don't miss Mary-Louise and the rest of the Weeds crew. My subconscious efficiently knocked that obsession out in just two dreams. Subconscious or unconscious? How can I not know the difference?

It smelled like summer today. A little boy named Sergio fell off the jungle gym and sobbed at the bosom of his Peruvian nanny. La Bimba is getting a little temper replete with back flips and swatting. And she is getting new dance moves. She does the twist. She dances to everything. She dances to the sound of me peeing. Tinkle, tinkle, little... It is not gross! Sometimes I have to bring her to the bathroom with me, park her in her high chair in the doorway near the washing machine. She likes the spin cycle.

This post is evasive. It is dancing around quicksand, it is backed against the exterior wall of a tall building too terrified to jump. I feel my resolve slipping. It's hard to be honest.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

Yawners

2007-04-14T19:39:00.000+01:00

La Bimba did the cutest thing tonight on her way to her date with Mr. Sandman. The way she goes to sleep at night is curled up next to me on the bed, sucking on her ciuccio and holding her froggie up close to her face, evidently sniffing it. She rolls to one side and rests then rolls back and rests, back and forth, back and forth, until she falls sound asleep. Then I transfer her to her crib. Tonight, she rolled to one side and continued onto her belly, pushed onto all fours, the splatted on her tummy and rested. Then she pushed back up, pushed to sitting, then leaned her head on my thigh and rested. She was trying so hard to stay awake to practice crawling and sitting, but she kept slumping, so tired was she. Adorable!

It rained today. I ate fried anchovies.

Do you think we should open a bed-and-breakfast in Naples or move to Portugal and open an authentic Neapolitan trattoria?

I keep forgetting I owe an article about Italian dancers who have had careers abroad but have returned to Italy to live to a magazine at the end of this month. I'm so distracted.

Wow. I just sat here for about five minutes staring at the screen and not typing. I am so bored with my bad self. Okay. Bye.

No, wait. To be an artist -- visual, performing, literary, whatevs -- you have to be unafraid to be hated and unafraid to be laughed at. Come to think of it, just being a card-carrying human being means risking being hated and laughed at. And loved, scariest of all, but only when you really think about it. Otherwise, being loved seems like a no-brainer desirable. I want everyone to like me and I fear being laughed at. Shit. How am I ever going to write that book?

Annie Dillard via C. S. Lewis: "The sum of human suffering we needen't worry about There is plenty of suffering, but no one ever suffers the sum of it."

Warning: Scatological Post

2007-04-13T20:13:00.000+01:00

Sometimes the bar over my blog is in Italian and sometimes it is in English. I have finished my Weeds marathon. I have nothing to say. Cliffhangers be damned!

I had something hysterical, witty and brilliant to write about, but I didn't write myself a note and now I have forgotten it. I was feeding La Bimba fish and cauliflower and pasta when a juicy Neapolitan tidbit came to me, something about The Husband, and I chuckled and La Bimba chuckled and said, "Tika," her all-purpose word for "That's cool. You're right. That's a cow. Give it to me. I'm done. Can I get out of this high chair now?" Now it's gone.

La Bimba pulled the J key off my computer keyboard. I cannot get it back on. I removed the ù/§ key -- because I don't use it and it bugs me -- to figure it out and I figured it out and still can't get the key on. J is not the most popular letter I am learning, but it is where my right index finger rests when I am poised to write and now it touches a little rubbery thing instead of a nice smooth key and I find it disturbing. Trip to Dino the computer guy is on the agenda.

When you live in Italy long enough you stop thinking about Fred Flintstone's pet dinosaur when you meet someone named Dino. Guess I haven't been here long enough. Bap-bap-bap-bap-bap!

It is summer in the city, folks, and it feels great. Mid-70s (I will never adjust to Celsius), sunny and breezy. T-shirt weather. And capri pants. I was wearing a pair of those nifty 3/4 length pants (trousers! not underwear!!) when The Husband glanced at my hirsute legs and suggested it might be time to shave. He said it with a chuckle. I asked if it bothered him and he said, "It doesn't bother me. For you, I said it." I guess he thinks it bothers me. It stands to reason that if it bothered me, I would have shaved, and that if he is pointing it out, it must bother him. I reasoned thusly and he still insisted that it doesn't bother him, but probably bothers me. Can anyone guess what really bothers me here?

I'll shave one of these days. There are so many things I'd rather do with my spare, Bimba-sleeping time. Like blog. And eat cake. Read a book. Wait for season 3 of Weeds.

I don't wax. It hurts and leaves red bumpies.

I finally finished the Dillard memoir. Fantastic. Too bad I didn't look up any of the words I didn't know. There were about eight of them. And I didn't dog-ear the pages or use a highlighter (because that would feel like college) so I'll never know what words I didn't know and didn't learn. Some writer/lover of language I am!

I am going to see some contemporary dance in Piazza Plebiscito tomorrow. That should be ... interesting.

I had another... I REMEMBER WHAT MADE ME AND LA BIMBA CHUCKLE! I had another weird dream last night. It involved poop in a jacuzzi. I was not the pooper, thank God. Elizabeth Perkins was. Anyway, I told The Husband the dream and he told me that dreaming about poop porta bene, brings good luck. I so prefer his analysis to my shrink's. When I told her about a poop dream (years ago, poop stuck to the outside of my jeans, couldn't get it off), she told me it was about shame. Shame or Good Luck. Both?

Shame is a big topic, too big to tackle on the blog this evening. I wrote a paper about Shame in Ulysses in grad school. Lots of bodily functions going on in that book. Poop, pee, semen, menstrual blood, Yes! Did I mention that James Joyce and I have the same birthday? And that Dublin had a Jewish mayor? And that I am thinking of going back to grad school in Performance Studies?

About going back to school: nah. I couldn't possibly write a cold, dry, danceless dissertation on dance. Or maybe I could write something dancey and fabulous and change the course of dance academia forever? What am I on about? Need more cake.

Naples, Motherhood, Mulitculti Marriage, Dance, Cake. These will be labels some day.

