Prologue to Beauty

LABORATORIO ARTIGIANALE
di Antonio Giornelli
Via Guelfa, 76

I flattened out the little piece of paper that lay scrunched up in my pockets for days. My heart skipped a little; I was safe. I have found shelter and dinner in the cozy hostel of St. Marco. I threw my duffel bag on the bunk bed and sat by the tall, paneled windows, laying out my clothes to dry. Tomorrow, I will find the artisanal shop and buy those two frames my father didn't get to buy and pray that they were open on Saturday. The red rooftop of the church of St. Marco blocked my view from the top of the hill but I decided to take it as a good omen of protection. Please, God, Marco, let the store be open during the designated times. It was already dark out and the thick clouds struggled to cover the far-reaching scope of the skies.

I have come here directed by the rough draft of a dream. I snuck my head to peak upwards at the long alleyways—those mysterious winding paths that trailed deep inside the hill with entrances illuminated by an eerie green light. It started to rain and the shopkeepers filled the narrow streets, blocking my path as they hurriedly entered the dangling purses on display and the bar tables and chairs outside. I ran my hand along the high walls and tried to capture a bird’s nest with my camera. I soon ran out of batteries. The mechanical rooftops clicked clumsily and the heavy rain drops pattered more loudly. I had forgotten my coat.

Little mistakes.

This I will reveal with utmost secrecy: I had missed my train stop because I couldn’t figure out how to open the bulky train doors and had been too embarrassed to ask. The train huffed slowly away with its stubborn doors sealed shut while the little village under the Tuscan sun waved past my eyes, becoming shuffled along with the bushes and trees closest to my sight. A few inches of glass always separate the thief from the diamond, the caged bird from freedom, the fool from the answer. I held my little dictionary up against my breast and quickly began flipping through the pages: “stazione.” Just in case: “sono perso.” I am lost. My ego groaned out loud: not yet...

I must point out that my mind had turned extra introspective during this solo trip, which may drive people insane if they don’t get along with all their Freudian spheres. In my case, the super-ego confronted the id in a rather cruel manner. You wanted adventure, didn’t you? You expected to get lost. You didn't even bring a guide book! Sometimes I wonder if you do it for the adrenaline rush. Some truth to that statement, but perhaps more of a testament to my laziness. I dumbly got off the next station, looking around for a bus that would lead me to the little town on the hill.

An elderly man approached me at Terontola, reading my traveler’s cluelessness and seeing through the underlying struggle of pride going on inside my head. He showed me where I could get bus tickets and kept me company until the bus arrived. “Sono studente a Roma...” “Sei giaponese?” “Si, mitad. Sono tambien Chilena.” The clue to being understood in Italy is to speak confidently in Spanish when you need to fill in the gaps. He nodded and smoked his pipe, looking ahead towards the mountains and observing that it will soon start to rain. I nodded and thought about my classmates in Siena and Venice. How different this place feels when you can’t speak English.

I hopped on the last bus to Cortona. You know, luck is the reason people don’t learn from mistakes; I heard the nagging voice inside my head scold me in the absence of company, but still I grinned like a kid who had gotten away with the cookie in her hand. Id: 1; super-ego: 0. I sat idly in the empty bus while I looked up at the hill we were nearing. It looked like a gigantic wedding cake. Tall, skinny trees and bushy olive trees scattered around the hill, and little domes and churches spread evenly outside of the town walls like frosting. I exchanged a few words with the driver who told me we were indeed going to Cortona and I was indeed a lucky girl. How is it that I know more strangers in a foreign country than I would on the streets of Seattle? I do not count the awkward chat on the public transit buses nor the drunken introductions at college parties. I remembered the extreme display of Italian hospitality we were shown when my father and I had gotten lost near Castiglione del Lago and the conversation Joel and I had with an older man while we were waiting at the bus stop near Lake Albano. I realized that not a day had gone by without some sort of exchange with the venders at the marketplace and the hidden grocery stores or the occasional unwelcomed attention from aggressive Italian men. I had learned to speak in a foreign country.

Date with David!

Bright and early, we met once more at the steps of St. Lorenzo which became our regular morning meeting spot. There, Lisa revealed to us the gripping continuation to the cliff-hanger of the Medici family drama, and, like true fans, we ventured over to the Palazzo Medici Riccardi to explore their premises.
This was no ordinary palace; or rather, it looked too ordinary from the outside. Blended in the corner was the fort-like home of the Godfathers of the Renaissance. It certainly fit the modest Medici's motto, which was to "Always keep out of the public eye – and never display any pride."

*picture: Rustification of the palace walls.

Inside the palace walls, however, was a different story. The entrance led to a beautiful courtyard which once contained Michelangelo's David and now overlooks the garden, where half the group waited to take turns to enter the Capella dei Magi, a private chapel inside the Palace.

