If I had had my camera out If I had had more time If I had been on my own And not running to catch the train to Zurich In the station of Milan. I would have taken at least two photos. One of a scraggly unleafed tree Waiting for someone As it sat onContinue reading “Tree and Girl”
Author Archives: Erika Bizzarri
Goats
Our farm was a real farm. Almost a hundred acres with pasturelands, fields and a hemlock grove with a brook. It was at the end of a dirt road with a big red barn and a white clapboard three-story house with a couple of porches entrances over on the right. The mailman would come onceContinue reading “Goats”
Penelope III
A lady. The only word that suits the woman in the picture. Head held high, lips parted, gazing past me, into…what? A fur coat draped around her shoulders, evening gown cut low, a bare arm crosses, clutching white gloves to her breast. One earring glitters half hidden by a wave of hair. Her only jewels.Continue reading “Penelope III”
Apple Orchard
McIntosh. An apple of which there is no other. Surely, that was the apple the wicked witch gave to Snow White. Round, red, perfect. Juicy, asking to be eaten. We had an orchard with over 80 trees on our 98-acre farm in Massachusetts. When harvest time came, my sister and I and the whole family wentContinue reading “Apple Orchard”
Penelope II
Boxes. That you had put in storage. Your past life lies scattered in the yard. Their contents, still remembering your touch wrapping each pot and pan each cup and dish with determination, anger at your fate, at false friends, betrayals, rueful yet relieved to leave it all in newspapers now stiff and yellowed. I goContinue reading “Penelope II”
Paris III
And the movies. My Architect. A moving study of Louis Kahn – of a son and his acceptance of a father, even if he had 3 families. Il Dono. Slow, focusing on textures. Calabria. Christ stopped at Eboli. A desolation of the soul, redeemed by the gift. Good thing I got my times mixed upContinue reading “Paris III”
Penelope
Penelope (January 1995) – Part I All those things that once you looked at daily, used, took so much for granted you no longer saw them, unaware of their existence, appendages, hands, hammer, knives, tools feet, shoes, carpets vertebras and muscles chairs, tables teeth pots and pans and dishes the ensemble of your mind andContinue reading “Penelope”
Paris II
The days go by, are confounded. Did it rain? Was there sun? Yves Klein blue on cement brick. The white light of Paris. But there’s always inchworm, inchworm, climbing up the wall… Sainte Chapelle. Read the story the stained glass has to tell. Too bad there’s no sun. Baguettes, with sesame. Cheeses, wine, salad. Inchworm,Continue reading “Paris II”
Hands
(Feb. 20, 2021) Where has the handshake gone? That sign of trust, of human contact. Strong, firm, fleeting, Warm, pulsating, limp and cold. Saying more than just a physical contact. Protective, as in Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride. Welcoming, forgiving as in his Return of the Prodigal Son. Clasping, grasping, as with Rodin’s anatomical studies. An emanationContinue reading “Hands”
Paris
Paris November 2004 – Part I Ryanair. Thrill to take-off as it used to be. Roar of motors, lifting off the ground. Paris. Metro. Steps and steps. Circumventing square in search of cab. Lane behind iron gate. Low houses painted sky-blue, pink, yellow. Steep half-width steps winding up (one floor only, thank our stars!) InstructionsContinue reading “Paris”
Museum Hum
Museum. Architecture for people – without people. (2000 and November 2004) White rooms, doorways leading to other white rooms. Pictures, straight-edged, in the straight-edged architecture of the rooms. Muffled voices in the carpeted room. Intermittent sounds detaching from what should have been the underlying silence. A hum persistent low key elusory pervasive inescapable. Barely perceptible.Continue reading “Museum Hum”
The Watcher: Sicily continued IX
Campino Because I was a friend of one of their families, I was somehow not a stranger in Campino. It was a tiny village up in the mountains. Including the chickens, there were perhaps 150 inhabitants. Threaded between the houses with their thick stone walls and heavy stone roofs were narrow pathways and under passageways,Continue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued IX”
Ahnenpass
The history of my mother’s family is actually rather complicated. My ancestors are remembered, some I knew and loved like my grandmother and aunt Toni. Others remain names in the Ahnenpass. Ahnenpass, a genealogical document required in Nazi Germany listing birth and death dates, occupations, where lived, who they were married to – all toContinue reading “Ahnenpass”
The Watcher: Sicily continued VIII
Milan and family The train approached Milan. The land was flat, a strange jumbled chessboard of green and yellow. The corners of the fields were all square. The violence of the Sicilian sun had abated. But here too the wheat was already bleached and reminded me of Van Gogh with the red of the poppiesContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued VIII”
Ghosts III January 11, 2004
The dark of night flows in like water, fills the room, imprisons me, a creature in its burrow. Eyes wide-open turn inwards to a world alive with ghosts that break unbidden through the fragile diaphragm separating out from in. Phantoms of the past exempt from time and space come one by one and then are gone.Continue reading “Ghosts III January 11, 2004”
Ancestors II
Eugenie (Jenny) Voetter 1876 – 1936 1899. She was 23, a concert pianist and a soprano, when she sat forher portrait in Munich. In a year. she would have her firstborn child,on a forlorn island in the Pacific where she had followed the man withwhom she had fallen in love. And where a dark-skinned nativeContinue reading “Ancestors II”
The Watcher: Sicily continued VII
Taormina Again a town, and again, a people to discover. The soldiers on the bus from the railroad station to the town itself were singing the songs of the Alpine troops. Perhaps it depended on the time of year, but the doors of Taormina seemed perpetually closed, jealously hiding their life behind the stone wallsContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued VII”
The Watcher: Sicily continued VI
Although Piazza Armerina was rather out of the way, Andrea insisted that we make a detour. Most people went there for the girls in bikinis decorating the mosaic pavement, so modern yet centuries old. But I discovered other things there as well. The male torso in the ruins left me breathless, so strong and beautifulContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued VI”
Ancestors
ANCESTORS (January 2004) Ancestors I knewand those I never knew.Family trees.They grow and branchbut backwards.We say we’re looking for our roots.So who is branch and who is trunk?I am the end product,the result of endless matingsbut in turn branch out into others.I am the sumthe penultimate answerof a penultimate answer. Who were theywhere did theyContinue reading “Ancestors”
The Watcher: Sicily continued V
Sicily, a land of contrasts: Agrigento The bare mountains around Palermo gave way to valleys and more rocks, a harsh wildness sweetened by the soft blush blossoms of the almond. There was a fierceness and a starkness to the land yet it was covered with flowers, stalks of pale stars, small white and purple blossomsContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued V”
Erika Bizzarri 