Another beautiful bright, dry day in Carmine Superiore. But while summer lingers in the sunshine on the churchyard, winter is edging through Carmine's narrow alleyways.
Sunday morning view from the Chiesa di San Gottardo,
Carmine Superiore.
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Season of sunrises
Cold, hazy and damp. But the torrential rain of the last couple of days seems to have gone away. We're all sending our best wishes to our neighbours in Liguria and Tuscany...
Autumn is now in full swing in Piemonte. Varicoloured leaf displays, snow on the Alps and as I walk Jakob! early in the morning I crunch across carpets of acorns and chestnuts.
From now until spring, I have my own secret season, which I think of as the season of sunrises. During this season, my camera-carrying comings and goings coincide with some spectacular early-morning displays. And today was the first.
Lombardy sunrise.
October 27, 2011
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Plus ça change...
Cold and raining. The latter is good for the garden. The former is good for... ? Fill in the blank if you can. I can't.
Seven years ago, give or take a few hours, I gave birth to my son, AJ. He arrived amid chaos. The House on the Rock was still only half-restored. There was no hot water in the kitchen, no water at all in the bathroom. The entire upper third of the house was still unplastered, and unelectrified - unexplored you might even say. Our very own heart of darkness. And the place had not much in the way of heating either.
In the weeks and months that followed through the chill of the Carmine winter, AJ slept with us on a mattress on the floor.
As much as tiny babies do, that is.
Which isn't much.
Of that time I remember mostly the cold at night. I remember sitting up in bed in the wee small hours, propped against a freezing external wall, with his little body at the breast or in my lap, cocooned in a blanket. I remember marvelling at M's ability to snooze on through vigorous smacking of infantile lips and vigorous attempts at burping, which I now recall never, ever succeeded. Oh, and the cholic.
I remember feeling that I was the only person alive that was awake at that moment. In the darkness of 3am, not a light lit. Not a waking soul to share the responsibility of this little life with. I remember the only thing that kept me going through the sleep deprivation all ordinary parents share was the fact of this little boy. Just the fact of him.
In the wee small hours of last Sunday night in bed, I'm cold, disastrously tired and awake. I'm propped against a freezing external wall. I've got pins and needles but I'm riveted to the spot by the warm weight of a not-so-small body asleep upright on my lap. I'm riveted by the desire not to wake my asthmatic son into yet another fit of uncontrollable coughing. I'm marvelling through gritted teeth- so-to-speak - at M's ability to snooze on through lights off and on, the too-frequent application of spray medications, the making of cups of tea to keep me awake and drinking chocolate to make him sleep. The inevitable fits of uncontrollable coughing that make me feel I should be heading down The Hill towards Pronto Soccorso.
I'm feeling that I'm the only person awake in the inky blackness of this night. Not a waking soul to share the responsibility of this not-so-little life with. And I know that the only thing that keeps me doing this is the fact of this growing child. Just the fact of him.
Happy birthday, AJ. Truly, an indisputable fact of my life.
Seven years ago, give or take a few hours, I gave birth to my son, AJ. He arrived amid chaos. The House on the Rock was still only half-restored. There was no hot water in the kitchen, no water at all in the bathroom. The entire upper third of the house was still unplastered, and unelectrified - unexplored you might even say. Our very own heart of darkness. And the place had not much in the way of heating either.
In the weeks and months that followed through the chill of the Carmine winter, AJ slept with us on a mattress on the floor.
As much as tiny babies do, that is.
Which isn't much.
Of that time I remember mostly the cold at night. I remember sitting up in bed in the wee small hours, propped against a freezing external wall, with his little body at the breast or in my lap, cocooned in a blanket. I remember marvelling at M's ability to snooze on through vigorous smacking of infantile lips and vigorous attempts at burping, which I now recall never, ever succeeded. Oh, and the cholic.
I remember feeling that I was the only person alive that was awake at that moment. In the darkness of 3am, not a light lit. Not a waking soul to share the responsibility of this little life with. I remember the only thing that kept me going through the sleep deprivation all ordinary parents share was the fact of this little boy. Just the fact of him.
