Showing posts with label Travels with Cadfael. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travels with Cadfael. Show all posts

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Travels with Cadfael: A New Year's Tale of Two Feasts, Rome and New York



Nothing exotic this New Years, but fond memories of a New Year's Eve in Trastevere, Rome, with my Benedictine monk friend Cadfael—whom I had met while I was studying chant in Solemes, which lead to a series of terrific travel adventures—while my then recent ex walked down the aisle in New York.

When you experience it, it’s not a cliche:

It was the best of times and the worst of times. We were in an epoch of belief and an epoch of incredulity, in a season of Darkness and a season of Light. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

There was to be a feast in Rome that I would attend, and one in New York that I would not. And so we will come to the end of the tale of the Talented Mr. Ripley and me (with no snide remarks from you, Steed), when he walked down the aisle with his ready-made family in my own parish in New York while I was in Rome getting some comfort from the monks.

Cadfael and I had spent Christmas in Galway,  and then landed in a Rome of grey skies and drizzle for New Year's. The weather fit my mood. We buzzed around town a bit on the Vespa to say goodbye and good riddance to the old year.

The plan was to have a late New Year’s Eve dinner in a small neighborhood place in Trastevere, with 2 of Cadfael’s English monk friends, Rupert and Lambert. For me it would be like having a monk shield against the sad thoughts of a disappointing year.

And what a shield it was.  Rupert is a dazzling dissipate. He is a living cross between Lord Sebastian Flyte and C.S.Lewis. A compact man, fortyish, his boyish good looks starting to fade, he is a compelling presence of sweetness and darkness. Lambert is a little younger and on the surface, very uncomplicated; he’s 6 feet 2 of warm openness.

The trio called for me at my hotel, the Villa San Pio on the Aventine, and we walked through the small, winding alleys of that most charming of Roman neighborhoods. We were led to a great table in the back of the taverna, where I sat against the wall looking into the room through the ring of Benedictines. In the deep haze of cigarette smoke the large Italian families were in full, noisy animation. I felt safe.

We got bottles of wine, and then more bottles. The monks reminded me of the sailors from my schooner sailing days. When they are on duty, it’s all business, but when they are off duty, they know how to relax, and drink. Our conversation danced to all corners—-American pop culture, Leeds, childhood stories, life in Italy. We laughed and laughed and at midnight sang a sotto voce “Auld lang syne” to each other. For a table of damaged people in a foreign city, we were doing very well as 2003 became 2004.

January 1 is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. I was in the church of Collegio Sant'Anselmo, where Cadfael was studying. It is a surprisingly modern church, all white inside. The sun was pouring in as I sat in the dazzling light tightly wrapped in my New York black coat, watching my dinner companions in their community, serving at Mass. They seemed familiar and unknowable at the same time.

After Mass, Cadfael said that the Abbott had granted permission for me to join Cad at the holiday meal. Visitors are only allowed in the refectory on special occasions, and it is an honor to be invited to eat with the community. We walked into the huge dining room with long tables set around its perimeter with almost 100 place settings for 100 men, and me. I was seated next to Cad, thank goodness, while a special holiday meal was served: classic antipasto, saltimbocca, potatoes au gratin, fresh bread, haricourt verts, spumanti for dessert, all with the correct wines from proseccio to champagne and a fabulous espresso.

Men eat faster than I do, and monks eat very fast. I tried to keep up but plates were flying around me left and right. The monastery is built on hierarchy: junior brothers serve, and everyone is seated by seniority. Usually a reader reads a text during a silent meal, but not on holidays.

After the meal, the assembly broke up pretty quickly. Cad and I went over to the Abbott, who is Spanish, so I could say thank you. We started to leave, when Rupert and Lambert came up behind us.

“Happy New Year”

Rupert sparked a conversation about Praxiteles, one of the greatest of the Attic sculptors, only for Lambert to jump in with the "Phidias was greater" argument. Did I mention they are both serious classicists. Their knowledge was startling, and they were showing off, but since it had the spirit of Monty Python about it, it was a riot instead of insufferable. We lingered in the room for two hours of nonstop cigarettes, chatter, and laughter. I wish I had captured it all on video--I would love to watch it again.

Finally we needed to go. Rupert walked me out, crooning an early Bing Crosby tune in his madly eccentric way:

 Oh, Please.
Lend your little ear to my pleas
Lend a ray of cheer to my pleas
Tell me that you love me too.

 Right words, wrong man.

Another wrong man was just starting his feast, his wedding reception in New York.  Ronald Coleman popped into my head as I imagined Ripley at the altar: "It was a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done." For a brief minute I wondered what could be going through his mind as he surveyed the buffet in the old, run-down parish basement as I enjoyed the magnificence of Rome.

That was not the end of it. I took a short break from my choir of 15 years—did I mention he was the choir director—and when I then wanted to return, he said he needed to regroup, and he couldn't do that if I were there.  So I was barred from my own choir, and I had no monks in New York to help assuage the hurt.

As for Cad and me, we had one more trip ahead of us, before things would change forever.
           , ,    

Friday, August 23, 2013

The Last Day of a City: August 23, Pompeii


This post is part of my Travels with Cadfael series, travelogues of the amazing trips I took with a Benedictine monk whom I had met at Solesmes while studying Gregorian chant.


It’s the mouth of a volcano. Yes, mouth, and lava tongue. A body, a monstrous living body, both male and female. It emits, ejects. It is also an interior, an abyss. Something alive, that can die.

 Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover

Cadfael and I pick up the walking sticks and start the ascent to the ancient gaping hole that is the top of Mount Vesuvius. The sun is blistering hot, even for late
August. Our column of polyglot pilgrims— dense, and nearly single file—winds its way through the long switchbacks, slowly rising in altitude. The ground is hard, fine dust, silky ash, and so very oooooold.

Having left his horse with a groom, grasping his walking stick, pouch slung over one shoulder, the Cavaliere marched firmly up the slope. . . . He never approached the crater without apprehension—partly the fear of danger, partly the fear of disappointment.

We feel no disappointment and only fear’s counterpart: awe. We are like ants crawling on the side of overwhelming past power and the threat of potentially more destruction to come. It’s sleeping, somnolent, now, but there is no denying the seismic power beneath the dust, real power, like when the gods and ancient Rome ruled the known world.

The souvenir stand doesn’t even bother me—it harkens back to the cartes postales tradition from the centuries of visitors, the Grand Tour to Victorian times to now.

After taking in as much as we could of this natural death machine it was time to make our way down, and move on to the victim.

It is, purely by happenstance, August 23 in 2004. I find it chilling to be walking in the actual streets that would be buried under twenty feet of ash the next day in Anno Domini 79, obliterating Pompeii and Herculaneum.

