A podcast with me on it is up at the New Books Network is up at https://newbooksnetwork.com/outrage

I will never hear it because the sound of my own voice makes me retch. Also, God only knows what bullshit I said in the heat of the moment. Fortunately, it's all a blur.

It's a shame, though, because the host had a fabulous Irish accent and the whole time, I thought that maybe I was secretly talking to Saoirse Ronan, although the possibility that Saoirse Ronan has a secret double life as a scholar of (according to her bio) "post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with deep analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars" is admittedly slim.

 

Okay. So I don't want to belabor the point, but DAMN, y'all -- it's HOT!!! This is the report of actual current weather conditions as they are at 5:10 p.m. our time.

Now, I just want to say, by way of excuse in case I seem whiny about this, that we do not have air-conditioning here and also (to re-iterate) there was a big SNAKE sunning itself on my front porch last weekend. 

"What does the snake have to do with anything?" you may ask.

Look, it's hot. We are all just going to have to significantly lower our expectations with regard to productivity, comprehension, and coherence. 

 

We are waiting to acclimate to the heat now and lie together side-by-side in bed gently sweating through the night. The night air through the open windows is heavy with jasmine.

As a consequence, we are happy to hear the recent news about new studies which seem to indicate that afternoon naps have substantial health benefits. It is always comforting to have your vices affirmed by medical science.

 

The reception for my new book happened Saturday afternoon down at the pub, out on the terrace under the tree leaves. As Jonathan and I left the house to go to it, we ran into (not literally, thank god) a big snake sunning itself on our porch. We decided (not immediately, I admit) to view it as a good omen -- the adrenalin certainly helps to put you into the pepped-up party mood and the screaming warms up the vocal cords wonderfully.

Because I have truly debilitating stage fright, fortuitously combined with truly abysmal Italian language skills, I wrote out the presentation in English (and also, you know, the book itself), but Jonathan did the translation of the presentation into Italian and then gave the presentation speaking as me. It was lovely. He did all the labor while I just sat and gazed at him adoringly. Easy peasy. The we all ate a lovely buffet that Daniele and Alice had put out for the occasion. Also, I had my hand kissed for the first non-facetious time ever in my life by an elderly European gentleman. It was pretty swoony, I have to say. Not everyone could get away with it.

But now I am ready to go back to being part of the furniture, which is how I like my life best. In furtherance of this, I have been taking long afternoon naps so as to preclude any future achievements that would end up in public receptions. I can't accomplish too much if I spend all my time drooling into my pillow. A clever tactic.

Besides which it is very hot. Very, very hot. Mimmo is a bit worried about the olives. It is too hot too soon for them. The trees have lots of baby olives the size and color of peas on the branches now, but if we don't get rain soon, he tells us that the baby olives could all drop off. This would break my heart.

And not just mine. The weather made for a bad harvest around here last year and put a real strain on the olive farmers. Olives have been cultivated on this land for at least two thousand years, but global climate change may be bringing it all crashing to an end -- not just the olives, but a whole way of life. None of us had anything that we can do about it personally and individually -- it is beyond our control. So I just watch the sky for signs of rain and hope.

 

The official publication day of my new book is tomorrow and the first publicity about it has appeared. It's kind of exciting!

http://page99test.blogspot.com/

The police arrived here unannounced on Tuesday. 

This, of course, triggered in me the old dread -- not "What have I done wrong?", but instead, "What of the many things that I've done wrong have I -- at last -- been caught at?" 

It turned out that they only wanted to verify that I actually live where I say that I live as part of one of my many applications to continue living here. There have been numerous applications, all of which exist in a netherworld of Italian bureaucratic limbo. And so neither Jonathan (who speaks Italian) nor I (who tries her very best to speak Italian) actually completely comprehend what it was all about.

All we know is that the police can get into our security gate without us letting them in, that I have a valid US passport with a picture that still looks like me, and that Jonathan's outfit of neon orange sports socks paired with Birkenstocks are humorous enough to engender good feeling even among initially stern-faced servants of the law, who (try as they might) cannot manage to maintain a straight face in the presence of such sartorial splendor. 

The entire town of lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea is buried in blooming jasmine (as is our house) these days. This is a small place and it is not an exaggeration to say "the entire town" is doing something. During the time that we have lived here, when Jonathan and I take our evening walks, we have processed through different seasons -- the season of chestnuts, the season of sea views, the season of jasmine. And I feel like we (we who in spite of everything cling to this forlorn and lovely mountainside) have all been through them together.

I try to photograph the poppies that are blooming all among our olive trees here at the house. They glow along with the dandelions and the tall grass and the wildflowers that Mimmo leaves untouched for our delight. But no picture that I take seems to capture the moment of wonder I have every morning when I see them.

