Over sixty years ago I first touched European soil and stayed for almost a year. Afteranother spell in the US, I crossed the ocean once more, this time to remain in Italywhere I have now been for over sixty, or perhaps seventy, years. My occupationshave varied, from having a shop to teaching English to translating.Continue reading “Eulogy for my Books”
Tag Archives: travel
Letter from Mario
How fortunate I am to have lived (and continue to live) in an era where the written word still leaves its mark. We leave – we are gone. We leave this, or that, we leave a comment or a drawing. We leave our words (an extension of our voice) to fend for themselves for as longContinue reading “Letter from Mario”
Food
Memories and the food we eat define who and what we are. A life in food. When I was eight it was hot oatmeal, sugar and milk. In a kitchen on a farm. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches eaten on the run to school along a snowy country road. At ten it was cabbage boiledContinue reading “Food”
Orvieto People
Orvieto is of course its people. Orvieto is … well Orvieto. Not just the streets and the buildings but Orvieto is its people. There are those we encounter every day when we move into the center of town. Coming up from the parking lot down below, there’s the young man in the shop before oneContinue reading “Orvieto People”
Brief Encounters
I was at the coffee bar and had just settled down for my morning coffee when I noticed a young man seated at the table by the door. He couldn’t have been more than twenty with a mop of curly hair and smooth chubby cheeks. And he was big. After exchanging good morning greetings, heContinue reading “Brief Encounters”
Fleeting Memories
July, summer has set in it all its heat. I lie motionless in bed hoping to cool off. My hands and arms finally feel cold. Eyes closed, I let my mind wander and find myself in Jerusalem or Nazareth. Forty years ago. I have risen early. The American students I am chaperoning are still asleep. All butContinue reading “Fleeting Memories”
Usual Musings
It must be one or two in the morning. I lie in bed and have pulled the blankets, really only one, up to my shoulders. And there in that triangle of sky at the top of a shaft between the shutters through which light can filter, I sometimes see, – from where I lie – theContinue reading “Usual Musings”
A Yellow Butterfly
As usual I was hunting for a book. A slender booklet. And there was this story of a yellow butterfly. Pont-Aven. A seaside town in the Brittany region of France, the haunt of artists such as Gaugin. But what I wanted to find was a brief essay where a saffron yellow butterfly was the leadingContinue reading “A Yellow Butterfly”
Reading versus Speaking
I have an Italian friend intent on learning new languages, in particular English. So, when we have a few minutes, we take out an English book and he reads a few pages aloud, marking words or phrases that are new to him, particularly those he feels he can use. There are some of course I warnContinue reading “Reading versus Speaking”
Moral Dilemma
A term I was unacquainted with. Is it perhaps too philosophical for me? Makes sense though when I figured out what it meant. So you have a house, a really old building with which you have fallen in love . It’s lovely but obviously needs to be seen to, needs repair, needs love. And nextContinue reading “Moral Dilemma”
Lion
Lion on my windowsillwhat are you looking at,what are you thinking. Silently you watch memove through the room. Yesterdayyou looked outwardson the age-old chestnutdown by the gate,on the ladder restingagainst the wallto one side of the window,on the lilac bushhalfway down the slopealready weighted downwith fragrant purple clusters.My Ukrainian helperasked permissionto cut a branch forContinue reading “Lion”
Love
We are human beings and subject to a range of emotions, ranging from hate to love. Perhaps one of the most significant of human emotions is love, that attachment to another being, an emotion we also find in our four-legged friends. There is the love of a child for his mother, of a mother forContinue reading “Love”
One Never Knows
One never knows There weren’t too many in Orvieto those years who spoke English. It must have been the late 1960s or early 70s. There was the language school, equivalent of high school. They needed someone called “a reader”, who would come once a week to lend a hand to the regular teacher and theyContinue reading “One Never Knows”
Memories
Rome with Carolyn, 8 may 2015 Over ten years ago. When living here in Rome was still something to be envied. The Janiculum. Dinner at Lo Scarpone. A large entrance courtyard with a flowering vine covering the whole area. Then in with tables and let’s say real food, although they also had pizza. In oneContinue reading “Memories”
Coming Back
Coming back. Returning. To a place. But without the people you saw there every day it was not the same. So you cut short your stay. You left. Surely, though, I want to tell you, you can return to a place without the people. A place can be seen for itself alone. You can experienceContinue reading “Coming Back”
Mother Tongue
I’m translating from Italian to English. But is English my mother tongue? Since my mother’s mother tongue was German, her first words to me, her infant daughter, were undoubtedly in German, but I don’t consider that my mother tongue. It might be so in a sense, for I probably absorbed it as I did my mother’sContinue reading “Mother Tongue”
Aftermath of Phone Books
I doubt one can still find those thick phone books which told you the telephone number and street where a person lived. Not only that but they doubled as cushions to raise toddlers high enough to sit at a table with grown-ups. Those large unwieldy objects are objects of the past, but small personal phoneContinue reading “Aftermath of Phone Books”
Cold Nose Two
I know it’s cold so don’t even try to poke my nose outside. I lie in bed waiting for my son to finish whatever he is doing at the computer since he must help me to put on my brace. Thoughts begin to swirl around my head. I should really get up but I can’tContinue reading “Cold Nose Two”
The letter C and A Special Birthday
December is marked by the letter C. There is of course Christmas but there is also Carolyn, Cynthia, and most important Costanza. Carolyn, you were just a student when first you came to stay with us, rather perplexed and not quite sure what you were doing in an unknown Italian household as you were finishingContinue reading “The letter C and A Special Birthday”
Dec. 24
A roundup of my beloved poems – a few of those countless excerpts that inhabit the library of my mind. There are many others I would add, but they, for now, must remain under cover. Wake! For the Sun, who scatter’d into flightThe Stars before him from the Field of Night,Drives Night along with themContinue reading “Dec. 24”
Erika Bizzarri 