From POSTCARDS. LITTLE LETTERS FROM LIFE
“The Moon is Full.”
The Italians are acting strangely today. Perhaps they are only being Italian and I am making more of this than is warranted. But this is a superstitious country where certain dishes must be stirred only clockwise, where Fridays are a dangerous day to make decisions, and where many men and women wear little serpent-like charms resembling sperm to ward off the “evil eye.”
Still, it has been scientifically established that the gravitational pull of the moon influences both the tides and the behavior of a variety of living creatures. Published solunar tables accurately guide fishermen and hunters to the feeding, sheltering and sleep patterns of both fish and birds. Even our word “lunatic” refers to deviant behavior wrought by the pull of the moon.
Combine that irresistible tug with one of the world’s more emotional peoples and things just happen. One of them is a change in traffic patterns in a country where “driving order” is a vastly overstated description of how things work.
I didn’t realize what was going on on the day of the first full moon. I couldn’t see it since it was daytime, but it was clear that overnight hundreds of drivers had somehow been replaced by alien life forms determined to kill me. Italians tend to be scofflaws anyway, blithely running red lights and double parking on streets barely wide enough for legal parking. But suddenly entire blocks were jammed end to end with double parked cars for their entire length, not just one or two.
All over scores of drivers entered intersections at full speed with glazed, unseeing eyes like movie zombies, while the few remaining unpossessed drivers stood on their brakes to avoid calamity. At numerous traffic circles or “roundabouts,” careening drivers formed an impenetrable race track, that you could only enter by closing your eyes and reciting a prayer. Parking places became non-existent. People squeezed head-on into spaces left between parallel parked cars. Every crosswalk had a parked car blocking it or an interlocking row of scooters and motorcycles with no room for pedestrians to squeeze through.
And then the night came and the full moon shone. It provided new cosmic light and inspiration for the graffiti artists who apparently hang someplace like bats or Count Dracula, only to emerge at night and cover benches, shop walls, marble monuments, gorgeous churches and palaces, and almost every sign, pillar, post and passageway with their hideous and despicable expressions of malcontent and mental disorder that mars the face of this otherwise beautiful city and many others.
In some towns equally demented mayors have decided that these artists should have a dedicated space to express themselves and have taxed the overburdened citizenry to provide it. But when the whole world is your canvas, who needs it? The tide of visual filth rolls on in tsunami proportions, clearly assisted by the tug on feeble intellects exerted by our pal the moon.
Magic Markers and spray paint aren’t the only media favored for expressing the bold vision of moonstruck morons. T-shirts are also a grand canvas. And for those of you who go around proclaiming that George Bush single-handedly turned Europe anti-American, you have to wonder why they love all those T-shirts with “American” phrases on them, names of fake sports teams, or words strung together that make absolutely no sense. It seems it doesn’t make any difference as long as it is in English and looks American. It is also quite clear that some of the folks who wear them know no English and understand nothing of what they say. A couple of years ago my hair stood on end to see an over-endowed 15-year old wearing a shirt that proclaimed what she was willing to do on a first date. If her father had known what it said, I think she wouldn’t have made it out of the house, and perhaps not alive.
As the moon waxed full here, it also became hotter as the scirocco winds swept up from Africa bearing its sickly, sweaty humidity. In Switzerland a similar wind called the Föhn has been blamed for a marked periodic increase in suicides. Mother Nature simply doesn’t seem to care that she drives some of her more vulnerable children nutty.
At the height of the full moon we drove across the peninsula to Porto Cesareo, a seaside town on the Ionian Sea. As we drove through the countryside we noticed two things, first that there was little or no graffiti on farm field walls or the buildings of small towns. The second was that the wind was shifting from a scirocco to the tramontana wind that blows from the north. Blessedly, the temperature started to drop.
We checked into a fine hotel, the Hotel Falli that overlooks the boardwalk and Porto Cesareo’s busy fishing fleet. A four-star place, it came with air-conditioning, one of mankind’s greatest inventions, and a superb restaurant where we had a sumptuous lunch. There was no graffiti on the hotel and none on the hotels on either side of the Falli. Yet while Falli is the name of the two brothers who own the hotel, the mere mention of it later to friends brought sudden snorts of mirth to friends, apparently evoking an Italian slang term involving, shall we say, phallic activities. Maybe it was graffiti after all.
That evening we strolled the boardwalk along the sea and finally stopped at a portable stand selling fresh peeled almonds, licorice, and all kinds of sweets and candies. Adriana who loves me so much that she occasionally lets me indulge in something that is unhealthily delicious bought me a bag of croccante, a joyously crunchy peanut brittle style candy made instead with large and lovely white almonds.
I bit down and immediately pulled a crown off one of my teeth.
I looked up and the moon was still full. We fled for our hotel and parked ourselves outside next door at a pizza place where I had a beer and gingerly gnawed on a memorably good pizza. We leaned back to watch the passing parade of meandering bicyclists, old fisherman arguing politics, strolling lovers, and families. Despite the moon and the $1,000 tooth that was now in my pocket, I still felt safe and like things were getting more or less back to normal. We both watched a young family approach us, a mom, dad and a child. “What a nice family,” Adriana remarked. “Did you see the father’s T-shirt? “ I asked. “It said, ‘F___ the Queen!’”
I’m not sure what the Queen had done to inspire that. I am not even sure which queen it was about, there aren’t many left around. Maybe it was an English tourist with a legitimate gripe.
More likely it was the moon.
Before we left home for Italy we had watched one of our favorite movies, Moonstruck. I didn’t realize there was so much more to it than I’d thought.
DON’T WORK
LIFE IS SHORT
BE HAPPY
To this recommendation painted on a wall in Bergamo I can only add, “Stay indoors when the moon is full. At least around here.”
Dick
Lecce, Italy, 2008