In a world of overhype, Pompeii stands out as a stunning, genuinely stirring destination that also does not disappoint. The city is huge—we wander from street to street, entering a villa here, a brothel there, with more and more blocks as far as the eye can see.

I imagine the shadows of the townspeople everywhere, going about their daily life with no idea that they would soon be buried under a pyroclastic flow: fast-moving currents of hot gas, ash and rock collectively known tephra that fell at a rate of 700 km/hour at a temperature now thought to have been 350 degrees celscius, for nearly twenty hours. Wiki tells us that the thermal energy released was 100,000 times that of the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

We wander out to the amphitheatre, where I hit my head walking through a low doorway and am stunned for a moment. Feels like a little blood on the scalp, I'm feeling a little woozy . . . .

In the TV version of this blog, this will trigger a dream sequence:

Scene up: Handsome Roman couple in a lavishly frescoed living chamber with an open-aired sky light and indoor fountain

Gaius Cadfaelius: Must we go to Lucius' tonight? We’ve already sat through two of his daughter’s Dionysian initiations. Isn’t that enough?

M.A Pellia: Yes, keep dressing or we’ll be late. You will need his support when you run for magistrate next year.

Cadfaelius: But their place is near the temple of the Sybilline Sisterhood. Those chicks give me the willies.

M.A.Pellia: Is that what you’re wearing? I wouldn’t be caught dead with you like that. Go put on your formal toga . . . .

Dream sequence ends--

In real life it just meant that Cad kept asking me, "Are you all right?" worried that a trip to an Italian emergency room was SO not on our agenda. We'd already had a flat tire.



We make our way to the Garden of the Fugitives, where there is a grouping of plaster cast victims, frozen in time. It was like looking at an eerie George Segal sculpture, except that these had been real people and there was no whimsy.

The sun continued strong on that August day, and there is almost no shade in Pompeii. We popped in to a few more of the specific doma, where I was particularly satisfied to see one of the original Cave Canem: "Beware of the Dog" floor tiles. Such a long way, in every sense, from the black/white/de-glo orange vinyl plastic “Beware of the dog” sign on the neighbor’s cyclone fence of my suburban childhood.

Of course the next day, August 24, did not see a repeat of history, and I woke up safe and sound in my hotel, where I spent the morning with Sontag’s The Volcano Lover which so richly combines legend, history, and Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton..

Vesuvius was once a young man, who saw a nymph lovely as a diamond. She scratched his heart, and his soul, he could think of nothing else. Breathing more and more heatedly, he lunged at her. The nymph, scorched by his attentions, jumped into the sea and became the island today called Capri. Seeing this, Vesuvius went mad, He loomed, his sighs of fire spread, little by little he became a mountain. And now, as immobilized as his beloved, forever beyond his reach, he continues to throw fire and makes the city of Naples tremble. How the helpless city regrets that the youth did not get what he desired!

 Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover
           , , ,    

Monday, September 10, 2012

Travels with Cadfael: The Songs of Elba




"I wanted to ask you why you stopped at the Isle of Elba."

"It was to carry out an order from Captain Leclère. As he was dying he gave me a package to deliver to Marshal Bertrand there."

So that was Edmond Dantes’s excuse—a deathbed promise. Cadfael and I had no such noble focus. Did you know that Dumas decided to write The Count of Monte Cristo after visiting Elba himself? He was traveling with a nephew of Bonaparte’s, and as they sailed back from Elba he saw the other islands in the Tuscan Archipelago——Gorgona, Capraia, Pianosa, Montecristo, Giglio, and Giannutri——and vowed to write a novel in memory of the trip. So there must be something captivating going on there. . . .

I visited Elba during my heady days of travel with my friend the Benedictine monk Cadfael. We were visiting Tuscany, and I wanted to be a completist, so off to Elba we went, driving southwest from San Gimignano to the port of Piombino for the ferry to Portoferraio, the city of Napolean Bonaparte’s first exile.

Our first foray to visit the Emperor’s town residence--Palazzina dei Mulini, located in the highest part of Portoferraio between Fort Stella and Fort Falcone--was nearly thwarted by the port’s tiny stone streets, and the fact that there is no place to park. Being a New Yorker I thought I understood the meaning of those words, but I was close to weeping after circling through an eternity of narrow stone streets that wouldn’t allow us to get where we needed. Luckily, Cad is deeply unflappable, and an extremely skilled driver. He piloted the Micra onto sidewalks, performed the drive-backwards-up-an-entire-hilled-street maneuver, and coaxed the mighty Micra down a flight of stairs—all to outflank those one-way signs.

Cad won, as usual, and the Micra was finally parked. We bounded up to the Palazzina only to see “Chiuso,” those most dreaded of Italian letters. Undaunted, we took ourselves to the Emperor’s summer residence, Villa di San Martino, at 6 km from Portoferraio along the road to Marciana. The man was only on the island for a total of 10 months, but decorum at all times.



I am not an imperialist at heart, but I was jazzed to be walking through the exiled Bonaparte’s bedroom, and his study, and to look out where he surveyed the sea, when we finally got into his town residence the next day.

But what I remember most about Elba overall is color and sky: the pink of Bonaparte’s town residence under a huge, tropical blue sky. Later in the day we drove west, away from the towns, on a mountainous road above the sea. The sky there was huge, majestic, and humbling, and we drove into layers of grey and blue offset by the sun’s gold. Peter Gabriel was our soundtrack as we egg-and-darted along the rising road, going deeper and deeper into that space between sea and sky. I understood what could have made such an impression on Dumas.


It was September 2002 . . . 
This trip had a very poignant timing. I got on a plane in New York on September 12, 2002, the day after the first anniversary of the attacks.  It was still a sad, dark, heavy time, and unease all around, as we didn't know if there would be more murders a year after. But as we said, we have to keep moving, and so to the airport I went to start this trip.

We spent our first Elban evening in the hotel. The lobby was pleasant—-the white tile floors spoke to the beachiness of the location, and the décor was clean and modern. To the left of the bar was a baby grand piano. Cad plays by ear, and has a good tenor voice. He asked the manager if he could play for a bit, and he said yes. There were small clusters of guests scattered throughout the lobby, mostly German tourists.

Actually there are so many German visitors on Elba, and the language is so prevalent, that it is a little disorienting. “M.A., can we please go back to Italy?"

At the piano, Cad’s repertoire is easy listening on the sentimental side, but with a musician’s flair. I sat by his side as he sang Piano Man and She's Always a Woman and joined in for some harmonies on Thunder Road and Four Green Fields. He sang out, but it was not intrusive and we could hear the soft conversation buzz throughout. There was some sweet applause when the set ended. It was nice.

Ah, the drink break.

Refueled, Cad started playing again, noodling around a theme, then playing it straight out: Oh my gosh, it was America the Beautiful. I was stunned to hear the tune. I hadn’t been thinking at all about home, and that haunting melody can put a lump in my throat at the very best of times.