In the wee small hours of last Sunday night in bed, I'm cold, disastrously tired and awake. I'm propped against a freezing external wall. I've got pins and needles but I'm riveted to the spot by the warm weight of a not-so-small body asleep upright on my lap. I'm riveted by the desire not to wake my asthmatic son into yet another fit of uncontrollable coughing. I'm marvelling through gritted teeth- so-to-speak - at M's ability to snooze on through lights off and on, the too-frequent application of spray medications, the making of cups of tea to keep me awake and drinking chocolate to make him sleep. The inevitable fits of uncontrollable coughing that make me feel I should be heading down The Hill towards Pronto Soccorso.
I'm feeling that I'm the only person awake in the inky blackness of this night. Not a waking soul to share the responsibility of this not-so-little life with. And I know that the only thing that keeps me doing this is the fact of this growing child. Just the fact of him.
Happy birthday, AJ. Truly, an indisputable fact of my life.
Monday, 24 October 2011
Autumn colours
Five degrees at 8am. Starting bright but ending cold, grey and frankly rather too English for my liking.
Carmine window.
October 2011
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Friday, 14 October 2011
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Wise words
Today, I am attending the 25th wedding anniversary celebrations of my oldest friend.
Twenty-five years of marriage is a long time these days, and I admire her and her husband for seeing it through, together, in a world when so many couples just don't bother to fight when the going gets tough. There will be a service at the little Norman church in her village in England's West Country, at which she and her husband will renew their vows in preparation for the next 25 years. They have done me the honour of asking me to read the lesson. Given my marital record, I'm not entirely sure the request wasn't either ironic or didactic, or, knowing her, a little bit of both:
"...clothe yourselves with love...and be thankful". Amen.
And my hearty congratulations to C & N : May we all have the pleasure of coming back to celebrate your Golden Wedding when the time comes.
Twenty-five years of marriage is a long time these days, and I admire her and her husband for seeing it through, together, in a world when so many couples just don't bother to fight when the going gets tough. There will be a service at the little Norman church in her village in England's West Country, at which she and her husband will renew their vows in preparation for the next 25 years. They have done me the honour of asking me to read the lesson. Given my marital record, I'm not entirely sure the request wasn't either ironic or didactic, or, knowing her, a little bit of both:
Colossians 3.12-17
“As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
"...clothe yourselves with love...and be thankful". Amen.
And my hearty congratulations to C & N : May we all have the pleasure of coming back to celebrate your Golden Wedding when the time comes.
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Translators' gaffes No. 1: Come to Cannobio - where the wildlife is
Sixteen degrees at 8am. They tell me these beautiful, sunny, dry Indian summer days are just about over, and autumn is waiting at the turn of the week.
I idly picked up a Cannobio accommodation brochure the other day, and my editor's eyes alighted on this particular description:
Perhaps visitors might be more than a little wary of this residenza, what with the heating with a mind of its own and something squirmy waiting at the pier...
I idly picked up a Cannobio accommodation brochure the other day, and my editor's eyes alighted on this particular description:
“...The flats are all endowed with equipped kitchen, autonomous heating, ample private balcony or terrace, sat-TV, parking, pier and boas...”
Perhaps visitors might be more than a little wary of this residenza, what with the heating with a mind of its own and something squirmy waiting at the pier...
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Book notes No. 47: Farewell Waltz, Milan Kundera
Farewell Waltz has, like far too many books, been languishing on my Amazon wish list for a long, long, long time. Its salvation from wish list oblivion had its seeds in the small French town of Salins-les-Bains, where I found myself curing in the famous salt waters at the end of August. Part-way through my session, I realised that I was surrounded by lady octogenarians, all bingo wings and flower-sculpture bonnets de bain, oo-ing and oh-la-laah-ing their way through an aquarobics session. And my sauna-high brain instantly connected to that immortal scene in the Hollywood version of Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being involving Juliette Binoche, Daniel Day-Lewis, and a number of women taking a fitness class beside a Communist-era spa-pool. Minus the flower-sculpture bonnets de bain.
