The Italian word for "ticket" is "biglietto" and there are various kinds of biglietti for all sorts of purposes. 

When you buy bread at the bakery counter in the supermarket outside town, first you get a biglietto from the little machine and then when your biglietto number is called, you go to the counter and get your bread. When you go to the post office, you get a biglietto from a little machine and then when your biglietto number is called, you go to the counter and get told to fuck off because you can neither send nor receive the mail you want. It is very orderly.

When you get a coffee, sometimes you pay first and get a biglietto from the cashier that you then present to the barista, who makes you a coffee. Sometimes, however, you get the coffee first from the barista and pay later. There is no way to tell which method any particular place uses, but if you are desperate and deprived enough, you can figure it out eventually.

When you take the train from Pietrasanta, there are no actual humans who work in our miniscule and unimportant train station, so you buy your biglietto from a machine at the station. Then you are supposed to go to another machine out by the tracks and stick the end of your ticket in it to be "validated." On the train itself, sometimes a conductor comes through and checks everyone's ticket and sometimes they don't. When I went with Jonathan to Pisa two weeks ago to watch him give his presentation in his mock trail for International Law, I forgot to validate my ticket and the conductor did come through checking, but she didn't care about my lack of validation. "They never care about the validation," Jonathan said and it is true.

When you park your car on the street, there is usually a machine somewhere around fairly nearby where you buy a biglietto for a certain amount of time to leave on your dashboard. You have to estimate how long you are going to be parked and, given our leisurely pace of life, it is prudent to overestimate that. By a lot.

All the parking biglietto machines work a bit differently so that when you park someplace new, it is always a bit touch-and-go trying to figure out the new machine and get back to your car with your biglietto before the parking patrol comes by and gives you the other kind of parking ticket.

When you park at a big parking garage or an airport parking lot, you get a biglietto when you go in and then you have to remember to pay at a machine somewhere else before you try to leave in your car at the exit gate, where there are no human attendants, but only a little machine that takes your already paid biglietto and then, for some reason, gives it back to you -- a little souvenir of your stay. I wander around with all sorts of used biglietti in my coat pockets and the cup holder of the car, like confetti. I'm pretty much always ready for a parade.

Jonathan came back from his trip to the US on Friday. His plane was an hour late leaving Newark and we were worried that he would miss his connecting flight in Zuruch for Firenze.

"If I miss my connection to Firenze," he texted me, "I'm going to see if they will send me to Pisa instead." Pisa is much closer to home than Firenze is. He had tried to buy tickets to leave and return from Pisa when planning this trip, but there were no workable flights from there that fit his schedule.

But he made his connecting flight in the nick of time and I jumped immediately into the car to drive the hour and a half to Firenze to get him. I got there just as the flight from Zurich was supposed to be touching down. But the info board said the flight was going to be 20 minutes late. Then it changed to 40 minutes late. Then 60, which is quite a lot for a 90 minute flight that is already in the air, so I settled in to wait.

At last, Jonathan texted that they were on the ground, but not in Firenze. They were in Pisa.

They had been diverted because of fog. So since he was already in Pisa, we decided that he would take the train to Pietrasanta and I would drive back there as quickly as I could and pick him up at the train station there.

Only when I tried to pay my parking biglietto at the little machine, the machine didn't seem to want my money. I tried everything -- turning the biglietto upside down, putting it in backwards, entering my license plate number into the keypad, inserting my credit card anyway. Nothing worked. So I got in the car and tried exiting the parking lot with the unpaid biglietto, but the exit gate was unmoved.

So I had to do the Exit Gate Backup Of Shame and then I re-parked the car and wandered forlornly around the airport until I found a man working in some sort of office.

"Excuse me," I said, "but this ticket is not functioning." ("Mi scusi, ma questo biglietto non funziona.")

He took the ticket and looked at it for a minute.

"Signora," he said very solemnly, "this is a biglietto for the train to Pisa."

"Ah," I said. "Well, that would explain it then."

In my defense, I need a lot of biglietti and, although they are all different, they are not that different.

But Jonathan is at last back home now. He brought a suitcase full of New York bagels and his old viola from high school. We stopped at the supermarket and bought smoked salmon before heading back up the hill to lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea.

Saturday, we went to lunch at the pub. Alice was there with Celeste. At one point, singing broke out. Jonathan is very happy to be back home.

 

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."

 

It is a blustery day and from where I am sitting, if I turn my head I can see the waves breaking in frothy white rows at the beach.

We spent New Year's Eve at the pub -- a more melancholy evening than it was a year ago. A year ago, Mirio came to our table and joined us and welcomed us to the family of the regulars. That night we first met Almo and finally learned Renata's name and a man that we had never seen before -- or since -- grabbed Jonathan in the sort of passionate and loving embrace that betokens many, many bottles of wine.

But there has been much death and other sadness in this past year and, for all the food and wine and fireworks, the party was a subdued affair. Daniele and Allice were long gone before midnight came.