To keep from crying I tried to focus on Cad’s expressive phrasing, and somewhere in the second verse I heard myself adding the harmony. Cad modulated during a verse interlude, and we sang the last verse in a higher key, putting the “alabaster cities gleam/undimmed by human tears” into a stronger part of vocal ranges.

When the song ended, we realized that everyone in the room had stopped talking. I felt a little numb, very self-conscious, and a little embarrassed. How cheesy was this? Would we come across as obnoxious Americans?

There were several beats of complete, palpable, silence . . . and then the conversation buzz picked up again. A hug from the strangers in the room would not have felt more embracing.

Cad went to get us drinks, and we sat and drank, for quite a while.

The next day we left to go back to Rome.
           , ,    

Friday, February 29, 2008

A Leap Day Special: Le Morte de Cadfael

ONCE upon a time. . .

No, that’s not quite right.

IN the beginning. . .

No, that’s just asking for trouble.

TO everything there is a season. . .


Yes, that’s it. I enjoyed a very special season of travels with Cadfael.

In the TV version of our story, this is a second season, flashback episode:

Scene up: Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris

M.A.Peel, luggage in tow, looking to meet up with a group going to Solesmes to study Gregorian chant.

Peel voice-over narration: Hmm, the instructions said to meet by the Air France info desk. Oh, there’s a good looking group. Maybe . . . .Maybe. . . . Ah, no.

[Several much older couples are at the side of the counter.]

Oh please, it can’t just be them.

[One young, good looking man is talking to one of the grandmas]

“Yeah, I never know how much to pack. And the cassock takes up so much room.”

Ohh, the only visual hope for fun in France is a priest, and, it turns out, a Benedictine monk.

Well, who did I THINK would be studying Gregorian chant?

Why was I studying Gregorian chant you may ask? I was deeply involved with singing Renaissance polyphony at the time, and I wanted to connect with the actual chants that many of the glorious motets are based on.

I had heard from a musician about a course taught by a professor out of Cal State, Los Angeles, at ground zero for chant, Solesmes. It was there, in the late 19th century, that Dom Gueranger led his community to study the texts that were being used throughout Europe, and to create one, codified version. Pope Pious X accepted this scholarship, and in 1904 the Vatican commissioned an edition of their work.

For me, it would mean a vacation living in a small French town for two weeks, and then a weekend in Paris. What could be better? And that’s what brought me to Paris on a fine July day at the end of the last century, and into Cadfael’s life.

Benedictine School Daze

Our days settled into a languidly lovely routine: after breakfast the group had class in an old building down by the river taught by an American monk. Several times a day we would go up to the church to listen to the French Benedictines as they chanted the canonical hours. The church is mostly 19th century built over and around the 11th and 15th foundations. It is very long and narrow, all stone, and appropriately imposing.

The stunning French Latin vowels ricocheted all over the walls-—I loved being completely enveloped by the sound. Cadfael was allowed to eat with the monks, one of whom, in a timely connection, was a nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr.

Here are the Office hours we listened to:

7:30 a.m. Laudes
10:00 a.m. Mass (office of Tierce integrated)
1:00 p.m. Sext
1:50 p.m. None
5:00 p.m. Vespers
8:30 p.m. Compline

In between the class lectures, and the time awash in the singing in church, we students had lunches and dinners and some free time together. I found myself often in the company of Cadfael.

On some long walks he told me about life in the monastery, all the intricacies of a closed system, all the little power pools that spring up.

I told him about life as a New Yorker—all the intricacies of a closed system, all the little power pools that spring up.

We clicked like a strange reincarnation of Hepburn and Tracey, with much banter. I was in the throes of multiple men headaches, and here before me was a wise, compassionate, funny listener. It was heaven.

The days peeled away. We finished the course, and the group went to Paris for the last weekend. Cad and I said we would keep in touch, but travelers often say that. In this case, it turned out to be for real.

I went to visit him in his monastery in the States, and he came to visit me in New York with a brother monk.

Then Cadfael went to Rome to study, and the whole world opened up for me. “M.A., I will meet you anywhere in the world . . . .” The Cadfael posts here are just the tip of the time we shared.

Rome, Siena, Florence, Elba, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Lake Balaton, Galway, Dublin, Amalfi, Naples. We were tourists for fun, and travelers going way off the beaten path.

I laughed more on the road with Cadfael than all the other days of those years combined.

The End of the Road

Five years after it started, the time of Cadfael came to an end. He graduated from his college in Rome with an advance degree, and that meant it was time for him to enter the motherhouse in Switzerland. No more studying, no more traveling.

As the cloister engulfed him, he became dead to the outside world, including me. It’s a strange fate to have, to develop an emotional attachment to a man who, by definition, would become unavailable.

But I would not have missed our time together for anything in the world.

And who knows, maybe the monk thing isn’t going to work out for him in the long run . . . .
              

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: Finding the Infinite


There are some images that you see as a child and wonder what it would be like to be there. For me, the Terrace of the Infinite was one of those images. It was so exotic, those ancient Romans perched against the infinite blue of the water and the sky. I had no idea where it actually was. Then one day Cad and I took a road up into the heavens, to the exquisite town of Ravello, and, in the always consulted Lonely Planet guide, I found, to my surprise, where to find the childhood vista.

The terrace is on the grounds of the Villa Cimbrone, that exotic hideaway for Stokowski and Garbo. Friends of Cadfael’s from his language school were camping on the Campania, and so we met up for lunch and to ramble through the gardens and hang out with those ancient Romans. It was infinitely enjoyable.

The next day was our trip to Caserta--to the palace of Naples under the Bourbon Kings Charles, Duke of Parma, and then his son. Ferdinand IV, who ruled the Two Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily in the eighteenth century.

Modeled on Versailles, the palace has 1,200 rooms, two-dozen state apartments, and a royal theater, as we toured through a never-ending series of room upon room.

But it’s the promenade out to the formal English gardens that put us back into the infinite, with miles of its parallel lines that connect the palace with the gardens. We walked under the hot August sun for what felt an eternity, and still were only in the middle of these parallel lanes.

And so we decided to abandon this endlessness for a very specific kind of Italian infinite—-hospitality. A young Roman friend of Cad’s was visiting his family who lives in Caserta, and he invited us over for lunch. We went from the cold, empty grandeur of the Naplese past to the warmth of a modest middle-class home.

Mother, father, 2 brothers and a sister all came in and out to say hello to the American monk and his New Yorker friend. We ate a perfect meal of spaghetti Bolognese with a Limoncello chaser accompanied by hilarious conversation between Italian and English. We took our leave and went into the city of Naples for the afternoon.

