The most exciting things in life happen when they are inflicted upon you, instead of you seeking them out. Keep up with people in your life, because only through other people and their experiences are we able to understand what we desire for ourselves. Like how Alexander Supertramp desired open air, or how Georgia O’Keefe desired to paint without colour for years until she understood monochrome. Quick decisions are best decisions because they happen in the moment you feel the energy. Elana told me that the Camino was the best time of her life in the hot sun, Seth told me he read all about it. So Arden and I booked a flight and ignited any maps.
The Camino de Santiago de Compostela is a set of hundreds of pilgrimmage routes throughout spain and france, historically beginning at people’s front doors, and leading to the city of Santiago, and into the church of St. James the Apostle. After he died, his body was found washed ashore covered in shells, thus the shell symbol of the trail. Beginning in the 1000 AD, people made this pilgrimage on foot in meditation, penance, and homage, like making a Hajj to Mecca (next planned pilgrimage). In the 1900’s, it became a novelty to walk the Camino as the original pilgrims did, on the unchanged paths through mountains, farms and villages. Some for religious purpose, some for cultural immersion. Some to eat, walk, talk, not talk. I don’t know why I went yet, but how important are a person’s motives to their experience? I guess, all of those things.
We began on the Camino Frances, to walk 106 km to Santiago.
Maps were burned,
Bags were lost (love always, ryanair)
We had our novels, What is the What and The Poinsonwood Bible,
passports, the clothes we wore, and every song imaginable in our heads for entertainment.
That’s all.
sans camera. its a good thing i didnt have it to distill the colors in my mind.
The entire Camino is marked with yellow arrows
Just when you think youre lost, you find an arrow.
Nothing to search for
Nothing to search for but arrows and shells.
Like the wizard of oz and the yellow brick road.
Sleeping and eating cheese in Galician villages,
In albergues equipped with beer and warm ham, bacon and eggs.
People take pride that their homes can be used by pilgrims
They want to do everything for you.
And families to offer you smiles and questions each night.
Spanish comes back to me.
Words are simple,
i can feel the breadth of a human through such simplicity. effort to understand and communicate speaks more than eye contact can tell.
It was cold, but rose bushes lined the ancient stone walls we walked on
(so we pretended they were blooming)
But if we let the cold days or rainy days or muddy feet (or no underwear for arden’s sake) penetrate our skin
it would be like spreading a disease.
So live and let live.
Live through your feelings, those at the depths and the surfaces of your soul
because even in the freezing cold, wet weather, you still know what warm is.
Each feeling you have you must claim to have known and owned.
When excitement drives you more than comfort and safety, that’s when you know love is love, time is right. Because you’re also not afraid to leave it, if you know what you're leaving there.
Maneuvering through ghost towns, highways, farms, forests, brooks.
The camino winds through life.
Some villages make me believe I am the first person to ever be.
Sometimes the side-of-the-highway-cargo-semi draft almost pushes me over.
Everywhere is a secret garden. Everywhere is a cemetery.
Tiny stone houses that have stood since wind.
Cows, dogs, sheep, churches, gravesites, altars
along the trail to receive prayers and pilgrims’ respect.
Like maybe you shouldn’t be let in on these family secrets.
but you are.
Galicians tend their gardens and feed their livestock,
because humans need a routine. It puts life experience into a rolodex.
Smiling is a feasible language. as you pass someone, wish them, Buen camino!
A couple 7 months pregnant walking for good graces.
So I wondered why for me-
Myth, friendship, religion, spirituality
im still not sure, but any exploration of the body in its simplest form tears flesh and bones away so you have no choice but to read what is written on your soul. Physically using your body, so there is nothing protecting your soul. Feeling the muscles in your body so you know its all there. These writings could be translated into an entire Religion just as they could to English or Spanish. For some the purpose could be hope to merely see what is written, and for others it could be uncovering the pieces of writing that remain a mystery.
