Christmas trees come with roots in Italy, and
mine, by some miracle of the Evergreen, is still alive on the balcony and
sprouting new buds despite the merciless winds of winter. This discovery of
unexpected spring in February is my fatto bello della settimana and I go out there
often. Never mind that I discovered these sweet baby sprouts solely because my
refrigerator freezes things rather than cooling them (if I want to eat a yogurt
without having to defrost it, I have to keep my food in a plastic bag hanging
off the balcony).
Writing a newspaper column, I
find, is a bit like tending a garden on the terrace. You have to look out the
windows often and always be somewhat preoccupied with the weather. Too much sun
will burn your rosemary to a crisp before you have a chance to sauté it
yourself, and the inclement cold will snuff the spice out of even the
healthiest geraniums. In this metaphor, the readers act as weatherman, writing
in to warn you if your words are too wet or two dry, borderline drought or definitely
blizzard. Some readers thank me for a useful article I wrote (by accident);
others tell me I’ve written an ‘awful piece’ (equally by accident) and either
beg or demand something new of me. Whichever the case, to have readers give a
yell from their own figurative balconies is a writer’s greatest privilege,
similar to the satisfaction that comes when sharing a salad made with
home-grown vegetables.
On occasion, I meet a reader in
person who approaches me with wonderfully disarming private observations like
‘I thought you would be old’ or ‘I didn’t think you’d be so small.’ And whether
or not these comments are compliments, I keep a collection of them close to my
heart, the same way Italians delight in collecting miniscule porcelain
keepsakes, fake gemstones and do-it-yourself decoupage with the first issue of
every new magazine they purchase.
Il fatto bello della settimana is
nearly two years old and only when a column approaches the toddler stage can
its mother really see how well it walks. Beauty, I’m quite convinced, is Italy’s most
easily captured commodity. The need for it permeates the Italian psyche in
every way, like water that fills three-fourths of the body. Beauty is an
expectation, not an exclamation, and B-E-L-L-O is used as a stamp of
approval-an official seal of worthiness, not the infatuated gush of those
bewitched. ‘In this country, craving beauty is not a conscious choice,’ my
friend Giovanni says. ‘In other countries, it’s dessert. Here, it’s the staple
food. And there’s so much of it, we need no dessert.’ This was his response to
my announcement: Il fatto bello is approaching its Terrible Twos and in need of a rather long nap. It’s
almost springtime and another column is pushing to be born.
‘I want to dedicate the column’s last article entirely
to beauty,’ I told him. And after tossing around a few lazy proverbs, he dug up
that gem for me from the very bottom of his brain. Giovanni has a special
talent for inspecting ideas as if they were paper scraps, found by chance and
picked up off the ground like valuable litter. Italians don’t think about
beauty often, the same way nobody gives a thought to the air with which they
fill their lungs unless it is polluted or dangerously missing. And that’s
exactly my point: around here, beauty is never really missing.
The birth of a new column does
not happen overnight, like real birth, which tends to occur on the night the
moon grows fattest. Its beginning stages began after Marco, as editor-in-chief,
wrote me a hurry-hurry letter just off a plane from New York. (Whenever the man goes to New York, he comes back
with the idea that my artistic efforts need redirecting. Someday, I’ll have to
go there myself to find out precisely why that is.) ‘Il fatto bello ha
fatto il suo tempo,’ he wrote. ‘Your
column has done its time. It’d be nice for you to riinventarti.’ After
beauty, reinvention is second in line when it comes to surviving in Italy. It is
the oddest thing. In a country where the stones stay unmoved for centuries and
tradition is served piping hot at every meal, no one ever wants you to stay the
same for long-and that means they love you.
The second impetus for reinvention came from the other
side of the ocean. Anthony, a radio-man from Mendocino, wrote me to say that
he’s learning Italian and has been reading my columns for nearly five years.
His e-mail was simple. ‘Linda, I’d like to see more words.’ Oh,
crimminy, Anthony, you might want to hold off on us ever really meeting in
person, because you’re already in trouble even from afar.
Okay, okay. It
has been truly bello writing il
fatto bello, but it is likely time to put the dear child to bed. Sogni d’oro, piccolino.
May your dreams be golden, sweetheart. And as for you, dear Readers and Weathermen,
I’ll see you next issue, wearing reinvention like a brand-new dress. Spring
after all, is not far away, and in Italy, a new wardrobe of words to
welcome the season can hardly be a bad idea.