Oy Ai Oy Ai O

2007-04-10T19:00:00.000+01:00

I am forcing myself to blog a bit before returning to my Weeds addiction. It's pretty bad. I don't blog, I don't do my writing group assignments (and I started the writing group!), I don't bake, I don't read. I just watch Weeds. I'm looking forward to running out of episodes.

This Weeds addiction has even stopped me from observing Naples, the whole point of this farshtunkeneh blog.

If anyone in my family is reading this right now, go Google Justin Kirk (he plays a character on Weeds) and tell me he doesn't look like cousin Erik. I know it's not like eerie twinship, but when he smiles, he reminds me so much of my LA cuz. There he is on the left.

I have been meaning to write a letter, an email actually since I still don't trust the Italian postal system, to all my maternal first cousins. I am the youngest of ten first cousins and an only child, so my cousins have been surrogate siblings. Not all of them, not always, not in the same ways, not at the same time, but enough to make me miss them and think about them, even the ones I have had very little contact with over the years since my grandparents died. I will write that email. I want to tell them that I think of them and love them and miss them and hope we can use the internet to keep us connected, send photos of our kids, write about our lives, gossip about the rest of the brood. I think it would feel good. Maybe I'll start by devoted a blog entry to each cousin...after an episode or two of Weeds, of course.

Cousin. Cugino in Italian. Brooklynites call Italian guys cugines (pronouned KOO-ZHEENZ) and now we know where that comes from. Cugette, unfortunately, is just a bastardized French feminization of cugine and aurally resembles courgettes, which is the Englishman's, via the French, again, it seems, word for zucchini, so it still counts as Italian. If you are reading this, R., linguistic anthropologist diva rock star, is an honorary PhD in my future?

I am not actually smoking the pot, just watching Kevin Nealon smoke it, but note my swiss cheesy brain. I have no desire to smoke a joint though I do have a lot of fond stoner memories. A lot of them take place in a car, but let's not go there since my parents read this blog and I wouldn't want to give them retroactive agita (from the Italian, agitare; I'm getting that PhD in Linguistics for Dummies, baby!).

Could be an interesting writing assignment: Write everything that comes to mind from when you were on drugs. Just keywords, not full stories, and then see where you go from there... dude. Here's an example:

Hopelessly Devoted to You. Break night. The Delta. Round robin candy bars. Someone stole the hood off my parka and it's 40 degrees below zero outside. Stoner hostess. I'll hold the joint up to your mouth; just breathe normally. Gilbert Gottfried: I crashed in the Andes mountains once, but I never ate a soccer player.

I think I'll go make some popcorn, scramble the words in the above paragraph, and see where I go...after an episode or two, that is...

Pass the Poppycock

2007-04-09T09:11:00.000+01:00

After experimentally downloading television shows on (off?) iTunes, I have found my addiction: Weeds. I am so addicted to the show that I am both miserable and thankful that I have only two seasons at my disposal. I know I am in too deep because I dreamed I was romantically involved with Mary-Louise Parker. It was totally lesbian until MLP grew a penis.

The same dream featured a cell phone I couldn't figure out how to use (the 21st century version of the missing-your-plane dream?), very undercooked pancakes, the revelation that our Irish friend F. is actually only 33 (shaved some years off ya, F!...or was this just another cloaked Jesus reference?), a little blond girl, and a hobbit house with a winding staircase. Freud? Jung? Anyone?

Today is Pasquetta, Easter Monday, La Bimba is napping, The Husband is fishing. I think I slept nine hours in a row last night. I say "I think" because I don't believe it's possible (shouldn't I be less tired now?) and because we mustn't jinx it!

I have been gearing up to share the story of how I came to Blogger. Are you ready? I'm not. Next time, I promise.

Sometimes while watching Weeds, I remember Mary-Louise in that movie where she died of AIDS and Drew Barrymore had a black baby. Was Whoopi Goldberg in that movie? And did I actually need to type "Goldberg" there given that there is but one Whoopi?

I had a Big Band songbook growing up. I would play "Makin' Whoopee," treble clef only, and sing along: Another bride, another groom, another sunny honeymoon, another season, another reason for makin' whoopee; a lot of shoes, a lot of rice, the groom is nervous, he answers twice, it's really killing, cause he's so willing, to make whoopee. Then it all goes down hill, washing dishes and baby clothes, not getting laid anymore. Good song.

Oh, I wanted to thank Doug and KC for suggesting places to move. Clearly, however, I should rephrase the question: Where should we move that doesn't require that we sell a kidney to afford?

Nothing Fancy

2007-04-05T18:18:00.000+01:00

La Bimba tortured us last night. She was up from 11:45pm to nearly 3am. I could not figure out what she wanted. The last half hour she was thrashing around and wailing. Then I thrashed around and wailed. The Husband helped, and then this morning he told me that I attacked him, which is true, but I plead temporary insanity.

Reader's Poll: Where should we move?

I bought Roberto Saviano's Gomorra for The Husband yesterday. I am looking forward to him reading it and having yet more to rail against Napoli about. Should make for a pleasant couple of weeks before he returns to his compulsive watching of TG3 Regione (local newscast). For those of you not up on camorra history, Saviano is Napoli's own Salman Rushdie: death threats have forced him into hiding and under police protection because of his book. I think it's a good read. What book that opens with dead bodies falling out of cargo containers isn't?

I forgot to mention in my post-passover post that I did an ingenious thing: I baked a cake (two actually) out of the leftover charoses. I took a carrot cake recipe and replaced the carrots-nuts with the apple-nut-raisin-wine-oj-cinnamon combo that was the mortar for our matzoh bricks. Delightful!

Oops, gotta go. La Bimba is about to lick the sole of one of my shoes. Che schifo...

Pesach Recap

2007-04-04T19:59:00.000+01:00

I have been dying to blog since the seder, but have been wildly tired and going to bed at 9pm. It is now one minute to nine so I have to write fast.

The seder was a success (see lovely comments from Dee on previous post; thanks, Dee!). We read a bit from the Italian Haggadah, we drank (some of us too much...hope you're feeling better...you know who you are!), and I observed five people polish off a vat of chicken soup.