 

Last night Daniele told us about the time he ran the Rome Marathon. This was many years ago, before he and Alice were married, before they had even started to date or knew each other very well. The race was just about to start when he ran (not literally) into her. It was then that she first gave him her phone number. But he had nothing to write it down with at that moment. Then the gun went off to start the race. 

"For 26 miles!!!" he said. "For 26 miles while I ran I said that number over and over and over in my head so that I would not forget it!" He told us the number. He still remembers it.

We discovered a wasp nest up near the mailbox this morning. They are hideous-looking beasts, menacing black and almost as big as my thumb. 

"Oh, no," Jonathan said, "now we won't be able to get our mail!" 

Then we laughed and laughed.

 

This one time in college, my friend Katrina had a gigantic fight with her boyfriend. She says that afterwards it was like a red mist rose up and the next thing she knew, she was standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a disposable razor in her hand and only one eyebrow. 

These things happen. The eyebrow eventually grew back and, in the meantime, Katrina looked really rather chic.

In a not completely dissimilar episode, I gave myself a haircut last Tuesday. I, however, do not look rather chic. I look like someone who gave herself a haircut in the bathroom mirror without really thinking things through. I comfort myself with the knowledge that, like Katrina's eyebrow, it will grow back eventually. In the meantime, I am happy to say that I recently bought a hat.

We met with the immigration lawyer on Monday and learned that I will have to pass an Italian language test sometime soon. If I am tested on things said by drunken marble workers in bars, I am set. If not, I am toast. So my new Italian tutor came up to the house on Friday to meet with me and assess my skill level. She had quite an entertaining drive up the hair-raising Via Capriglia and eventually just abandoned her car at a convenient stopping place by the side of the road and decided to walk the rest of the way up to the house. The Via Capriglia can have that effect on people. We have decided to meet via Skype from now on. (There are major doubts about my language skills, but my driving nerves are clearly Grade A.)

The poppies have reached our grounds now and a rose bush has appeared out of nowhere covered in deep red blossoms. The jasmine all around the house has begun to flower. It is blooming all over the village and tonight we saw the first honeysuckle.

 

The cherry trees outside have gone from bare branches to blossoms to ripe cherries in the space of only a month. The cherries themselves, alas, are not very tasty. Friends visiting here last weekend from Switzerland tell us that these cherries are used to make excellent homemade schnapps. The possibility of Jonathan and I managing to make distilled alcohol in our own home without accidently poisoning ourselves in relatively low, so we are giving the schnapps a pass. Songbirds with blushing pink throats fill the branches, pecking at the fruit and singing happily. So we have decided to think of the cherry trees as just very large, very lovely bird feeders.

Down at the pub, Daniele is also feeling the spring -- he is experimenting and feeding us all with the outcome. Two nights ago, we had a lovely penne with a creamy tomato basil sauce with exactly the right amount of hot pepper to make it sing. And then last night, we were gifted with the first fabulous pizza of the season -- anchovies and zucchini flowers. Daniele wants all the world to eat and to be happy. There are worse ambitions.

 

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.

 

The wisteria have come now into all their voluptuous gorgeousness. The arbor has a roof made of them and a wall made of a hillside of wildflowers. The light underneath flickers and there is a constant drone of very fat and lazy bees.

The little lizards have come back now that it is warm again. They are sunning themselves on the walkways and on the grape arbor, which is just beginning to have leaves, and they flick away when we get near. They are charming as long as they stay out of my bed.

The old men at the pub have mostly moved outside again now, under the big leafy tree that shades most of the front terrace. In the afternoons, from up here under the wisteria, I can hear them laughing down there, adding another note to the riotous birdsong.

The red poppies are out in great swathes all along the Via Capriglia. They started slowly, only a few down in town, but every day we see that more have bloomed and that they have come higher up the hillside. They have made it all the way into Capriglia itself now, but are not yet here on our property. I am waiting for them.

In the meantime, I have have discovered white wisteria down by the gate and deep purple irises in the woods.

Jonathan's parents have come for a visit. They arrived Monday evening.

So Monday morning, Jonathan and I went down to town to buy groceries, etc., for them. Alas, Monday was May Day and everything in town was closed. No shops opened -- not even our usual big supermarket down near the highway.

But we ran into Daniele and Alice, who own the pub up here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea, down in the piazza.

"What do you need?" Daniele asked us. 

They are so incredibly kind. They just immediately and spontaneously offered us the resources in their kitchen -- whatever we needed. These are the people whom we are lucky enough to live among now. There is no way that I can ever begin to repay their kindness to us, but it would be such a joyous experience to try.

I am enjoying the second day of what is apparently going to be a three day stomach flu. I miss my Dad very much today.