That I should later finally choose to 1-click on Farewell Waltz was, then, inevitable. And that I should enjoy it so much that I stayed up very late, and in the morning shunned company over my cappuccino to finish it, was also inevitable.
Farewell Waltz is a dark comedy involving a small number of characters connected to a Communist-era spa some distance from Prague. Ruzena, a spa attendant, is pregnant, and has decided that a famous jazz trumpeter with whom she had a one-night stand, is to be named the father in preference to her adoring no-hoper boyfriend. Klima is the poor musician so accused, and he is married to the disastrously beautiful and equally disastrously jealous Kamilla. Dr Skreta is a spa gynaecologist famous for his miraculous cure for infertility. Jakub, whose past has seen him both government-sanctioned executioner and victim, is leaving the country for good, and is in town to say goodbye to his ward, Olga, the daughter of a friend he sent to his death. Then there is Bretlef, a rich American who is at once saint and Don Juan.
Oh yes, and a little blue pill.
Kundera, as usual, beautifully tangles his characters into moral, social, political and emotional knots and still finds time for some trenchant social comment and a spot of jazz.
But there is more. About one-third of the way through the book Kundera stopped me dead in my tracks with his elucidation of something we in Carmine have been wrestling with over the past couple of years - something I thought I could never hope to understand. In the passage in question, Jakub, the character who has suffered so much under Communist rule, but who has also made others suffer, is wrestling with the exact same question:
“The old men merged in his mind with prison guards, examining magistrates, and informers who spied on their neighbours to see if they talked politics while shopping. What drove such people to their sinister occupations? Spite? Certainly, but also the desire for order. Because the desire for order tries to transform the human world into an inorganic reign in which everything goes well, everything functions as a subject of an impersonal will. The desire for order is at the same time a desire for death, because life is a perpetual violation of order. Or, inversely, the desire for order is the virtuous pretext by which man's hatred for man justifies its crimes.”
And now I have it straight.
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Sunday, 30 October 2011
Sunday morning
Another beautiful bright, dry day in Carmine Superiore. But while summer lingers in the sunshine on the churchyard, winter is edging through Carmine's narrow alleyways.
Sunday morning view from the Chiesa di San Gottardo,
Carmine Superiore.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Season of sunrises
Cold, hazy and damp. But the torrential rain of the last couple of days seems to have gone away. We're all sending our best wishes to our neighbours in Liguria and Tuscany...
Autumn is now in full swing in Piemonte. Varicoloured leaf displays, snow on the Alps and as I walk Jakob! early in the morning I crunch across carpets of acorns and chestnuts.
From now until spring, I have my own secret season, which I think of as the season of sunrises. During this season, my camera-carrying comings and goings coincide with some spectacular early-morning displays. And today was the first.
Lombardy sunrise.
October 27, 2011
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Plus ça change...
Cold and raining. The latter is good for the garden. The former is good for... ? Fill in the blank if you can. I can't.
Seven years ago, give or take a few hours, I gave birth to my son, AJ. He arrived amid chaos. The House on the Rock was still only half-restored. There was no hot water in the kitchen, no water at all in the bathroom. The entire upper third of the house was still unplastered, and unelectrified - unexplored you might even say. Our very own heart of darkness. And the place had not much in the way of heating either.
In the weeks and months that followed through the chill of the Carmine winter, AJ slept with us on a mattress on the floor.
As much as tiny babies do, that is.
Which isn't much.
Of that time I remember mostly the cold at night. I remember sitting up in bed in the wee small hours, propped against a freezing external wall, with his little body at the breast or in my lap, cocooned in a blanket. I remember marvelling at M's ability to snooze on through vigorous smacking of infantile lips and vigorous attempts at burping, which I now recall never, ever succeeded. Oh, and the cholic.
I remember feeling that I was the only person alive that was awake at that moment. In the darkness of 3am, not a light lit. Not a waking soul to share the responsibility of this little life with. I remember the only thing that kept me going through the sleep deprivation all ordinary parents share was the fact of this little boy. Just the fact of him.