When I went to pick up the meat from the butcher, he was out from behind the counter, madly cleaving some part of some animal, shaving off its fat. He turned to me with doleful eyes and said, "Mi dispiace, signora." I thought he was going to tell me he sold my brisket to some other Jew or that he couldn't sell it to me because he went home after putting it aside for me and realized he was an anti-Semite. Silly me. He was only apologizing because he failed to procure the chicken livers. He was visibly pained over it. I told him not to worry, The Husband would be relieved.

The butcher went into the big fridge and brought out my hunk of mooing love and my chicken (I took the smallest one he had...two kilos...and the seder group still ate it all!). On my previous visit I had forgotten to ask about the lamb shank, so I did so then, all apologetically for not having advised him sooner, telling him it was for the seder plate, that it represented the sacrifice, jewda jewda jewda. He looked at me quizically, so I continued explaining, zampetto di capretta, cosce di agnello, non lo so, and he said, "No, no, I understand," went back into the fridge, and came out carrying half of an entire lamb. He pointed to foot of the skinned beast and said, "Va bene questo?," this okay?, and after I nodded because what else was I supposed to do, he simply hacked off the foot and wrapped it up with my chicken.

This was my first seder with a lamb foot that I saw come fresh off a lamb. It had toenails. I should have taken a picture. Next year...in Naples!

As for the chicken, it still had a couple of feathers on it, so I had to pluck them like a babushka in the shtetl. I felt so old country! It's harder to forget your chicken was a chicken when it still has feathers. Store-bought chickens look more like headless babies. I am now going to try my best not to think about headless babies.

The only other Jew at the seder table was the aforementioned Dee. She brought Rakusens' matzoh sponsored by the Jewish Chronicle. It had the letters JC in the corner, so I naturally thought it was sponsored by Jesus Christ.

My most recent ex is a carpenter and my father or my mother, I can't remember who now, said to me as a warning (?), "You know, Jesus was a carpenter." I told my ex that and he said, "Well he was a Jew first." Good one. He's still a dick, my ex, but that was a good one.

That felt good, calling my ex a dick on my blog. I might have to do that more often. No hard feelings!

So, the seder group sang a chorus of Dayenu (Ci sarebbe bastato!), dubbed the brisket "la genovese ebrea," recited the 10 plagues while dipping their pinkies in wine, reclined, and made it through a meal without bread. I am so proud. Even La Bimba sat through the narration. La Bimba loves Zio Sal, Zio Mimmo, and especially Aunt Catrin for whom she did her gorilla scream and imaginary bicycle dance.

I taught my first yoga class at the Mudra space today. Only one person came (thanks, H!), but it was great. I am going to go out on a limb and assume that no one from Mudra will ever read this blog, so let me tell you how fucking annoying they are about money. H. wanted to know how much a gym membership costs, how much a yoga series costs, etc., and the woman was all, "Diciamo...tipo...va beh...potrebbe essere." What is with these people? Print a flaming price list and hand it to people.

Neapolitans HATE to put prices on things. I once had a rude awakening when I went to a dance studio here (I will refrain from mentioning their name as much to avoid trouble as to avoid giving them any publicity, positive or negative) to attend a lecture they sponsored. The invite said nothing about price. As I was walking out the door, the bitchface secretary (and I mean BITCHFACE; she is awful, and no, having a baby has not softened her at all), said, "Oh, you have to pay 30 euro." Thirty euro to listen to someone talk about how to do dance PR in Italy? You know I would never have gone if I had known it cost 30 euro. I told her I'd pay her next time because I only had 10 euro on me. When I returned to the studio to take class a couple of weeks later, the woman actually stopped me on my way out, again, to ask for the money. I told her, "Non si fa così," and she couldn't look me in the eye when I handed her the cash. Stronza!

They really know how to make you feel cheap here.

On a lighter note, The Husband informed me today that he would like to roast a baby pig at La Bimba's birthday party. Will La Bimba ever be able to enjoy "This Little Piggy" without having flashbacks to her first birthday when she saw a little piggy spinning on a spit, engulfed in flames? My dad is looking forward to tasting it.

That reminds me of a story the late Olympic champion wrestler David Schultz told me when I was hanging out with him on John Dupont's Foxcatcher Farm in Pennsylvania (I was there with another ex, long long ago, too long to remember if he had been a dick or not; but not that long before Dupont shot and killed Schultz...horrible story). Schultz and his family -- wife, very young son and infant daugher -- were about to eat some venison when Schultz said to his son, "Son, tonight we are having Bambi for dinner." Poor boy dissolved in tears. Schultz also told his son when his wife got pregnant the second time, "Son, we are having another baby. So, we are going to have to give you away." By then the son was used to these taunts and just rolled his eyes.

Sometimes I write things about people that I regard as amusing, as something to smile about, and, if they're no longer with us, to remember them by, fondly. Sometimes I'm not sure they would see it that way.

An April Fool for Fame

2007-04-01T09:50:00.000+01:00

Here is the Time article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1604905,00.html

And La Bimba is back on track! Eleven and a half hours of uninterrupted dreamland. Brava!

I've been preparing some dishes in advance for tomorrow's seder: carrot tzimmes and the charoses (or charoset if you are into the Sephardic pronunciation; the s ending is Ashkenazi Hebrew, and also Yiddish).

All this talk about Sephardic (also modern, i.e. what they speak in Israel today, Hebrew) vs. Ashkenazi Hebrew brings me back to Oxford circa 1989. I did a year abroad there, a bizarre year at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies (note British spelling of centre...looks so French...don't the British hate the French?...I guess not as much as the Pilgrims hated the English because they changed the spelling...those crazy Pilgrims, self-hating English...I don't actually know who was responsible for changing re to er, our to or...just asiding away here). Of our group of ten? twenty?, I don't remember, students, I was the only one who chose to study Yiddish. There was the modern Hebrew group, the Biblical Hebrew group, and the Yiddish lone wolf in sheep's clothing. I studied one-on-one with Professor Dov Ber Kerler, a very hairy Russian man who had me writing short stories in Yiddish by the end of the year. Now I don't remember anything. Sorry Dov!

