O brave new world, That has such people in’t
by Lisa Pegnato
I am a crab, half in the water, and half out. My astrologically inclined friends tell me that this is the nature of those born under the sign of Cancer. Cancer is a water sign for people who aren’t sure if they like water. We Cancerians have a love of travel, but also a love of home; a fascination with being somewhere else, but also a tendency to stay within our own four walls. As a result, we establish a deep attachment to place, even if that place is 6272.19 “great circle miles” from Los Angeles. This is flying distance from my address to a little house on Via Santa Maria delle Rose in Assisi, Perugia, Italia, Europe, home of Saint Francis, Saint Claire, Saint Rufino and probably at least six or seven others, who, according to my Italian grandmother, will do significant things for you if you know the right way to ask.
When I received the acceptance to the writing residency in Assisi, I sat in stunned disbelief, staring in shock at my husband across the dining room table. Finally, after months and months of rejection from jobs, publications, and residencies, someone wanted me! And it didn’t hurt that the award letter was addressed to “Esteemed Writer” which had my little bruised ego turning cartwheels. My husband said, “I told you so” and pushed back from the table, leaving me alone to begin a series of half-in half-out arguments with myself. It costs money to get to Italy. My last meaningful job disappeared over a year before, when the entertainment industry lost itself in multiple strikes amplified by interest rate hikes. The debate was an endless one: how does someone like me, an exceedingly practical woman, justify a month in Europe dedicated to — art?
I started writing as a form of self-defense. I no longer had a job with a parking space and a paycheck, but writing was something I thought I could do and something that I thought I should explore, even if that writing process involved a great deal of time spent staring blankly out the window at the cars dodging potholes and running stop signs…
I started writing as a form of self-defense. I no longer had a job with a parking space and a paycheck, but writing was something I thought I could do and something that I thought I should explore, even if that writing process involved a great deal of time spent staring blankly out the window at the cars dodging potholes and running stop signs on the street outside. Now I had the opportunity to stare blankly out the window at the Italian countryside. That, and the idea that I’d be traveling solo for a month convinced me to accept this unbelievable and possibly indulgent and selfish opportunity. Besides, at least according to my nonna, I had all those saints on my side.
I did research, looked at pictures on a website, read guidebooks, and spent endless amounts of time debating luggage and flight options with anyone who would indulge me. But, ultimately, no one could answer the question — how does one “residence”? Finally, my husband drove me to the airport and I left for Italy with a little green suitcase, a big green backpack, and a major case of Sindrome dell’impostore.
I warmed up for the residency by spending four days in the lovely and bewildering chaos that is Rome, writing every day in my brand-new notebook, inspired and overwhelmed by everything from espresso cups to the number 64 bus. On the fifth day, I made my way through the Roma Termini to the Regionale that would take me to Assisi. Leaving the station, possibly the most awe-inspiring site in Rome, with every train on all twenty-four tracks seemingly arriving and departing at the same time, my Regionale traveled past a set of impressive ruins of what looked like an aqueduct, except that these unvisited monumental and crumbling walls were inconveniently located next to binari 23 and 24. There’s so much history in Rome that by necessity, some of it, maybe a lot of it, gets ignored. As the train left the graffitied outskirts of Rome, rushing past the little towns of Narni and Terni, the countryside gradually opened up to endless green fields and rows of olive trees, orange poppies growing wild near the tracks, and substantial hills, which I later learned are the foothills of the Apennine Mountain range. But despite all my research and planning, I was still completely unprepared for my first sight of Assisi on the hill, still some miles away, as the train followed the curved tracks and the walled city came into view. That must be Assisi, I thought, because the nature of travel involves a state of constant dislocation, confusion: I think it’s this; it might be that. Either everything looks like the picture or nothing like the picture, and the brain-in-motion is left to perpetually put the puzzle pieces together.
