Looking back....

Janus, the spirit of comings and goings.....

In these dark northern days, shortness of sky, lack of light, prevalence of precipitation..... abundance of alliteration....

We are in the jaws of Janus: Arches/doorways/beginnings/endings.....

I have been reviewing pictures of the past. And, with the utmost respect to Janus's duplicitous features, I look back with both affection and trepidation. I love the past, but I fear it too. I cannot live there. The shades pursue me.

But it can be a wonderful world, while I must also look to the future....

Without prejudice, and without politics, I have chosen pictures here that reflect my love for Italy, and the life that, for well over twenty years, I spent in that complex and benighted land.

Of course there is no right way, nor wrong way, to portray a country that did not exist c150 years ago,  but whose geography has bound it together through the years, and whose notional history has fried itself into the collective minds of those who don't, like me, have the right to comment....

My personal relationship with Italy is inevitably (though not exclusively) linked to the delightful woman (Amanda) who for more than forty years put up with me....  Who danced in the Via dei Fori Imperiale and anywhere there was music; who shared everything and everywhere.....  Mussolini could not have deterred her.  We loved it all....  

For many years we lived on the shores of Lake Bracciano:

In the village of Trevignano Romano:

But initially, I lived in Trastevere, close by Santa Maria:

And the city of Rome, my home for years, is manageable, so long as you take it in your stride:

Or stand back a little:

Or look at it askance:

Or admire its viscera:

I love the ingenuity of this world.  Here a Muse rests her immortal chin on her knuckle within a now defunct power station. How many centuries separate past and present is not the issue.  The extraordinary continuum is what takes my breath away....

And then, not far away, a relatively forgotten stone recalls the horrors that hardly a lifetime ago deprived Rome of all dignity or humanity.  The history of Rome is, like so many other histories, full of infamy, stained with blood and pain. Ignominy is so often the middle name of rulers.....

But, burying my head in the mud, I love Italy.  So much of my life unravelled within the highs and lows of this beautiful part of the world.  So many nights playing hoopla in Trajan's Forum:

So many nights wandering home through dark streets near dawn, pretending to be Marcello Mastroianni, or blowing imaginary kisses to Anna Magnani.....

But Italy is not Rome.  Look at Pisa, by day:

Or by night:

Admire the profile of Monte Amiata under restless skies:

Or spend an evening as the full moon rises over San Gimignano:

Relax by, and swim in the effervescent waters of Lago di Vico:

Or savour the salt, swim with the fish, dine on spaghetti alle vongole at Santa Severa:

Don't let's worry about the monsters:

Think about the joys of the Nile - or anywhere....

Sing along with Verdi:

Tap your feet to the local band:

Have an aperitivo overlooking the Campo in Siena:

Or a small carafe of wine:

Or, if the mood takes you, a jug of something local (Grazie, Antonio):

Share an al fresco lunch with friends (Grazie, Gino):

Pay your respects to the Etruscans:

Check out the heart of Lucca:

Or the arts of Subiaco:

Breathe the sun going down over the sea:

Or scent the darkness over Tuscan hills, an evening confusion of rosemary with fig, helichrysum italicum with ginestra..... while a wood fire toasts fegatelli on the grill.  Oh.....

I watch the nuns of Santa Brigida fade, giggling, into the night in Farfa:

I sleep in the bed where Verdi was born:

I don the clothes of a cloistered monk to dead-head my roses:

I park where I like:

I will take confession (if that is what you wish...)

And I will give you a ride on my shiny shoed horse, if you will inform on your best friend:

And I will show you the tomb where America buried Italy, if you will follow me:

Yes.  Look at me looking at myself, but not knowing what I see (Grazie, Caravaggio).....

Italy has always been an enigma, and will continue to be a prickly pear, a fruit with beauty enclosed in a difficult skin.  Persist and you will be rewarded.  Shy back and you will miss the joy.

All relationships have their highlights and their shadows.  Here Amanda poses in the doorway of a pizzeria that, having been a stable and then a garage, was moulded into a successful bar in the Suburra by friends who accepted me into a short-lived partnership, which could have changed our lives.....  [Another story?  Ed]

Ah.  yes.  All those years ago.....  And this is Lago di Bracciano, by which we lived, and where Amanda rests now, swimming, smiling in her sleep at all this nostalgia:

We are in January, remembering the Roman god who looked both ways, back and forward.  It is our destiny to be consumed by our past and to fret about our future, but Janus teaches us to be calm and to take it in our stride.  His expressions are neither fraught nor discomfited.  Ahead and behind are essentially the same - just two aspects that combine to make one whole.

Dance on my little one: