Last September I took a job in Venice selling jewelry behind the cityys only piazza. If you ever need quick employment and mindless labor, know that a cubicle full of hanging necklaces will provide you with both. During the job interview, I took the advice of my 80-year old aunt whose 20 years with Fascism still make her withhold information.
Don’t tell la padrona that youuve been educated. Sheell never hire you.. I volunteered no
previous employment history at our meeting, and realized that, in fact, the owner required none.
Have you sold before?
Yes.
Good. Return tomorrow.
Apparently, salesgirls need to be loquacious with customers, not with bosses.
I liked the product and sold it quite easily, especially to middle-aged Americans, who always wanted to hug me after a sale. Italian women made tougher customers. They come in to tell you about the diamonds they have at home and leave empty handed. Luckily for the ladies who stepped into the store, I was no longer writing articles on life in Italy. Every journalistic vein in my body was dry and my brain could not hold a single ounce of cultural analysis. Whenever I had an impulse to analyse the customers, I reminded myself that I was no longer a writer. I was a shop girl, thank God. I was there to sell jewelry, not ideassand I was rather enjoying it. When there was actually someone to sell to, I mean.
The rest of the time could be classified as pura tortura. Frankly, a person with no desire to think has no business having so much wait time. Not that torture, in and of itself, is necessarily a bad thing. Ask any of the big-wig writersstheyyll tell you that torture is a fundamental pit-stop on the road to creativity. Certainly, good writers need to develop other qualities as wellllike compassion, vision and an eye for the unexpected. But while virtues take time to create and effort to maintain, torture is immediate and, well, relatively easy.
Once a week, after a day of shop-girling, I would write to my ex-boss, Marco. He had taken my career change in stride and never once insinuated that my new profession was not my calling in life. Quite a feat for someone who has boisterous opinions on all topics, including how to indent paragraphs properly. He preferred me writing, but if I wanted self-torture instead, far be it for him to deny me the right.
In efforts to repay Marco for his unfailing support, I titled each note Il fatto bello della settimanaa. Underneath, in my weekly attempt at optimism, I strove to describe something beautifull IId inadvertently experienced. Three lines maximum, two lines meglio; those were the rules. Marco knew to respond rarely.
That was the other rule. In the real world of journalism, readers almost never responddthey read. They just read and understand.
For the better part of two years I had written a bi-monthly language and culture column, spending innumerable hours searching for words that would reflect the Italian psyche. On the columnns second anniversary, I realized I was finished and vowed never to write another line. Like it or not, my search for telltale expressions was over. But if truth be told, that realization left a surprising void that slowly filled with a slightly frightening question: What in the world do I look for now?
When youure searching for something that is still undefined, you often end up finding whateverrs most readily available. For me, it was beauty. Italy is teeming with it. Life, in fact, is teeming with it.
I walked through San Marco at seven this morning. Only the pigeons were there to admire my new coat. Puffy sleeves, fog and the flutter of wings. Hemmingway would have conjured up a bullfight right there in the piazza.
Visited Peggy’s today. A trip to the Guggenheim, forces you to begrudgingly admit your own normalness.
Went to lunch at my aunt and unclees. Lo zio stands up and toasts before every meal. It is always quite a speech. A 12-person table-cloth is short for their table. Every place setting has a different glass and most of them used to be Nutella jars.
I never wrote my friend fragments of earth-shattering loveliness or life-changing realizations. By nature of its name il fatto bello della settimana treats beauty as fact. It was simply about preserving sudden moments of brightnesssthose times when a word or a deed succeeds in shaking us out of our habitual sleepwalk.
Speaking of which, after five months of fatti belli, Marco picked up the phone. Il fatto bello della settimana is your next column, Linda.
I’ve sworn off writing, Marco.
So I’ve heard. Now get to work.
You’re not my boss anymore. Quit bossing me.
Deadline is Monday.
Damn. I know how to be unreliable in every other way. But somehow, I find deadlines virtually impossible to disobey. Especially when the deadline happens to be il fatto bello della settimana.
