Author Archives: Erika Bizzarri

Every room has a story to tell.  Four walls, a floor and a ceiling, delineate, define a cube of space, home to memories of lives lived and now forgotten. Forgotten you say? You overlook the fact that the walls, layer upon layer, retain what they have seen, what they have heard. Elusive ghostly shadows fleetinglyContinue reading “Every Room”

Teapots, like books, sit quietly on their shelves throughout the day. At least Nennella’s teapots do. Oh my, you remark when you enter the day room. There they are, next to the fireplace, next to the French window, next to the door that leads to the hall. Oh my. Porcelain, earthenware, brass, ceramic. An armyContinue reading “Nennella’s Teapots”

On finding a fragment of an “Etruscan” vase. In digging up my garden, I unearth a fragment of what was once a vessel of some sort. As I wipe away the earth, an enormous eye in black gloss paint stares up at me. Thin-walled, subtly curving, one edge softly rounded, this inch-long shard is allContinue reading “On Finding a Fragment”

My Vaphio cup and memories The Vaphio cup with its scene of the domestication of wild bulls. The one I have is of course a reproduction of the over 3000-year old original in the museum in Athens and is not gold and I doubt that any metal cleaner would make it look as if itContinue reading “Vaphio Cup”

A letter. Hand-written on a piece of paper, folded and put into an envelope, consigned to the posts where it will be put into a bin or a canvas bag with others, destination overseas. A hand-written letter. Surely not from yesterday. Too old-fashioned. Too time consuming. Taking too long to arrive. Too everything. Still, IContinue reading “A Letter”

Contacts with real people, October 16, 2021 This morning on our first walk. As we turn into the street that leads towards home, I see two people sitting on a bench. Laughing and talking with each other. LIVE! How lovely. Not an iPhone in sight. Time passes and it’s now eleven and I’m back home.Continue reading “Contacts”

 “Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small, That stood along the floor and by the wall; And some loquacious Vessels were; and some Listen’d perhaps, but never talk’d at all.” Rubaiyat A tattered faded fragment of brown suede with Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam impressed in letters of gold. The vestige barely clings to theContinue reading “Rubaiyat”

I’ve written on Canes and Clocks and Chairs. On porcelain teacups, on a wooden ale-bowl. On New Year’s Eve and a game we played. So now what can I write about? Something that is universal, something that includes yesterday, today and tomorrow. What better perhaps than pots and pans, humble yet irreplaceable. Faithful, but atContinue reading “Pots and Pans”

Shattered. Shards of glass  lie scattered underfoot. All I had meant to do was dust it. Finnish, it was, you said. A small crystal goblet gifted by a special friend. It slipped from my hand and is now in fragments. Meant to contain a cordial or a shot of whisky, it was as Heidegger saidContinue reading “Finnish Crystal Glass”

She opened the icebox door and jumped back as a two-foot long snake-like creature slithered out and onto the kitchen floor. No one had warned her that a fisherman from the lake of Bolsena had passed by to leave the usual Christmas homage to the architect, the head of the house.  After the initial shock,Continue reading “Eels, Garlic, Wine, & Truffles                “

We come into this world on an endlessly moving stream, a moving sidewalk if you like, carrying us to our final port of call. Apparently alone, a host of others, on their individual conveyor belts, follow along as we continue our relentless journey through the tunnel of life. In passing, scenes flash by on eitherContinue reading “Moving Sidewalk / Conveyor Belt”

Remembered September, 2021 Rome? For me Rome was Carolyn, it was Monteverde Vecchio.  It was going to the station in Orvieto, through streets that were still empty where blinds had been thrown open only here and there and the only sign of life might be a man in his undershirt stretching and yawning in theContinue reading “Carolyn’s Rome”

In the year 1052 Ou-Yang in his study heard a pattering and rustling, that broke into a great churning and crashing, like the noise of waves, or of soldiers going to battle.  Sent out to see what it was, his boy returned declaring he had seen no men and that the noise must be inContinue reading “October”

There are closets and cupboards, storerooms and glass cases, where one keeps one’s relics, the things that tie one to yesterday. They may sometimes have an intrinsic value of their own, sometimes, divorced from their surroundings, they may seem to be pieces of junk. One forgets they have a history, were created, were loved, dusted,Continue reading “Worth Keeping”

I could be anywhere, you said. Anywhere, or nowhere.  You can only walk back and forth along a corridor, a ambulation to be precise. I think of a church and its ambulatory. Where one perambulated in the chancel behind the high altar. Off bounds. Past a door to the world outside, off bounds, prisoner ofContinue reading “Anywhere, Elsewhere, Nowhere”

Monday, any Monday, summer or winter It was not yet eight. The worn wooden door, it really needed painting, opened to let a dog on a leash and a cane appear, followed by an elderly lady, a fedora covering her grey hair and the elastics of that mandatory mask. She took in the container forContinue reading “Or, If, Perhaps, If Only”

The past is never   “past”, suddenly without warning it may surface like a rubbing of indented writing, indelible traces of bygone days, although often specific recollections of who and what elude me. A young man accosts me in the piazza of a hill town where I had gone in search of pottery for my shop.Continue reading “One Never Knows”

I can hear them conversing, comparing, arguing. Oh, I’ve had quite a life. As befits nobility like me. A golden robe no less. You others all pale by comparison. Don’t be so sure of yourself. You may date to 1930, but were made for a rather self-centered man who thought himself above all others. IContinue reading “Fabric Scraps”

October 17, 2013 Leopard spotted flannel Hand printed potato die Left over remnant of my two-year old’s pjs. What happened to the leopard suit? What happened to the little boy? The suit has gone the way of things outgrown. The little boy given way to the man. 

Did the owner think of the apartment I’m in now as a sort of gatehouse, with concierge services? The entrance door is glass, although it’s clouded glass. The small window at one side offers a glimpse into the room I inhabit,  and I have hung a Chinese scarf there to preserve my privacy. Privacy? ForContinue reading “Glass Doors”