Walking all day on the camino was like water. Your entire body is submerged, you don’t and wont know if anything is actually there- any finger, nose, leg. Unless you think about it, move it around, consciously give it feeling when it is surrounded by the same particles everywhere, same temperature, same amount, same touch. Nothing will make any part of your body feel different until you make your own movements.
Caught between contentedness being outdoors where my feet stand, and turning and moving to walk every path and touch every blade of grass spoken of. I do not want to constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are. I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
Wilderness makes me believe that rose colored glasses are actually real eyes.
a celebration of colour, sex, disguise, mischief and dreams. WORLD-ON-ECSTASY celebration. while mozart’s wife, a family of tigers and leonardo davinci are dancing in san marco, countless casanovas wander windy streets silently with their busty louvers on their arms, gliding like ghosts. moderation in moderation. inherent sin and show-off grandeur.
arabian facades and untamed decrepitness refer truthfully to shakespeare and his cohorts that wrote of the trickery in the old stones. venice, designer of the rich and famous- who now lets everyone join. you can ride its universe RIGHT at the moment it moves through your bones. but you may forget everything you know about europe as you see the head of the grand canale welcoming infinity and its clouds into the city.
venetian home doorways open to canal waterways. what if you have no boat? how deep will you fall? i love water because it terrifies me just as well. nowhere to start or finish, getting lost on the island is impossible and inherent. there is no time to be serious when your city is drowning. old-as-time-and-in-costume signores stumble out of morningtime belini bars. ask the polizia for laws on drinking in public, they will kindly show you to the market to buy a vino rosso.
venice is everything at the same time.
senses aligned, so exponentially heightened-
that they have disappeared like people’s faces
filling dreams and nightmares.
like a one-night-love-affair with casanova- his city gives the dazzling attraction of the lump sum over what is more regularly doled out in a lifetime of installments.
under the procuratie nuove in piazza san marco (marble arches, iron and orb lights) you will find the triumph of venice, the Florian Caffe of 1720, where men of letter and of art convene over earl grey and tartuffe. lord byron, and goethe himself as patrons. us proletariats become kings by sitting in the state tea room with menthe linen walls and hand carved darkwood marble tables, and our own silver tray of treats. visit and wear your fanciest velvet and fur. put on your best face-of-a-poetry-ambassador even if wine has made it smile like a clown all day. preserve venezia just as the romantics lived it, and intended for us to as well.
in venice, be a fortune hunter.
cover you eyes if you want to,
because there is everything else to do but see.
and there is everything to see.
the best things in the world happen early in the morning. {but really, think about it...}
the only thing calling for my departure after 3 hours spent with my dinner at the tiny, haunting lair of La Giostra was the now-almost-nothing candle stick on my wooden table with mismatched tablecloths, and the tin holder brimming with its hot wax.
it was the secret of Via de Benci, with no sign to speak of. my head could touch the facade of the tiny doorway that we had guessed would open to the ristorante. greetings with a sparkling bianco, old photos of Chef Tonarelli and the Boss (the Bruce Springsteen Boss), community wooden coat racks, and thousands of strands of christmas lights. snow on the ceiling.
La Giostra's building has lived for 400 years, housing an old merry-go-round from a piazzale (no wonder it is magic), until years ago with the Hapsburg Lorena Princes. they were bound to the recipes of their heritage, as their grandmother showed them what she called "the big magic" in food. they coined their own tastes and named la Giostra, paying homage to the quaint ruggedness of its history...
"the sciences are not like Minvera, that came out of Jupiter all armed, they are daughters of time."
food should reflect the feelings posessed by the instant. yet history's most perfected combinations at the same time. just like how everything is most ripe, prime. nothing should be tipica.
Ubaldo Tonarelli is to his chef-hat and tinsel-white hair as his son The Prince is to thousands of worldtravelled peuter bracelets and bone necklaces around him. they bring one plate at a time from the steamy kitchen. freshness that tricks you into thinking you are eating something still cooking in the oven. like making a birthday present for your mama and finally giving it, beaming more pride for your talent than the Jayhawks. Ravioli di Pecorino Toscano e pere Williams. smells enough to satisfy hunger, of pinching butter, watermelon and chives. Sheets of cream-thick early-morning crafted pasta like cashmere blankets holding the pearbutterpecorino babies.
i have never known what spending time on taste is like.
