I spend a lot of time thinking about the Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge. That underappreciated mammoth I used to cross nearly everyday into Manhattan. I think I might be fixating on it in a religious sense or something. Well more to come. I need to get back to work before class. I like this picture, it was a good day. The original is a polaroid.

Andevamo verso mezzanotte per le vie di Milano
deserte, corso Italia, con Anna Maria Ortese
e Massimo Leli
e Guido Ballo e non so chi altri,
e io tenevo nella mia manina tenera
di una bimba di cui rammento i riccioli neri
e i grandi occhi ma non il nome,
e a un tratto lei disse a voca alta:
” ‘E buio. Quando ‘e buio, bisogna tacere.”

Allora, pensai io, bisognerebbe tacere sempre.

When it is dark

We went out around midnight to the streets of Milan
deserted, corso Italia, with Anna Maria Ortese
and Massimo Leli
and Guido Ballo and I don’t know who else,
and I held in my hand soft
from a baby girl whose black curls
and bigs eyes I took in but not her name,
and at some turn she said in a loud voice:
“It is dark. When it is dark, one needs quiet.”

So then, I thought, one should always need quiet.

Helle Busacca, from Il libro delle ombre cinesi 1990
Translation my own, ADGD

Blackberry-picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.

Seamus Heaney

Per Milano

Non è che dalle cuspidi amorose
crescano i mutamenti della carne,
Milano benedetta
Donna altera e sanguigna
con due mammelle amorose
pronte a sfmare i popoli del mondo
Milano dagli irti colli
che ha veduto qui
crescere il mio amore
che ora è defunto.
Milano dai vorticosi pensieri
dove le mille allegrie
muoiono paingenti sil Naviglio
Milano ostrica pura
io sono la tua perla,
amore.

For Milan

It is not from the peaks of love
that the changes of the flesh begin.
blessed Milan
fickle and sanguine Woman
with two loving breasts
ready to cure the hunger of all the world,
Milan from the steep hills
that have seen here
my love now dead grow.
Milan from whirling thoughts
where thousands of joys
die crying on the Naviglio
Milan pure oyster
I am your pearl,
love.

I know that piece is shaped like a dagger-edged parallelogram, so round out the edges. I showed how to do that. Didn’t I? Ok, good. Just keep practicing it for a while, if the edges tear, try again. Remember, it has to look like glass. We are all about appearances around here. We aren’t a grocery store, we have no cryovac machine.

Who wrapped this Chevre? Poor soul of course it was you. Don’t worry. Just next time make sure the ends of the plastic are on the bottom for presentation but also so they don’t curl up and let the air in. Go on, rewrap it your shift doesn’t end for a few more hours. We’ve got the time, it’s a Wednesday at two.

Cut horizontally here, then when it reaches this point, about the size of your hand, or even a little bigger start cutting from the center like for the others. Yes, exactly. I know it keeps crumbling. No don’t fuse it back together with its own oils like I see you want to, just leave the bits out as samples. Here, in this dish. Sometimes the customers don’t mind if it is a little mangled, sometimes they do- just ask.

Haven’t you ever wrapped Christmas presents? Well apparently with little efficiency huh? Push the rind to the edge, crease the corners and fold neatly. It should look as clean and neat as a thirty dollar pound can possibly be. Here is the tape, either diagonally or not. Stick the PLU code on your shoulder to free up your hands. Now you can work for Hallmark.

Which knife are you using? Eh, not a good idea. Someone pass her a long filet knife. I need a coffee and a cigarette. Here use this, its better. When you use the larger knife everything sticks to the blade and it looks mashed together. No one wants their Pierre Robert mashed. And the longer knife makes less gauges on a piece like this, good, you have it.

This sign is crooked. Just remember the signs need to be straight and angled back a little bit. I know it looks like the rind but it isn’t the rind, place it in the rind, always. We don’t want to pierce the body and let air in. Yeah, go get a coffee. Good idea.

Five days in. In the past five days I have learned to use my hands. I work in shapes and dimensions. Years and years of abstract learning are making this more difficult for me than most people. My fingers trip over one another. Knives shake in my hands. My confidence with wax paper desperately needs to grow. I dream in cheeses, I see their odd shapes I feel their different levels of softness I smell various pungent aromas in my hair. There are over two-hundred cheeses in that case. I am uttering French provinces and German surnames in my sleep.

una bella cosina…At the cafe where I have been going for a couple of weeks regularly now they make a cafe’ macchiato correctly. It is a miracle, a shocker, an utterly delightful finding. Not only do they have nice tables and friendly service, but they make their drinks true to form and their respective names. And just when everything was beginning to feel so completely false. This is my first autumn in America in three years and it feels monumental. This coffee just might save me. This is at Cafe Grumpy on Meserole Ave at Diamond Street here in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It is a plug because they know me here now and they deserve a good word.
The cafe’ macchiato is a lost art form in America and most of the fault falls upon Starbucks, with their giant sugar filled milk cocktails. A cafe’ macchiato done properly is a tiny little drink. It is a pillow of comfort, a pillow because of the frothy milk that has stained (macchiato means stained in Italian) the perfect shot of espresso. In the morning it doesn’t shock you awake like a regular cafe’ but eases you in, reminding you that there is no need to rush. In the afternoon it provides the caffeine and the sweet sugary taste necessary for a mid-day pick-me-up. At cafe’ Brunellesco (on via degli Alfani near the facolta’) they could predict what we wanted based on the look in our eyes, most days my eyes said “macchiato”. A cappuccino after noon is unheard of and the most important cafe’ for me always occurs in the afternoon. I was often prone to order the “doppio” during the later hours of the day, dinner wasn’t until at least nine and one must find ways to push through and gather energy to continue.
Again I think of cool Italian fall days sitting outside at the little round tables with pigeons and cigarette smoke and beggars with exceptional hygiene and nothing in this clean country compares. This morning I went to hit some tennis balls over at the handball courts and the garbage not yet picked up from the weekend gave me a certain comfort. So yes garbage and strong coffee remind me of Italy and this is a good thing. You may have your doubts but garbage and strong coffee are a perfect pair for a number of reasons. Here are a few:
1. They both have a pungent smell (often complimentary depending on what kinds of establishments one frequents)
2. The garbage not being collected indicates that someone is inside enjoying a cafe’ before work
3. The coffee can be inconsistent as are public services
4. Coffee makes you feel more awake, garbage reminds you we aren’t living in paradise (ok it is more far-fetched but just try it out)

