Be Reckless

Plunging Into 2006

2005 has been a year of new beginnings.

After spending most of 2004 recovering from the euphoria following the long awaited liberation from prison of my Dakota friend James Weddell (an ordeal I spent ten year of my life on), I started 2004 buying my first house and living my first room-mating experience.

I also published my first book in the U.S. (the previous four were all published in Italy) and had my one-and-so-far-only internet dating romance (a good one with a great guy, even if it will apparently not last into 2006 because of... too long of a distance).

I participated in the Bloghers conference in San Francisco, met tons of interesting women and got more interested in blogging. I came back and started this blog, which brings me to new discoveries every day. I also had my first public speaking in Los Angeles, the first one not in my native language.

I renewed and started new friendships that brighten my days even more. I hope to keep them in my life for the years to come since these people are amazing, each one in their own way.

I guess I can feel satisfied. But what I am really looking forward is starting my new 2006 projects.

2006 seems to be the year of passion.

I am already working at the documentaries I want to turn some of the Reckless women stories into. My excitement for working at documentaries is back full blast. I am looking forward to do my best on it since it's seem to be the form of storytelling that better fits me.

I am also waiting for Giorgio (one of the best interior photographers ever) to arrive here on January 10 (my b-day, by the way). I'll be working with him for a whole month almost full time, photographing Los Angeles modernist-bohemian houses for Elle Decor Italia. And I really love to write stories when I can also participate in the visual outcome.

Just not to feel like I'm lazy, always in January I will start my research of contacts and avenues to "import" here some innovative cartoons that my friend Andrea is creating and producing in Italy with his company, T-Rex. Andrea is a crazy wizard and an imaginative genius. He's also one of the people I feel more connected to in the the whole world. And his funny, smart-ass, provocative cartoons for kids and young adults can crack up even the most serious viewers.

I was looking to celebrate the start of 2006 swimming into the ocean and in the New Moonlight. But a big storm put his wet, scary print on my plans and imposed a switch of gear.

So I'll be plunging into 2006 some other way. I am known not to mind switching plans.

I just hope my flexibility will allow me to stand up and balance on my surfboard facing waves, storms and/or mudslides.

Whatever 2006 will bring, I will welcome

Word Power

I am not referring to the Microsoft Office Software.

In these days, I am very sensitive to the power of words.

Even more than usual. More than what it is legitimate to expect by somebody who works with words as her trade tool. More than what you'd expect by somebody who is mainly writing and speaking in a different language than her native.

My natural ability to pick up easily foreign languages comes from my satisfaction in learning new words.

I crave new words and new ways to express concepts. I get bored of (too) commonly used words. They become boring to me as clothes worn for too long. Wouldn't be a better world if we could renew our language seasonally, like our wardrobe? Recycle the worn out words to the Salvation Army?

Some attempts are made every day. Some words change meaning through their same lifetime.

Take "reckless", that implied some negative connotation until a few years ago but it's now used more as synonymous for "fearless".

Take "mommyblogging", new word composed by a brand new one and an (ab)-used one. My Bloghers friends are debating in these days if it's good or evil. If we should reject it as belittling women or claim it back. Personally, I think it's fun and self-ironic. But so I think also of the word "babe", and that costed me never-ending argument with some very smart an d very serious (maybe too serious) women.

What I want to talk here about, however, are words taught me by a man.

I had the luxury of spending an afternoon with my friend Julio, who's a full blood Zapotec Mexican Indian but grew up in Los Angeles South Central and mainly around black people.

While he was trying to teach me, Daniele and Elizabeth Texas Hold'Em (a very different version from the poker I used to play in Italy), Julio also taught us some slang, homies' words.

So I came to know that while the cops are known among East Los Angeles street-bangers as "la hurla", blacks in South Central call them "po-po". Reason for that seems to be that their infant children learn to warn their dads of the cops coming before they can speak properly any word. Po-po stays for "police", and big grown-ups gladly use the term they learned from their still not walking kids.

I also learned to say "get in the farla", Mexican slang for car. And now that's what I tell Moki when I want him to jump in my vehicle.

Poor dog! He already had troubles to become bilingual, having to deal with me speaking to him in English or Italian depending on my moods. Now he'll have to be bi-slangal.

January Beach Weather

I wish I could really go to the beach today. No such luck. My schedule saw me spending the morning in Pasadena and now I'm back to the Future, stuck with some work to get done.

But I cannot deny that this gorgeous, warm and sunny weather fills my heart with pure ecstasy.

