PAST IMPERFECT, PRESENT TENSE, FUTURE CONDITIONAL
I'm sitting on the dondolo (pictured below) something we dreamed of doing during those last few weeks in London. Birds are chattering in the hedge and mourning doves coo-coo to me from a nearby copse. It's a hot day, unusually so for May, and the sky over the distant hills foretells a thunderstorm will come our way, perhaps by evening.
THE DONDOLO!
We arrived home late Thursday night, weeping as we came through the garden gate. Even in the midnight air the arch of Nahema roses bestowed a trace of their perfume upon us. After we dumped our suitcases and stripped off our clothes, we showered and fell into bed where we wept again, the way one might after a great escape. For two weeks prior to our departure we worried that Joel might not be allowed re-entry upon landing in Rome. That particular fear, like so many fears, didn’t come to pass.
As we approached immigration we scanned the 12 booths each housing an immigration officer; only one was a woman and we instinctively chose her. I greeted her in Italian, showing her my Italian Residency ID quickly adding that Joel and I are married and would she like to see the marriage certificate. She took my ID and our passports and asked what was our final destination. “Toscana,” I said, and her face lit up. “Ma che bella!”she exclaimed, (how beautiful). “E il cibo!”(and the food!) and she made that wonderful Italian gesture that symbolizes ‘delicious,’ which entails screwing the tip of your right forefinger into your right cheek. And that was it. THAT WAS IT!! We were through! Once out of sight, we clung to each other.
The driver who has been transporting us to and from Italian airports for 6 years was waiting for us. More tears. We were his first ride since Italy went into lock-down. For safe-distance he had fabricated a metal bar that arched from one side of the car, along the ceiling and down the other side, from which he had attached thick plastic that fell to the floor directly behind the front seat, thus separating us from him. He whizzed us through the dark, traffic-free highway, to our valley’s winding roads and finally to the lane where we live.
There is an essay in today’s (Sunday) Guardian about the joy of solitude. The writer lives somewhere in the wilds of Scotland. It’s a lovely essay that discusses the difference between loneliness and solitude. I seconded all that she wrote until the final sentence which urged everyone to practice solitude. I wondered how she would suggest those less fortunate than her practice this. How, I wondered, could one swap loneliness for solitude when one is homeless, or stuck in a small room in a grubby tenement, or fleeing war, or indeed, stuck in a city? And I meant city, not the pretty outskirts.
In 2012, when Hurricane Sandy hit New York, Joel and I were living on Manhattan’s upper west side and were unscathed. A few days later we joined other volunteers and made our way to Far Rockaway in Queens where we spend the day delivering supplies to people stuck on the upper floors of low income high-rises. There was still no electricity or water, hence no working elevators, or flushing toilets. The stench that rushed out at us as tenants opened their doors was intense. For hours we went up and down flights of stairs and along dark, soulless hallways carrying bags of groceries and toiletries. In the evening a bus was provided to take we volunteers back to Manhattan. I remember two things from that dystopian hour-long ride. One was the silence inside the bus and the pall of communal depression. The other was the sense of imminent danger. Watching the city scroll by, looking at the density and the disrepair of its infrastructure, it all looked so fragile; a city built of toothpicks that the next storm might completely topple.
It felt like that at Heathrow Airport last Thursday; the sense of wrongness that we have created and lived in for the last fifty years. The airport was completely devoid of commerce. There was nothing to be bought or eaten. No piped-in music. Just the same announcement every few minutes asking us to stay distanced. Haphazard measures were taken to achieve this; on our arrival at the check-in floor we were sent five floors down to what would normally be the parking garage. There, we queued along with other passengers, until it was our turn to be called up to the check-in desk.
If we had found navigating Hampstead Heath challenging, the airport was worse. Try navigating suitcases and trolleys and children while maintaining a 2 metre distance. Children and toddlers masked and gloved…everyone masked and gloved. Everyone’s temperature taken before security where my shoulder bag and suitcase were selected for inspection; the entire contents of both dumped into an un-sanitized tray. Every single item touched by the inspector’s un-sanitized rubber gloves. The culprits? A tiny tub of lip balm and my fountain pen, the instrument with which I have been exploring for 50 years, suddenly weapon-ized. We managed to find a large table where we spent half an hour dumping everything again in order to wipe it all.
The plane itself felt eerie as did, during taxi-ing for takeoff, the sight of hundreds of parked planes. Those flying beasts that had carried the virus all over the world are now in detention. I envisioned their metal repurposed into trains. We flew because it was the only way to get here at the moment. In the future we will train between Tuscany and London. But it’s hard to think about a future now. We’ve all lived in the future for so long that I don’t know if we finally caught up to it or if it just stopped existing.
I suppose some people would like the future to be like the recent past. Not me. Apart from the return of the arts and hugging loved ones there is nothing more I want than to be where I am right now. We were fortunate to have lived way out here in the Tuscan countryside for 5 years, year-round, before lockdown forced loneliness or solitude on everyone. As artists we’ve always veered between the twin cravings of solitude and public adoration. As I have enjoyed far less of the latter I am better equipped to live with the former. And where pre-pandemic I often experienced solitude as isolation, nonetheless it was self-isolation, not mandatory.
There’s a saying: “Between hope and expectation lies disappointment.” We all hope for a better future; better not to expect it. Better to live in today. But that’s easy for me to say; my today is surrounded by stunning beauty, kind friends, serenity and no virus. How I wish we would spread such privilege, instead of the virus.
I leave you with this little video, a nice combination of past and present. Carry it forward.
Stay well, stay strong,
With love,
Maggie
