Jonathan and I went in to Firenze Saturday evening to see Yo-Yo Ma play some Bach cello suites. It was one of the most profound artistic experiences of my life.

There was nothing on the stage -- just a chair. And he himself didn't do any talking -- just walked out carrying his cello and sat down and started to play.

And it was like being hit by a tidal wave of purest beauty -- an intensely physical sensation, sitting still there in my auditorium seat, of love. I felt it -- all in a rush -- in every part of my body, but most especially in my heart. Jonathan cried.

It's a strange thing to be allowed to watch a man sit on a stage in the light and commune directly with his gods. It seems like that should be an entirely private affair, such an intimate moment -- something that we should not look upon with unshielded eyes.

But I think the thing that great artists have is that they can touch their gods and they can also give you the feeling that you are, for the space of that moment, touching them, too. It was like he was giving each one of us, personally, the gift of transcendence. And now my heart is changed forever.

"I always thought you were a little bit crazy to cry in front of that Botticelli Madonna in the Uffizi," Jonathan said later on the way home. "But now I understand."

I have reached the stage of my life where divesting myself of everything I own has enormous appeal. There is just something about having to physically lift up all of your possessions yourself that makes your treasures seem so much less precious. In ten and a half months, we will leave our hidden paradise here in the woods for a different paradise in a different place -- right in heart of bustling downtown Capriglia-by-the-Sea (pop. 255 people, counting us). And we will once again have to lift up all our shit.

In preparation for this, I have been very slowly ridding myself of books that I paid $30K to transport all the way across eight time zones, but now -- who was I kidding? -- will never read again. There is a Little Free Library in the big grocery store just outside town and every time we go there I bring two books to donate. My books are in English, but there is a very international community here and the books almost always have been taken by someone by the next time we go in. It's a slow process, but an oddly satisfying one.

Yesterday when Jonathan was putting out the trash, he found a book that had been left for us in our mailbox. It was from our neighbor Fabio. He left a note saying that he had come across the book in the grocery store LFL and took it for me because it seemed like the sort of thing I would be interested in. Indeed, it was -- so much so that I bought it in 2002 when I lived in the South Pacific and carried it back to the US and kept it for over two decades and shipped it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to Italy ($30K...) before I put it in the grocery store LFL last week.

It is nice to have thoughtful and caring friends who think about me when they come across books I would like. Apparently, I am keeping this one.

We have had another meeting with the owners of the belfry house. And, although we don't yet have a rental contract, we have a verbal agreement that one of these days we will make a written agreement to eventually sign a contract to rent the house. We are very excited about this because it means we will be renting an empty house and will, therefore, have room for all our stuff -- our stuff that I am currently busy donating to the LFL at the grocery store.

The belfry house is lovely -- maybe even slightly larger than this one, but without all the outbuildings and grounds. So no more grape arbor or olive grove with poppies blooming in it or chestnut trees turning golden in the fall and dropping their spiky nut bombs for us to make vanilla-rum chestnut butter with. We are planning to go crazy this fall brining olives and making enough corbezzoli jam to last us for the duration.

But the new house has enough M.C. Escher stairways and topsy-turvy layout to make us feel that now familiar and, frankly, beloved sensation of complete disorientation. We have been inside the belfry house twice now and still can't figure out where all the rooms are. (Jonathan is better at it than I am, but he has a Ph.D. in non-Euclidian higher-dimensional geometry and I feel that gives him an advantage.)

 Before:

After:

Jonathan passed his driver's license test!

 Un Bar Aux Folies Bergère

 

The exceptionally cool and rainy May followed by the last few days of glorious summer warmth has led to two unexpected pieces of magic.

The first is that there were wild porcini mushrooms at the greengrocers this morning. These are not usually in season until the fall, but the seasons are all cattywampus and so the mushrooms have been coaxed into appearing months ahead of schedule. I just finished making some rosemary-infused olive oil (we have masses of rosemary in our garden) and we will sauté the porcini in it and eat them with some of Jonathan's homemade bread. 