Dov Ber and Dovid Katz, one of the most important Yiddish scholars in the world (a Brooklynite...from Borough Park, methinks...that was some Shakespeare for you since we're in England...are feeling condescended to, dear reader?...should I let you figure out my brillilant strokes of brilliance by yourself?), the two big, raving Jews, would get together for lunch at the St. Giles cafe next to the Hebrew Studies department. They would order all sorts of treyf (non-kosher food) like bacon and cheese together, and sit at the tiny table screaming in Yiddish. I loved the balls of it all.

I never did get used to Jews speaking in English accents. When I told one of our fellow students, a Jewish Londoner, that my grandmother's name was Daurcy Schwartz, she said, "What? Dancing Plants?" (remember you have to say that with a British accent, dahncing plahnts).

Speaking of meat and cheese, I remember going to my local deli with my first boyfriend B. Brooklyn 1986. Adelman's on Kings Highway between Ocean Avenue and East 19th Street. Adelman's is a kosher deli, so that means no dairy, just meat. (There are also kosher dairy restaurants, but those are gross). B. ordered a cheeseburger. The waiter looked at him like he was with the gestapo. How could a boy, Lutheran minister's son notwithstanding, grow up in Brooklyn and order a cheeseburger at a Jewish deli?

I am also fondly remembering a seder during which Grandma Daurcy Schwartz told us the story about having sex with Papa Myer under the Brooklyn Bridge. I am sure it never happened. Either way, it is not a story for the dinner table. I miss my grandma, Big D. She had a t-shirt that said "75 and Still Sexy" and another one that said "Daurcy is my name, sex is my game." I'll have to find a way to post a photo of her so that you get the picture (pun intended however lamely so!).

I remember fasting with my mom during Yom Kippur. We would fast and watch cooking shows at the same time. We thought we got extra credit from God for that. My father never fasted. He would show up in the bedroom where mom and I were starving, half a bagel hanging out of his mouth. Heathen!

I used to like to watch the parade of Sephardic women on their way to synagogue on the high holy days. They wore Versace and Gucci to synagogue. Ocean Parkway, a wide Brooklyn boulevard with a synagogue on every block, became a catwalk. The Hasidim were much less interesting to watch except for visitors from the midwest. For the midwesterner, the Hasidim were like martians or a lost tribe from the Amazon jungle.

Obviously, I am not an obersvant Jew. Jewishness is my culture, Judaism the religion I don't follow. Passover seder is like Christmas dinner, fasting on Yom Kippur is a habit (one I gave up since moving to Italy...I conveniently never remember about Yom Kippur until it has already passed). I just want La Bimba to experience the matzoh half of her genetic make-up since she is growing up in the pizza.

Judeo-Christian Holiday Time

2007-03-31T16:21:00.000+01:00

Just came from an Easter egg-hunt party. Lots of American moms with Italian husbands. I could see our apartment from the hostess's terrace. I called The Husband on the phone and he came out on our terrace and we waved to each other. Isn't that cool?

The hostess is a woman from Queens whose husband is on a tour here, not a rock band tour -- no glammy bus with pink-fur-lined walls and bean bag chairs, no clouds of pot smoke and half-dressed groupies lolling about -- but a foreign service tour, three years with the American consulate, a white building that faces the sea and is surrounded by machine-gun-toting carabinieri. Their apartment is on two levels with a wrap-around terrace, nearly 360 degree views of glorious Naples. And so glorious today, sunny, warm, perfect. La Bimba even found an Easter egg. Sort of. Oh, and by the way, her three-day 11-hour sleep run ended when The Husband and I tried to return to our bed, which is in the same room as her crib. She was up two nights ago from 1am to 4:30am, last night from 2:15am to 4:00am. Do over!

My yoga class starts Monday and all day today I've had a sneaking suspicion that no one at the studio has any idea about it, that the distracted diva dancer dude, who agreed to the course, did not inform anyone, had probably forgotten all about it himself. Sure enough, when I passed by this afternoon, the two "soci" (business partners or members) I found had no idea what I was talking about. After a long discussion and a call to the woman who opens the studio doors on Monday morning, we confirmed the class will begin at 9:30am on Monday as I promised my yoga-desperate friends.

If you can't make it to the class, you could bombard the studio with questions about it, claim deep interest, request alternative times and days, in a word, make them think I've got hundreds of would-be anglophone yogis banging down my door. Banging in a peaceful way. No bad karma. The number of the studio is 081.406.443. FYI, no one speaks English there though they like to think they do.

Often, Italians think they speak English better than Americans do. I once translated a sign into English from Italian for a little internet point. Roberto, the cute owner, asked me to translate something that warned clients that they would have to pay for any pages they print, even if they fuck up. I wrote something like, "Clients must pay for all pages printed, including those printed in error." I think I originally wrote something simpler, but you get the point. When I returned the next day, there was my perfect translation. Two days later, however, the sign had changed. It now read something like, "Errors to pages must to pay you." It wasn't that exactly, but it was that bad. So I asked Roberto why he changed the sign. He said, "Someone told me what you had written was wrong." "I see," I said, "And was that someone a native English speaker?" Roberto unsquirmingly replied, "No. He was Italian." "And you trust an Italian, who studied English for a year at liceo over an English mother tongue speaker?" To that Roberto gave me a BOH shrug and we left it at that.

You see, poor little Roberto still thinks I was wrong and the idiot who told him so was right. That makes two idiots and an annoyed americana.

Idiot is such a harsh word. Excuse me.

I am gearing up for Passover. I couldn't invite everyone I wanted to invite because we don't have the space (so if you're reading this and you are one of the uninvited, scusami tanto!!!). We are still going to have to smoosh 9 people around our table. I've ordered the brisket (petto di manzo; the butcher, when I told him I wanted the piece whole, pulled the meat a bit closer to his body, as if he were going to hide it behind his back and say, "Petto di manzo? Quale petto di manzo? Io non vedo un petto di manzo? Vedi tu un petto di manzo? Yo, Luigi, do you see a cow chest here?" asked me, "Wait, what are you going to do with it?" WHAT IS WITH THESE OVERLY CONCERNED BUTCHERS? Do they really care about the fate of their meat? Or are they just concerned the clueless americana is going to blame them when her meat doesn't come out right and they are just trying to cover their bases? How long can I make this parenthetical? If a parenthetical is longer than the part of a paragraph not in parentheses, does that make it an aside?), the chicken, the chicken livers (here the butcher had to call his supplier and ask if he could have half a kilo of chicken livers because usually, you know, one doesn't buy less than a kilo. For what? I have never ever seen chicken liver on a Neapolitan menu or table). I forgot to mention the lamb shank I need...and the pint of Christian blood...just kidding.