Grazie mile, Prince. ---"Preencessa, Prego Mile... my love..."
florentines of all kinds. hippies from it's Haight and Madame Butterflys with their louvers and fur. all in subdued merriment defined only by a Brunello. merriment you could only imagine to be soon followed by piano playing, wine and lots of loveandsex to be had all around.
"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." -virginia woolfe
i find it almost impossible to penetrate authenticity with a camera lens. but i will try next time i am at la giostra, i will get a photo of the prince and his bones and bracelets, pear and pecorino. until then, found snapshots of the lovers lights.
Arden and I imagine sirens on the rocks and warriors with tritans, exploring the seas and mountains of the Amalfi coast in the old-olden days. We crave green space, as the regal age of Florence masks its absence. So, we find Amalfi on the map and we go. Throw yourself into some decisions and figure out transportation as you go. Never a dull moment guaranteed! An ideology Kurt calls, “ready, fire, aim!” Where there is intrigue in potential. Dried fruit, nutella, euro store wine and chit chat with a Neapolitan professor slash wine connosuier (sp?) (who was diggin’ our one-buck-chuck) make trenitalia the best place to enjoy. Between getting lost on the island of Capri as 3 of the 15 people on the land, sneaking into the Hotel Luna and eating their hymsumsim sour plants while running around like banshees in front of security cameras, being the topo-map keeper while only getting us all lost at sunset forcing a hitch hike, realizing we were only ten minutes away from our destination, and running into a pack of mountain goats, the Amalfi Coast was the most entertaining and awe-striking place on the whole earth. (only to be enjoyed while wearing the same clothes for 4 days and nights straight).
Naples is disheveled chaos in a baroque background
(with palm trees and plastic flamingoes).
But secretly beautiful, like Baz Lhurmann placing Romeo and Juliet in 1990’s Venice Beach.
Mt. Vesuvius is a reminder of time.
how it passes, where it is given, how its increments are valued by humans.
We take a boat to our playground, the island of Capri.
Accompanied only
by kids in their colorful coats, women harvesting backyard orange trees.
Chilly fishing town by winter, J.Lo’s getaway by summer
glamour’s ghost.
Casas carved into cliffs, that each morning greeted by the Mediterranean.
Villas del Helios.
Each step along our trail, a different view framed by birds.
If someone had seen this sight before me,
it would surely already be in the hall-of-fame of heaven.
Unless they just kept it for themselves, like I do.
Limitless beauty, nowhere but here.
Skin-itching excitement for the view bound a few steps ahead,
Yet feeling permeating through your eyes in the present moment,
so much that all other senses are lost.
Sirens on land
mermaids swim in the sea.
From which earth’s sky models its color.
Aquamarine gold becomes indigo tangerine in sunset rainstorms
that follow us along our walk.
Evergreen, olive trees, ivy, dandelions, orange trees, moss and tropical lillies
all in one place!
Doves.
Pass kissing lovers,
standing where perfection can be infinite but only captured at one moment,
where you want to be held by someone at the same time,
standing in sure perfection with unsure excitement of love and who its with,
content turbulence.
In Positano
Sit the beach in a sweater
listen to seagull screech, watch fish flop in threaded nets.
Find balance of mountain, sea, village.
Allow the pasticceria to bake pastry smells into your nostrils.
You will know the mailman’s hometown.
Quiet, you will see everything.
Then the “Path of the Gods” leads through the center and away from the coast town Amalfi, bambinos play kickball off the cathedral, limoncello is made through the windows. Salmon colored matchbox houses dwindle, lemon trees multiply; stream becomes a river, trail leads upward. Mountain goats’ bells, crashing waves, mountain height. Literally getting lost (even losing your own stomach), only to find a secret 2 mile staircase off the highway near a handwritten sign that says to amalfi. That noone but us will ever find, ever. Hiking sees what you’re not supposed to. Or what no one else has before.