Let's face it. I love the rain only for a change. It should last just a couple of hours. Then, I'm done with. Then, I want to look at sunny blue skies again and feel my skin warmed by the sun rays.

I've been served well today. While the earth is still damp from the latest wild downpour, the sky is a perfect May sky. Even the trees in my yard got tricked. They're sprouting Spring blooms.

My birthday is around the corner and if I can ask a present from the universe, that would be a day like this. If not, I'd consider today as my advanced birthday present.

Heather has her birthday in January too, although she's an Aquarius and I'm a Capricorn. I decided to give an advanced birthday present to her as well. I just placed on her bed a few pretty things I found on my way back to Pasadena. No patience to wait until the proper day.

One present I know I will not be getting for my birthday is something I asked for (maybe that was the mistake). I asked a friend who was working at the project of his own book to get done with the second chapter and present it to me on my birthday. He had been sharing the first one in its different stages with me. He did a great job. I tried to encourage him to keep going despite his full time, very demanding day-job. But that was about a month ago and I have not heard from him anymore since. So be it. I'm not somebody who pushes for things to happen. If he still felt like, my email address didn't change. So it's just up to him.

One of the things that I did not decide but, I guess, decided themselves for me, is that this year I won't waste time or energy feeling disappointed. If I felt that way, I'd move on. Next project, next romance, next idea. It's different than "plan B" because you don't need to change direction. You just have to let it go without blocking the energy flow with... (sorrow, disappointment, second guessing, wondering etc.)

Oh my! Am I finally getting a little wiser although I am not feeling any older?

Mount Washington, Montecristo And The King Coyote

My grandfather used to take me walking up and down the hills since I could barely move my first steps.

It was a ritual going on all summer long. He would take me, my sister, my two cousins and the two dogs. We'd leave around 9 a.m. and come back around noon, starving and exhausted but with plenty of things to tell my grandma. We'd also bring back baskets of blackberries, hazelnuts or porcini mushrooms depending if it was July, August or September.

We kids would see our grandparenst only in summer. We were left in their care at this big family house on the shore of Lake Maggiore in Italy when the schools would close and our parents had to keep working in the city.

There were good and bad things about our stay there. Some things I deeply disliked and tried to escape from. Some I wouldn't trade for anything else. Walking with my grandpa was the big winner on top of the positive list.

Walking is a fantastic meditation in motion, and also great work-out. Walking up and down the hills is poetry.

You need pace. You need a sense of aesthetics. You need stamina. You need to know your strenght and weaknesses.

Tonight Moki and I took the longest route through the hills and all of a sudden I realized why I like living in Mount Washington so much. It reminds me of Montecristo. Not the famous island of the Count but the steepest mountain close to my grandparents' summer house.

Montecristo was my forbidden Mecca. That one walk my grandpa would not take me on since I was too little to climb all the way up there on my own. And I would spend all summers asking him every night when I was going to be big enough to go to Montecristo.

He finally took me when I was six years old. All my expectations were met. You'd reach the top only walking a lizardy, dirty road which stopped to be allowed to cars after only one mile. The forest grew thicker and darker at every curve. The flowers scent also grew wilder. And once on top, you had this 360 pretty view of all the green and rolling hills below.

Tonight Moki and I enjoyed the same, panting but exhilarated by the pinky stripes of clouds in the sunset sky, just before descending through the canyon. As soon as we reached the bottom of it,
we were surprised by an unexpected presence.

Standing in the middle of the path and clearly intentioned to remain there was the king of all coyotes. I've seen many coyotes, both around here and in other canyons, either in California or in the Arizona desert. None of them was as big as this one. He could easily match Moki's size and weight.
They could have legally fight in the same category in the Utlmate Fighting Championship for canines.

Moki was not scared at all, so wasn't the coyote. I wondered a couple of seconds if we should just keep going or turn around. It was clear that the coyote was not going to leave his post.

That's quite a strange behavior for a coyote, I thought, evaluating if it wasn't too reckless let Moki get too close. And that's when I noticed.

Between the paws of the big coyote was a small, whitish rabbit who had seen better days. Just half eaten but with still meat attached to his bones.

King Coyote was not going to leave that catch to another predator who didn't even hunt for. After all it was his kill, not Moki's.

Out of respect, we stepped out of the path and took a larger turn, still getting as close as a few feet but moving slowly and steadily around the King and his meal.

The coyote kept us under constant surveillance but did not move in our direction, as I expected.

He was majestic, untamed and self-assured.

As magic as Montecristo was, I never met any coyote there. Neither king nor paesant.

Los Angeles International

Tonight I had my memory refreshed. Once more, I have been reminded of the main reason of my fondness for this city.