No, really, as late as the early 20th century, Jews were still be accused of killing Christians for their blood, ritual sacrifice. Jews don't kill Christians! They kill each other, slowly, bloodlessly, through constant complaining and criticizing.

I was going to edit out the above graph because I don't want to come off a self-hating Jew. But blogs are for risk-taking, not for self-censorship, so there you go.

The Husband says he is not going to eat the chopped chicken livers. I asked him why since he eats beef liver, which is so much nastier, and beef heart and all sorts of other innards. It comes down to the bird flu and something about the Chinese.

I've got the Haggadah all ready in Italian, just got to make some copies. What else? No matzoh balls because I can't find the meal. My Auntie Ada's secret to fluffy matzoh balls is to use seltzer, but I tried that once and my balls were denser than that Italian who said my English was wrong.

See you in April!

Shameless Self-Promotion and Candy Bars

2007-03-28T17:06:00.000+01:00

Check it out: http://www.ilfoglio.it/pdfdwl/11502800_2.pdf, the article entitled "Cara Napoli." I think Il Foglio is a conservatissimo newspaper...does that make me a conservative by association? I'd better send a check to MoveOn.org just to cover my bases.

The writer, Jeff, sent me an email apologizing for the edit, for the fact that The Husband comes off as a guy who doesn't shave regularly and who is chain smoker. Don't worry, Jeff! The description is half right (he's not a chain smoker) and I know how the editing game goes. Remember that editor we both knew in California (I won't get specific here), the one you said had a tin ear? Snicker, snicker, someone pass me a Snickers.

I actually ate a Twix bar today. I remember when Twix came out. I bought my first one at the candy store on the corner of Avenue R and Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. I thought the cookie-caramel-chocolate combo was divine. Now it tastes like plastic and I don't believe it provides the health benefits of dark chocolate. I bought the Twix at a tabacchaio where there was an older woman and a younger woman sitting behind the counter, the cigarettes stacked neatly behind them, the older woman puffing away in the tiny space. I could just make out the name brands behind the cloud of smoke. I was buying chocolate and cigarettes (for The Husband) because we needed change because we needed gas and no one was working at any of the gas stations except for one where the guy had no change. We waited behind plumes of diesel fumes only to arrive at the pump and be told either we buy 20 euros of gas as opposed to the 10 euros we wanted or find a 10 euro note because the dude had to give a 10 back to the guy in the Mercedes...are you still awake? I wasn't.

La Bimba did it again! 11.5 hours of straight sleepage. Go Bimba Go!

Italians do not touch their cornetti. They always eat them wrapped in a napkin, maybe because they think their hands are dirty or maybe because they don't want their hands to get dirty. Same in Naples as in Rome or Milan. However, Italians will touch La Bimba on the face, all over her precious little unsuspecting face. They do not seem to be concerned about getting her dirty (or giving her germs...luckily she is still getting hits of antibodies from breast milk every day) or about getting her snot on them (I am pretty diligent about cleaning her little schnoz, but still, a booger has been known to get away). Once, here in bella Napoli, a pasticciere (baker) came up to La Bimba, stuck his flour-covered index finger in front of her mouth and said, "This is how a baker tastes. Dai, assaggia!" Baker from Planet Clueless or just your average Napoletano baby mauler?

Nurture vs. Nature

2007-03-27T19:37:00.000+01:00

La Bimba crawled today. Three steps forward and about five back, but still! But the big news is she slept ELEVEN AND A HALF HOURS IN A ROW last night. Could it be that the night-weaning has worked after only six nights? If The Husband knew I just typed that sentence he would order me to delete it since I just jinxed the whole situation and now La Bimba will probably be up every two hours tonight. Vediamo.

Last night, our friends Salvatore and Nicola came over to dinner by accident. They confused this Monday with next Monday when we are having our seder. I sent an SMS out to people last week, inviting them to seder and requesting RSVPs because we don't have a table suitable for more than 8 people and I didn't want to buy too much matzoh (pane azzimo in Italian if you were itching to know). Sal and Nic RSVPed. They brought wine. They are so good! The reason they confused the date is because they didn't bother to read past the word Monday on the SMS, and they didn't bother to read past the word Monday is because no one, I mean nobody, plans anything that far in advance. Most outtings are spontaneous or maybe planned a day in advance, if you can call, "Andiamo a Procida domani? Va bene. Ci sentiamo domani. Vediamo," a plan. We Neapolitans don't like to feel trapped, you see.

Sal and Nic are a gay couple. Sal is 40, Nic is 31, and they are polar opposites. Sal is a hairdresser, loves to gossip, tends to speak dialect, and has a total mind-meld with The Husband. Nic is soft-spoken, reads a ton, is quasi Buddhist, speaks careful Italian, and looks at me with genuine compassion when The Husband is off on one of his anti-Naples rants. They are the sweetest couple. Sal is always trying to get Nic to eat more, while Nic laments the 10 kilos he put on during his father's illness and subsequent death ("Nutella was my comfort," he said).

When we all get together we nearly always talk about Naples, its beauty, its hideousness, its charm, its brutality. Last night Sal and Nic were in fierce albeit loving disagreement over the root cause of Naples' troubles. Sal insists that the Italian government wants Naples and the rest of southern Italy to remain poor, criminalized (as if the rest of Italy isn't full of criminals...did you see the photo of Berlusconi in today's paper? Che vergogna), chaotic. He says it serves them. Of course it does! Is there a nation on this earth that doesn't keep all or part of its population down to keep a tiny fraction up up up and away with all the capital?

