Piacere

Molesting the Good Luck Boar of Florence

I'd suspected that my online language lessons were being overly encouraging when they congratulated me on being "37% fluent in Italian!" and I was right. While I can comment on the fact that "he is a captain of a large ship," I was not, until recently, equipped to properly introduce myself, excuse myself, or, most importantly, buy myself food. These are some basics that Duolingo has cheerily skipped over in favor of teaching me how to intone some troubling phrases like "not all women are ladies." I'm beginning to think this innocuous seeming language app has an agenda. 

I have met a handful of people thus far during my time here, and have been maddened by my inability to greet them properly, reduced by my lack of knowledge to mutely grinning like a buffoon and telepathically offering my apology for being a dumb, uncultured, language-less American. So I had to go to the source to find out the correct way to receive someone when introduced. It's simple. "Piacere." It means "pleasure." Another key phrase, which comes in handy if you drop your change inside a store, or bump into a little old lady who's blocking your way in the grocery store because she's absorbed in evaluating the different Kinder chocolate products on the endcap of the aisle, is "mi dispiace," which means I'm sorry but actually means "I'm displeased." As in, it makes me unhappy to know I've troubled or bothered or bumped you. The presence and absence of pleasure is, it seems, central to making your way in Italian society. 

For practically the entirety of my time living in New York, bitching and complaining about how awful the city was felt like a common hobby. I'm not the first and I won't be the last to point out just how profoundly the city demands a sort of love-hate dynamic of its citizens. No one really admits to loving it unless or until they leave it, if even temporarily, or if someone talks shit about it, at which point one must in no uncertain terms defend the city's honor. So it's been odd to find myself in places where natives to a specific place are 100% enthralled with their homes. I found it sweet, if borderline provincial, when I was living in Vermont, and now that I'm in Tuscany I find it romantic and beautiful and little else to hear Toni's sons, who have traveled extensively, point out certain aspects of the landscape or comment on the clear, dry air and its allowances to take in an expansive view. They've lived here their whole lives and will, after studying in different places around the world, return here. And to them, its beauty has not been diminished by familiarity or routine. They don't take it for granted. For someone like me who pursues novelty almost compulsively and only really appreciates a thing when it's firmly in my rearview mirror, this approach is instructive to say the least.  

Luckily, there is novelty all around me at the moment, which has at least partially distracted me from my internal angst, a veritable bodily organ that undergoes chronic inflammation if left unchecked. Friday in the caseificio, we did not receive milk, and thus did not make cheese, so the morning and early afternoon were mostly absorbed with cleaning, flipping the newest batches of Rocco and Rocco Carbone (the small bloomy and ash-ripened cheeses we make), wrapping the older batches, placing the Buccia di Rospo in brine, and rolling out the soft cheese into little crottin-like logs that would eventually be sprinkled with erba cipollina (chives). We stopped for our usual coffee break at around 10:30 and this time I managed to forego the leftover tiramisu because I am ascetic in the extreme as everyone knows. By 1:30 we were mostly done, and frozen to the bone -- the dairy is quite chilly this time of year and everyone's extremities were verging on numb. Toni invited me up to the house for a warming bowl of zuppa fagioli and frittata and salad, with some Rocco Carbone and Dante (the cloth-bound cheddar style sheep cheese we make) to round things out. I'd be lying if I said I passed up the small, ethereal sliver of cheesecake to go with my espresso at the end of the meal. Am I not human? If you cut me do I not bleed (cheese)? 

The rest of the day, and the weekend ahead, yawned endlessly in front of me, daunting for its distinct lack of activity, social engagement or interaction of any kind. I managed to amuse myself as best I could with books (perilously close to finishing one of the two I brought in my suitcase) and more Duolingo and some maddeningly inconsistent web television (wifi is not the best here che sorpresa), so I was thrilled when morning rolled around and Toni invited me to join her on a quick trip to Firenze. I piled into the car with her, her son Oscar and Oscar's girlfriend Ornella and away we went. It was a sunny, cloudless cool day, less like a mid-winter one and more like a cruel autumnal one. The road  on the outskirts of the city snaked around the hills above which loomed massive villas and literal castles. To my left I could see the Duomo's bulbous silhouette and around it, the city. 