My first night in Assisi, I undertake the initial test for any visitor: finding a place for dinner in an unfamiliar town. I have been traveling all day and I am hungry. It is the unbelievably early dinner hour of 19:00. I apologize in English for this transgression to a skeptical server, my limited Italian has abandoned me. I am shown to a small high table with a small high stool on a tiny outdoor patio, conspicuously overlooking the street. The server tells me the restaurant is completely booked, although I can see through the window that not a single table is occupied at this hour. I am the only diner. Even simple things like a knife and a fork look completely unfamiliar. I might as well be having supper on the moon.
I try to ask advice on the menu, fail miserably, order unimaginatively, drink my wine too quickly, and then it becomes a little struggle to remain on my perch. An hour later, after I’ve finished my pasta, the entire restaurant is full, not a single space unoccupied, and I am abandoned at my little table on the little patio outside the restaurant, as the two servers dart from person to person inside with wine, bread, menus. I give up on the idea of an espresso. I come inside to ask for my check, and only then am I rewarded with a smile from the server who has probably forgotten all about me.
O brave new world.
The next morning, I find the greens market, the bakery, the bank, the alimentari where I pick up the wrong item, and am told that what I have in my hand is not a small bottle of milk but a large bottle of cream. What does “intero” mean? All the guidebooks on the planet will not prepare you for the chaos that is an alimentari on Monday morning, crammed with customers who are there to buy cheese, or salami, or toothpaste, or to argue with the proprietor about some new outrage, judging from the volume levels, or perhaps it’s just the same Monday morning conversation as last week. In the midst of juggling the ringing up and the weighing out, the woman behind the counter dispatches a customer waiting in line to help me find a bottle of acqua minerale frizzante.
The morning is a series of cross-cultural mistakes, like touching a bunch of tulips at the greens market which causes the shopkeeper to fly out of her establishment demanding “Signora? Signora?” After that experience, I’m not sure if the protocol is to ask for vegetables or to choose them myself, but I see another shopper pick up a small plastic basket and begin to make her selection, so I do the same. Farther down the little street, I enter another market and am greeted by three stern figures in grocer’s coats, who watch me in silence as I examine the contents of the shelves. I point to the prosciutto in the case, and the woman clearly in charge of the meat slicing machine asks me how many slices I want, indicated by a chopping motion of her hand. Four, I say, overwhelmed by it all, even though I know the word is quattro.
The morning is a series of cross-cultural mistakes, like touching a bunch of tulips at the greens market which causes the shopkeeper to fly out of her establishment demanding “Signora?”
I persevere, even though the crab in me wants to spend every day in bed, under the covers, or quietly writing at my table. Instead, I do my shopping every morning, learning to take the erratic shopkeeping hours in stride. If the butcher is closed, then perhaps I don’t really need to go to the butcher. I learn to ask come si dice over and over again, and I always get a response, which I try very hard to remember. How do you say this? What is the word for that? I introduce myself with the Italian pronunciation of my name. I ask theirs, with the exception of the three stern people in their grocer coats who still intimidate me, but one day when I’m in their shop fruitlessly rooting through my too-small change purse to find the correct coins and in frustration dump the contents into my hand, the grocer-coated one at the register takes the time to patiently count out the correct change. I stand like a child with my palm open as he chooses the coins, endlessly grateful and deliriously happy, the fever-dream of travel calmed by a single gesture. I return again and again, asking for quattro fette di prosciutto per favore, and spend many minutes pondering the bread selection with the man behind the counter.
There are more small victories along with small setbacks. I am now allowed to choose my own flowers at the greens market, but I am reprimanded when I attempt to re-use a bag when I go to the chocolate store to buy all the varieties of Perugina chocolate not available in the States. My saved bag is taken from me and replaced with a fresh bag, which is then carefully taped closed and handed back to me with a receipt and a reproachful look.