And the second piece of magic brought about by the rainy May is that we have an exceptionally abundant number of fireflies this year so that when we are walking in the dark through our olive groves or even along the road from the pub to our house, the air sparkles and shimmers all around us. It is easy to believe that fairies live in the summertime woods.

(photo by Tsuneaki Hiramatsu)

 

Summer is here now. It arrived all of the sudden with great waves of poppies and mosquitos and wild blue skies. We sleep now with the windows wide open with the sounds of the owls hunting in the dark woods and the larks rioting in the cherry tree at dawn.

Today is the Festa della Republica and there is a community potluck picnic here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. We are bringing brownies and deviled eggs, which are exotic foreign delicacies here. We hope.

Saturday night, we lent a hand for the first time at the pub, doing the bills, sitting at the end of a table and trying to keep our arithmetic straight while simultaneously eating and talking to Nonno and participating in the life of our little world with the chaos of Saturday night clamoring all around us.

I once watched a documentary about the MIT Blackjack Team, who won thousands and thousands of dollars counting cards in Las Vegas casinos. The trick was not learning to count cards -- the trick was managing to count cards in the midst of a Las Vegas casino with waitresses offering you drinks and shouting discount prices in your ear and dealers keeping up a constant patter and other players exclaiming over wins and losses and odds. To make the team, potential MIT players had to pass a final test of counting and playing while being distracted by screaming undergraduates.

I bring this up for a reason.

I will just say that the steaks at the pub are 25 euros per kilo and one of the ones ordered Saturday night weighed 1.7 kilos. You do the math.

Fortunately, Jonathan did the math. He does, after all, have a mathematics Ph.D. -- albeit in higher-dimensional geometry. But I think we were OK. We are going again Monday night. If we can be of any help to Daniele and Alice, we want to help. Pray for us.

Then Sunday morning, our beach club opened and we hit the sand. We are Umbrellone #9 this year -- at the back of last year's #10. Sometimes, when I'm having a bad day or a hard time with something, I think to myself, "I want to go home." Then I think, "But where is my home?" and I have some amount of confusion about that. But when I stand in the sea and look out at the far blue horizon, I feel that, wherever home is, I am there.

My new bathing suit arrived at last. It doesn't fit. The top is too small, which has never in my entire life before ever been a problem for me. By turning it upside down, though, with the neck clasp at my back and the back strap around my neck, I can get it to pretty much work -- enough, anyway, to be wearable. So I will be spending the better part of the summer wandering around the Italian coast with my clothes on upside down. It's like I've finally achieved my life's ambition to inhabit the reincarnated spirit of Little Edie Beale.

S-T-A-U-N-C-H.

 

Today marks 1000 days that we have lived in Italy. When we first came here to our rustic farmhouse in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea, we knew no one and understood almost nothing. We were so dazed (by the move) and so dazzled (by the beauty) that it took us a while to get our bearings. We are still getting them, still dazzled.

But we know people now and understand, if not the post office, at least how the grocery store works. We know our butcher and our greengrocers and the people at our olive press and our flour mill. We know our neighbors and their families. We know the old men down at the pub who sit under the shade tree and drink wine and gossip all day. We know Alice and Daniele and are happily waiting for their baby to arrive. We know the baby's name.

Yesterday, Jonathan ran into the owner of the lovely house next to the belfry that we hope to rent for the next ten years. He says that they are happy to rent to us -- so all is well there. We still don't know what the rent will be, but we have our fingers crossed.

We also spoke to our immigration attorney yesterday and she says everything is good to go for my citizenship application even though only one of my state-level non-criminal records has come so far. She is going to check in person today to make sure that is true and get back to us.

The poppies are blooming in our olive groves now and the olive trees themselves are covered in flower buds that are just about to open. The chestnut trees are starting to bloom. The cherry tree is alive with joyous songbirds eating all the cherries. I have an Italian lesson later this morning. Jonathan is busy right now baking bread.

Our cherry trees are filled with ripe cherries that we can almost reach from the window in the hallway, but because of the steepness of the mountain terrain here, are at least 50 feet above the ground and, therefore, completely unreachable.

Everyone in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea has been working in their yards during this sun-filled weekend so the air outside smells of fresh-cut grass and pine trees and jasmine.