And now January is here. We have yet another rental car, but still no driver's license for Jonathan or visa for me. The police will supposedly do a surprise check to see if I actually live here, but since we don't know when they are coming, we don't have any way of making sure that we will be home when they do. But I guess one excuse is probably as good as another for them to get out of the office and enjoy a ride up the lovely Via Capriglia.

We went into Firenze on Wednesday to go to a van Gogh show and then to lunch and then the Palazzo Pitti.

But we spoke only Italian to each other at lunch to keep from interacting with the loud English-speaking tourists seated next to us. For now, it feels like all we need is just the two of us. We hibernate together up here in our aerie, watching the surf break and the lights glitter down below us on the plain. At night, especially, it seems like we are very high up in the air.

I have taken some pictures of some of the doors here at the house. It seemed seasonally appropriate.

 

 

 

The rain comes in waves these days. In between storms, the view is very clear and the sea is ink blue. During the storms, the mists roll in and it seems like we are alone on an island with cherry trees and new figs and lavender and no one else in the whole world. It is warm and yellow inside the house and outside the rain falls gently and the clouds gather around us and we can't even see the hills just behind the house.

The rain has washed away all the wisteria blossoms and the red poppies by the side of the Via Capriglia hang their heads down like beautiful ladies all left heartbroken.

At the pub, we have become part of the furniture and when the power went out in the rains last Friday, Jonathan called down and Alice told him how to turn it back on again.

Mimmo has been asking around about the fur near our front gate and the consensus now seems to be emerging that it is not wolves after all that have left it, but wild boar, who apparently like to scratch themselves against metal gates whenever they get the chance. This does not strike me as particularly comforting news. The wild boar are just as vicious as the wolves, but somehow I imagine the wolves to be swifter in dispatching their victims -- a small consolation, maybe, but a consolation nonetheless.

We went to the opera in Firenze Friday night -- Don Giovanni. The performances were amazing, of course -- one does not end up singing opera in Italy by being second rate. But for me, everything was haunted by echoes of other summers when Jonathan and I drove down to Santa Fe to the opera there -- a road trip across the Sangre de Cristos and then dropping down into Santa Fe for a night or two at Garrett's Desert Inn (which no longer exists) and a visit to our usual café, our usual bookstores, our usual restaurant. We have an umbrella here with us now that we bought one rainy afternoon at the Five and Dime on the plaza -- it got broken last week, but I will not throw it away.

And then the opera at the Santa Fe Opera House open to the night at the edge of town, where we would be cold together in the high desert air and dazzled and the sky was always clear sapphire blue. Once a man at the table next to us in our usual restaurant leaned over and asked us if we were married and for how long. "Why do you ask?" we said. "Because he looks happy," he said, pointing at Jonathan. But we were both happy then and, in my memory, the operas that we saw glow and sparkle and I remember sleeping very close to Jonathan on those nights to stay warm.

Jonathan and I blew into Firenze today -- hoping for one last visit before the summer tourist season roils in. That horse, however, turned out to be already out of the bag. We threaded our way carefully through crowds and I felt sorry for the people who only get to see lovely, stony, serene Firenze all filled up this way. I began to feel guilty, even, that we were there. We, after all, were just parts of their crowds -- they who perhaps only had Firenze this one time in their lives. 

So we visited a few of our best friends in the Uffizi (via the joy of our annual pass that means we don't pay and we don't wait in line -- which now feels like cheating somehow. Although one of the big selling points of the pass is that you don't have to stand in line, but just go right in whenever you want, there has never before actually been a line to cut to the head of -- until today.) 

Then we went over to Zecchi, the lovely art supply store on a tiny side street near the Duomo. After drooling over the jars of powdered pigments for all these months, I finally decided to take the plunge and buy some.

The staff at Zecchi are very kind and very helpful and patient, explaining things to me and helping me choose colors. They even took the time to specially make me a little jar of cadmium yellow because there were only big ones in stock. They let me try all the brushes to see which ones I liked best. Everyone so jovial.

But there was a woman in there, who started shouting at one of the other salesmen, the head clerk, I think. She was being just awful to him -- rude and demeaning and preemptory -- because she couldn't get the wifi to work on her phone. He was trying to tell her how to connect to the store wifi and she wouldn't even let him talk -- she kept interrupting him, wouldn't listen to what he was trying to tell her, but was just berating him because she couldn't check her email in the store to find her supply list of the things she needed to buy for an art course she was taking for a week.

It was horrible. Jonathan and I were in an agony of mortification, because of course she was speaking English and, although it was hard to tell because of her anger, she sounded American to me. I was paralyzed with embarrassment for my whole native country.

She stormed out and in the silence that followed her exit, Jonathan and I just stood there, feeling so much shame. I apologized in my best (very broken) Italian to the men working there for all Americans. They were, of course, lovely. "There is no problem with Americans," the head clerk said to us. "There is just a problem with her." We all commiserated together. Then we turned our attentions to more pleasant topics -- the different types of spolvero paper and their various uses. Nice men so happy to share their extensive knowledge of art materials with us.