Having just returned from Italy and having to deal with the countless reactions of others, I think this essay is helpful and true. True not only for the Mediterranean but for any generalization. On the other hand it does just leave us more isolated. Oh well.

This search has led me to some modern Greek verse (in translation). Despite the fact that the unity of the Mediterranean is a myth I am still exploring the concept as a genre or kind of national literature. Here is a poem. It suits the day.

A Young Poet in His Twenty-Fourth Year

By C.P. Cavafy

Brain, work now as well as you can.
A one-sided passion is destroying him.
He’s in a maddening situation.
Every day he kisses the face he worships,
his hands are on those exquisite limbs.
He’s never loved before with this degree of passion.
But the beautiful fulfillment of love
is lacking, that fulfillment is lacking
which both of them must want with the same intensity.

(They aren’t equally given to the abnormal form of sensual pleasure;
only he is completely possessed by it.)

And so he’s wearing himself out, all on edge.
Then—to make things worse—he’s out of work.
He manages somehow to borrow
a little here and there (sometimes
almost begging for it) and he just gets by.
He kisses those adored lips, excites himself
on that exquisite body—though he now feels
it only acquiesces. And then
he drinks and smokes, drinks and smokes;
and he drags himself to the cafés all day long,
drags the weariness consuming his beauty.
Brain, work now as well as you can.

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

The sunshine in autumn is better than the sunshine in summer. Well perhaps only because this summer has seemed eternal (due in large part to my unemployment I suppose) and a cooler day makes the sun even more valuable. It has been to hot for too long and in fact it is now more a matter of fashion than anything else. I like scarves and jackets and boots. I am tired of planning for heavy perspiration on the subway.
This picture was taken moments after I finished reading Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida and I just happened to have a camera with me. Looking at the images- the buildings and the people one can see a 20th century kind of fashion. The images of our time make us dead. When we take a picture we know it will live past us and to someone in the future and it will be history. Here I would like to direct you to the blog of my dear friends Stefano and Falcone:

Now think about this statement: “I could read my nonexistence in the clothes my mother had worn before I can remember her.” This is from Barthes’ Camera Lucida. The images on my friends’ blog are records of history when we will no longer remember what people looked like. In fact according to Barthes the photograph erases the need to remember. Now that photograph of Manhattan is a week old and my day spent in the park has nothing to do with the image we see here. So then, do the fashions we see on people or the expressions they present us with in photographs have anything to do with their lives? I need to think about this more. Barthes and I both have a problem understanding photography as an art form. We can take photos as the highest art or as completely artless: “I perceive the referent (here, the photograph really transcends itself: is this not the sole proof of its art? To annihilate itself as medium, to be no longer a sign but the thing itself.”

Today I had my first foray into the black-market bread industry here in Greenpoint Brooklyn. After a good hour of sitting and drinking coffee at an outdoor café I decided I needed a change of scenery. The food at my gentrified (albeit lovely) café was just not as appealing as the sweet aroma coming from the neighboring Polish bakery.
I picked up my things and headed over. Nestled amongst low industrial rooftops is a very large and very well-established bakery. With an output that provides baked goods to many restaurants in the area one wouldn’t expect any kind of suspicious behavior. Then again, the suspicious behavior was rather comforting; it was a reassurance that the world wasn’t so clean and well behaved as surrounding condos and baby clothing boutiques would have you believe.
I walked in sensing I was possibly the only non-Pole in the building. Not so! I saw a table of Indian businessmen eating sandwiches and drinking coffee. “Ok, I thought, this place is branching out, they know how to do business, how to adapt.” I got on line and eventually ordered some grainy loaf and half a dozen shiny looking sweet rolls. This was decidedly something I had to share with my roommates. I had a good sized bag of bread and it only came to $1.80 and I thought about what a good deal it was. (Another testimony to not shopping at supermarkets but going directly to the source.) I did have to point at the loaves and create some makeshift phrases to express what I wanted, the thrill of it all carried me back to life abroad and I felt uplifted.
I had nearly worked up the confidence to say goodbye in Polski when one of the Indian men, so quietly sitting in the corner jumped up and ran towards me. He made eye contact which caused me to slow down, I could see he had a message for me. Then without warning he sprayed me with a very large bottle of Dolce & Gabanna and opened for me his entire case of perfumes. In the doorway of the bakery, on my way home to make lunch I was assaulted with what looked like the makeup counter at Bloomingdale’s. Good thing my bread was wrapped in two layers of plastic bags. He had doused me in my confusion. “You buy?” “No thank you” was all I could utter.
I am grateful for the black market perfume industry, as well as for the handbags and shoes and scarves. It helps me remember Florence a little more clearly, and feel less far away from those mercantile piazzas and bridges and back alleyways and churches, etc.