 

We are still wrestling with the Arkansas state bureaucracy, trying to get my non-existent criminal record and the ever-elusive apostille. Who knew that petty government officials in Arkansas (ground zero for denigrating all education except Bible study) would have so much difficulty handling official documents?

Meanwhile, Jonathan is scheduled to take his on-road driving test in his now years-long quest for an Italian driver's license. Whenever we go anywhere, he practices driving according to the official regulations as mandated by law. This gets us honked at a lot and overtaken by cars behind us who figure it's probably worth risking death by passing us on a dangerously narrow and winding cliffside road rather than continuing to drive behind an obvious madman.

So to cheer ourselves up, we have made another trip to the flour mill and also one to the cannoli shop by the beach in Viareggio, where everything is beautiful.

And we went to meet the owners and see the house with the view of the church belfry that we hope to be able to rent. It is a gorgeous little house with starlings fluttering around it and a dazzling view of the sea from almost every window. From the top bedroom, you can, indeed, look directly over at the bell hanging in the bell tower. We are anxiously waiting now to see if they are willing to rent it to us and if we will be able to afford it. I am trying not to get my hopes too high. But, honestly, both of us were smitten and we may, once again, act rashly in pursuit of beauty.

 

The final step  in my application for Italian citizenship is providing proof that I have not committed any (heinous) crimes in the US. I have already submitted proof of that on the national level, but I am now in the midst of trying to prove it for every state where I've ever lived. There have been a lot of them. And given the bureaucratic difficulty that I'm having getting proof of my blamelessness, I cannot even imagine how complicated the process would be if I had, in fact, committed crimes. The mind reels.

The people in Colorado say they sent the completed forms to my brother's house in Washington, but they never arrived and there is no record of them anywhere in the postal system. So we had to start all over again with that and have our fingers crossed that the second time is the charm. The people in Arkansas did send the forms to my brother, but neglected to include the dreaded Apostille, without which the Italian government will not accept the forms as legitimate. We called the office in Arkansas (long-distance overseas phone rates, btw) and they said at first that we hadn't requested the Apostille and then transferred our call to a supervisor who didn't answer the phone. We called back and got a different person who admitted that we had, indeed, requested the Apostille and that they would mail one out to my brother, but not any time soon. We should not hold our breaths.

And when I say that "we" called, what I mean is "Jonathan." Jonathan called. The secret to a happy marriage is to find a partner who will call government offices -- repeatedly -- on your behalf when you yourself Just Can't Any More.

To reward ourselves for wading through so many automated voice mail menus, we then went to the flour mill. This was Jonathan's idea -- that we should start buying our flour straight from the mill, of which there are a few around here, small family mills stone-grinding wheat, but also corn, chickpeas, chestnuts, rice. One of them is housed in an old abbey.

So we went yesterday afternoon to the Angeli mill just outside Pietrasanta and had a lovely chat with the miller (who looked familiar to me) about different types of flours with different amounts of protein and gluten in them. Then he measured out our flour from a big sack into a small bag for us.

"Do you live around here?" he said.

"Yes, in Capriglia."

"Ah, there's such a lovely view from up there."

"Yes -- and we eat well, too, at the pub."

He laughed and his face lit up. "Yes," he said. "You eat well with Daniele cooking. Give him my salutations."

And so maybe I have seen him at the pub and that is why I recognized him. We will know his name soon. Jonathan baked bread from the flour and it was great, so we are going back next week for more. Mark my words: It is just a matter of time before Jonathan "Wouldn't It Be Cool To Make Our Own Olive Oil" Poritz has us growing our own wheat out in the backyard and then taking it ourselves down to our friend at the mill.

About every six months, the big grocery store outside town has a promotion where you get little stamps -- called "bollini" -- with your purchases -- one stamp for every 15 euros you spend. Then you can redeem the stamps for prizes. We are currently saving up to get a Bosch multi-tool for 45 bollini.

The cashiers give out the stamps and clearly have some leeway in this. We have found that if we are polite and friendly, we are often rewarded with an extra stamp or two. And almost all the cashiers will round up if you are within 3 or 4 euros of the next amount to get another stamp. It is fun and friendly.