On a cold rainy day, I am wandering Assisi in search of lunch, carefully keeping to the center of the street so I don’t slip on the cobblestones as I’ve been told by at least two people, including Marina, the dottoressa of considerable talent and even more considerable patience who runs our residency, although at the time she issues the warning she is navigating the steep street in a pair of high heels and therefore loses some credibility. I see a restaurant with chicken curry on the menu in a city awash with pasta and pizza. I secure a table in the warm, cozy space, and make the acquaintance of Chefs Traci and Sanjeev as well as the estimable front-of-house server, whose English is as fluent as my Italian. She corrects my choice of wine with a small shake of her head and a tiny furrowing of her brow, and then waves at me when I see her energetically sweeping out the restaurant the next day. I return two more times, the second time I eat way too much, greedily ordering every course, and spend the rest of the day happily collapsed on my bed. The third time is my last night in Assisi, and Traci gives me a splendid table with a view of the narrow street and the blue-pink sky fading to dusk, a clear sunset following a week of rain. I eat my meal (more moderately this time) and drink the wine my new friend, the server, has chosen. At the end of the evening, I am invited back into the restaurant kitchen, all of us crowded into Sanjeev’s tiny cooking space, and suddenly, I know that I am home.
How many goodly creatures there are here!
The most essential form of travel is getting from one place to another, which is like saying that writing is picking up a pen. To truly travel is to exist in a state of unreality, a floating universe filled with buildings and cities seen only in picture books, encountering a reality that is so much louder, brighter, dirtier, bigger and smaller than the image in your head. We think of travel in terms of the physical – board the aircraft, sleep in a hotel room, order a cup of coffee in another language. Valuable experiences, not without the potential for adventure, but only part of the experience. Travel is the conductor on the train who nicely tells you that you’ve seated yourself in the wrong compartment; the fellow tourist who tells you how to buy a ticket at the tobacconist across the street and then holds a seat for you on the bus. Travel is the cream, not the milk, not touching the flowers, not re-using the bag, the wrong change, the wrong word, misreading the map and turning down the wrong street and then suddenly coming to the realization as you attempt not to slip on the wet cobblestones that you did not know any of this existed. These previously unknown people and places suddenly crowd into your life, shaping every day, influencing the way you move through the space, even the objects you pick up and consider. This is a new world, all expectations dashed into pieces and reformed with shiny new experiences that require the entire heart, soul and imagination to comprehend. This perpetual unsettled state can be overwhelming. Fear and courage in equal measure push in on all sides. What was formerly a grand adventure becomes too much. It’s exhausting. Push back, succumb, give up, run back to the hotel, pull the covers over your head, wish you were home.
We all return to our starting place, of course. After a period of temporal confusion, we arrive back where we started. The surroundings will be the same, but not quite, as if the angles changed and the walls don’t meet the floor. The friends and acquaintances we’ve made on our journey are no longer people we see every day but are now dissolving into characters that live in a far-away land. Our minds are crowded with new-acquired images and none of these new images want to coexist with the old, which in turn become dislocating and foreign, a sort of reverse culture shock. Home isn’t home. Not yet.
Travel makes us wiser. We have changed in ways that we cannot understand, but over time, if we’re lucky and if we’re willing, the changes might be revealed to us.
I am one soul among many. If I go back, people may remember me, but most likely not, especially in a place like Assisi, crowded with school groups brought to view history, religious pilgrims searching for saints and redemption, and tourists hungry for gelato. I know that even if I shared a dinner or an aperitivo or even a long walk with someone, the callous universe most likely has no plans to reunite us. Our experiences, once immediate and vivid, fade into story.
O wonder! How beauteous mankind is!
Travel makes us wiser. We have changed in ways that we cannot understand, but over time, if we’re lucky and if we’re willing, the changes might be revealed to us. The journey leaves us with the struggle of having one foot in the water, the other in the sand. We are both here and there, the peace of home denied to us. We adjust or not, hold our souvenirs in our hands and bore all of those around us with our photographs and videos that give only a two-dimensional shadow of our experience, even though we stare at the pictures again and again, trying to find what we’ve gained and lost. We are suspended somewhere in that great circle of miles.
We have met such remarkable people in our travels, now embedded like tiny particles in our consciousness and memory, altering us in ways that we struggle to understand. Before our journey, our little leap into the unknown, we did not know people like this existed.
And now they are with us forever.
O brave new world.
— From Act 5 of Shakespeare’s The Tempest
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t.