And then, lo and behold, she was back! She had her list. She wanted to shop. So the head clerk she had been berating helped her with all her purchases, subdued, but correct and perfectly civil. She paid (rather rudely). She left. 

We stood frozen as she made her way out of the shop -- the three men who worked there and Jonathan and I, no one moving or saying a word. I had my back to the door, but I could see the head clerk's eyes as he watched her leave, watched the door close behind her, watched her walk off. Then his body relaxed. "It's OK," he said to me. "She's Irish."

We all laughed. 

They gave us a 10% discount on our entire purchase, for no particular reason -- maybe just for not being her. 

 

It takes us a bit less than two hours to drive to Firenze, depending on traffic. While Venice seems to be all soft light and water, Firenze is red tile and stone. I prefer it, if only because it is "our" city. We have our regular parking garage with our regular bakery near it. We have "our" museum -- the Uffizi. We know some restaurants we like and where the English-language bookstore is. (Well, Jonathan knows -- I have no sense of direction at all and have been relying on the boys to navigate in the car ever since they were still strapped in child seats in the back. Even now, we sometimes talk about the time, about five years ago, when we were lost and I suddenly knew where I was. It was glorious! But mostly Jonathan knows where to go and I hold his hand.)

But my favorite place in Firenze is Zecchi, the art supply store.

It is small (smaller than this wide-angle picture makes it look) and crowded with pencils and paints and jars holding brushes of all kinds jammed in together in an only vaguely ordered confusion. There is very little room to move around because beautiful things in tubes and boxes and piles fill all the space.

Behind the tumbled chaos on the counter in the back is a whole wall of jars of powdered pigments -- every color, but heavy on all the gradations of burnt red that are the colors of Tuscany. They seem like the ingredients for magical elixirs and I suppose that in a way they are. 

We went there on Wednesday and I bought more pencils for my drawing class and then we went to the Museo degli Innocenti to see the Escher exhibit, "Italy as Inspiration for the work of M.C. Escher."

We've been saying ever since we moved into the rustic farmhouse that it is like living in an Escher drawing. It turns out that we were more correct than we knew. Escher lived in Italy for 13 years -- he got married in Viareggio, which is so close to us that we go there to get our favorite bread.

His early drawings of landscapes around here are absolutely realistic renderings of the places and look like, well, Escher drawings, with nonsensical stairways and strange contorted perspectives because that is how this place actually is -- defying logic and even gravity. There were photographs paired with the scenes he drew and they are exact matches.

So my big reaction to the show was, "Aha! I knew it!" Like I have somehow caught Italy red-handed in the act.

Chestnut season, you will be relieved to hear, seems to be ending here in Capriglia-by-the-Sea. We still get some nuts crashing down through the leaves, sounding much bigger than they are, but it is handfuls a day now rather than hundreds and we feel that we can once again go outside without fear or protective headwear.

On Wednesday, we drove into Firenze and bought an annual pass to the Uffizi. Now we can go in whenever we want without waiting in line or paying. On future visits we will perhaps stay longer, perhaps look at more. But this time we hightailed it straight to my favorite piece in the museum -- a Botticelli Madonna that no one ever pays any attention to because it is in the same room as The Birth of Venus, on the wall opposite so that the crowds are facing the other way, busy taking pictures of the goddess on the half-shell with their phones, and I have the already heart-broken Madonna to myself. She seems to know, even with the chubby baby still on her lap, the whole bloody story of what is yet to become of her child.

I cried, of course, standing there at the back of the sea of I-Phones. Jonathan and I stayed so long looking at her that a few people in the crowd even noticed us and wandered over to take a phone picture before walking off. Then we went to see the Caravaggios and then to lunch.

Firenze is filled with people speaking English, which sounds startling now when we encounter it in the wild. Many of them looked hot or tired or slightly annoyed and I suspect that many of them were not having a very good time. I remember the first time I came to Italy, when I was a teenager here with my family, not having a very good time and at one point -- in Venice -- finally rebelling and refusing to go on yet another tour-group excursion to see yet another required marvel that I didn't understand. I claimed not to feel well, demanded to be left to sleep in the hotel, and when I was sure the coast was clear, went out by myself into the streets near the Piazza San Marco and bought a basket of fresh cherries and ate them. I still remember those cherries fondly.

I also remember thinking that Italy might be a fun place if I wasn't with my parents on a forced march of tourist sites with the crowds and the heat, so perhaps I am projecting my own remembered feelings onto the beleaguered Americans snapping photos of Venus in the Uffizi to look at later, I guess, somewhere cool and quiet where they could sit down.

Back at home, we went down to the pub, where Daniele dished out helpings of risotto for all the usual reprobates on the terrace. Daniele and Alice give away so much free food there out under the tree leaves that I don't see how they possibly manage to stay in business. The risotto was made with gorgonzola and prosciutto and was one of the best things I have ever put in my mouth.