I happened to go pick up Giorgio, the photographer I will be working with for a straight month, at LAX. Well, not just at LAX.  At Thomas Bradley International Terminal.

I had not been there ina while since I usually fly with American Airlines and I also pick up visitors from other American cities either at United, Delta or American terminals.

Thomas Bradley is another world. It really is the whole world.

If you spend a good hour and half there, as I did tonight, you end up feeling almost buzzed by the variety of people. Here they come in rows and waves to the surface, and they all look so different. It's a huge mix of skin colors, and features, clothing and costumes as diversified as you could ever imagine.

The billboard announces British Airlines, Mexicana, China Airlines, Taiwan, Singapore, Alaskan, Air Mexico... And the passengers come out of the custom protected area sporting dark circles under their eyes from the long hours of traveling, and walking slowly and tiresome.

Until they don't spot their friends or relatives come to meet them. Then, depending on their ethnicity and the lenght of separation, they speed up, giggle and jump with esultation,  shout for joy or cry for emotion. Some are loud, some more reserved. But most of them, and most than anything else, they kiss.

Passionately sometimes, just friendly and affectionately others. Two kisses on the cheecks between man and woman or woman and woman...huummmm....French or Italian. Three kisses, left-right-left cheek, and also between men...Russsian. Very rarely kisses, more modest hugs or handshakes... Chinese.

It is so interesting to observe all these ethnic variety and behavioral differences. And it is so great to live in a city where you can have nieghbors from India, Mexico or Armenia living all on your same street.

I considere this a great privilege and I know I could never deal with an all caucasian or all-anything else that is one-only-race anymore.

We live in a multicolored world and this city is its truest reflection.

Moki's Secret Recipe

I already confessed that I am addicted to tracking the traffic on this blog.

It's always fun to see who are your loyal readers and who casually arrives to this site looking for something different.

Today, I had the best revelation. Somebody googled "moki's salad dressing recipes", and was directed here.

You know, my dog has many talents but I didn't know he could hide secret recipes from me.

I promise, if I get Moki to reveal his special spicy mix to dress salads, I will post it on the blog.

I just hope that does not mean that my dog simply pisses on rucola, radicchio and baby lettuce minsunderstanding salad for other kind of greens.

A Hundred Years Down The Road

Since I believe that age is only a state of mind, I never back up from doing anything I'd like saying
"I should have thought about it when I was younger".

Knowing that, a friend sent me a beautiful quote from a book he just picked up and enjoyed, written by Peter Steinheart, a S.F. naturalist. Here it is, as beautiful as it is written in "The Undressed Art":


"Hukusai declared at the age of seventy-three: "From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the form of things.  Byt the time I was fify, I had published an infinity of desiugns, but all that I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account.  At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, birds, fishes and insects.  In consequence, when I am eighty, I shall have made more progress, at ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things, at a hundred I shave have reached a marvelous stage, and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive."

Ecstasy, Middlesex and More

The harder I work, the harder I need to play. Or, at least, to relax and free my mind of daily worries.

Art is a great escape. So it's reading. A good exhibit and a good book are my tickets to an instant two hour-vacation from the hectics of my schedule.

This week, it has been Ecstasy at the Geffen Gallery of Moca Downtown. The room with the green lights, the giant rotating mushrooms upside down, the crystal fountain that actually contains LSD... they made my mind spin like bubbles in a champagne glass. No need to enlist any help from real Ammanita Muscaria.

At night, it's still Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, the guy who also wrote The Virgin Suicides. His first person account of the saga of Calliope Stephanides, who travels from a tiny village on Mount Olympus to Prohibition-era Detroit is breathtaking. Full of coupe de scenes , with a visual and expansive narrative, it makes you dream and feel together with Calliope, who will soon become Cal.

Thank you Litty for giving me this book on my birthday. Highly appreciated.

If you want to make me happy, don't give me diamonds. Give me books or art tools, as a prospective boyfriend once told me he'd have given me if he was my guy. Obviously, he raised his score and soon got the part he auditioned for so convincingly.

Emergency

I have a family emergency in Italy. I am suddenly going back there, my plane leaving in a few hours.

I won't be able to be on-line for a few days. I will be close in spirit, though.

Keep me in your prayers. Hopefully, I will be back soon, both here and in California.

My Beautiful Sister

(Written on Monday, 23 January, to be posted at a later time, when I’ll regain access to the Internet.)

My sister did not look so beautiful today when I saw her, still in a deep coma, attached to a respiratory machine. She's lodged in the intensive therapy unit of the neuro-chirurgical department of the hospital in Bergamo.

