part IV

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.