memorie Genovesi, per la piú parte

I played alone a lot as a kid.
As far as I can remember, growing up (in Italy, that is—in Iran I had my beloved Niro, who was practically my appendage and I his) my only steady friends were those in the South—Marianna, Amalia, Luigi, and together we would all torment little Pasquale.

I remember looking down the sidewalk with tears blurring the vision that was supposed to be perfect now that I’d just acquired my first pair of glasses as I saluted my first-grade friend Denise for the last time. She had been my only friend that year; I was moving to a different part of Genova, and she was moving to South America—I think her mother was from Peru, or something to that extent, and the move stemmed from reasons thus related.

In second grade, there was Martina. And Luca. We were a strange bunch; it was always the three of us. Martina had short, blonde hair, and she was the only girl in the class who wore a white robe instead of a black one. Though she talked to Luca and me, she didn’t talk to many others. I remember her very well; she was a pianist. She was a pianist with sleepy eyes but definitely not a singer—her voice creaked in a low monotone. But she was friendly. My mother didn’t like her mother, and I didn’t care. Luca was the young Fonzie of the class. Martina and I were the top students of the class, and Luca never did his homework. He was intelligent. He wore a leather jacket and a small earring in one of his ears, maybe the right one. His smile was something between wryness and the warmest and most sincere smile I have ever known.
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An old man whom I’d never met before taught me how to skate at the park after his daughter grew impatient with my level of skating inability. Daddy and I went places on Sundays—and, after that man taught me how to skate, daddy read or walked while I skated. We really liked the harbor, the expo right next to the massive Genova aquarium.
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Why did I have few northern friends? Was it the distance of the Genovese? But then how do you account for me and my inability to keep quiet and mind my own business? I’m Genovese…

The Genovese are funny proud people, we are. Our defensiveness is all but fist-shaking-less. Last time I went to Santa Croce, grown-and-handsome Luigi called me “l’Americana.” Upon perceiving my prompt irritation, he smiled, told me to calm myself, and said, “You really are a Genovese.”

And Niro—aside from the awkward visit they rendered us when I was 9 years old, it’s been 15 years since I have seen him.

always seem to find some way to be drenched.

Currently listening to: Chris Thile - "Bridal Veil Falls"


"The Rain Guitar"

The water-grass under had never waved
But one way. It showed me that flow is forever
Sealed from rain in a weir. For some reason having
To do with Winchester, I was sitting on my guitar case
Watching nothing but eelgrass trying to go downstream with all the right motions
But one. I had on a sweater, and my threads were opening
Like mouths with rain. It mattered to me not at all
That a bridge was stumping
With a man, or that he came near and cast a fish
thread into the weir. I had no line and no feeling.
I had nothing to do with fish
But my eyes on the grass they hid in, waving with the one move of trying
To be somewhere else. With what I had, what could I do?
I got out my guitar, that somebody told me was supposed to improve
With moisture - or was it when it dried out? - and hit the lowest
And loudest chord. The drops that were falling just then
Hammered like Georgia railroad track
With E. The man went into a kind of fishing
Turn. Play it, he said through his pipe. There
I went, fast as I could with cold fingers. The strings shook
With drops. A buck dance settled on the weir. Where was the city
Cathedral in all this? Out of sight, but somewhere around.
Play a little more
Of that, he said, and cast. Music-wood shone,
Getting worse or better faster than it liked:
Improvement or disintegration
Supposed to take years, fell on it
By the gallon. It darkened and rang
Like chimes. My sweater collapsed, and the rain reached
My underwear. I picked, the guitar showered, and he cast to the mountain
Music. HIs wood leg tapped
On the cobbles. Memories of many men
Hung, rain-faced, improving, sealed-off
In the weir. I found myself playing Australian
Versions of British marching songs. Mouths opened all over me; I sang,
His legs beat and marched
Like companions. I was Air Force,
I said. So was I; I picked
This up in Burma, he said, tapping his gone leg
With his fly rod, as burma and the South
west Pacific and north Georgia reeled,
rapped, cast, chimed, darkened and drew down
Cathedral water, and improved.


[James Dickey, 1962]