Do as Romans do

The sky was a dark orange blanket thrown over a dark, glum Rome, yesterday evening. The Pope had resigned in the morning and the skyes, in their sad gloom, seemed to cry out all their concern and bleak despair in the long, dark afternoon that followed the news from the Vatican. Here I am, waiting for the bus number 85, on the large via Taranto, swept by a nasty, soaken wind that pours on my poor shoes and coat, all the misery and joy of this new beginning. Because, and I am sure of this,  this is a new benìginning for the Church and for the times to come. And while I run to my darling bus that opens its doors like a mother hugs her little child, my memory flies back to the morning. I am alone in the house, pottering around, from one room to the other, like a bouncing ball, waiting for a chinese friend, when all of a sudden (or maybe it was the holy ghost), at a few minutes to twelve, I say to mysef, isn't it a fine time to have a look at the news? And what news! I barely believe what I am reading and I ring my husband who is buying bread and water in the little shop next door. "It's a joke!", he says. But then, in a minute, he is upstairs and on the phone. No joke, no science fiction. This is life, true and sound, the one that goes flickering, through days and nights, changing what we can see, but never that which is essential. Rome, my dear Rome, saw it all, many times over. All must change because all must stay the same, said the old prince of Salina in the magnificent novel "The Lepard". I smile at the good and wait until tomorrow for another day to come, with sun and rain. Do as Romans do.

A coffee with Borromini

My lovely Lenci doll

If, one day, you happen to come to the Eternal city, please do not rush in a crowd, in the speedy Gonzales rythm of modern tourism! Take your time, instead, breathe slowly in the glow of a glorious golden dawn and open ears, eyes, soul, mind and heart to all the beauty Rome can bestow on you.  Not only the Colosseum, and not Piazza di Spagna alone or the Trevi fountain, in spite of all their bliss, no, no: Rome hides its grace in shadows and perfect diamond spells which are there to meet you, if only you might like to follow her secret charm... If you walk down the Clivo di Scauro on the Celio, for instance, you might meet, white dressed and blond and beautiful, the nynph Egeria who inspired King Numa, when Rome was still to become the glory of ancient times. In the catacombs of Saint Sebastian, please, after roaming in the hell of those dark christian caves, abide in the pagan tomb on the top, were birds sing and flowers bloom: paradise after all. And paradise is in Piazza Sant'Eustachio in the joyous lantern of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, masterpiece of Borromini, which looks like a white ballerina piroetting graciously in the blue sky. I was there, yesterday, sipping the best coffee in Rome (in the Sant'Eustachio bar), eyes fixed on the Borromini treasure, my soul up there, dancing in the clouds, when all of  a sudden, a voice makes me start: "Sorry, do ya think it's going to rain?" 

Goodbye Sardinia

When august went to sleep and the first rains of autum filled the sardinian air with the frills and chills of september, all the Ponti family, after three months of heat and salty water spent in the white villa that overlooked the Cala Girgolu bay, was about to pack and leave. Rome, sweet Rone again. Oh, how I dreaded that moment! how I loved the pouring rain that pitterpattered on my little window and gushed down the winding road that lead to the sea in a cappucino coloured brook! I saw, believe me, in that savage waters, the sacred marriage of skies, earth and sea...
It was a time of deep thougth for little me (so much in love with Sardinia...) and of adventure. Down to the beach in my red raincoat I dashed and up and down the golden bay (Idid not fear the lightning that scared Mimma so much) to look for those pretty nothings that the tide, in rolling waves, brought back from who know where: a broken bucket, a piece of oar, a funny looking doll, with weed tangled in its hair. My treasures, all mine. I went back home carrying them in my arms, my glossy cheeks sparkling in the white skies while Tavolara, sitting o the horizon, bore a hat of  stranded clouds and smiled at me a deep, mysterious green smile,  a shade of the pink and pale blue one it wore during the long, peaceful summer days, in glorious lush.
Tavolara, the island of my heart, seemed to understand me. It looked at my treasures with bountiful, motherlike eyes. I smiled back and stood still and watched and felt its magic spell. The spell I still feel now and forever.

Here I am, home, little me. I leave my  precious bundle of broken life on a bench and up the stairs to my room to get changed. Up and down in a flash. "Mimma, where are the things I left here?". "That junk? I threw it out, right now, darling". Goodbye Sardinia.

Poets and monkeys

This man, with his spiky moustache and  paglietta hat is Trilussa, a great Roman poet

 Walking down this very old street full of antique shops and blessed by an aristocratic flare, you might bump into the ill looking statue of a clumsy silenus, lying on his side pretending to be a gorgeous mermaid. It is the “Babuino”, the baboon, one of Rome’s talking statues.  An awkward, nasty looking thing, with a huge head and a clumsy body. The romans despised it from the start.  It was Pope Gregorio XIII, who decided, in 1576, to place it right here, in the heart of the street that, in those lost days, bore the sweet sounding name of “Clementina” in honour of Pope Clemente VII.

From then on,  the ugly silenus stares in the face of the passers by. One of them, in the XVI century, was a spanish cardinal, Pedro de Deza Manuel,  who lived nearby.  The poor fellow had bad sight. Every day, when  passing in front of the statue, he made  a big bow and took off his hat to pay his respects. And the romans laughed and laughed, their cynical, eternal, loud laugh. Then, one day, the statue started to talk. It spoke the language of mock and derision... It spoke, but in  pure epigrams, the language of the crowds. It told the truth, but in a weird way. Like a  marble jester for the successors of St Peter. The great  poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli (1791-1863) dedicated one of his many sonnets  (all writen in witty roman dialect) to the talking statue of the babuino... And Belli - oh he sure was a genius! -  was the secret voice of another talking statue, that lived in another square, close to Piazza Navona: Pasquino.