In the wee small hours of last Sunday night in bed, I'm cold, disastrously tired and awake. I'm propped against a freezing external wall. I've got pins and needles but I'm riveted to the spot by the warm weight of a not-so-small body asleep upright on my lap. I'm riveted by the desire not to wake my asthmatic son into yet another fit of uncontrollable coughing. I'm marvelling through gritted teeth- so-to-speak - at M's ability to snooze on through lights off and on, the too-frequent application of spray medications, the making of cups of tea to keep me awake and drinking chocolate to make him sleep. The inevitable fits of uncontrollable coughing that make me feel I should be heading down The Hill towards Pronto Soccorso.
I'm feeling that I'm the only person awake in the inky blackness of this night. Not a waking soul to share the responsibility of this not-so-little life with. And I know that the only thing that keeps me doing this is the fact of this growing child. Just the fact of him.
Happy birthday, AJ. Truly, an indisputable fact of my life.
Seven years ago, give or take a few hours, I gave birth to my son, AJ. He arrived amid chaos. The House on the Rock was still only half-restored. There was no hot water in the kitchen, no water at all in the bathroom. The entire upper third of the house was still unplastered, and unelectrified - unexplored you might even say. Our very own heart of darkness. And the place had not much in the way of heating either.
In the weeks and months that followed through the chill of the Carmine winter, AJ slept with us on a mattress on the floor.
As much as tiny babies do, that is.
Which isn't much.
Of that time I remember mostly the cold at night. I remember sitting up in bed in the wee small hours, propped against a freezing external wall, with his little body at the breast or in my lap, cocooned in a blanket. I remember marvelling at M's ability to snooze on through vigorous smacking of infantile lips and vigorous attempts at burping, which I now recall never, ever succeeded. Oh, and the cholic.
I remember feeling that I was the only person alive that was awake at that moment. In the darkness of 3am, not a light lit. Not a waking soul to share the responsibility of this little life with. I remember the only thing that kept me going through the sleep deprivation all ordinary parents share was the fact of this little boy. Just the fact of him.
In the wee small hours of last Sunday night in bed, I'm cold, disastrously tired and awake. I'm propped against a freezing external wall. I've got pins and needles but I'm riveted to the spot by the warm weight of a not-so-small body asleep upright on my lap. I'm riveted by the desire not to wake my asthmatic son into yet another fit of uncontrollable coughing. I'm marvelling through gritted teeth- so-to-speak - at M's ability to snooze on through lights off and on, the too-frequent application of spray medications, the making of cups of tea to keep me awake and drinking chocolate to make him sleep. The inevitable fits of uncontrollable coughing that make me feel I should be heading down The Hill towards Pronto Soccorso.
I'm feeling that I'm the only person awake in the inky blackness of this night. Not a waking soul to share the responsibility of this not-so-little life with. And I know that the only thing that keeps me doing this is the fact of this growing child. Just the fact of him.
Happy birthday, AJ. Truly, an indisputable fact of my life.
Monday, 24 October 2011
Autumn colours
Five degrees at 8am. Starting bright but ending cold, grey and frankly rather too English for my liking.
Carmine window.
October 2011
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Friday, 14 October 2011
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Wise words
Today, I am attending the 25th wedding anniversary celebrations of my oldest friend.
Twenty-five years of marriage is a long time these days, and I admire her and her husband for seeing it through, together, in a world when so many couples just don't bother to fight when the going gets tough. There will be a service at the little Norman church in her village in England's West Country, at which she and her husband will renew their vows in preparation for the next 25 years. They have done me the honour of asking me to read the lesson. Given my marital record, I'm not entirely sure the request wasn't either ironic or didactic, or, knowing her, a little bit of both:
"...clothe yourselves with love...and be thankful". Amen.
And my hearty congratulations to C & N : May we all have the pleasure of coming back to celebrate your Golden Wedding when the time comes.
