I am beginning my 3rd week here-
I come expecting one thing
and find that, and always something more.
Italy is a useful visual and sensual contrapposizione
to the modern life I lead in the US,
so much here is OLD, centuries old,
the young American mind stutters (and sometimes freezes)
to be wrapped within it, breathe its airs;
Italy brings into sharp focus and sets on edge
assumptions lugged from home, those
nurtured on the dull haze of a sameness
borne of a welcoming, open-armed, national embrace
of façade, vinyl, wallboard, the latest "new" whatever it is,
built cheaply, delivered quickly, hyped today,
denigrated tomorrow, daily encounters with
employees along all points of the
consumerist spectrum distanced
by many miles and income levels from
the corporate bosses and entities
for whom they work, unknown and unseen,
come-and-go.
Super-sized shopping zones,
their vast carparks
now(already!) reversing their fortunes,
dilapidating structures not yet
even 50-60 years old, less than a
human lifespan.
The US was, and in many ways still is
trying to be the go-go country when seen
reflected in Italy's trying to hang on
to something vital, losing surely, but there is
so much here to hold on to, that the effort
seems valiant, precious, important.
I find myself wanting to preserve what remains
here of the past, to shout, NO! to the trendy places
opening here and there with halogen lighting and
uncomfortable plastic seats replacing
the old, use-worn wooden ones.
While here, I stay inside the cities, the centri urbani
where the contrast between old and new is most great.
I assume what's going on in the peripheries is much
the same as what I see at home, raw land being appropriated
for modernity, as defined today where nothing exists to preserve.
Fortunately inside the city walls, what's here is not likely
to be razed in wholesale fashion, and so the beauty of it
remains, the street scenes themselves a vast stage,
a veritable museum.
The difficult global economy, difficult in the sense that it
has hit a speed bump and stalled, has slowed
the rush to build here, as at home.
A blessing of sorts. . .
Perhaps the pause will give man and minds a chance
to consider what's important, not economically but
poetically so, and therefore nourishing to man in ways beyond
expediency. But I doubt it.
Every time of man creates and leaves its own unique footprint.
The footprint of today anywhere and everywhere is, after all
the perfect, if imperfect reflection of where we are, who we are.
Some of today's public buildings, skyscrapers, and some
few, private, intelligently conceived, architecturally
intriguing homes are most assuredly: beautiful.
I'm not as sure they are worked and lived in with the
same enduring passion of the past; technology
has bi-furcated everyday experience, has shrunken
rather than expanded time.
The footprint of renaissance Italy is of a time long ago and forever gone,
but it is a treasure and a gift to come here and see what beautiful things
man was capable then of dreaming, conceiving, building.
It's a marvel.