Strange but true, in this same Via del Babuino (at number 58) a great successor of Belli, Carlo Alberto Salustri (1871-1950), known as Trilussa, was born. Belli and Trilussa are dear to the romans and they both still live their secret  marble life in two statues in two different  “piazze”, dedicated to them,  both in Trastevere.

Ba Ba black sheep

In may, when the Roman rose garden on top of the Aventine bloomed in glory and sweet pink and red  scent, it was time for  the Mater Dei pupils  (of the third elementary class) to have their first holy comunion in the dark chapel of the school, which stood like a soldier in the darkness and solitude of the Salita San Sebastianello, at a stone throw from Piazza di Spagna...

How I dreamed to wear the white, wedding-like dress, that covered knees and ankles, which my sister had worn some years before and that slept its silent sleep in a wardrobe downstairs, hidden in the dark, calling me from another world, the world of desire and lust.  Down to the grass, it swept, kissing mother earth and allowing me to think myself a persian princess... Here I am, the day has arrived, I am wearing the white beauty and the veil and I am standing, together with my schoolfriends and the cardinal, in black and red, in the sunny courtyard of the school for a holy picture. The photographer is ready, cheese. I do not know why, but in that still moment, I turned my head to my left, the wing of the devil, far away, heart and soul in search of  what I do not know. The principal, eyes like needles, froze me: "Your mother bought you in Marks and Spencer!"


In the picture, my ba ba black sheep bennibag...

The angels of Raffaello

In a morning of blue skies and angels, I had joined a guided tour to Raffaello's rooms in the Vatican, organized by a she professor who teaches in a blessed Roman University. We met in the gleaming hall of the Vatican museums, closed by the Vatican walls: me, in the frenzy of visitors, children and adults, that cloistered for tickets and souvenirs.  While my Virgil chatted, long and wide, with a Max Mara dressed manager of the museum, I bought a bookmark in the litlle Vatican shop, that displayed in all its beauty a blond Melozzo angel.
At last, the group is tied up an ready to move on. Now I know, looking at all those global faces, yellow and black and all the colours of the raimbow, why my professor had sighed: "Oh how difficult it is to spray a bit of umanistic salt and Renaissance pepper on top of the Ands and on the Tropic of Capricorn..."
Well, off we went, through long corridors, full of everything that is beauty, running along, with no time whatsoever to search and spot, in the huge map halls, the tiny village of Monte Santa Maria, lost in the sabine hills, where I bought a little house with a terrace that scrapes skies and angels... No way, run run run and if time is friendly we might throw a glance to the Sistine Chapel.

At last, here we are in the majestic rooms that Pope Giulio II, a warrior, a nobleman, one who was a great friend of Michelangelo, asked Raffaello to paint. Which thing he, Raffaello did in glory. Here we are  in the Sala della Segnatura, in front of the School of Athens. Plato and Arstoteles, finger up for the first (meaning that the answers are all in the attic...), finger down for the second who believed in the superior thruth of reality. And while my guide starts the usual game of finding out who is who: Parmenides and Eraclitus and all the others, philosophers and mathematicians, and so on and on between the blue skies and the imperial geometries of the place, I loose myself in front of the great painting, ignoring a  game which I played a long time ago when I studied history of art at University... My two eyes, and the third one too, open to faces and art.  And lo, I see them, the angels that, fresh in the morning, saluted me from up above! I see them, white and blond, snow sight, looking at me from the painting. Thre angels on a row, on the left, in the mixt of all the scholars: a todler, a little boy and a lovely teen ager. The three of them, there forever, to  witness, right in the middle of all the human toil for knowledge, the eternal mistery of life...
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanze_di_Raffaello

White bliss

When I was a little girl I could not wait to have my first holy comunion. Not for the ceremony itself, of course, and certainly not for the meaning of the holy bread - the "particula" - turning into God himself. No, no. How could a nine year old  care about those trifles that so much concerned mothers and aunts? No, no. The only reason why I yearned to taste the body of Christ was that  I would wear, for the occasion, the long white dress,  that my older sister had on many years before and that waited, paitently, in its plastic coat, for me to turn into a newborn christian.It hung quietly in a wardrobe of my mother's closet, counting the hours for its ribirth....
The day arrived at last, as sunny as my beautiful dress that tolled its new beginning, and I stood, as white as snow, in the middle of my schoolfriends first and in the big, green  Ponti garden soon after. All around me, cousins and aunts and friends. The afternoon washed away, and so did my enthusiasm for the white dress. Now that I was wearing it, I found it had no sugar nor spice nor anything nice...

All of a sudden, my memory switches on and I run backwards to another sunny day, that of my older sister's holy comunion when little me, dressed in a pale blue skirt and flowery blouse, had eyes and heart for my white tulle beauty, gleaming in the sun.  The dress seemed to smile  at me, singing one day I will be yours... Here I am, in a snap, standing on the cotto terrace, with my brothers end sister, models  for my father's pictures of the great day. Oh, the longing in my little keen eyes, oh, the bliss of the white fabric dream,  shining in the light, right there, beside me: the dream I cherished in my heart!  Now I know: Christmas  eves are far better than Christmas days!