I remember maybe twenty years ago traveling to Istanbul with my sons. They would've been late 20's, at the time. One night, we got lost in a seedy neighborhood but, to our delight, ended up in a charming restaurant. A form, I suppose, of 'lost but found.'
I've never particularly liked planning ... I have a certain degree of faith that tells me that it is not so much the specific choice made that carries the day but rather how one navigates through that choice. My sense is that many an unhappy Soul's misery is connected to a belief that the game of life can be won -- whatever that means -- by making optimal choices, as if life was a one-independent variable optimizing problem of elementary differential calculus.
One hears the hints of such thinking in such expressions as "the one," in the notion that there is an ideal mate or lover just waiting to be found. Many a recent television or film production or, I suspect, romance novel surrounds the notion that someone has or hasn't found "the one." I wonder how much disappointment hinges on the belief that one has failed to solve that elementary optimization problem.
"If only I had" or "If only I hadn't."
One day, my fellow travelers and I were wandering through the streets/canals of Venice .... pretty lost. Stumbled upon a restaurant ... La Zucca ... maybe it means the Pumpkin ... but all that matters little. Venice has the look of a skid-row-scenario ... dirty from age ... untidy from the centuries. It was 12:15 and M and my knees and legs were raging in pain from climbing up and down dozens of staired bridges that cross its canals. The restaurant was to open at 12:30 but we had no reservation. Reservation!? Is someone kidding. There was a Swiss woman sitting out there and she had no reservation, either. La Zucca! 12:30 came and we were fit in and then began a series of walk-ins and phone calls. "Do you have a reservation? ... Sorry but we're full. Maybe the end of the week?"
Stumbled upon a wonderful moment ... camaraderie between M, I, two of our kids and one of our 6 grandkids.
We're back, now, feeling quite heartened by the whole experience. From the beginning where one of us had the idea that a trip was particularly important for one of us who is ill ... to travel as Pilgrims ... not seeking cure at some Grotto or Shrine ... but seeking wholeness in la Familia.
I don't see how the trip could've been better. Much love from inside our group and from without. Each hotel permitted us a home base ... even one in Florence that could've been called Domo d'Charles Adams. Dark rooms ... and curious hotel staff. A little spooky. Apparently was home of first Italian Assembly after the Italian Cities unified.
Indeed, on our last night, a colleague whom I only knew from the internet picked us up at a hotel ... he and his wife. First they drove 4 of us to the church in which he and his Father prayed ... the church where a Leonardo "Last Supper" was on display. Walking in was entering a sacred space, even though the church was heavily involved in the Inquisition that didn't treat my ancestors with kindness. Then to their home ... Two of their five kids were there and Neo the Dog ... a thoroughly whacky and happy pooch. (Love dogs ... No chauvinism except with their loved ones.) He's a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst ... she a homeopathic physician. Three of their kids were away; two there. The 17 year old youngster came in wearing a sweatshirt that said:
Nobody Reads
Your
Fucking
Blog.
I'm committed to having one that says:
Very Few People
Indeed
Read
My Fucking Blog!
The 21 year old daughter was charming ... a sculptress full of interest, like her brother, full of interest in the world. And dinner with them all? Was beyond anything we might've imagined. Oh! The food was wonderful ... hand-made spaetzle and foods that were on my daughter and grand-daughter's diets ... but the simple sharing of caring and ideas between strangers filled us even more than the Italian Hospitality we had already tasted with a sense of the goodness of the world ... while the News of the Week on CNN International raged about us during the week as Simon and Garfunkel's Silent Night had nearly 50 years ago. What a wonderful evening: comradeship and true joy (Alexander Woolcott?)
Leaving the next day from our hotel ... I received an e-mail from an internet buddy, accusing me of Lord-knows-what. The fellow was interpreting something I said about not understanding a cartoon as being off-putting. No. Actually, I was caught up in the Glee and Sadness of a trip that functioned in the former embracing of the Good while realizing that, indeed, one of us was ill.
With my colleagues in Italy, difference was something to be toasted. With my internet buddy, it was to be interpreted.
Many blogs ago, I wrote of my Abby Rule. Abby had been a university student of mine whom I mocked once coming into class one morning late after two absences. She ran out, to explain later that she had just a week before come home to find her Dad dead on the floor. The Abby Rule is a recommendation that we meet everyone with both "a presumption of good intentions" and a provisional assumption that, like us, they're dealing with what the kids called in the 1960's: "Some pretty HEAVY shit."
Any case, the holiday was wonderful, restorative and full of caring, even if M and I are both just a bit worn and lame-of-leg!
No comments:
Post a Comment