I first heard of the Bay of Naples, in Ireland. In college my backpacker friend Karen and I stopped in the town of Dalkey enroute to Dublin, and there saw a view of the Irish sea that was widely claimed to rival the beauty of the Bay of Naples. And lo so many years later now, I was looking at the original itself. It is stunning, from many angles.

It was time to get back to Amalfi, and that meant driving on some of that extraordinary coast road in the pitch dark. Taking all those hairpin turns in the dark caused a disorienting sensation. The motion of the turns, punctuated by intermittent oncoming headlights, made me feel like we were in a giant pinball machine.

Switchback after switchback upon dizzying turns started to have a hypnotic effect on us both, more problematic for Cad than me. And there was a slightly sickening sensation that a mistake on Cad’s part would put us over the edge and into the final infinite.

But Cadfael’s skill triumphed as usual, and we lived to travel another day.
           , ,    

Monday, October 8, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: The Amalfi Coast

“I’m near Salerno—do you want to visit?”

It was a variation on a theme from the last several years. Usually Cadfael said, ”I’ll meet you anywhere in the world.” But this time the destination was predetermined, as though we were Calvinists: the Amalfi Coast.

Cad picked me up at the Naples airport, and we drove the highway to Salerno, then down to the extraordinary coast road back to the actual town of Amalfi. It’s an alpha driver’s highway, where you must hug the ancient hewn, towering granite on the hairpins, as the buses come barreling straight on, all against the startling blue sky and sea.

It felt like we drove forever, looking for the Hotel Luna Convento. Finally we came to its distinct tower that sits on the rock that juts out into the water, seen in many photographs of the area. Built around a convent founded by St. Francis of Assisi in 1222, it was a perfect hotel—-white stucco, gorgeous tiled floors, stunning views of the water.

Cad was staying near Salerno, where he was subbing for a priest in a small town. I don’t do well with jet lag, so I took the first day to relax by the pool. In the morning I walked to the dock in town and took the ferry over to Salerno. It’s one of the all-time most beautiful ferry rides there is, as you pull away from the town and can see life miraculously built into the sides of those sheer rocks.

It was charming to see Cad on the other dock, waiting for me. Usually it’s him coming to get me in our travels, and this was a twist in the ritual. Some of the joy of travel with a partner is ritual—his driving, my navigating, reading from literature at times, just being quiet at times. “No, no, they can’t take that away from me . . . “

We visited La Trinite della Cava, a Benedictine monastery founded in 1025. As usual, our private tour took us behind the scenes, and in this case, into the ground. The monastery is enormous, and they were excavating centuries of levels and rooms below it as part of a joint government archaeological project. It was part creepy, part astonishing to descend into the ancient past—-all that physical work to build and create, seeing traces of all those people gone and forgotten, but for the witness of the current people populating the planet, like us,

That night we went to a dream-like restaurant, high in the mountain above the monastery. It was part of a winery, and the tables were outside, under an arbor covered with grape vines. As is often the case in our travels, we were the only nonItalians in the place. The food was light, simple and deeply savory, the wines full and rich, and while this was vacation mode for me, I marveled again, as centuries of people have before me, at the distinct beauty of Italian life. Our senses, so fully engaged, was a powerful contrast to the dust of the day's visit.

I don't know if our lives will leave any discernible mark to be witnessed by the current people 1,000 years from now, but the idea of witness to lives led took on more meaning when we went to Pompeii the next day.
           , ,    

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: Christmas in July

There is a tradition of “Christmas in July,” although I don’t know why. The charming Dick Powell/Ellen Drew/Preston Sturges film is from 1940. Just last week USA reran the Cynthia Nixon/Christmastide episode of House, so someone is keeping it alive. I will contribute to the idea by continuing the Irish Christmas travels with Cadfael that I started on Bloomsday.

It is Christmas Eve, 2003. We are staying in the Galway Radisson, the only hotel for miles open on Christmas. Dinner at the hotel is a proper Christmas Eve feast: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, broccoli and salad followed by a bouche de Noel, with the banquet tables festooned with fresh fir garland and white and red candles lit everywhere. After dinner we are walk to the great Cathedral in Galway under a clear dark sky. The night air of Christmas Eve has always felt palpably different to me. Maybe it’s the fleeting visceral sense of holiness and its companion, “the thrill of hope.”

Midnight Mass was warm and joyous. The bishop spoke in Irish for quite a while before changing to English.

After Mass we return to the hotel, to the Scandinavian-inflected bar with a beautiful open fire, filled with the interesting mix of people who find themselves in a hotel at Christmas. There was an older gentleman—tall, solid, like a boxer, with shocking white hair, the map of Ireland on his face, wearing a beautiful, stiff white dress shirt and exquisite black suit, who stood up and sang “O Holy Night” a cappella in a strong tenor voice. It’s an old tradition, this bar singing, but you don’t always see it. And there was that thought again, “the thrill of hope” in all the beauty of the music. Cadfael then sat down at the piano, and accompanied the gentleman through several other songs, which we sang harmony to. It was the first time since Elba that Cadfael and I sang together, and it was lovely.

So, you may ask, what do two drifters off to see the world do on Christmas Day?

They go to the Cliffs of Moher—-that cold, dramatic, stark place of imposing beauty. The cliffs at their height are a sheer drop of 700 feet to the Atlantic. We drove through the Burren through small, rural villages under a deeply leaden sky. From the moment we got out at the visitor's car park, the wind was a formidable presence as we made our way to the cliffs' edge. It was the perfect anti-Christmas Day. While families all over the world were waking up to a cuddly Christmas morning, the monk and I were hiking around the ancient sandstone—-I screamed a bit and laughed and cried, feeling a little like King Lear on the plain. Not everyone gets to have the cozy Soprano Christmas tableau.

The next day we flew over to Inishmore, the first and largest of the Aran Islands. That brought us back to 1000 B.C. to a fortress called Dun Aengus, built during the Bronze Age. We hiked through terraced layers of the ancient stone fortification to the cliffs’ edge, braced by the cold, snapping air that brought the primal place strangely to life. I could imagine those Bronze-Age people trying to scratch a life out of the harshness of that rocky land, and going to their deaths defending their next-to-nothingness from Barbarians trying to take it away. Being at Dun Aengus—without the hordes of summer tourists--tore a rip in the cozy fabric we shroud our lives in—-I could see and feel life stripped down to the barest elements, and it felt good.

Cadfael and I were headed for Rome for New Years, but we stopped for a night in Dublin to see The Return of the King, which had just opened. In a movie theater near O’Connell Bridge we were swept into the strongholds of Rohan and Gondor for the final battles for Middle Earth. It was a stunning visual complement to the actual ancient fortress we had seen. It reinforced my admiration for Tolkien and Peter Jackson’s astonishing imaginations. The movie is also a paen to fellowships outside of traditional nuclear families, which is something I know a lot about. As the credits rolled, Annie Lennox’s haunting "Into the West" filled the theater in a very Celtic ending to our time in Ireland.