The beautifully frescoed room revealed a clear message to all those who entered it: if you are our friend, we will protect you and feature you in our paintings. If you are not, you will be hunted down by leopards and left to fend for yourself in the Hobbesian state of nature. The Medici were displayed as the three magi on the private frescoes by Gozzoli, elevating their status to those of Biblical characters and in the process, personalizing the story of Christ.

--

On our way to the Academia for our date with David, we stopped by the Ospedale degli Innocenti (Hospital of the Innocents). The hospital was a children's orphanage built by Brunelleschi, who designed an elegant pattern of triangles and semi-circles throughout the piazza.

There is a revolving window near the entrance where babies could be dropped off anonymously to be cared for by the orphanage. We contemplated donating our smallest classmate but the window was unfortunately blocked off:

According to hearsay, there was a strike in the morning which delayed our entrance to the Academia for a few minutes. Meanwhile, the shop in the front struck gold that day with students flocking to get the ten postcards for a euro deal.

Once inside the Academia, the architecture of the place directed us straight to the main attraction. With its powerful hands, the piercing look of determination and the left arm calmly holding the sling, David looked ready to strike a giant. At his feet, we were the ones looking up at a giant: was this the young underdog that slay Goliath, and was to become a powerful symbol of Florence?

The adonis that Michelangelo freed from a slab of marble represented not only a gracious display of the male physique but a symbol for the Florentines in their fight against France and, later, a marker of the triumphant comeback of the Medici, among other meanings it has taken on over the years.

Unfortunately for photography enthusiasts, no pictures were allowed inside. Only our memories would capture the essence of David… (or this David to the left, on the side of the bus)

--

The group split up for lunch and some of us picnicked at the footsteps of the Duomo. For the remainder of the day, we were busy completing our next Quest and exploring the city (and exercising our poor Italian skills) on a scavenger hunt.
What was the animal featured on the far side of the Mercato Nuovo? This beaming boar encircled by these lovely ladies:

We were also led to the church of Santa Maria Novella to investigate Masaccio's the Trinity. The patrons were depicted in the fresco praying alongside the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in perfect symmetry. Although a bit faded with time, Masaccio's piece represented a hallmark of Renaissance art with its elegant use of perspective inside the personal atmosphere of the Renaissance home.

To prevent photo bleaching, no pictures were allowed inside once more. Instead, I am about to leave you with a picture of Honors students scribbling away in their journals and taking over the hotel's breakfast room, putting down in words what cameras were not allowed to do in pictures this day… but as we are limited to 4 pictures per entry, this too, I shall leave to your imagination.

You'll just have to trust our word: we're hard at work.

In search of tragedy

What is beauty?

We often associate it with the visual arts.

In a rousing speech meant to open the eyes of cynics and objectivists, my high school art teacher once emotively proclaimed that the trash can, with the papers crumpled up in varying degrees of tightness inside of it and the lucidity with which the plastic shone at a certain angle—it too, could become Art. Marcel Duchamps, avant-garde of readymade art, angrily made the point with a urinal, which he surnamed “fountain,” by entering it into an art opening which stirred much controversy.

Were these things beautiful? Devoid of meaning, could ordinary objects attain a status of beauty?

I often find myself enjoying a song until I realize how supremely nauseating the lyrics can be. Conversely, I find the most abstract pieces of art deeply moving once I understand the language of the symbols the painter assigns: the gazing stars in Miro, the ant phobia of Dali, the cigarette butts angrily encrusted in a Jackson Pollock painting… details that cannot go overlooked in their pointed purpose.

Essentially, Beauty is assigned by the viewer, or “in the eye of the beholder,” as the saying goes. I remember meeting a boy whose lips were blue, a birth mark in a most unusual spot, which have captivated me until the mystery of them had dissipated together with my infatuation.

What is Beauty?

My headphones over my ears in the late night, it is the classical guitar playing of my teacher which is the epitome of all things beautiful and true. It drowns out the music from the piazza below us and the cacophonous chattering of the people in cafes, sounds I do welcome at times when I think about how far away I have traveled.

His artistry on the guitar is the sort of beauty that evokes my senses so violently it can shake a few tears out of my perplexed being.

Let me explain before you label me a crybaby.

Perhaps I can appreciate the art better with the understanding of the time and care with which you produce such tone on the classical guitar: the daily sanding of the fingernails with the soft, gray sandpaper flown over from San Francisco, the drawer full of clipped nails to use in the tragic event of a ruptured nail (and the backup ping pong ball shells), the little jar of vitamin E sitting on the edge of the desk to fortify the nails (horse manure apparently works wonders, but I did not press for further details), the precise knowledge of the angle at which to stroke the string—and that is only on the right hand.