Our first stop was to the Mercato Sant'Ambrogio, a weekly neighborhood market outside the city center that was teeming with shoppers and vendors selling used cashmere sweaters, fur lined coats, dresses and purses on the periphery, and , as one ventured further in, tables filled with purple artichokes, fennel, huge hunks of bread, meats, jams, honeys, cheeses and -- be still my heart -- massive, sand castle-like cakes of torrone, sold by the slice and available in half a dozen iterations. I selected one dusted with chocolate and studded with hazelnuts and proceeded to plotz as I stole surreptitious knobs of it from its plastic baggie. There was a grand hall with more specialty vendors  -- a couple of butchers, a bakery and a deli selling cheese and fresh pastas and pestos and tapenades. Overwhelmed, I ducked into a little corner store for an acqua minerale and much-needed laundry detergent and then linked back up with my crew outside. Together, we made our way towards the center of town, through narrow stone-paved streets, passing by a pink stucco'd teatro covered in some sort of climbing vegetation. We popped into a shop trucking entirely in circus equipment -- juggling pins, hoola hoops and unicycles -- why I do not know. And then, turning a corner, all of a sudden a swath of the Duomo revealed itself. We moved toward the central square and then splintered off -- Toni on errands and the rest of us in the general direction of the Apple store #jobsruleseverythingaroundme. Taking in the goddamned splendor of the massive archway, the old-timey carousel, the marble pavings of the arcades surrounding the square moved me to motherfucking tears because dear god, everywhere I looked there was something heartbreakingly beautiful to see. After a quick dip into JobsLand, we hung out on the Ponte Vecchia and wound our way through the outer corridors of the Uffizi Galleries, casually rubbing elbows with the statues of the Great Florentines -- Dante and Boccaccio and Petrarch and Da Vinci and Donatello and Vespucci and Macchiavelli and other boring underachievers -- before ducking down a sidestreet to wait in line at a literal hole in the wall for what my compatriots told me were some of the world's best sandwiches, but after procuring said sandwiches bemoaned the fact that they'd shrunk in size and increased in price due to an enhanced tourist popularity. 

Gradually we wended our way back to the car, popping into a pizzeria where, in spite of having just eaten a (decidedly small) sandwich, I grabbed myself a slice and was immediately disappointed. Even by American standards this would be considered a poor representation of the genre. Alas, in the tourist-heavy warrens of central Firenze, pizza quality is hit or miss, and it's best to go on recommendations lest you wind up ruing your very first REAL ITALIAN PIZZA EXPERIENCE. #mylifeissuperhard

And thus concluded my first journey to the storied seat of Tuscan amazingness. The rest of the day passed without incident, other than a foiled attempt to build a fire in the kitchen hearth and the compulsive consumption of the rest of my torrone haul. 

Sunday I woke up late and received Toni's message to join her for a coffee "in town" just in time to throw on some sweaters and head out the door. I tried in vain yet again to befriend some of the feral farm cats,  who rather evilly assume the demeanor of wanting pets and cuddles only to hiss and slash and generally threaten violence at the offer of my well-meaning hand. 

Initially I'd thought that the town closest to us was San Casciano, but in fact there is a SMALLER village just about ten minutes' drive down the road called San Pancrazio, which, as is often the case in these teensy Italian burgs, boasts only a cafe/bar, a post office, an alimentari (Italian for bodega or general store, depending on your cultural origins), a church and a little restaurant. We popped into the cafe, where some of the locals had gathered and were taking their coffee and post-church Negronis (legit). I was introduced to the old lady who runs the joint ("piacere!") and given the rundown of the boite's offerings (pastry, piadini, insalata, etc.) before popping into the alimentari to grab some essentials (pesto, bread, mozzarella, arancini and prosciutto PLEASE GOD HELP ME). Then Toni drove me down to the Paterno size of our farm, where more of the family resides, so that I could peep le pecora and take a gander at my future digs -- once it gets warmer I'll be moving across the tiny valley into the barn attached to one of the guest houses. Certainly not as plush as the digs I'm currently posted up in, but charmingly spartan in its own right. I started off in the stables, hopping over the fence into the outside pens to introduce myself to the sheeps, who were decidedly terrified of me and in no way assuaged by my "piacere-ing." They watched me from a comfortable distance, all three groups of various sizes/ages keeping tabs on me while simultaneously snatching mouthfuls of hay and taking the occasional shit. Satisfactorily spurned by my ruminant colleagues, I made my way into the stable and the airplane hangar sized milking parlor, gazing at the sheer (shear!) multitude of animals milling about. The ewes who'd just lambed were in individual pens with their babies, and I was able to scratch a few noses and cuddles a couple of lambies before hightailing it back up over the hill, down the valley, across a burbling goddamned stream and up again to Corzano. 

Tonight I will have Sunday supper with Toni and her family and tomorrow my first true work week begins. I'm happy and lonely and hopeful and overwhelmed and impatient and trying my hardest to embrace the feeling of being at odds and out of my comfort zone, marveling at the immensity and profusion of obstacles that immigrants and non-natives and refugees with far fewer resources than I have faced and continue to face. I think about how brave my own great grandparents must have been to emigrate to America with no language skills, no jobs lined up, no family or friends. I've been so lucky to enter a foreign place of my own volition and to land amongst warm, welcoming people who want to feed me and teach me and help me. I only hope that the next time I'm on the other side of that equation I will be as generous and kind.