Gwen John, my newest hero

Today I was browsing the Tate Online Collection with their "Carousel" and I found Gwen John. Born in 1876, she was the sister of the famouser (ha!) painter Augustus John and became Rodin's mistress as well as a friend of Rilke. She never received the recognition her brother had, and was always struggling despite her obvious talent. She died in 1939. Most of her paintings at the Tate are portraits--very quiet, careful portrayals of women. Click here to see all of the ones at Tate. The one shown here is Chloe Boughton-Leigh, one of my favorites.

10 June--Lucca

Now we are in Lucca. The barcode sticker is from a kind of drawing pencil I bought per due euro.

10 June--Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa

12:25 Piazza dei Miracoli
It makes sense to me, in a certain way, that people would make a beautiful place as a way to worship God. Certainly they had more secular concerns on their minds, but in a way, good things came of it. The exact occupying of space, the beautiful support of matter, the creation of an interior space that feels organic or otherworldly—all these things are as dizzying as an excellent song of worship or a prolonged liturgy.

10 June--thoughts on the language

Waiting for the train to La Spezia:

One of the main differences about this language is the vowels. Often, within a syllable, it is not the whole syllable that is accented but only the vowel. And the vowel sounds are unlike any others either in my language or in French, or in the little Spanish that I have heard. The diphthongs are completely gone, but in their place is a difficult type of accent, or voice modulation, or something. What happens is that extreme care must be taken to say one’s e’s with that non-French “a” sounds, and one’s i’s thickly but consistently throughout, and one’s a’s drawn out into two beats.
Perhaps one of the most challenging words is one that we hear quite often: grazie. The hardest part is the rhythm of the “ie,” which, when first learned, is pronounced as two distinct syllables, “zee—ay.” On further instruction it quickens a bit, to “tsz—uh.” But now, hearing it in cafés and after money exchanges hands, it becomes clear that it is actually an “ah” sound, something off the cuff and expansive and something that opens one’s mouth wide at the beginning but at the end ends up something at the back of one’s mouth, by the molars and the edge of one’s tongue.
It interests me very much to hear Americans with other accents speaking Italian, or other language-speakers speaking it. For example, a French woman approached me in Monterosso when we came in on the train (I was carrying a copy of Le Monde) and when she pronounced “Manarola” it was with that slippery French way of making the whole word more accented than any one syllable, and the a’s were breathy and it made more sense to me than it ever has in Italian. When she said “Vernazza” the “ver” was spoken like “verre” (glass) or “vers” (toward), and the z’s had a small Italian sound but just enough to make it clear. After we spoke, she asked me de quelle region was I from; I said we were Americans (I tried to say “sono” and then “siamo” before I remembered that I ought to say “nous sommes”) and she said “Mais vous parlez tres bien!” so I smiled the rest of the day and was altogether unbearable.
Eating dinner our first night here I overheard a woman with a strong Southern accent repeating what a man (one of our waiters) had just said to her: Che bella (ké bellah). It is impossible to describe how she made it sound entirely Dixie without even a hind of the original pronunciation.
I understand now why when Italians speak English they add an “uh” sound at the end of words, and at the end of sentences—because in Italian you are never without a vowel to make your phrase a question or an indignant statement. In French it seems to be that the emotions are created by intonation that occurs somewhere at the upper end of the throat, underneath the tongue, and between the teeth . . .

9 June--Monterosso

In Monterosso there are two sections of the city: Old and New, divided by a short tunnel. Next to the tunnel is a statue of Saint Francis, along with a castle and a German bunker from World War II (very minimalist and utilitarian). We ate gelato (“Una nocciola, s’il vous plait—er, per favore) and walked around. At the beach in New City I picked up some rocks. The water is very clear, and at the beach I saw that it's because they don't have any sand--only very small pebbles worn very smooth.
The Old City was beautiful. There was a creepy church covered in scaffolding and dedicated to something like “mortis e oratorio,” and a “societas [di?] morti” or something along those lines. Signs hung in English and other languages saying that it needed restoration very badly so please donate one euro. There were collapsing, dusty crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and an immense and terrifying crucifix at the front (Christ seemed to be in even more pain than usual) and, most hair-raising of all, in the reliefs on the arches, skeletons stretched out their arms right next to the cherubs and blue flowers. The room was circular, and at the top of the ceiling a cupola painted a bright blue, the only thing completely lit. There was a banner on a stand that said something like “society of death” and that strange word, “oratorium.” The dust was pasty thick on everything. On the left in a tall glass case stood a statue of (presumably) Mary, clothed in thick tapestry cloth, with wide eyes and a faintly disturbing smile—disturbing, I suppose, because it looked like a doll rather than a carving. Her hands were raised with the palms out; the gesture, rather than evoking a sense of motherly benediction, brought to mind a prisoner with their hands and face against the glass. I thought, “Poor woman, but I don’t really want you to come out, now that they’ve kept you in there for so long.”
On the ceiling were four circles with odd portraits, of (after some guess-work translating) Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke (I think). There were some other saint names that I was not familiar with—they sounded almost Greek, or something more Byzantine than Italian.
Another thing that made this so strange was that the chapel, on the whole, was not exactly somber. The chandeliers had small gems and many crystals; the portraits had delicate, intricate borders; the walls were white peeling plaster, not stone; many of the borders of things were pale blue; and over the door on the inside were painted ropes of pink flowers and bows. But over the door from the outside, too, were the words similar to “mortis” and “oratorio” and a skull and crossbones, almost like a pirate’s.
{It turns out what I stumbled upon was the “mortis et orationis” oratory, seat of the Confraternita dei Neri. “Mortis” means death, and “orationis” means prayer. See this site for info on the Purgatorian Archonfraternity, and this place (scroll down half way) for the Archonfraternity of Death and Prayer.}