The breath inside of my lungs was replaced for 4 days by the something, I do not know what. Because the awe of the constant scenes of the Amalfi coast is as mythical as the fish I imagine to be swimming inside the colour of diamonds.
en tu vestido
de color amaranto y azucena
vivi a desarrollanola dicha y el dolor- la vina llena
de radiantes racimos
que conquiste en la tierra.
-pablo neruda
(found on a plaque along the hikers trail on Capri, exactly the spot where it was written. most beautiful when not translated.)
i do not think you should
keep track of where you are at each point.
that’s like writing a poem
and stopping at every punctuation,
making sure the flowers still smelled how you describe them,
or making sure that the first time you loved it was real,
that it did feel like an explosion in your mind and body,
a vacuum released in your heart;
but the richest colors exist
in the spark of moment only,
the deepest permeation of sun and sweat and searing sense.
The Sartorialist my louver (and Garance Dore) came to visit Florence for Men's Fall Fashion Preview Week (and to sign my book.)
www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com
My language does not sound like how butter tastes (I am not Italiano), so I stand out extra a lot.
but if you’re inherently not going to fit in for being American in Italy, you might as well go all the way and place yourself among the best dressed in the world. Glamour’s most hidden, finest patrons. In a glass garden courtyard. there lie the masters of the world.
Where the pear champagne flows like pitchers-of-miller-at-charley’s and real Sartorialists are everywhere.
I told Scott Schuman I was from Missouri.
He told me Missouri (St. Louis- Frontenac) is where he got his first Armani. And like an idiot, who does not know how her questions sound when they come out, I meant to ask him how old he was when he got this first Armaaani, and it came out as (so eloquent):
"Oh! How old are you [Mr. Sartorialist]?"
"---How old am I?"
Wonderful.
buona sera, and ti ami carrie dennis.
Welcome to Florence, Italy, Signorina.
The colors so old and regal that they expect you to use them for your soul.
And to bring them all with you where you go.
Teenage love novels tell lovers to put their locks on the fences of the Ponte Vecchio.
Find all of the gold jewelry that sunk to the depths of the Arno
in the flood of 1966.
You are sure to meet a member of the mafia, at least once per day,
without knowing.
Pasta with tomatoes, whose insides have absorbed more of the basil than the leaf itself, invent a language by which I can understand the Italians, and they can understand me.
But all other times I can pretend I am from Turkey so they do not speak English to me. Soon I will become Italian, I think.
Everyone in Florence, a Bon Vivant,
Whether you live in the Pitti Palace or sweep its marble steps.
Feet and desert boots see the world.
Maps are obsolete.
I have not yet sketched the collection of lost lovers’ padlocks on the fence on the Ponte Vecchio,
I have not been inside the brass doors of the duomo, or touched its moss green tile.
I have not seen David.
But I know that Florence is the place already.
Art does not insist on being correct.
But, Florence is the exception.
It is correct.
Artists are to keep some sort of arms length from their work to avoid the danger of closeness, but it may be impossible not to become your own fictional character while making art in Italy.
Whether you know where you are going or you do not,
you will certainly bump into it without even having that purpose.
Thus inventing a different place.
Spend most of the day getting lost that way,
and finding what you weren’t looking for.
Loving someone is a hobby. Finding a lover is a Florentine sport.
To be in love with the fact, the mantra-
that daily, the necessities of smell, romance, food, company,
(nothing more or less)
are most important,
demand the most energy.
Miles (Davis Junior, Allison and Ada’s best friend),
resident dog of Santa Reparata school of art
wears softer sweaters than I do,
and knows Italian better as well.
Men are so beautiful, that even the hidden stitches on their pressed pant hems
make you want to hold onto the back of their neck and have them press their lips
against your forehead.
Ciao tutti.
write letters to me and i will write you one back.
i love letters.
carolyn wiedeman
c/o santa reparata intl. school of art
via san gallo 53/r
50129 florence, italy
