Italy: January dreaming

It was the adverbs that did me in.  The adverbs that caused me to flunk out of the Duolingo on-line Italian study program.  Not the meaning of the adverbs, but their positioning.

I had finally figured out anche ("also").  At least for Duolingo's purposes, just put it at the beginning of the sentence.  But it was spesso ("often") that gave me problems, and then sempre ("always") that finally did me in.  I couldn't remember whether to put it before or after the verb.  "I always work," or "I work always."  I'm pretty sure now it's the latter, but my mind kept boggling.  And still does. 

Actually, I didn't flunk out.  But I finally received enough demerits that I was told I'd have to pay to continue, or at least to continue with all the symbols of merit I had received to that point.  I'll  just start over -- not caring about my medals of merit -- and I'm sure they'll start me out at the place I left off.  Worrying once more about sempre.   

The fact I even signed up is remarkable.  I took three terms of Intensive Italian in college, two of them while in Italy itself.  It didn't stick.  It didn't stick despite all the visits I've made to Italy since college, including my visits to Lake Como the past three years.  One problem is that Italians are so fluent in English now.  At least, those Italians that I'm apt to talk to as a mindless American tourist.

But I love Italy, and am constantly drawn back.  As I've mentioned, I plan to return to Lake Como again this August.  I've been re-reading -- browsing through, mainly -- Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, her account of the efforts, by herself and her husband, to renovate as a summer home a dilapidated stone house outside Cortona in southern Tuscany, near the border with Umbria.

Of course, I'd never renovate a house myself.  Not after reading the months of work Frances and Ed put into their own project, as well as reading similar accounts by other expatriate writers, British and American.  I'm too lazy.  But if I had the money, I'd gladly pay workers to do all the work, while I moseyed around getting in their way.  If I had the money, I'd gladly buy a house -- such as the one I stay in each year at Lake Como -- that someone else had renovated, with modern wiring and plumbing, while preserving in its entirety its rustic charm.

My attitude is that suggested by my long-time motto: "Why buy a boat when you have friends who own a boat?"  Or "swimming pool."  Or "beach home."   

But I didn't sit down at my computer to point out my character flaws.  I just wanted to emphasize how much I like Italy -- as apparently do a large number of my fellow countrymen.  I like the scenery.  I like the history.  I like the people.  I like its architecture.

I love the food.  I love not only the food, but the Italian belief that eating is not just a consumption of necessary nutrients, but is almost a sacrament, a source of life's enjoyment worth lingering over.  And that it is also a social act, to be shared with friends and relatives.  As Frances marvels, eating outdoors with her husband, early in their ownership of their Italian property:

He piles the bread board with our cheeses, salami, peppers, and on our plates arranges our first course, the classic caprese: sliced tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, and a drizzle of oil.

... The cicadas yammer in the trees, that deeply heart-of-summer sound. The tomatoes are so intense we go silent as we taste them. Ed opens a celebratory bottle of prosecco and we settle down to recap the saga of buying and restoring the house. ... We dream on about other projects. The sun through the flowering trees bathes us in gold sifted light. "This isn't real; we've wandered into a Fellini film," I say.

Her husband replies that maybe Fellini hadn't really been all that creative.  Maybe all of Italian life actually resembled a Fellini film, and Fellini was just telling it as it is.

I wouldn't go that far.  But when I'm in Italy, and everything is going relatively smoothly, it seems almost too good to be true.  Is this real, I ask myself?  Life back home seems like a crazy madhouse, from the vantage point of an Italian lunch -- whether a feast, or simple rustic food.  Yes, things that work in America may not always work in Italy.  You may get irritated, just like you do at home.  But the irritation is over, and you move on.  You don't brood and simmer over it  until -- joined with other daily irritations -- it affects your entire personality.

These may be merely the ravings of a guy who's tired of January and dreams of the warmth of the Mediterranean world, the Italian sun, a guy who's never actually experienced Italy in winter.  But I don't care.  I'm hungry for "intense" tomatoes.  I want to pass a bottle of prosecco around the dinner table.

I long for yammering cicadas!

I'll be back to Lake Como in August.  If it's too hot, as it may well be in August, I may long for the cool, moist zephyrs of January in Seattle.  That's human nature, right?

Maybe not.  Meanwhile, I need to remember where to place my Italian adverbs.  Sempre!