22nd July, 2011
Although it's not the 113 degrees Fahrenheit that it is in NY today, it's still bloody hot here. And yet I watch as Silvia makes her way to her orta - veggie garden - in overalls and boots and kerchief atop her head, a bit like a Tuscan Rosy the Riveter. She crouches in that manner of dancers and athletes, the calf muscles supple, her movement graceful. I long to join her but my Italian is not so good today, or I should say, I used it up in Siena this morning where we went to various non-English speaking shops in search of some important items.
It's rather like the desert here in that while it might be a searing, dry 90 degrees by day, the temperature can, more often than not, drop down to 60 at night which feels a lot colder than the 60 one experiences on a fluky mid-winter day. And so it is that for the last few nights our recently purchased cotton blanket has not sufficed and we have resorted to wearing T shirts and nighties to bed, one night even socks! Most attractive.
So we returned to Siena this morning to purchase a summer-weight down comforter. It's also Luana's birthday on Sunday and we decided to go to my favorite clothing store to find a present for her. Dolce Trami (Sweet Threads) is run by a trio of sexy, warm women in their 30's and it's worth going there just to see their faces light up when we enter - not, I think because they see money coming in the door, but rather because we all know we're going to have a lot of fun for the next hour. It's one of those shops so rare to find in big cities anymore, a real boutique, every item chosen with a good eye and only 1 or 2 of each item. Most of the clothes that have been my favorites for years have come from this place.
I have in mind a scarf/shawl for Luana, whom I think of as my younger Leonine sister. She has a great pair of shoulders which she loves to bare on summer evenings and yet, like me, easily feels a chill around her neck.
Anna, the owner of the store, immediately chooses - from among perhaps 50 scarfs and shawls - the perfect one for Luana, whom she's never met. When scrunched as a scarf the shawl, which is made from the finest cashmere and silk, is a gentle swirl of colors, but when opened up to its beach towel expanse you see it is the map of the NYC subway! And there's our stop - 96th Street. Perfetto!
I tell the girls it's my birthday soon and that I will return next week for a something for myself. The only problem being that by then I know they will have selected a dozen items that will all seem as though they were made only for me.
Ah, Siena. When I first came here in 1965 it stood out in the countryside, easily seen upon approach as the walled medieval city it is. Now it is surrounded by a vast urban/suburban sprawl. Yet once you have parked inside one the many Portos in its wall you are immediately back in time: the cobbled streets winding in diminishing circles, the crumbly buildings with their slatted shutters and layers of paint and stucco peeling back to reveal their age, much like the rings in a felled tree; the smells of pastry and pasta and caffe and dust and perfume and oil, a heady, exotic mix that flares the nostrils and waters the mouth; the Sienese ladies, immaculately dressed and coiffed, the business men likewise; the tourists gathering in the Campo, many of them sitting or lying on its brick surface as if upon a beach.
We've been here during the Palio, when the circular route around the Campo is packed with clay, making it one of the fastest, scariest horse-tracks anywhere, the crowds hanging from temporary tiers of seating, windows and balconies, and thousands more crammed, standing, into the actual center of the circle. Once was enough for me: the barricaded energy of the spectators, the heightened emotions of the locals, the flying hooves and, the year we were there, a flying jockey whose fate I'm glad not to know of. And after the race, the men weeping in the streets, the claustrophobia of the fleeing crowd. No, I prefer and ordinary day here. And this year, while I'm sure not a good thing for the city, the streets are not shoulder to shoulder with tourists, in fact it's almost eerily empty. On the one hand it's a pleasure to experience it this way; one feels assimilated into the atmosphere of the city itself and can more easily see and appreciate the architecture. But underneath this is a more ominous feeling that has to do with the reality of the global economy. Even right after 9/11 Europe was never this empty.
So, it is a relief to drive back here to the emptiness of the landscape, to sit in one of the old deck chairs Gianni refurbished for us yesterday, have a cup of tea and muse about sleeping under that down comforter.