But Nic doesn't agree. He has read nearly everything written on Neapolitan history and he is convinced that it is inherent to the Neapolitan character to be sneaky, conniving, anarchic; that without a dictatorship the Neapolitan people will never follow the rules. Only the Normans managed to exert some control over the populace, but as soon as they were gone, this unruly bunch went right back to their old ways. The Neapolitan people are like curly hair, where a permanent wave is anything but permanent (hair simile in honor of Sal!).

I would say both are right. How's that for diplomatic? The Neapolitans do seem to resist with every fiber of their fiber-free-diet beings anything that the powers that be suggest even if it is in their best interest to submit. "Che me ne frega," why should I give a damn, is their typical response to suggestions that edge toward civic responsibility. They wag their heads at the garbage, the motorinos that nearly take out grandmas and babies, the cheating, the murders, the wet laundry dripping on their heads, the lit cigarette butts flying out of windows, but then they litter, ride their motorinos like maniacs, cheat, wring out their laundry on your head, flick their ciggies out their windows. Note that I did not include "murder" there: very few Neapolitans actual kill anyone. For all the news of camorra slayings, the city is still way less violent than many American cities, it's just more colorful about it, more drama for the press.

And the government is always caught up in some shady dealings with the mafia. I am woefully incapable of writing about that, however, since I don't do that kind of research unless someone pays me to (any takers?).

My friend J., the American journalist in Rome, has two articles coming out on Naples, featuring yours truly and The Husband, one in Time magazine and one Il Foglio, byline Jeff Israely. Let me know if you want your name off the blog, Jeff! J is for Jeff! If you're interested in reading about different goings-on in Italy, particularly about the Pope, in English, just google Jeff. He is a great writer and has lots of groovy angles on il bel paese.

New subject: I was on the phone with my friend A., who lost her husband this past December, and she was telling me all about the memorial they had for him. A. is a dancer, so people performed and people boogied. She told me that one friend stood up and said, "Let's give a round of applause to M," and everyone stood up and gave a five-minute standing ovation. A. was amazed by that, but I explained to her that it should not have struck her as odd since she has Italian roots, and the Italians applaud the dead. When the casket comes out of the church (or goes in? or both?), the crowd claps and claps. The first time I saw that I thought, "That's weird," and then, "That's so cool!" So, here's to you M. I hope you can see me clapping from wherever you are.

Le Veline

2007-03-25T19:21:00.000+01:00

The subject of le veline is one that is near and dear to my heart, so near and dear that it threatens to give me a coronary when I think about it. For someone who worships at the altar of Terpsichore, le veline represent false goddesses.

Le veline are the dancers on an Italian TV show called Striscia La Notizia. The word velina means tissue paper or flimsy paper.

These are the current veline...

Don't look like flimsy pieces of tissue paper to me! Maybe it's not their bodies that garnered the name veline, but rather, dare I say, their minds? Or maybe their value from the perspective of the male hosts that surround them? (Not just male. The ubiquitous Michelle Hunziker, a Swiss Italian actress, often cohosts on Striscia. Her relationship to le veline? She makes rude, jealous comments, like there should only be one pretty girl next to Enzo, the puppy and Gabibbo...Gabibbo needs his own post. Suffice it to say, he is a big mascot that looks like Barney except red).

The brunette, Melissa, is from Sardinia, never danced before. She played soccer. The blond, Thais, is Brazilian, so she was dancing in the womb. No matter either way. They are effectively pole dancers without poles (okay, sometimes they have poles), strippers who are already practically naked. I enjoy seeing the grandmas in the audience clap along to their gyrations.

Here are the veline from 1999-2002:
Am I going to get arrested for this post? Don't you love how there is always one blond and one brunette? It's just so fair! Equal opportunity! Not only blonds have fun! No brunette left behind! We see more of the brunette's behind!

The only Italian TV show I watch with any regularity is L'Eredità, a quiz show hosted by a lipless guy named Carlo. It used to be hosted by Amadeus, who looks like a weasel, but who I much preferred. Under Amadeus's reign, there was a dancer named Giovanna Civitillo (Newsflash! She has classical ballet training. She studied at Spazio Danza right here near Napoli! What happened?!) and four other back-up dancers. Every evening before La Scossa (shock or shake; the part of the show when the contestants have to avoid choosing the correct answer from a list of about 10), Giovanna did one of three dances and lip-synched. The choreography was a little salsa, a little samba, some random shoulder shimmying and pelvic thrusting, and a dash of voguing. The four other dancers did an occasional pirouette, some floor work here and there, body waves, basic jazz choreography. They have since axed all of these ladies and replaced them with le professoresse, four women in black and white outfits, who explain the answers to some questions and who dance with disco balls and put their fingers in their mouths. They are awful. I miss Giovanna, Miriam, Claudia, Ombretta, and Valentina. (I just rattled those names off by heart. Isn't that impressive? Disturbing?).

My question is, Why are they there? Why are their dancing girls on a quiz show, on a news program? Imagine Alex Trebec surrounded by dancing girls. Pat Sajak may have Vanna White, but at least Miss Horsey Tooth Face has the dignity to just turn letters, just stand still, smile, and turn letters.

Some extraordinary number of Italian girls when surveyed said they wanted to grow up to be veline. Something like...all of them. Again, not so good with statistics, but everyone who's anyone knows that Italian girls want to grow up to be veline!

Inside the Italian dance studio, you see what dance in Italy is about. A class taught by a fabulous contemporary dancer visiting from Belgium or Denmark might attract 20 students. A class taught by the choreographer of Janet Jackson videos will attract at least 250. Danza moderna, a.k.a. jazz/TV dance and hip hop or breakdance are huge, so huge they have become synonymous with dance.

Le veline just stump me. I know that Italians like to see skin, love beautiful women. I know newscasters show cleavage here. But I'm still tortured by it all.

There is another show called Amici, which is like American Idol (I guess, never seen it). Here two teams of performers compete in singing, acting, and dancing. The dancing can even be ever so slightly contemporary, but again, it's mostly Broadway-like. The host is a woman with the deepest voice I have ever heard. She sounds like Cookie Monster.

