Dear friends After almost three years and almost a thousand posts, I need a break. So until inspiration again graces me, you won’t find me online. Hopefully I’ll be back soon, with new thoughts that occur to me when I’m trying to sleep, switch on the light and jot them down before they vanish intoContinue reading “Taking a Break”
Author Archives: Erika Bizzarri
Somewhere Out There
I saw it once. I’ve been searching for it ever since. What? A film. Haunting images of a room seen across the way, glowing with light as a mother brings in a steaming bowl of soup for her husband and children. We are seeing it from a dark room – across the way. We areContinue reading “Somewhere Out There”
True Riches
La vera ricchezza sono le persone. True riches are not things but people. This morning a slight youngish man with a red van, where the tools of his trade were neatly lined up, each one in its specific space, knocked on my door. It was my electrician who had come to check up on aContinue reading “True Riches”
Wordless Communication
How does one share a feeling? I suppose you could ask your dog. When she (or he) gets all excited and joyous about seeing you, knowing you will take her (or him) for a walk, isn’t that a way of telling you what they feel? Might also be familiarity. As the days and years pass,Continue reading “Wordless Communication”
Surfeit
Just one is quite enough. A friend sent me 50 pictures of the wonders of nature. Flowers, birds, creatures of the sea, trees. I scroll through them all, marveling. Yet I feel overwhelmed by too much. Just one would have been quite enough. Just one I could have lingered over, impressed it in my mind.Continue reading “Surfeit”
Belly Buttons
Or Rather Silly Daily Thoughts Another summer weekend. School is far from thoughts. Too hot for clothes, more or less. Midnight. Gaggles of giggling Lolitas wander the main drag. Dressed or undressed depending on your definition. Long bare adolescent legs. Frayed shorts barely covering buttocks go up in front to just below the belly button.Continue reading “Belly Buttons”
The Importance of Having a Name
Seems everyone knows me by name. Maybe because I’ve been around so long. I used to have a shop and if someone whose child was having problems with English, or the Carabinieri or the hospital when whoever they were dealing with didn’t speak Italian, would turn to Erika. At this point, the Carabinieri and theContinue reading “The Importance of Having a Name”
Music and Memory
As I get older my lifestyle changes. What I once took for granted, gradually vanishes from sight, or should I say from hearing. Memory. All that remains to us as we get older is memory. We can no longer hear the music that marked our lives, except in memory. We can no longer enjoy theContinue reading “Music and Memory”
Coffee
It’s a hot hot summer day. You find that even thinking takes it out of you. And then you see a stand selling granita di caffe. Coffee, frozen and crushed to a mush and with a cap of whipped cream on top. Does that count as coffee? I suppose it does for it brings youContinue reading “Coffee”
Colleen/Guardian Angel
Aren’t we all supposed to have guardian angels? They may not be all that interested in their charges, and sometimes seem to disregard them completely. There’s one in particular who seems to have forgotten what he was supposed to be doing. In any case my friend Colleen Garvey caught him sleeping. She said he was theContinue reading “Colleen/Guardian Angel”
Friends
A warm summer night. A man and a woman are animatedly conversing as they drive up into the hills. Fireflies are flashing against the velvety black woods. She’s not quite sure how the conversation took this turn, but she finds herself on the defensive. A friend, she says, always remains a friend even when theirContinue reading “Friends”
Solitude
A gift of old age. Or a curse. To learn to take in hand, and not to be subjected to. To be ardently sought for. Solitude, allowing us to think, move perhaps back into the past which is the basis of all we do, the past of things best forgotten, or the foundation of theContinue reading “Solitude”
Conversation and Mario
An Italian friendship and conversations, and eventually letters: How does one begin to write about a person, about a friendship with its strange ties and bonds, and even stronger boundaries? Mario and I were simply two people who found pleasure in each other’s company. We demanded very little, yet the time we gave each otherContinue reading “Conversation and Mario”
Sky Blue Pink
When asked, she would sayher favorite color wassky-blue pink.Like the baseboards and window framesin her room.On the white-papered wallsfairies and elves were drawn in colored chalkscavorting among mushrooms and bluebellsunder the vigilant eye of Raggedy Ann and Andy,as she admonished her little sister not to touchuntil she had sprayed them with fixativ.There were white dustContinue reading “Sky Blue Pink”
Waiting Again
Inspired by John Looker. Thank you, John. “With the voices of those who were dead speaking even now in her ears she was lost in a world beyond place or time …” from “How the Dead Spoke to Odyssea,” in Shimmering Horizons by John Looker, Bennison Books, 2021. Waiting again. As always. DANGER. NO ACCESS. The signContinue reading “Waiting Again”
The Archaeologist and Food
Food, forever food One of my sons is an archaeologist. His younger brother started out as a naturalist. Both ended up involved with wild boars. My older archaeologist son is also into cooking. Particularly the “archaeological” aspect. Years ago he tried making beer the original Egyptian way, sprouting and roasting hops (using a friend’s potteryContinue reading “The Archaeologist and Food”
Learning Italian
If one wants to become acquainted with a culture, one really should become involved with the language. And of course, vice versa. There are different ways to do it and I suppose I did all of them. Studying grammar and dictionaries, reading whatever came to hand, speaking with everyone whether a stranger or not, friendships,Continue reading “Learning Italian”
Claudio and The Little Owl
Ten o’clock and all is dark. Returning from a festa at Lugnano in Teverina where there has been a skype connection with Arizona concerning the dig of a Roman villa. The people in the square are still busy eating, perhaps have begun dancing. The medieval church with its portico that once sheltered pilgrims now resoundsContinue reading “Claudio and The Little Owl”
Trees
John Muir loved trees and so do I. Remember reading how he would climb up to the top of a sequoia and sway back and forth with the tree in the wind. He never saw a discontented tree, he said. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast-rooted they travel aboutContinue reading “Trees”
The Box
On Finding a Box (1994?) A dusty brown corrugated cardboard box, stained and faded, the kind your groceries come in. Put on the shelf outside, in the shed behind the house, a miracle it didn’t get rained on – when the boys cleaned out their grandpa’s desk after he died two years ago. Now theContinue reading “The Box”
Erika Bizzarri 