I’m writing this post take a break from my normal nonna daily activities of making winter minestrone (using Norman’s recipe!) and reading my 15th century lady poetry. Hopefully my few readers will excuse my absence from the blog. I just finished a long overdue essay on Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (Vultures), which had been weighing me down for a long time. I’ve felt really settled and happy in the past week or so.
Here are some highlights.
#1: In New York, I sweat a lot. This may have to do with the fact that I drink half a pot of hot coffee before I hustle to teach my NYU undergrads in the morning. In Bologna, I don’t sweat at all. That might be because my apartment is kept a chill 58 degrees, or it might stem from the fact that I am not guzzling half a gallon of piping hot American coffee that’s highly caffeinated. (Oscar, I miss our coffee breaks!) Maybe Italians are highly aware of this link and in fact avoid multiple servings of coffee to keep their sweating under control.
My coffee routine is pretty fun, though, and it happens every morning. And I don’t sweat! Italians really don’t drink one coffee after another. In fact, if you are at the bar and drink a cappuccino, and then ask for, say, a caffe macchiato, they give you a strange look as if you just asked them for a vial of rose water. I have a favorite bar near my apartment on Via dell’Independenza where I get my cappuccino and brioche . The barista, a cute little fellow who looks like an overgrown member of a boy band judging by his 90‘s earring and use of hair product, likes me and has learned my ways of double servings of coffee. Begrudgingly, he supplies me with my second, while winking excessively, as if to say that he *knows* what’s up. This serves to only further my shame. I try to avoid this type of intercultural contact.
I just can’t take the shame so my routine has changed. I still go to my favorite bar, but I now go to my second tier supplier of coffee, a slightly ramshackle joint with an aged collection of mints and gums and strange pink terracotta everywhere, after I get my first cappuccino. There, I get my caffe macchiato and stand at the bar, thus avoiding my shame and getting my critical second coffee.
Why are they so against me drinking two in a row? Is there something pathological about serial coffee consumption?
#2: I was browsing what has become my favorite bookstore, EATALY (which has a good selection of literature and philosophy in addition to having a bar, an enoteca with €3 glasses of Nebbiolo as well as a sandwich stand that has my favorite gorgonzola and pear sandwiches), when I saw that Benedetta Tobagi, who participated in the DENUNCIA conference I co-organizd last year, was presenting her new book, Come mi batte forte il tuo cuore, published by Einaudi (fancy!) the next day. Benedetta gave a great paper at the conference about ways victims of 70‘s terrorism in italy have voiced their own “denunciations” of political practice that leads to extremism. So I took Marisa, my friend who has just arrived to do her own research in Bologna, to see Benedetta speak.
Benedetta’s father, a respected journalist for Corriere della Sera was killed in such terrorist attack so her work has an incredible personal resonance. She had lots to say and handled the questions from the respondent really well, even though he was the typical Italian 50 something paunchy academic, dressed in the usual uniform of a corduroy suit. He tried to make it about himself and his own thoughts but Benedetta was so strong that he wasn’t much of a bother.
My life here has a nice consistency: coffee, cooking at home, long walks (Bologna’s center is so small there is hardly any need to take a bus), and fightings teenagers for desk space at the public library.
The teenagers are completely obsessed with making out in public, so I’m planning a future post in which I only take pictures of teenagers making out in public space.
I’m also working on a photo-essay of all the best graffiti I’ve seen here, so stay tuned.
