A
couple of weeks ago I lost a dear friend, Adam, to lung cancer.
His illness and death were quick, and as we
were separated by oceans during his last weeks I am struggling to believe it’s
real. Then today another good friend
sent me a photo of our gang, together less than a year ago in a country pub on
the south coast of NSW . Looking at the photo of Dave, Linda, Adam,
Jenny and I – actors I trained with at drama school and who mean the world to
me – I am transported back in time to see Adam on stage performing… Adam young
and virile… Adam full of warmth and energy… Adam playing the guitar… Adam doing
the salsa with a hip-swivel most white guys don’t possess… Adam on the rocks
with his fishing-rod… Adam jumping out of a plane and running across the field
toward his friends and family with a smile of achievement and exhilaration on
his face… and for a moment he is so vivid and close I am back there… not with
the loss but with him.
Thoughts about time recall a passage I’d like to share from my (as yet unpublished) manuscript Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues…
Time
is a strange thing; memories too. Only
weeks ago I was kissed in the Milano moonlight by a rugged Swede. A little over twenty years ago I walked the streets
of Florence Firenze ,
as the Italians more correctly call it, both scenes are now vivid; a million
things forgotten in between.
How
can it be that our mental library rewinds so accurately at times, opening the
image file without hesitation, even if we’d rather it didn’t? Yet on other occasions we can’t find where we
stored details of something we thought we’d never forget? Random I suppose.
Today
excitement seems to have shaken the memory loose, like a rapid reboot after a
file lay previously frozen. Perhaps the
file is corrupted, only partly saved, but what has been salvaged is now there
in front of me, demanding attention.
Of
Firenze twenty years ago I don’t recall who I
met… but crystal clear is the excitement of actually being there, of walking
across Ponte Vecchio, of taking a bus
to an out-of-town hostel and, most startling, the picture of myself as a spirited,
young woman. How can so much time have
passed, yet I feel so little changed?
How can I be hardly more grown up yet so much older? That is time’s mystery and magic.
In
this moment I move toward Firenze with the
same hope and excitement of bygone years.
It’s taken me only forty minutes to arrive by car from my house in the
olive grove, with air-conditioning and CD blaring Puccini. My clothes are cleaner and there’s no
back-pack, but I feel much like the same girl.
I ditch the car at
Porta Romana, to avoid what I’ve been
warned are extreme fines for driving into the no-traffic zone, and walk along
the old city wall to Piazza T. Tasso. After turning right up Via del Campuccio, in a few hundred
meters I get the feeling I should turn left.
The first voices I hear are American and they confirm my suspicions that
where I want to go is off to the right of Via
dei Serragli upon which I’m now strolling.
These back streets are quiet not only because locals are away on holidays
but because I’ve arrived, intentionally, during siesta. My inner tempo increases with anticipation
and then suddenly I’m there – at the River Arno.
Moving quickly
towards Ponte Santa Trinita I lean
over the side and look up stream to the one and only Ponte Vecchio. The famous
bridge - designed in 1345 by either Giotto’s pupil,
Taddeo Gaddi, or, as more recently
believed, by Neri di Fioravante - is exactly as I recall. Yet until that second I could not have
properly described it. It’s as if a fog
in my brain is slowly lifting, recognition fighting the cobwebs of clutter to
rejoin the dots of experience past. I
can do nothing but stare. Caught in a
time-warp even taking a photo seems glib.
I then surprise myself by being consumed by two competing sensations:
one a sense of privilege that I’ve returned, when so many have not had the
pleasure; the other, a little sour grapes that it’s taken me so long. I laugh at my greed. And also my hording instincts, for after all
this time I still posses a musty old Firenze map with highlights circled; so
sure was I then, that I’d be back much sooner.
Eventually I do
take photos of course. Then I approach Ponte Vecchio from the northern
side. Pretty jewelry displays fill every
shop window. Was it so twenty years
ago? I don’t remember. I soon learn that indeed it was: for the
butchers, tanners and blacksmiths who operated from the bridge originally, were
thrown out by Duke Ferdinando I in 1593 for creating too much noise and
stench. Back and forward along Ponte Vecchio I wander, luxuriating in
the fact that there’s no hurry. Nor does
it matter that it’s Monday and museums are shut, as I plan to visit Firenze over and over again. I feel rich with opportunity, and my Tuscan
hat provokes conversation.
Next I wander
along the Archibusieri, the corridor adjacent
to the river, until I find myself looking straight under the arches of the
infamous Uffizi Gallery. I smirk to see I had scribbled the names of
favourite paintings on the back of my precious map. And I wonder if my experience of them now
will be as satisfying? I walk in circles
around Piazza della Signoria still
reveling in the lack of need to rush. A
talented guitarist adds to the atmosphere, playing classical augmentations of
well-known pop songs. Friends laugh at
my fondness for John Denver - cemented after going to a live concert not long
after my father died and finding him of immense comfort. What would they think of hearing Annie’s Song in the middle of Firenze ? I can see
Brunelleschi’s Dome poking up over buildings in the distance but decide to save
the duomo’s delights for later. Instead
I walk toward Basilica di Santa Croce,
stopping on the opposite side of the piazza to stare at the white stone façade
glistening in the strong afternoon light.
Churches of this size really do need a large space in front of them, for
one of the things that makes the Duomo in Milano and the Vatican in Rome
After hours of
indulgent wandering in the vicinity of Piazza della Repubblica and Piazza San
Marco, I finally make my way back across Ponte Vecchio toward my car.
On the south side of the river I drive around to Piazzale Michelangelo. Sinking
into splendid views over the city and river, Brunelleschi’s Dome sparkling in
early evening sun, I am soon refreshed by the gradually-cooler air and the
music provided by buskers, one strumming a Ukranian dulcimer.
After driving back
to my new home in the Tuscan olive grove, I then top off an invigorating day by
preparing a salad with tomatoes, basil and peppers picked freshly from the garden
near my cottage. Combined with pane, olio e parmigiano reggiano this is about as good as it gets, and I walk up
the hill to the pool with a bottle of Chianti under my arm and the scent of
freshly-cut basilico in my
nostrils. The key to this country
living, I’m fast realizing, is going to be to mix it up - alternating between bustling
town and social experiences, with quiet time for reading, writing and
swimming.
A new wave of
contentment washes over me.
(Copyright: Julie Mullins)
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