The Ruminant Ramblings of a Romantic

I’m missing the easy music in everyday Italian life, and regretting the rush and intolerance and selfish jostling evident here these past few days wherever I turn. 

The following music (currently my favorite) soothes me, lifts me, returns me to myself, in a sharp-edged world.

Paisiello - Nina - "Il mio ben" - Cecilia Bartoli

Mozart - “Ah, lo previdi!”  (starting at 7:28)

images:  Christie B. Cochrell, Verdi poster and manuscript

Some Favorite Italian Moments

. arrival in Verona, to be stunned by the view above

. meeting a pair of Chinese dragons from the previous night’s Turandot outside the Arena

. bits of old walls showing through new plaster

. slices of local cheeses, one with herbs

. the trumpets & torches deployed grandly in Aida

. the Nabucconezer Pizzeria

. farmhouses spotted from trains

. Verdi’s salumeria (salsamenteria) and pizzeria with mozzerella di bufala

. the peace of Sant’Agata

. the stern old woman who took my hand

. two copies of Anna Karenina in Italian in the B&B

. the idea of the Treviso fish market

. violins playing in la chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore

. coming upon the canal with letters afloat

. the Sunday bells, as always

. our quiet backwater in Venice with an occasional motorboat, Franciscan friar, terrier

. the 10^th century crypt floored in water

. the island of glass

. glass chandeliers in the Murano church

. suddenly in the night the Arsenale with its pride of lions

. the closed museum which we’d all walked far to see

. La Fenice in the rain

. crossing the canal by traghetto

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, View from B&B delle Erbe

Back to That Other, Less Orange, Reality

I'm home, but my spirit is still wandering in Italy. I shall find the words for it all very soon!  (To-do piles permitting.)

In the meantime, let's share one of those jaunty orange cocktails that everyone was drinking everywhere at all hours—kids too.  Spritz Aperol, I learned when I inquired.  Seeing the world not through rose colored glasses, but through glasses of luminous orange.




images:  Christie B. Cochrell, Hat and Cocktail

The Journey Itself

The journey itself is my home.

 —Basho

image:  Therese Nicolas

...I Become

I read; I travel; I become

—Derek Walcott

image:  Reading in Italy, A Pretty Book

There Are No Foreign Lands

There are no foreign lands.  It is the traveler only who is foreign.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Silverado Squatters

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Bengal Merchant

Instead of 1600 Plants

Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

—Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

 




image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Lindisfarne Harbor

Becoming Common Ground

Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.

—Wendell Berry, A Place on Earth

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Ca' d'Oro

A Series of Interesting Guesses

But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

—Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There:  Travels in Europe

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Reflections

I Am Not the Same

I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.

—Mary Anne Radmacher

image:  Piazetta San Marco im Mondschein, Friedrich Nerly