Found phrase

Seen on a t-shirt walking by outside The Bean Cycle:

"Step on Degas to make the Van Gogh."

I had to think about it for a minute.

8 June--Monterosso

On the train to Monterosso (of the Cinque Terre).
The train station must have been built in the twenties—it is beautiful and classy perfectly crowded. The trains depart from half of a green glass circle, a long line of tracks leaves towards the half-circle of sky at the far end. Some of the cities we pass have tall buildings painted in San Francisco colors, warm and bright. Right out of Milano Centrale there are again the patchworked pieces of land, marked off against each other by trees or high grasses. Sometimes a path cuts between them, something defined but often just a footpath—worn down onto the white soil by Italian (!) feet.

It worries me, this inability to think about what I am seeing. What seems most natural so far is this train ride, the being of nowhere except for near sleep; the lack of responsibilities except for to wait, my favorite responsibility; the dream-ness of it especially, I guess, since that is the only way I know how to think of train stations and train rides and these cities with my favorite kind of buildings puzzled shoulder-to-shoulder on the sides and cracks of mountainous hills that roll into one another.

Now we are in Vernazza.

8 June--Duomo

The interior of the Duomo is a very crowded place, the saints and the wealthy crowded against the walls and the altarpieces, the paintings, the pillars. The ceiling, they tell me, is actually painted, but looks carved either because of the artists’ talent or just the distance. The height of the place (from the inside even) is what hits you almost immediately, in a way that skyscrapers cannot. The arches look paper thin, the whole thing is an illusion or sketch just hanging in the air, and the only that has weight are the robes of the graceful statues.
The roof of the Duomo is a series of smooth staircases and hallways of spires. From a distance, and glimpsed through the chinks in the city from the streetcar windows, it seems a castle of insects, things that gather mud and dust and pile it onto itself to make a nest. It feels, from a distance, like netting, or a dirty white, or scaffolding that is pencil-thin and built up into pointed towers. From a distance, it is a dream and impossibility. Once on the rooftop, it is the center of the city. The population on the outside walls (sinners, scholars, saints, angels, holy pagans) has been thinned (relatively speaking) and is now a crowd of bishops, popes, Romans (I think soldiers), and wise men (and a woman or two). At the top of each tall thin tower on a small square stands a person, facing outward towards the city that surrounds it. Further down the tower are alcove-like things with pillars that seem to trap the enclosed figure—though none seem to be discomforted. These small enclosures surround that section of the spire, and sometimes there is a larger standing figure between each. The spire then continues on in a pattern at the very top, something almost Asian looking, flowery but sharp. And then after that the shape and design of the pillar-enclosures are repeated, though not the actual things. This is only one of the methods on which the people stand. But in any case, they stand everywhere, far enough away from the walkways to make it feel as if either you or they are floating.

8 June 2005

6 June--Galleria

Ristorante il Salatta, Via Baracchini 9 Milano: This is where we ate our first Italian dinner, more as a method of keeping away the jet lag than a need to satiate any type of hunger. It was in the Galleria, an immense area of halls higher than arches should be able to stand, with mosaics on the floors (including a bull that Rachel twirled upon for good luck), and mosaic on some of the arches near the ceiling, and incredibly ornate stonework, and glass domes, and carvings everywhere. It looked exactly like one of those old architectural drawings in which the sketch lines are still visible. One of the most amazing things about the city is its tricks on “traditional perspective—and by “traditional” I mean “what I’m used to.” The streets are crooked and lean over onto each other, the buildings are tall, but not so tall that you don’t see them, and because of the combination of these two things the light falls on certain façades while leaving others dark, and the result is a David Hockney painting, or a dream I once had. Good night, Milano.