The deep calluses on the fingers which have permanently settled on his left hand and the fortified skin that has coated over his muscles over the many hours and decades of practice, the agility with which his big, knuckly fingers would move over the fret board and the surprising gentleness with which they would land on a note and end in a harmonic.

These are details in the back of my mind that I do not need to see in order to hear.

Sometimes, his fingers would lightly graze along the string or an intake of breath would be heard on the recording. Perhaps blinded by my own amore, I believe these little imperfections make the music more alive and thus more beautiful in my mind.

It is this precision, the intimate knowledge of the instrument and the impassioned intentionality of every note that becomes evident with each stroke that constitutes Beauty.

It has become the standard by which I rate all things beautiful: does it make me want to cry?

Although I have tried to analyze the mechanism that goes into the embarrassing end result, I don’t believe that emotions operate so easily on a set recipe.
And so I begin this journey with a list of things that constitute Beauty which have greatly moved me so far and another listing I expect will do the same during my stay. These will not be merely limited to artworks and sculptures one finds plentiful in Italy, but to specific events, sounds, and sights I hope to experience.

Close to tears:

• The way the clouds parted after a torrential rain on our way to Rome
• The bright pink sunset over the city of Florence, also my first sight of the city.
• The isolated church of St. Antimo in the heart of

  

  Tuscany
• The color of the rosy limestone during an afternoon in Assisi
• “The Annunciation” painting
• Seeing the Trajan column the second time around (after Lisa’s helpful explanations)
• The olive trees in the birthplace of Leonardo DaVinci
• Little children gathered around a puppet master in the Piazza Navona
• I must admit-- the exquisite collection of the Valentino designs, the blueprints and the site ambience around the Peace Arch.
• The rendition of an old Argentinean tango by trumpet and bass players in the Campo.

May need tissue:

• The Sistine Chapel
• The Pantheon when it rains (the weather has simply been too sunny and I may find the rain by itself phenomenal)
• Michelangelo’s David
• The various artworks at the Uffizi
• Love graffiti… or the sheer quantity of them sprawled around the city
• Opera, depending on my budget
• The final glance of Italy from the airplane window

Driving with babo 2

My biggest fear before the trip was that we would get lost.

When my father suggested that we rent a car and drive all over Tuscany, my blood ran cold and he knew why; he acquires a terrible temperament when he gets lost behind the wheel. Family outings which require long car rides often involve my mother threatening to divorce while my sibling and I strap our seatbelts tightly in the backseat. So when he bought a few maps of Italy, suggested we get a manual car (it was 200% cheaper than renting an automatic), and made me book all the hotels, I studied very diligently. Found hotels I could place on a map. Printed out copies of routes from Google Maps and learned a few helpful phrases in Italian.

We wandered around Castiglione del Lago on the fourth day and it was quickly getting dark. A little old lady had led us completely astray when we had asked her for directions to the Locanda Poggioleone and my father was getting impatient. I braced myself for the beast to come out, a fear which kept me very attentive to all the signs we passed on the road. Signs to Pozzuolo kept leading us in circles and Google Maps gave incomprehensible directions.

“Junko, go ask that woman…” my father would point to a lady getting in her car.

“You do it... it’s always me...” I groaned.

“Your Italian is better!” Always praising me when it’s useful.

“You are fluent in Spanish too!” I quipped back. Despite my whiny comebacks, he did not raise his voice or look angry. We did not get into arguments, which is rare of us. It got quiet in the car and he gently reassured me: “I know you are uncomfortable asking for help, but how else are we going to find the place? It is getting dark soon and my phone is not working.”

I hate to bug strangers. I hate to get out of the car with a sweet smile and pleading eyes, revealing to the world my foreigner status and asking for their charity. I had gotten really good at it here and the people had always been helpful and pleasant. Within a few days of this, I became increasingly thirsty for the rush of the successful interactions I’ve had. I would secretly look for excuses to ask for directions, to try out my Italian and to learn new words I would then excitedly look up in the dictionary. This, of course, I did not admit to myself at the time and the thought of letting it be known to my father was something I subconsciously avoided at all costs.

However, his surprising softness convinced me to do my part maturely; I might as well enjoy myself, I thought. We stopped by a house on the side of the road where a man with a protruding belly was hosing this field. “Scusi... buena sera. Sapere dove la Locanda Poggioleone?” I proudly asked him with an innocent, sweet smile planted on my face. The man scratched his head, grabbed my printout from Google Maps and said a few words out loud. He gave up after a few minutes when he saw my blank, smiling face and called out to his wife inside the house. My face quickly changed expressions. Come se dice? No, it doesn’t matter, please don’t bother yourself... I stood like a mute trying to dissuade the man with my sorry gestures. How terrible was this moment I understood my vulnerable position.