We left for Rome the next day. It was December 30, and on January 1 The Talented Mr. Ripley (the scary, newly ex) was walking down the aisle with his ready-made family in my own parish. I was relieved to be in exile, but more distractions from the crushing reality of it all were still needed.

           , , ,    

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: A Christmas Tale Begins

Bloomsday—-when Joyce fans the world over celebrate the novel set on June 16, 1904, the first date of the artist as a young man and Nora Barnacle, a personal encounter between man and woman that would change the shape of world literature—-is the day to start to spin the tale of Cadfael’s and my trip to Ireland.

The Christmas tale begins in December 2003. Cadfael had called with the usual “I will meet you anywhere in the world” invitation for during his holiday study break.

It was a call from heaven. I greatly needed be somewhere. On New Year’s Day, The Talented Mr. Ripley (the scary, newly ex) would be walking down the aisle, with his ready-made family, in my own parish. I didn’t want to be anywhere near them.

In all the world, I felt a strong pull to go to Ireland, hoping to be washed in the ancestral warmth and love of the country that specialized in mirth in the midst of heartache. Cadfael agreed. I would fly to Rome on Dec. 23 to meet him, then we would fly to Dublin, then drive cross country to the great city of Galway in Connemara. Each leg of the journey would put space and time between me and Mr. Ripley.

The trip started well. During dinner with a friend in New York before I went to the airport, I was bemoaning how endless the nearly seven hours to Rome feel, and how I never sit next to anyone interesting.

Seat 24 A: “Are you on your way home?”
Seat 24 B: An Italian-inflected “Yes.”

later

24 A: What do you do in New York?
24 B: I’m a cosmogonist.

And it wasn’t a punchline.

24B was a postdoc at ISCAP, the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University, codirected by Mr. Elegant Universe, Brian Greene. My own academic brushes with Niels Bohr, Feynman, Millikan came rushing back and we slipped through a worm hole of conversation straight to landing. It turned out that Mr. Cosmogonist—quite the world traveler himself---had known a priest at Kylemore, an ancient Benedictine abbey that was now a school not far from Galway City (I had been there years before), and I said that I would bring a greeting to the priest if he liked. I left the plane with a tiny mission and a sealed envelope when I arrived in Rome.

My first visit to Kylemore was twenty years ago, visiting a college friend who was on a Rotary scholarship to Galway University. I remembered that I bought Seamus Heaney’s collection of poetry,Station Island, in a bookstore in Galway on that trip, and his work started filling my thoughts. Because an Italian cosmologist had brought up the Irish Benedictine community, Seamus Heaney—-the great Ulster Catholic master of vivid language and the complex ideas of Irish identity between Christian and Celt, modern and ancient, English and Irish—-joined me on my pilgrimage. It was a welcomed presence in my desire to erase a darkness, take a break from a reality I couldn’t change, and fill up a loss with the primal beauty of the Irish West.

And so Cadfael and I found ourselves in the Dublin airport on December 23. Cad is a very skilled driver, but the left road thing made for hilarious, scary moments just getting out of the rental car lot as we adjusted our car routine for different hands. Then it was 3 hours of easy driving to the midnight turn to Christmas Eve Day, with a cinematic soundtrack provided by exquisite radio in Ireland. We switched between soaring classics—Saint Saens Christmas Oratorio, Hodie Christus Natus Est by Palestrina, the Victoria O Magnum Mysterium and the Praetorious In Dulci Jubilo—and Christmas carols from Sting and Stevie Nicks.

That long, straight drive, enveloped in a rich deep darkness, put more and more distance of all kinds between me and New York, and I began to breath. We let the unique quirkiness of the Irish set the trip’s tone: the major artery connecting Dublin to Galway is mostly one lane in each direction. One lane. They are a unique tribe, these Irish.

I finally felt a little safe, sitting next to Cadfael going to the city of Galway, where Nora Barnacle was born and lived until she left to work in a hotel in Dublin before walking into literary history.
           , , ,    

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

The Wagner of My Year

“In 2006 and 2007, Pluto will align with the Galactic Center three times, ushering in an unprecedented period of cosmic awareness and healing. Pluto’s conjunction with the Galactic Center occurs only once every 248 years.

How each of us experiences this transit will depend on our consciousness.” From StarPriestess.com

Which is all by way of offering some explanation for this being the year I take the plunge on Wagner.

Tonight Steed and I are headed to Lincoln Center to see the Tristan Project—the concert version of the great Wagner opera Tristan und Isolde, as envisioned by Peter Sellars and video artist Bill Viola, with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angelos Philharmonic. The performance is 5 hours (with two intermissions)—it is not for the faintheated. We were attracted by the idea of Viola’s work complementing the transcendence of Wagner’s music.

July will see us at Lincoln Center for what’s being called the rare Russian Ring. We’ve never seen any version of the Ring, so to see it with Valery Gergiev, director of the Kirov Opera, made it all the more compelling. You’ve got to love a city where one series for the performances sold out in 2 days—last July.

Wagner is a fathomless well that can be intimidating by the immensity of conflicting things you need to process about him: the staggering beauty of the music itself, the tantalizing intellectualism, the relentless anti-Semitism, the Tristan Chord alone, the mythologies of his worlds. It’s not so easily accessible. It could constitute a life-time of study. Yet study feels antithetical to the truest essence of Wagner. He had only the most minimal of formal musical training himself. He was talent personified, and I can only hope to find him on that abstract landscape—to let his work wash over me, to hopefully connect within me.

Two years ago Cadfael and I were on the Amalfi Coast, and we went inland up to Ravello. Wagner had summered there in 1880, in the Villa Rufalo, whose gardens he used for the model of Klingsor’s garden in Act II of Parsifal. The grounds are now the setting for the Ravello Festival, with that gorgeous stage that floats high above the water. [Their site has a gorgeous flash intro, worth a click.Pick a language to launch.] It was a thrill to ramble around what’s left of the old castle, to walk out to “terrace of the infinite”—those Roman busts that line the low wall on the grounds of the Villa Cimbrone (where Great Garbo honeymooned with Leopold Stokowski). Ravello is an other-worldly setting.

The experience of Wagner is other-worldly. It’s a way to break from the pedestrian cares of everyday life, to try to connect to the primal forces and truths of being human, if only for as long as it takes that last chord to completely decay.
           , , ,    

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: ". . . the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans"

The weather in Prague continued grey and raining. I was hating the city all around--it was crowded and cold and chaotic. I was very happy when it was time to leave. Cadfael and I headed into Hungary, and everything started brightening.

You're out of the woods
You're out of the dark
You're out of the night
Step into the sun
Step into the light
Keep straight ahead for
The most glorious place -

Budapest

What a beautiful city. In a shrinking world, Budapest, with the dazzling Danube and nine beautiful bridges, is still exotic.

