WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES
PREFACE:
Ten years ago today Joel and I arrived in Provence to start work on our book: Provence: Lasting Impressions. At the same time, I started this blog. Next month will be 7 years since we moved to Tuscany full-time. These two anniversaries hold great significance for me and Joel in that they were life-altering decisions. And so I have recently been giving much thought to the impact these decisions have had on us as a married couple, creative collaborators, and as individual artists. I have divided the resulting essay into two parts in order to make its digestion both easier and tastier. I hope you enjoy the journey.
PART ONE
The north wind has moved east and so we sit sheltered by the house, faces to the sun. I hear a tractor in the field to the south of the garden and, nosy biddy that I am, go check it out through a gap in the Mediterranean hedge beyond which lie the rolling hills of Tuscany. I hear the farmer’s voice and then the shepherd’s. Vincenzo, the farmer, who is deeply Tuscan/Puglese is on foot, having developed a herniated disc which will be operated on tomorrow. He is instructing John, the shepherd, who is deeply Indian, to plough a part of the field with the tractor in preparation for Silvia, the farmer’s wife, who will turn this half-acre into her organic garden from which she will daily share its crops of tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, peppers, and cucumber.
We have lived here, year-round, for seven years come April; summered here for many years before that and starting in ’95 taught our writing and photography workshop for seven years, just up the road from where we now live. In May it will be 20 years since we were married on the estate where we taught and where we housed our family and friends for a week of celebration leading up to the actual ceremony between the colonnade of cypress trees that lead to the estate’s castle. So, lots of history. We are, of course, forever more stranieri (strangers). But we are accepted and respected in the community having found the right balance and the just stance that allows us to be inside-outsiders.
The other day I was reading aloud to Joel some Italian idioms and we had a good laugh at the examples of usage which, if literally translated into English would make little to no sense. It was then that I realized that when we speak Italian we translate literally from the English, which, although we seem to be well-understood by the natives actually means we basically use Italian words to speak English!Unlike the author Jhumpa Lahiri, who chose to immerse herself in this language to the profound extent that she has written two books in Italian, we have never made that commitment to this language. I am somewhat ashamed of this, but mostly I am sad, as one is when scanning the past and seeing all the landmarks of missed opportunity. Depending with whom we are speaking and what region they are from we either a) understand everything, b) catch the gist of it, or c) understand NOTHING.
There are several reasons for our lack of fluency, the major one being that as artists working at home we are not conversing with people all day, every day. Another reason is that while we have taken courses here and there over the years we are pigri (lazy) and never did our homework. The third, and most damning reason is that we are vecchi (old people)…the hard drive is full. That we remember our own language is cause for jubilation.
There are pros and cons in this regard, as in everything in life. One of the pros is that (pre-pandemic) one could walk down crowded streets, or sit in bars and cafes and let the music of the language play in the background. This liberation should not be underrated. In our modern world of ceaseless chatter, banal opinion, ugly judgment and fake news, it is a relief to not have to listen to the words yet be able to hear the exquisite, operatic nature of this beautiful language.
But we are not pre-pandemic and we have quite a way to go before we will be post-pandemic, and so suddenly, the need to know certain legal facts that pertain to the country in which we are residing is vital. We have spent the last several weeks trying to get vaccinated. As a result we are deep in the world of Italian bureaucracy which is maddening even if you are Italian. If you are not, and not fluent in the language, good luck. I won’t bore you with details but as of today we are once again trying to get an appointment at the Immigration Office in Siena in order for me to file for the residency papers to which I’m entitled as a UK citizen who has lived here since before the Brexit Referendum. I need these papers in order to get the National Health Card without which I cannot be vaccinated. Once – if – I have achieved all of this then we will have to go through the entire process again for Joel who will be eligible because he is married to me….yes, I shall be milking that for all that it’s worth ;-)The mind is indeed a tricky thing. The amount of energy it takes to understand bureaucratic language is exhausting. I pride myself on my creative skills that enable me to converse with Italians about anything and everything and am particularly proud of my ability to joke in this language. I have been speaking with Silvia, who does not speak English, for over 9 years. We chat several times a week and it comes easy between us. In spite of her heavy workload on the farm she has generously been helping us navigate the system and yet there was a moment last week when my mind was so overloaded that I found myself completely blanking as she was explaining what I needed to do and have ready for my appointment. My mind veered between a many-tentacled entity grasping for any word or phrase that would allow me entry to a complete, nerve-shattering shutdown … to the extent that I became convinced that any language I had attained was forever gone and I thought, well, there goes the possibility of getting vaccinated and without it the possibility of visiting our kids in America of returning to England. We’re here on a sheep farm in the deep Tuscan countryside, speaking English to each other and no-one else FOREVER.
Today we sit in the sun and watch the bees imbibing nectar from the rosemary bushes whose blue blossoms are abuzz themselves. The cockerel up the lane crows about what I know not, but I crow back to him giving thanks for his impregnating the hens who provide us with a dozen plus eggs every week. The sheep begin their afternoon chorus and the shepherd leaves the tractor and goes to the barn to milk them. The milk is refrigerated daily and collected a couple of times a week for delivery to the consortium where it is turned into pecorino cheese. But Silvia always saves enough to make ricotta and her own pecorino which she shares with us.
Our friend, Gianni, comes in the garden gate; he wants to make sure we have understood the news that cases are on the rise and that our region in back in the red zone. Silvia returns with good news; I have an appointment for next Monday to get my residency papers. But the villagers are angry: where is the vaccine? Why is it not being produced in the many labs in this region? We are all tired. Our brains fractured in every language. And many of us are scanning the past, trying to make sense of our lives and the decisions we’ve made along the way, as if we can right something. But this staring back at what was, does not serve us. We have to give up all hope for a better past.
Today is Thursday, or it’s just today. I sat down to write because I wanted to capture something of what it is like to have lived in another country for seven years, but somewhere in the flow of ink I lost the thread. In fact, the threads are many. We have woven a life here together. The tapestry is rich but I am not yet sure exactly what it depicts. And there is more than one tapestry: there is ours, and Joel’s, and mine. Each of them has mistakes and dropped stitches. Each tells a story of success and adventure, of solitude and connection, courage and failure. It is the ongoing fabrication of our lives, and it is still on the loom. If we took it off now it would unravel. So we weave on.
To be Continued.
With love, Maggie
