THE SILENCE OF ABSENCE
October 20 2013Joel has been in Milan for three days for his exhibition there, while I have remained at the farm to take care of many of the preparations for our imminent departure for Provence.
Not so long ago, it seems, I used to take off on my own for England or Cape Cod, relishing a couple of weeks of solitude and what then seemed like a luxury of uninterrupted thoughts, meals eaten at will, experience without commentary, and the re-connecting to that part of the self that one gives over to the considerations and compromises of relationship. Then, there would be the excitement of our reunion; that first glimpse of the face I love, both familiar and as heart-stoppingly beautiful as the first look, 23 years ago. But now, as the proverbial sands of time speed through the glass, even three days seems far too long to be apart; perhaps even more so, after 10 months of living in Europe where we have become more entwined than ever.There is a kind of silence, these past three days that is more than just the natural peace of living here on the farm. It is the silence of absence, not only of Joel, but the absence of Gianni and Luana who are busy coping with her injury, and an even greater silence that carries with it an air of anticipation and disaster and sorrow.
The storm that raged through here last week has left more than a mud-line. Whole swaths of trees are felled, fields re-aligned, hillsides sliding. The back road one must take to get to the temporary footbridge that allows you to reach town, has a sense of danger about it, as though the next rain might wash it away, too. Edges are crumbling, cracks widening, and no repair in sight. This is a country second to Greece in terms of bankrupt governments and crumbling infrastructure. How can it be that Greece and Italy, those great cultures and civilizations that gave the world invention and architecture, art and philosophy, and pasta, damn it, how can they have fallen to their broken knees? Entropy, I believe it’s called.
Yesterday, I drove the back road to the footbridge, parked the car and walked two miles to the dentist and back. Many people have lost the contents of their homes, while some yards are filled with furniture still being hosed down. Most of the shops have re-opened although there are very few functioning freezers. The absence of gelato enough to make me shatter the silence with a few porca madonna’s. Yet here, as everywhere, the people rally, their spirits lifted by community. But fear hangs in the air.Dusk was falling as I walked back from the dentist and I felt a little anxious about driving on the isolated dirt road, even a flicker of paranoia as I drew money from the ATM. What if someone saw me? What if they followed me? What if they pushed me off the road? Why was I thinking like that? It’s in the air, the sense that the barbarians could be coming. It has to do with the collision of natural and man-made disasters; the sense that no-one’s in charge. There are no funds to fix the roads and bridges. But it’s a national disaster you might say, and then one remembers that this nation not only didn’t become a nation until the mid 19th century, but whatever governmental coherence it might have achieved was basically destroyed by 20 years of Berlusconi rule. Sound familiar?The sun was dipping behind the hills as I made my way across the footbridge. I passed half a dozen pedestrians with whom I shared a buona sera, along with a shake of the head and a shrugged shoulder. The 15 minutes drive back along the dirt road was uneventful in terms of highway robbery. In the distance, the dusty grey-blue hills set off a peaceful sunset, the comfort of its rosy glow in the gloom jolted by the green of the nearer hills whose vibrancy seemed to scream its victory over the storm, while below the fields lay thick with mud and debris.
Turning on to our dirt road, I stopped for a moment, rolled down the windows and looked at our valley, a landscape that is by now familiar, yet forever changing with the seasons and the light; the silence filled with suspense.