We explored that exotic side, but the city’s serious side had more meaning. We visited the Terror Haus, at 60 Andrassy Uta, Budapest’s Champs Elysee. It had only opened the year before, as part of a movement to not erase all the traces of the city’s Nazi and Communist past. 60 Andrassy was the headquarters of the Hungarian Nazis, and then the Soviets. The website explains: “Having survived two terror regimes, it was felt that the time had come for Hungary to erect a fitting memorial to the victims, and at the same time to present a picture of what life was like for Hungarians in those times.”

It’s a powerful experience, beginning with an enormous tank as you enter, representing the shear power of the regimes over its people. There are three different floors restored with artifacts. But it’s the elevator to the basement that sets it apart from any other museum. The basement was used as a prison and torture chamber. You can walk through the labyrinth of cells, some as small as 5ft x 2 ft, and see the iron pliers and vises and nails.

Near the exit of the exhibit is a small hall that was the most controversial part. It has photographs and names of the Hungarians who had “worked” there. These were part of the records that were preserved. This is not ancient history. The children and grandchildren of these people are very much alive, and can recognize family members when they visit. It's a uniquely Hungarian approach to a dark past.

From the visit to the past, we decided to connect with modern Budapest—at a mall, to see a movie. Spike Lee’s 25th hour was playing in the English language theater. I didn’t know the story, and was stunned when the images of 9/11 and the tribute in lights came on the screen. It felt very strange seeing images of that day in an audience of Eastern Europeans.

I had been absorbing so much of their history, and now my own was staring me in the face. Again, that obscene day came flooding back in strange snatches. The subways being shut down—-no one knew if there were more waves of attacks coming. I walked home in a daze. From the rooftop of my building, Mr. Ripley and I could see thick, thick black smoke rising to the south. I started weeping again for it all in a mall in Pest.

I was glad when the lights came up. Cad and I crossed back over to Buda, and walked along the Danube back to the hotel, those regal bridges sparkling gaily through the fog that was rolling in.

It was a lovely moment in a beautiful friendship. If you’re going to nurse a broken heart, doing it in Budapest with a friend such as Cad is one good way.

I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

The weight of history—decades past and more recent—had sobered me up. Let’s just say, I snapped out of it, because tomorrow, is another day.

A blessed Easter to all who partake--
           ,    

Friday, March 23, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: Love and Death in Prague

''A land of spires and toy palaces and golden painted gates and bridges with sad-eyed statues peering out over misty black water, a village of cobblestones and stained glass unlicked by cannon, and that fairy-tale castle floating above it, hovering unanchored by anything at all, a city where surely anything will be possible.''

Arthur Phillips’s perfect snapshot of the actual Prague, from the end of his novel called Prague, which is set in Budapest. In an interview he explains “The novel is named not for a city, but for an emotional disorder: if only I were over there, or with her, or doing that, then I would be where the action is. . . So for some expatriates living in Budapest, Prague felt like the place to be.”

Ah, yes, the “if only” disorder, combined with the desire to be in “the place to be.” Prague is a troublemaker, make no mistake about it.

Our visit starts well enough. The hotel in Vinohrady is great—very hip, very part of the new. The lobby has free Internet access. In a very funny, cinematic moment, I was trying to get information from the front desk clerk about one of the museums—lots of smiles and head bobbing, but no actual exchange of information. Cad comes up behind me with museum hours, directions, and fees—he’d been online getting all the answers.

And right then is when I should have thrown myself into the Vltava before allowing my fingers to log-on to my e-mail. I hadn’t missed it at all in Vienna, but the computer was just feet away, and I couldn’t stop myself.

There was an e-mail from The Talented Mr. Ripley, and one from my brother.

Again, I could have walked out the door and thrown myself in front of a tram. But no. I chose self-inflicted pain via e-mail.

Mr. Ripley’s e-mail said he’d been in the park with Consuela, gotten a sunburn, and they were in love.

My brother’s e-mail told me that the head of the small museum I work for had died.

Phillips had warned us that this was the city where anything is possible, but good grief.

I knew that geographical separation from Mr. Ripley wasn’t going to sever everything. We were collaboraters in an artistic endeavor, which meant we still had to see each other twice a week. Consuela had been on the scene for just a few months, starting out on the fringes and working her way inward. It was quick work from any angle. She would manipulate Mr. Ripley into a family and then down the aisle, but I’m getting ahead of the story (that’s part of Cad and my trip to Ireland).

I had seen my colleague two days before I got on the plane for Rome. He had been ill, but this death was still sudden. I had worked with him for 13 years on an almost daily basis. What had been a stable work environment would now be completely volatile. It was awful not being with my staff for this.

We headed out toward the Charles Bridge. The day was grey and raining, in that Shakespearean way when the elements are in sympathy with the sadness. I found it hard to concentrate. We had lunch, but I was too tired for general sightseeing. I wanted to lie down for a while, and Cad was happy to take a side trip to Costco.

Back at the hotel, napping didn’t bring much relief, as the "what ifs" of a failed relationship haunted me. But the bubble bath Cad picked up for me in Costco felt good.

We had accomplished one thing that day, getting tickets to the Prague Symphony Orchestra at Smetana Hall in the Municipal Building. And so we ended the day in beauty, with Dvorak’s 9th Symphony washing over us.

Here’s Dvorak's New World Symphony for home use. If you have 6 minutes, it’s really worth viewing. The video, from a German producer Volkmar on YouTube, starts out very straightforward, but it quickly enters the whimsical world of Balloonman looking for love, with a “hooked on classics” back-beat, and Thomas Crown Affair split screens. The twist at the end connects it to the universal saga of, yes, love and death. Strangely comforting.



It seems Prague is in the air. Here's the NY Times 36 Hours in Prague, which is a ten-most e-mailed article today.
           ,    

Monday, March 12, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: Entr'Acte, Vienna to Prague

Our Viennese time. We did the tourist things, like the Hofburg and Schoenbrunn—and some traveler things, like taking the underground out to St. Mark’s Cemetery to where they think Mozart’s body was actually interred after being thrown into a bag of lime.

I learned much about the Austro-Hungarian empire, particularly the cult of SiSi. She was Franz Josef’s consort, the Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary, and basically the princess Diana of her day. She was beautiful and stylish, trapped in a loveless marriage to the Emperor, suffered the murder/suicide of her only son Rudolf and his lover Mary Vetsera, (known as the Mayerling tragedy, hence the films), and was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist in Geneva, who had set out that day to kill a French prince. No wonder history is so vivid in Europe.