But there is one cashier who is never fun and friendly no matter what the circumstances. In fact, he is often actively hostile -- slamming your bag of potato chips down on the conveyor belt with particular ferocity, for example. We don't go to him no matter how short his line is. And it is often very short.

But yesterday, Jonathan ran down on his bike to get a couple of bottles of vodka for the limoncello we are making. It was a very slow time of day (post-lunch nap time) and the mean guy was the only cashier working. The total for the vodka came to 29 euros and change -- less than one euro short of the 30 needed to get two bollini. Any other cashier would have rounded up, but the mean guy gave Jonathan just one, which was technically correct. "Technically correct," of course, is the worst kind of correct and, moreover, seems to violate the entire spirit of Italy. It's practically unpatriotic.

But, fine. Whatever.

Jonathan came home with the vodka and the one stamp and I pasted it onto our little stamp sheet.

A couple of hours later, we were together in the kitchen making the limoncello. 

"What's that?" Jonathan said, pointing at the floor.

There were two bollini sitting all by themselves in the middle of the floor. Jonathan doesn't believe it, but I am convinced that this house gave us two bollini to make up for the mean guy having been so, well, mean.

The house is enchanted.

 

This morning we were buying some veg when a massive tour group -- like 50 people -- stopped in to view the store. The store comfortably holds maybe six people -- eight is a crowd. So it was a teeny bit crowded when 50 tourists piled in to watch Jonathan and I choose a red pepper.

Barbara and Sara say this happens all the time. The members of the tour groups take lots of pictures, but never buy anything. They think fresh fruit and veg being on sale is quaint. I do so hope that I looked quaint. I did my best.

Barbara and Sara also gave us another giant load of lemons, so we are making limoncello and lemon marmalade this afternoon.

The rain has cleared off for a bit and the poppies are knocking our eyes out. I ran across a quote from Goethe yesterday -- one that my friend Bill Davis had sent to me when I was living in the South Pacific: "No one walks under palm trees unpunished." I suspect that poppy fields are the same and, therefore, spend an inordinate amount of time trying to propitiate the angry gods. 

 

Eternal optimism is a beautiful hallmark of my character. In other words, I am a chump.

I have ordered a new bathing suit to be sent in the mail in preparation for the summer. I had to order it online to be shipped because the style of bathing suits around here -- every single one, no matter how grandmotherly and modest is the rest of the suit -- is to have only a thin string of dental floss going up your butt, leaving the rest uncovered. Now, I make no judgements about the amount of butt that other people choose to exhibit to the world. You go, girl. But if I were to wear such a suit, I would spend the whole time trying to pick that bit of string out of my butt crack. And I just don't think that would be attractive.

So I ordered this new bathing suit and crossed my fingers that my friends at the Post Office would somehow allow it to come to our house here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea -- perhaps in a moment of inattention. I am following its progress very closely. So far, it has gone to Milan, then to Rome, then back to Milan again. It is now at Milan Malpensa Airport (MXP) -- the international airport in Milan, as opposed to Milan Linate, which is for domestic flights -- waiting to fly out of Italy to god-only-knows where. One thing about our mail -- it certainly gets to see the world. I will update on its whereabouts when/if I get news.

We continue to search for houses to buy. We were offered one that is about halfway down the mountain at a very reasonable price. True, it has no bathroom, but -- on the bright side -- it is surrounded by dense forest which could possibly suffice. We also have a lead on one that is next to the church almost at the level of the belltower. Jonathan thinks that this is a mark against it, but I think it would be lovely to be able to see straight into the belfry and watch the hunchback ringing the bells. Not to mention how much we would probably learn about the habits of bats.

We are going to help out a bit at the pub this summer now that it is getting close to the time when Alice's baby is due. We will be in charge of adding up all the bills and doing the money on nights when it is very busy and crowded. This will now make the second time in my life when I have ended up working in a bar just because I was around all the time anyway. The first time was in North Carolina at The Cave and The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato is based on that. If I ever write another book about our time here (after the one that I'm currently writing about our first thousand days), I will call it Barflies in the Belfry.