UNFRAMED

This morning I sat facing a window in the Val d’Orcia where we have retreated for three days. Outside, a large, black-trunked tree, clad in orange foliage, shook and swayed and whipped itself in a wind and rain driven frenzy. It filled the entire frame with only here and there a glimpse of grey sky through its maddened branches. Inside the room, and inside me, stillness. After several minutes a single leaf tore itself free and flew out of the frame.

We, too, are tearing ourselves free. In the last two weeks we were caught in our own frenzy: emptying drawers and cupboards, donating clothing and dishes, packing books and art, and dismantling our studio in readiness for the shippers’ arrival on 1st December. Not to mention filling 20 large plastic bags with an embarrassing quantity of the unnecessary shit we’ve accumulated over the last 9 years.

Mixed in with our frenzy was no small amount of marital tension; the difference in our separate approaches to divesting ourselves widened into a chasm that echoed with fear and recrimination. For my part, the fear that the amount of stuff Joel “needs” to keep far outweighing mine, caused me to regress into feeling second-class and overwhelmed by – okay, I’ll say it – the importance of the successful male artist.  Joel’s fear, I’m sure, had to do with feeling pushed and bullied into making decisions he’s not yet ready to make…and all of this while continuing to be filmed for the documentary.

We’re saying goodbye for all the right reasons, which I have written about in previous posts. Before we returned to Tuscany on 1st November to begin this process, we had convinced ourselves it would be a piece of cake.  After all, we aren’t taking any furniture or kitchen equipment. We have everything we need in our small London flat. Sure, a few pieces of art and some treasured books would be a welcome addition, while our studio equipment will be shipped to the commercial studio we’ve rented near the flat. Besides, we already left, hadn’t we? I mean, once you make up your mind to go, you’re gone. No? So I told myself.

For a while, the accumulation of Joel’s boxes served me well, allowing me to focus on his inability to let go instead of allowing myself to feel the unexpected, unwanted feelings of my own sorrow at leaving.

Eventually, with most of the work done and the film crew leaving, we looked at each other and saw two old, exhausted people. We could easily have checked ourselves into an asylum, but instead took ourselves here to La Posta Marcucci, a lovely hot springs hotel in Bagno Vignoni where we surrendered to the healing waters, massage, naps, walks and the luxury of being fed.

We also surrendered to a flood of feelings as we recognized the many ways we have been woven into this landscape and its culture. From the hotel bedroom window, we looked out and up to Rocca d’Orcia where, starting in 1995 we would escape during the middle weekend of The Tuscany Workshop which we taught for several years. For 2 days we’d sleep on a horsehair mattress in a 3 room inn, and nap on a bench under an enormous linden tree, drugged by its perfume-laden blossoms, lullabied by the buzz of a thousand pollen-collecting bees.

Yesterday, lunching in the dining room, we were moved to tears to hear the hotel’s playlist of Adagios; the very same ones we listened to in the car as we travelled around Tuscany in the early years.  These Adagios became the soundtrack to the making our book:  Tuscany, Inside the Light.

Tomorrow we will return to the stone barn that’s been our home all these years to begin a week of goodbyes; lunches and dinners with friends, hugs and thankyou’s with the many shopkeepers in our, and the surrounding villages; people who’ve served us fine produce and kindly put up with our less than perfect Italian. The final goodbye will be with Gianni and Luana who will make dinner for us the night before we leave.  And then . . . 

I think of that tree outside the window this morning and I like to think we are that single leaf having the courage to leave of our own accord.  It’s a nice metaphor and somewhat applicable. But the larger truth is that none of us is as free to choose as we would like to think.  Sooner, or later, the wind and rain will come for us, detach us from all that we have known and fling us to the ground: earth to earth, dust to dust.  But we are not there yet and so we leave while the going is good. We’ll disappear from this frame and enter a new one, albeit with too many boxes!

To all of you who’ve kept me company here in Tuscany, especially during times when I felt like a stranger, I send you thanks and gratitude. I hope you’ll continue to journey with me, now to England, where I hope to open to new adventures, which I promise to share with you.

With love,

Maggie