Then it was time for us to move on. We were driving to Prague, with a few stops along the way. The first was the monastery of Goettwig, near Krems in lower Austria, dedicated in 1083. We had a private tour from a friend of Cad’s, stumbled upon a soprano rehearsing Mozart’s Laudate Dominum, and enjoyed a private organ recital—all slightly surreal. Then we drove along the Danube to the great monastery at Melk. It has a very sleak, modern museum, where I ran into huge, gorgeously lit Lucite panels floating between galleries with this text:

When I am in motion I see only one side, one aspect. Some things are unclear; I see only parts, not the whole. Being on the move causes unrest, but this unrest enables me to move, lets my heart grow wide.

How odd. It was like getting advice and comfort from on high, a la the freeway sign in Steve Martin’s L.A. Story. Well, things turned out all right there.

We needed to press on. There was more beautiful driving along the Danube, passing through one small town upon another, talking of cabbages and kings. Finally it was time to cross over into the Czech Republic and head north to Prague.

It was later than we had planned, which meant we were going to enter Prague in the dark. Not ideal, since it’s a tough city to navigate, and I only had vague directions to the hotel.

In our division of labor, I navigate and Cad does all the driving. He can be quite adamant with the “tell me which way to go—I’m just driving” line.

I’ve got maps and mapquest pages, but I can’t get our bearings. One distinction of travels with the monk is that situations like this are always very funny, not tense. We’re laughing and laughing—-driving aimlessly in the dark, Lost in Prague (should have turned that one into a movie script).

We pass a taxi queue. PING. I have an idea. I’ll get out, and get a taxi to take me to the hotel, and Cad will follow.

Then we realize we have no Czech money. OHHHHHH—such a rookie mistake. Now we need to find a cash machine. Didn’t we pass one during the twentieth circle sweep two hours ago?

We get back to a Czech ATM. I lose the coin toss and go in. I am confronted by 3 slightly different machines—not clear why they look different or what they do. Damn. I pick a machine, feed it my card, and pray I can get to the screen with the glorious Union Jack that will offer me my native language.

Now, machines and I are not always in sync. And Cad knows this, having spent quite a bit of time with me . . . . .

Aha. Success.

We get back to the taxi queue. I show the driver the hotel address, and explain fervently that Cad will be following, and he musn’t lose him.

It’s going well—we’re driving for quite a while, to the Zizkov district. Finally I see Arcotel (that great German boutique chain) Teatrino. I’ve been afraid to turn around to see if Cad’s there. Ah, yes, he’s just turning the corner. We’re in Prague.
           ,    

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: Shirley Horn Trumps The Talented Mr. Ripley

“Hello.”

“I will meet you anywhere in the world.”

It was the warm voice of my friend Cadfael. He was between semesters again, and I had vacation time I hadn’t used.

We decided on Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. Cad would be spending the summer in Vienna learning German, and he was very familiar with Budapest through the great Benedictine Archabbey at Pannonhalma.

So we were on the road again. Except this trip was clouded by two shadows, one I knew about when I left New York, the other I would only learn of when we got to Prague. When I got on the plane, I knew I had a broken heart (no, not Steed), although my friends were quite certain I had dodged a bullet. The blur of the last months was playing over in my head very clearly as The Talented Mr. Ripley, not The Way We Were, so I knew they were right. (Thank God we have films to help us make sense of our lives.)

Still, when someone gets under your skin you have to deal with it. And there’s no better way than to travel with a monk.

I met up with Cad in Rome for one great dinner in Trastevere, then we flew to Vienna. We stayed near Rathausplatz, which allowed for lovely leisurely walks to the city center of that white, imperial city.

We were in Vienna primarily to attend JazzFest Wien, which takes place at the Staatsoper in the off season. We had tickets for 2 evenings. One evening was the a capella, gospel vocal group Take 6, along with Marcus Miller. Take 6 did not disappoint, sweeping us along in its exuberant, uplifting harmonies. Miller was cool.

But the highlight was seeing Miss Shirley Horn. This was July of 2003; she would die just over two years later from complications from breast cancer and diabetes.

But on that July night, it was ALL about courage, and struggle, memory and loss. It was an extraordinary concert experience, with a chaser of bitterness for me. It was The Talented Mr. Ripley who had suggested we see Horn. Which meant I had tickets to see her in New York as part of the JVC series the last week in June, and then I saw her the very next week in Vienna—a strange quirk of timing that was an enormous gift.

Here’s Stephen Holden on the JVC concert: “Seated in a wheelchair and facing the audience, Ms. Horn exuded the authority of an amused grande dame, serenely but firmly in charge.”

Her right leg had recently been amputated below the knee due to complications from diabetes.

“The set was anchored in four elongated ballads, A Time for Love, Yesterday, Here's to Life, and May the Music Never End, that worked together to evoke a grand, ultimately optimistic summing up of a lifetime's bittersweet experience.”

Her performance was even stronger in Vienna. Her timing with accompanist George Mesterhazy was more certain and in sync. She had spent decades playing piano while she sang, but without her foot, she had to give that up. Her singing was warm and piercing. As Ben Ratliff wrote in her obituary, "She cherished her repertory, making audiences feel that she was cutting through to the stark truths of songs like Here's to Life and You Won't Forget Me."

This brave, talented woman knew real trouble, and in the face of it, did whatever she needed to keep singing. Her courage and love of life was inspiring and refreshing after the ugliness and hatred of life that engulfed The Talented Mr. Ripley. She reminded me of what is possible, if not always found. Thanks for the assist, Miss Horn.

“HERE'S TO LIFE, HERE'S TO LOVE, HERE'S TO YOU.”

Note: Blue Girl has a clip up of Horn singing "Shall I Catch a Shooting Star?" It is stunning. Definitely go over and listen--it's a real treat. Thanks Blue Girl.
           ,    

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Travels with Cadfael: The Drive of the Native