6 June--Santuario Santa Maria

The church has alcoves down the sides and frescoes, paintings, and reliefs in each. The ceiling is separated into many [what’s the word?] that all connect honey-comb-like. They are painted in startlingly pagan geometric designs, almost Greek, or Byzantine, or Klée or Kandinsky. The colors fill the spectrum, yellow and orange and orange-red, and burnt gold and dry blood red and slate royal blue, and white and a little gilt, and sky blue and light green. There are circles and squares and repeating groups of rectangles that are filled with circles, and lines that twist and thicken and thin. The moldings (?) are elaborate, in white that is turning fast to gray and casts pale blue shadows; there are circles, circles within half circles, flowers, lines that might be leaves, and thin horizontal lines crowded together.

Here are two tickets for the trolleys/streetcars/trams that take you all around the city. When you walk onto it you place one end of it into a hole in a little yellow metal box on a pole behind the driver’s seat, and it makes a sound like a hole punch but really just stamps it. But no one checks to see if you have a ticket anyway. Sometimes they are just one car, sometimes they are three or four strung together and make a noise like a crashing train as they fly down cobble-y streets and around corners. The seats are orange and plastic, and the trams stop so quickly that one risks sliding to the ground even if sitting. There are doors marked “uscita” and “entrata” but no one looks at them, so embarking and disembarking is just a matter of elbowing gently so as to get where you want to be before the doors shut.

6 June--l'Ultima Cena

To see The Last Supper an appointment must be made. It seems similar to the way some women schedule c-sections: mark the date and time at which you would like to see this amazing, disintegrating work of art—you have five minutes to look and let it change your life—now onto the next appointment!
In Italian it is l’Ultima Cena. The verb “to have dinner” is “cenare” pronounced “chih-nah-reh.” When you say it you must open your mouth very wide and for heaven's sake don’t say it with a French accent.

6 June contd.

Our first hotel, small and hidden on a side street with a variety of flags hanging out from the front.

We took a train from Malpensa (the airport) to Milano, and everything looks like Japan (or at least it did until we got into downtown Milan). I have already spoken to quite a few people, one in French and the rest in butchered Italian. A few kind ladies on the tram (called trolleys or streetcars in San Francisco) helped us find our stop. There was much motioning, pleasant disagreement and finally agreement when the oldest of them (wearing purple eyeshadow) agreed that the best plan would be to let the girl whose stop was right before ours tell us when to get off. There were about seven women involved in the conversation at one point.

The way here (to Milano) was lined with patchwork plots of land with small ancient houses of two stories or more, some with windows entirely missing, others with two or more towers attached to the sides. All had haphazard but tidy gardens with driftwood-ish sticks as stalks for the plants; a few rows of this, a few rows of that; tangled green and the bright washing hanging out.
Here in the city I have already seen three obelisk-like statues, monuments with lions, naked women, crying women, or a combination of all three. One was to Giuseppe Garibaldi and I feel that I should know him but I do not. It makes me wonder if anyone really does: imagine a whole city of people and a traveler who wants to know who Giuseppe is but nobody can tell him.

6 June 2005

A Comment Before We Begin: I'm seventeen. Don't expect much. If something seems out of context, that's because it is--these are just bits and pieces of what I wrote.

6 Jun
On the plane.
. . . Whereas this voyage must be pre-defined as a particular type of experience for reasons of comfort, sanity, and enjoyment,
And Whereas a mindset of creating a complete record is impossible and self-destructive,
And Whereas an identity as an artist must be fitted in there somewhere,
And Whereas Iowa is one week after our return,
And Whereas this is only this particular student’s first voyage overseas,
Be it here resolved that my purpose for a large portion of this three-week traveling will be to, as Mr. Jay Dukart put it, ‘Eat, sleep, see,’ as well as to be in constant awareness of my identity as a writer and the possibilities and privileges therein, namely
a. to see certain experiences through characters’ eyes
b. to attempt to recognize plot possibilities inherent in each/any experience, positive or otherwise
c. to record what I wish to, and only that
d. to write at every point that I have a chance
e. to write even when I do not wish to, or have the time, or the consent of my traveling companions
Amendment: this resolution may be dissolved at any point, as desires the undersigned, creator and subject of the resolution.
x Emily J. Garcia

Eureka!

Having created an electronic space spur-of-the-moment as a bonding activity between sisters (I'm the younger one) I was considering what exactly to do with it. As you can see by the title, I have an idea now. I'll post sections of the notebooks I filled while in Italy, in the hopes that this way I won't have people asking me what it was like. Please see The Sun Also Rises for more on the topic of not talking about things.