Twenty-five years of marriage is a long time these days, and I admire her and her husband for seeing it through, together, in a world when so many couples just don't bother to fight when the going gets tough. There will be a service at the little Norman church in her village in England's West Country, at which she and her husband will renew their vows in preparation for the next 25 years. They have done me the honour of asking me to read the lesson. Given my marital record, I'm not entirely sure the request wasn't either ironic or didactic, or, knowing her, a little bit of both:
Colossians 3.12-17
“As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
"...clothe yourselves with love...and be thankful". Amen.
And my hearty congratulations to C & N : May we all have the pleasure of coming back to celebrate your Golden Wedding when the time comes.
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Translators' gaffes No. 1: Come to Cannobio - where the wildlife is
Sixteen degrees at 8am. They tell me these beautiful, sunny, dry Indian summer days are just about over, and autumn is waiting at the turn of the week.
I idly picked up a Cannobio accommodation brochure the other day, and my editor's eyes alighted on this particular description:
Perhaps visitors might be more than a little wary of this residenza, what with the heating with a mind of its own and something squirmy waiting at the pier...
I idly picked up a Cannobio accommodation brochure the other day, and my editor's eyes alighted on this particular description:
“...The flats are all endowed with equipped kitchen, autonomous heating, ample private balcony or terrace, sat-TV, parking, pier and boas...”
Perhaps visitors might be more than a little wary of this residenza, what with the heating with a mind of its own and something squirmy waiting at the pier...
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Book notes No. 47: Farewell Waltz, Milan Kundera
Farewell Waltz has, like far too many books, been languishing on my Amazon wish list for a long, long, long time. Its salvation from wish list oblivion had its seeds in the small French town of Salins-les-Bains, where I found myself curing in the famous salt waters at the end of August. Part-way through my session, I realised that I was surrounded by lady octogenarians, all bingo wings and flower-sculpture bonnets de bain, oo-ing and oh-la-laah-ing their way through an aquarobics session. And my sauna-high brain instantly connected to that immortal scene in the Hollywood version of Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being involving Juliette Binoche, Daniel Day-Lewis, and a number of women taking a fitness class beside a Communist-era spa-pool. Minus the flower-sculpture bonnets de bain.
That I should later finally choose to 1-click on Farewell Waltz was, then, inevitable. And that I should enjoy it so much that I stayed up very late, and in the morning shunned company over my cappuccino to finish it, was also inevitable.
Farewell Waltz is a dark comedy involving a small number of characters connected to a Communist-era spa some distance from Prague. Ruzena, a spa attendant, is pregnant, and has decided that a famous jazz trumpeter with whom she had a one-night stand, is to be named the father in preference to her adoring no-hoper boyfriend. Klima is the poor musician so accused, and he is married to the disastrously beautiful and equally disastrously jealous Kamilla. Dr Skreta is a spa gynaecologist famous for his miraculous cure for infertility. Jakub, whose past has seen him both government-sanctioned executioner and victim, is leaving the country for good, and is in town to say goodbye to his ward, Olga, the daughter of a friend he sent to his death. Then there is Bretlef, a rich American who is at once saint and Don Juan.
Oh yes, and a little blue pill.
Kundera, as usual, beautifully tangles his characters into moral, social, political and emotional knots and still finds time for some trenchant social comment and a spot of jazz.
But there is more. About one-third of the way through the book Kundera stopped me dead in my tracks with his elucidation of something we in Carmine have been wrestling with over the past couple of years - something I thought I could never hope to understand. In the passage in question, Jakub, the character who has suffered so much under Communist rule, but who has also made others suffer, is wrestling with the exact same question:
“The old men merged in his mind with prison guards, examining magistrates, and informers who spied on their neighbours to see if they talked politics while shopping. What drove such people to their sinister occupations? Spite? Certainly, but also the desire for order. Because the desire for order tries to transform the human world into an inorganic reign in which everything goes well, everything functions as a subject of an impersonal will. The desire for order is at the same time a desire for death, because life is a perpetual violation of order. Or, inversely, the desire for order is the virtuous pretext by which man's hatred for man justifies its crimes.”
And now I have it straight.
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