We planned to spend one day around Siena with Pietro, the classically handsome Italian friend of Cadfael's. We met-up in a parking lot in the outskirts of the city, for Cad and me to switch to Pietro’s car for the tour with the native. I sat in the back and watched those clay hills roll under the stunning Tuscan sky, with the pop Italian station and their melodic Italian chatter providing the soundtrack. We went to ancient Bagno Vignoli for lunch, then on to Pienza, where we lazily walked through the maze of old side streets. In our post-meal lethargy we were becoming cinematic-—conversing less, quietly resting more. We could be Jules et Jim et Catherine to the French tourists passing us; there was no way to outwardly know who we were, and our own crosscurrents were ricocheting off each other in various directions. (But that’s a subject for a different blog.) We went hiking for a bit to see the Madonna of the Scouts (challenging in a silk duster and soft shoes), visited Abbazia di Monte Oliveto for the exquisite Sodoma frescoes on the life of Benedict, stopped by the ancient Rocca of Montalcino, then enjoyed a 6-course dinner at some local place. It was a full day. Pietro was driving us back to our own car when it began to pour, dangerously. It was a complete white out— oddly tropical for Italy. We had driven pretty far and had quite a way to go to get back, even though it was very late and we were filled with fatigue and alcohol. Pietro starts trying to tell jokes in English to stay focused and awake. They were awful—they didn’t make sense, even when he put them back into Italian. But he would not be deterred—he was now shouting at me to follow these bizarre funnies. It then crossed my mind that we were in danger of a serious car accident. How strange is fate that draws people together, in space and time, for its own purpose. If I were going to die that night, it was going to be in the company of a gorgeous Italian and a good-looking monk. Well, okay. They would be fine companions to weather purgatory with (if, like in A Guy Named Joe, you get to hang out with those you go down with). The white-out conditions were barely abating. Pietro was beyond tired, when he made a dramatic left turn into a car park of some office building. Suddenly it was quiet, and we were bathed in an eerie chartreuse neon light that illuminated the cement walls. It was a Batman-villain lair come to life--I was sure the ground was going to be on an angle when we got out. From the intense beauty of the day’s journey—the piercing Tuscan sun, the shocking red of the tomatoes at dinner, the mounds of pink impatients in the window boxes in Pienza—we were now in a deserted, cold, and foreboding place. Cad, did you sign us up for this Antonioni movie? Didn’t you ask for script approval? We huddled, we sang along with the radio, we walked to the other levels--it seemed like forever. Finally the rain let up, and we were back on the road to Siena, where Cad and I finally got back to our own beloved Micra. We had another 90 minutes drive to reach the farmhouse where we were staying, and we just beat the sunrise by the time our heads hit the pillows. We decided to spend an immobilized day recovering before heading out to Elba.
           ,    

Monday, December 4, 2006

Travels with Cadfael: Images Regained

(continued from TWC:The Camera, below.)

Roman cab rides, unlike their London counterparts, are one of the great cheap thrills still around. Cad and I were back at Santa Sabine in a flash. Running back to the cloister, I really thought I would see my camera sitting in the far corner of that ageless enclosure.

But no. It wasn’t there. My disposable camera was gone.

There was a caretaker of sorts lurking about—he had been moving around flowers from a recent wedding when we were there earlier. I said to Cadfael, “Go speak Italian to him.” Cad explained the situation, while I beamed hopefully. But no, no. He hadn’t seen any camera—-no one had turned anything in.

Hmm. He was looking nervous. I was not convinced.

Cad, let’s ask at the rectory. (S. Sabine is the central church of the Dominican order.)

Yes, but they will likely all be at dinner.

We clanged the huge brass knocker on the enormous wooden door (which felt like Kong’s gates on Skull Island) several times. No answer.

We were walking away, when we heard the door open behind us, and out stepped a stunning figure in gleaming white robes and Billy Idol hair. He was Gandalf after Moria.

Yes—Yes, Can I help you? Cad spoke Italian, with a monk inflection—and the brother insisted we all go back together to look for the camera. We looked in the church, we swept through the cloister. Nothing. Then we encountered the shifty-looking caretaker. The brother spoke to him out of ear-shot, and then shifty went behind a room screen in the corner and came out with my camera. He could lie to the two Americans, but not to that force of goodness.

Brilliant. Two days of memories returned. We thanked the vision in white profusely, and headed for the Piazza Navona for dinner.

I noticed 4 more pictures had been snapped. When I had it developed, it was pictures of the floor of S.Sabine, and of the caretaker himself.
           ,    

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Travels with Cadfael: The Camera

Steed was off visiting one of his many Aunties when I met up with Cadfael in Rome. We headed for the Cimetero acattolico so I could pay respects to Keats and Shelley. It was extremely hot for September, and when we came upon the a.k.a Protestant Cemetery we made a deeply unfortunate miscalculation of direction: we were just down the block from the main entrance, but we thought it was around the corner. We were midway along the opposing wall before we realized we were 180 degrees from where we needed to be. That wall. That relentless, endless, overwhelming wall. We walked and walked, and still weren’t at the gate. Little cutouts in the stone taunted us with slivers of views of the inside. Still we walked and sweated—-the wall was winning, the stiff upper lip was quivering. Finally the stone gave way to iron.

We went to Keats first, of course. Anyone who cares about poetry would be moved. The tombstone is something you can embrace as a touchstone for everything you love about that great talent. I took many pictures; Cad took many pictures of me with the stone.

I need to stop for one point: the tombstone has a wrong date. Keats died on Feb. 23, 1822. The stone says Feb. 24. I have never seen anyone point this out. There’s a typo on the sacred grave marker of the god of many English majors and it’s never mentioned? Very odd.

Next we found Shelley. Yes, there were newly dried roses on the stone. More photos, Click, Click, Click.

On to a swirl of visiting: Up the Aventine to the famous keyhole in the Knight’s of Malta building, Click; into the sublime S. Sabine, Click; a temporary rest in its cloister Click, Click, so Cad could get on his cell, and I could write a postcard to Steed; then jumping on the Metropolitana, over to the Lateran.

In front of the formidable entrance, we sat savoring some luscious bianco sotttobosco with a Barolo we had picked up (a very different experience from tea with no lemon and marzipan delights.) We were just ready to journey on, when I reached into my bag for my camera—and it wasn’t there. No, no, that can’t be. “Turn it inside out.” No camera.

I went white. Two days' worth of pictures. Keats. Shelley. Me. Cad calmly said we could retrace our steps tomorrow, and take a whole new set of pictures. No. No. Not the wall again. I can’t face the wall.

Think, M.A. When did you last have it?

In the cloister of S. Sabine.

Okay—we’ll go back now. Maybe it's still there.

Cadfael--the gentlemen of monks.

So tired. But we’ve got to try. Back to the Aventine. To be continued.
           , ,    

Monday, November 27, 2006

Travels with Cadfael

Meet Cadfael—a Benedictine monk I have traveled with from time to time. (My monk isn’t really named Cadfael—that’s the nom de blog I have given him. Although there are similarities to Ellis Peters/Pargeter’s creation, especially the worldliness.) Because he is studying for an advanced degree in Rome, he is often at leisure between terms and free to travel. And we became great travel partners--it was just one of those things. We met in Solesmes a few years ago, when I was studying Gregorian chant and he was a visiting American monk. But that’s a tale for a second season flashback.

This is a Rome snapshot. On my first visit to the ecclesiastical city, Cad was a living audioguide with a wicked laughtrack. He was gracious in revisiting the landmarks he had seen too many times, including, of course, St. Peter's. There was one blip of actual excitement when we came upon John XXIII in an altar. Cad: “This is huge. I heard he had been brought up, but I thought it was an urban legend.” Hip monk humor—it makes me laugh. Lots of Cadfael travels to come—stay tuned.
           ,    
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)