I read somewhere that Dancing with the Stars is the most popular show in America. Various people in the concert dance industry (industry...guffaw guffaw) have been suggesting that contemporary dancers find a way to capitalize on the popularity of the program. Their mistake is that the program is popular, but that doesn't mean dance is. People watch Fear Factor, but don't then go out and eat worms and jump out of airplanes without parachutes. And ballroom dancing is an entirely different animal.

My friend R. thinks contemporary dance has low audience turnout because it's more fun to do than to watch. That is definitely part of the problem. The great Merce Cunningham said that it wasn't necessary to like his dances. He just hopes they make you think, and we all know most of us don't want to go to the theater to think. We want to escape! So bring on the half-naked butt-shakers!

It is true that a lot of concert dance of the modern-postmodern-contemporary variety is a drag to watch, even when one is in the know.

As for Dancing with the Stars, I think it's popular because people like to see famous people make asses of themselves (be humbled; kind of like carnival, the kings become plebes and viceversa), and they also like to see people triumph over adversity (dance well without having any formal training), and they like crash courses rather than 3-year MFA degrees. Lacking grace and dancing is the collision the audience loves... look at that spaz, they cry!

I don't have a lot of faith in contemporary dance becoming popular. It would probably lose its edge if it did. And besides, we all know dancing is for sissies.

I am in the process of writing two articles, one about Italian dancers who have had careers abroad and have returned to Italy, the other about expat dancers who are involved in Italian scene. I should have some more insight on le veline after, don't you think? All these thoughts on dance need a lot of work. I should get back to writing about Naples, huh?

And about baking! I just purchased my first sifter. Yes, it's true, I have been baking without one all along. The cakes come out good, but I had no idea what a difference a sifter makes! I made a coffee cake this evening -- I tried explaining to The Husband that there is no coffee in coffee cake, that you eat it, I guess, with coffee, never mind -- and it came out so light and fluffy. No lumps. I'm very excited. Now I need to get a double boiler to melt me some chocolate!

Aesop vs. Partenope

2007-03-25T16:57:00.000+01:00

I was thinking about the butcher who wouldn't sell meat to my friend. Naples is such a funny place. On the one hand, anyone and everyone will try to pull a fast one, overcharge, underweigh. You go into a bar and ask for a coffee and the cashier says, "Let's say 90 cents." What do you mean, "let's say?" The price is written right above your head, ya noodnik. Or you'll buy some bread and the bread lady will say, "One euro 40 cents," and you give her a euro fifty and she says, "grazie" and doesn't give you back your 10 cents. Of course, you don't care about the 10 cents, in fact, you would have probably handed it back to her or dropped it on the counter, but that's not for her to decide. It's the principle.

On the other hand, there's the butcher, who is willing to lose money over his principles, in this case, how to best feed your 8-month-old. Not very capitalistic, which I like. Very annoying when you want meat and you want it now, which I don't like.

Sales people are either up in your face here or they don't give you the time of day. They tend to look annoyed, bored, hostile. It helps to bring La Bimba along, soften 'em up some. But their friendly, smiling demeanors that emerge when La Bimba bats her baby blues metamorphize into an even more bitter experience when I return to them without her and they look at me annoyed, bored, hostile. How soon they forget!

Sometimes, I reread these paragraphs and cringe over the English. It's all italianated. Awful.

What do you think of this: You go to your car, which is parked in the street, and see that someone rammed into it and left a big dent in its side. A hit-and-run, there is no way to find the culprit and bring them to justice. So, to pay for the repairs, you take down the license plate number of a bus or garbage truck, bring it to a lawyer, and tell her that this driver hit your car. The lawyer then finds a way to get your insurance to pay or the city's insurance to pay. Ethical? Qui si fa così.

Neapolitan morality is like its streets: full of holes to twist your ankle in. The city forces you, expat adventurer, to question your own morals, to question whether a universal code of ethics exists. Most things are fairly harmless if utterly aggravating, like littering. It's their streets, if they choose to live in filth up to their knees, that's their choice, right? At least there's no death penalty...unless you get on the wrong side of the camorra, that is.

More iTunes TV downloads. The Sarah Silverman Show. I hate it. All of these nihilistic programs, what are they good for?

My friend R. and I are having a delicious email dialogue about modern/postmodern/contemporary dance and why it seems to be dead, about why a show like Dancing With the Stars is so popular, etc. Something to ponder: A respected "downtown" New York choreographer said something to the effect of, "'Hey, if someone calls themselves an artist, then I believe them, they're an artist," to which someone replied, "Oh, then if someone calls themselves a surgeon, are they then a surgeon?"

Go ahead. Ponder it. And get back to me.

Butchery

2007-03-24T17:01:00.000+01:00

Is it bad blogger etiquette to not respond to people's comments? I have this tendency to bump into a friend in the street, think, "Wow, great haircut!" and then not say anything. I imagine that I've said the compliment out loud, I am sure I mean to say it out loud, but it is actually living alone, eating take-out Chinese out of the carton by itself, in my head. So, for all of you who have been commenting on my blog, "I love your hair!"

I mean, Thank you, and please keep commenting.

I went to see my friend the new mom today. It was a brief visit. Her baby is doing great. My friend is doing great even in the face of evil pediatric advice, i.e. scolding. According to the pediatrician she was overfeeding the baby and neglecting the umbilical cord stump. She has been a mom for two and half weeks, she is tired, it is all new and challenging, and this doctor made her feel like a shitty mom. Fucker!

People in positions of authority just love to make you feel bad here in Napoli. A person in a position of authority in Napoli is anyone who stands in front of you, usually behind a counter or desk, and answers your questions. A counter or desk can be very loosely interpreted...it could mean the Dutch door of a basso. Your questions can also be very loosely interpreted...you may not have asked the person in authority anything. You may have been walking down the street, innocently pushing your innocent baby in her stroller, and someone from behind their Dutch door or hanging out their window might say, "She's not dressed warmly enough! It's windy. She'll get bronchitis!"

Or maybe you go to the butcher and ask for a half-kilo of meat for your baby and the butcher says, "That's too much," and you chuckle affectionately at the misunderstanding and say, "Not for one meal! I cook it and then freeze it," which causes the butcher to look at you with a mixture of pity and disgust and to say, "You can't do that! The baby must eat only fresh meat," and you say, "Well, I'm not going to cook fresh every single day. I don't have that kind of time. I work," which makes the butcher turn the color of the side of beef that stares at you from the glass case, and he says, "Well, I'm not going to sell it to you."