The wife came out and the two argued for a few minutes in their loud, Italian voices. Her curly hair bounced a little as they disagreed and bickered over directions. Neither of them seemed to know where the Locanda was situated, and so they called out to the uncle who was repairing the car in the garage despite my pathetic attempts at pleading them to not to be bothered. They argued in their loud voices for a while longer and I was unable to decipher what they were saying as their words overlapped and interrupted each other. The uncle suggested West at one point, which was met by a chorus of “No, no, no!” from the family members. Naturally, they collectively called the sister who was cleaning up inside the house: “Mariana!” She was wearing long plastic gloves which met at her elbow and were slightly stained with grease. “Sorry,” Mariana shyly expressed to me, excusing her unclean state. The only English word I heard from them was the apology I could not deliver.

This is the part of the story where I have to swear that what I’m telling you actually occurred. Mariana did not know and so they called the grandma who was rocking in her chair in front of the house. The elderly woman slowly made her way towards the row of family members encircling me, arguing and contemplating amongst each other where this Locanda could be. It’s okay... please don’t concern yourselves with our problems… my face was becoming slightly flushed in embarrassment, bowed down like the Japanese do in these situations. The man pointed to my father who was sitting in the car and told me he would direct us. No, he said he will drive his car with his sister and we should follow him. “Oh, no...it’s okay....” I mumbled in English, knowing that their minds were already set while my mind was slightly unsettled. Do they truly know where the Locanda is or are we going to drive around until we find it? Still, you cannot turn down such a considerate offer. I sat in the car and my dad turned to ask: “Well?” he looked hopeful. “Babo... they want us to follow them.”

Off we went, shyly waving goodbye and thank you to the grandma, uncle, and mother who saw us off. The mother handed her husband a shirt so that he could put it over his casual tank top. They drove in front of us in the opposite direction in which we arrived and my father and I exchanged some worried looks. “How incredibly nice of them,” we commented out loud. “But…” We kept on following like obedient guests, content that somebody else was alleviating our burden even if we may not find the place in the end. Down a little road we went, up a hill and around the curb. The car in front of us stopped and over our heads we saw big, neon green letters in front of a modern establishment: Locanda Poggioleone. So it does exist!

We were ecstatic in our gratification, shaking the hands of our hosts who hugged us tightly and laughed with their full bellies. Much can be understood in happy expressions and extended arms. “Ciao! Grazie mille! Buena sera!” I threw a string of generic phrases at them as they drove away. When their car was no longer in our sight, I turned to my father who was still grinning. I breathed a sigh of relief.

We did not argue once in those seven days I drove with babo. Perhaps I should give thanks to the impressive Italian hospitality for averting a potential argument. We were certainly lucky to have experienced such a warm dosage of cultural shock. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that we were lucky we let it transform our relationship.

Driving with babo

The little blue Fiat sped forward with a determined whir like a bumblebee carrying a load of bread twice its body mass.

“Italians,” he mumbles, but I detect a hint of a smile in his observation.

Perhaps it was an expression of smug complacency when expectations, good or bad, are met; perhaps it was the feeling of nostalgia sweeping over him as the compact, diesel-fueled cars raced across the countryside hills.

Yet clearly, this was not New York, Oregon, or Georgia. It wasn’t quite Spain, England, or France, or any of the places we had once lived in so long ago.
Tufts of lively green leaves supported by old man crutches reached upwards towards the skies to join the clouds in their gentle swaying. In the fields, yellow rustic houses with emerald shutters stood as if they had sprouted along with the overheated sunflowers and vines through countless summers.

I rolled down the window to breathe in the new air. The opening invited a pitter pattering sound inside the rental car which pressed down on our ears, but the discomfort went by without a command of disaproval from my father.
I let the wind cool my face and assign a new scent to our airplane-strained clothes. Was this the smell of arancias dampened by the morning droppings of the sheep?

I counted.
In six more days, we would be arriving in the city of Rome, where the white tips of our fingernails would be darkened by the city’s activities and we would be awakened by the clanging of plates from the bustling restaurant next door. And in just seven days, my babo (Italian for “papa” as a hotel maid later taught me) would be returning to the routine of work in his long-sleeved shirt and a matching tie in a room excessively cooled by air-conditioning.

But for now, we were headed towards Tuscany with thoughts more preoccupied with the past, surrounded by a land where stories are engrained like the crescent wrinkles gently forming on the corner of my father’s eyes.

We were humbled by the sight before us. We dripped with appreciation and sweat as the Europe we had left so long ago unrolled its beautiful fields and hills beneath our wheels.

The first castles and Roman ruins that came to view drew exaggerated gasps from the both of us.