The latter actually happened to an American friend here in Napoli. When she told the butcher she would have to feed the baby jarred food if he wouldn't sell her the meat, he said that jarred food was better than fresh meat cooked and then frozen because the freezing kills all the nutrients. I guess the processing of baby food keeps all the nutrients in tact. I guess "fresh" in this case means a new jar freshly opened each day.

Can I just say, Aiuto?

These kind of moments make me want to say, "Can I aks you somethin'? Fuck you."

That line was overheard on the New York subway by a friend of a friend. It is almost, but not quite, okay not nearly as good as the line I overheard on the New York subway. A crazy person was muttering and bugging people, you know, your average, normal, New York crazy person, just getting up in peoples' faces and reciting Ginsburg poems mixed with shopping lists and quotes from Rainman, when, just as the train pulled into West 4th Street, the tall dark and handsome stranger in a blue business suit who was sitting next to me, calmly reading the paper, betraying no irritation, not even snapping open the paper to facilitate a crisp fold, stood up, put his hand on the solar plexus of the crazy person, shoved him toward the doors and said, "You're getting off here." Just before he backed out of the train, looking completely unfazed (as opposed to the rest of us, who had our jaws on the floor... say "jaws on the floor" with a Brooklyn accent, please... jaws on the flaw), the crazy person said, "I'd rather be home eating Cheerios than hanging out with you purgatories."

Okay, let's talk yoga. I think I am actually going to start teaching Monday, April 2nd from 9:30-11am at MUDRA, Rampe Brancaccio 6, Napoli, Chiaia district, above Via dei Mille. I will confirm this information on Tuesday of this week. Keep your fingers in the lotus position for me!

Did I mention I am reading Annie Dillard's An American Childhood? And that it is the most gorgeous memoir? Growing up in Pittsburgh in the 50s and 60s. The pages are like grassy fields, beds of leaves, shady trees, dappled sunlight. Beautiful. What a writer.

I thought I had carpal tunnel syndrome yesterday. I no longer think I have it. Syndrome is a scary word, scarier than disease. Speaking of words, I entered a neologism contest at the end of last year. I haven't heard anything, so I guess I didn't win. Evidently, the judges do not recognize genius when they see it, but you, fair reader, you certainly do...

CRUISEFIX
Function: Noun
Definition: A strong dose of information involving the life and exploits of Tom Cruise.
Example: Thank goodness there was a People magazine in the doctor’s office; I really needed a Cruisefix.
Related terms: Cruisefy v. 1. To seek information involving the life and exploits of Tom Cruise: I was up until 2 a.m. Cruisefying on the web. 2. To torment a person for strange behaviour due to hormonal shifts: I have post-partum depression and my husband is totally Cruisefying me for it.
Cruisefixion n. The excruciating pain that follows a Cruisefix.

I should have at least gotten an honorable mention. Fuckers.

A Round of Applause

2007-03-21T19:17:00.000+01:00

I forgot to mention La Bimba's other big breakthrough: she claps her hands. If my neighbor C. is reading this, she is probably thinking, "Oh La Bimba has been clapping her hands forevs." It is true that she had grokked the concept about a month ago, but she was just lightly tapping her fingers together, her hands in an A-frame position, emitting no sound. Now she slams her hands together, full palmar action. You can hear her from the other room! So now when she dances her fabulous shim-sham-shimmy, she alternates between Fosse hands and clapping, her mouth wide open, having a grand old time. Still, I hope she grows up to become an accountant.

During one of the gazillion ultrasounds that my OB did during my pregnancy, we saw La Bimba with her hands together in front of her chest. The doctor said, "She's praying," to which I replied, "No she's not. She's doing that Neapolitan hand gesture that means, 'What do you want from me?' or 'What the hell'd you do that for?'" Here is little visual guide to Neapolitan gestures, hardly comprehensive.

I just downloaded and watched season one of The Office. Steve Carrell is too funny. Really. He is too funny, like it's too much, it's actually painful to watch at times. Can someone in the know let me know if it's worth downloading seasons 2 and 3? Or is it just so much of the same? Do any relationships develop? I still haven't gotten Sky and probably never will, so the occasional iTunes download is my only hope, and the DVDs my mamma brings me from the States. Thanks, mamma!

The chocolate cake I baked the other day came out great. It had yogurt in it. NB: it had yogurt in it. The cake is gone. Next up: yellow cake.

Hey! I am planning a seder at my house on April 2nd, first night of Passover. The Husband is being very unsupportive. I think he is afraid I am becoming religious. Fear not, dear man, that is not going to happen. One of my closest friends from college became an orthodox Jew a couple of years after we graduated. She is now married with, at last count (we're not in touch anymore) four kids, and lives in an orthodox Jewish enclave north of NYC. She did not grow up remotely religious. The last time we spoke she told me she was worried about me because I was making a bad decision being with a non-Jew (she was right about that guy, but his Gentile status had nothing to do with it) and that nothing is inevitable because God decides (this in response to my comments on the situation in Israel/Palestine...I think I said something controversial like, "War is inevitable"). I suppose nothing is ever inevitable, just very very likely.

She and I were great friends, had a lot of naughty fun in college. People change, paths diverge, yarmulkes are crocheted, Jews marry Italians and have little matzoh-pizzas. La Bimba is a delicious matzoh-pizza. Maybe that's what we'll have at the seder: matzoh-pizza! With bitter herb topping!

I printed a Haggadah, the Passover text, in Italian. All the prayers that made me squirm once I understood them now sound great. Here's an example, the 10 plagues: sangue, rane pidocchi, bestie feroci, mortalità, ulcere, grandine, cavallette, oscurità, morte dei primogeniti. Don't they sound pleasant compared to the English: blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the first born. Boils! Ewwwww. And you're supposed to eat after that? All the wine-drinking is probably to keep your appetite up. Anyway, I am looking forward to my first Italian seder. It won't be kosher and we won't throw out the bread in the house, so it will be just like I remember.