I could not recognize her when they finally let me in, breaking the visiting time obedience rule since I just landed, flying all the way from California.

I got the call on Saturday. It was one of those balmy Californian afternoons, and I was in Calabasas on the set of a house that we’ll feature in Elle Décor Italia.

They told me that Marina had fallen and had brain hemoragia. They told me she was brought to the hospital in a deep coma. They told me that the surgeon decided to perform surgery despite the odds of “one in a thousand” chance of survival. She was still young and very healthy. Who could make better use of that one-chance, after all?

I booked my flight to Italy for Sunday morning based on that one-in-a-thousand chance. She was a winner before I even boarded and made it through despite the doctors’ pessimism. However, that did not determine any possible prediction of the future. She had to be kept in a pharmacological coma to give time to the brain to recover before allowing her to try breathing on her own. Only when she will recover her vital functions, it will be possible to determine how big has been the damage to her brain and what could be the consequences.

I might end up with a sister who smiles when upset, frowns when she’s happy and needs diapers, chalk and a board to express herself in sentences. So is what the very non-nonsense doctor is telling me behind the all catalogue of medical obscure terms he used to describe what happened and could happen to her.

I knew better, though. Not immediately. I have to admit that for a while I could only feel a huge black void when I tried to establish contact with Marina, and I was scared. But when I finally sat on the first plane to New York, I closed my eyes and experienced flashes of images, fast paced dreaming materials.

They were memories from Marina’s point of view. Only my sister could have seen and remembered them that way. There was the red pebble that she and I “borrowed” from our neighbors’ backyard. When we were about to get caught, Marina made me hid it in my nostril. But the damn thing went way too far, requesting extraction by the family doctor. My sister was ashamed and felt guilty. I never knew that. I only remembered the thrill.

I knew then that my sister is going to make it. Of course, she has to. I could not live without her. Here, I said it. I, the steel warrior who has been acting matter of fact and taking care of business for 48 hours straight by now. I am finally admitting it, Marina. I need you to come back. That’s why I am staying at your house here in Bergamo and not at the many friends who are willing to be there for me now, offering comfort and support. Thanks but no thanks.

I need to be here. Alone. Surrounded only by my sister’s presence and silence.

I took a bath and slipped on my sister’s nightie. I am going to sleep in her bed, the sheets still fragrant with her scent. I am listening to the Jefferson Airplane cd she was listening to with Luca, her brand new love whom I met today for the first time.

Marina and Luca met 25 years ago in Brazil. They brushed lives one against the other for a moment, then split up for separate adventures. A fourth of a century after, they met again in Tuscany, at a friend’s house. Both 50 years old by now and with some gray in their hair, kids to father on Luca’s side and an aging and ailing mother on Marina’s, they fell madly in love.

It has been fireworks, sparkles and heart palpitation ever since. You can’t leave Luca alone, Marina. Come back for him too. He wants you, just as much as I want you. Your hundred of friends, who called me incessantly all day long, want you. You are the most beloved person I can’t think of, and all this love is going to keep you alive.

It will take weeks for you to wake up and it will be a very hard struggle. But you will come back. You, whole and energetic, and full of life just as before. You. Not just a veggie in a woman’s body poked and pinched one million times, with a bandage wrapping your still opened skull that says “attention, the bone is missing”, since the brain needs space and air to go back to its place and shape after the big swell.

All those tubes and hoses moving quarters of morphine, dopamine and solution in, urine and blood out, taking possession of your veins and channels. Your tongue stuck between your teeth so that it cannot slip into your throat and suffocate you. Your yellowish complexion and the shaved head…All that is just temporary.

You are coming back to smile and play with me and this will just be a nightmare to leave behind. You’re coming back to feel when I’ll hold you and brush your locks with my fingers… your curly hair just like mine. Me brushing your shiny dark brown as you used to do with my blonds when we were little.

Tuesday, January 24.

I slept a few hours and lost the pounding headache that kept me constant company in the past two days. I need all my strength for you now, and I need to get myself together to go tell our mom. I had her prepared to see me back in Italy without detecting the extent of what happened to you.

I had other people lie to her, tell her that you fell and hit your head, that they’re keeping you under surveillance and that’s why she won’t be able to reach you on your cell and talk to you. My trained liars told mom that I am coming tomorrow for a business meeting, and that I’ll come to see you directly from Malpensa airport. I will then go to her, our mom, “from the hospital”.

Mom bought it. How strange, since she always knew what was going on with us, and lying to her was useless. It might be Parkinson’s disease, It might be that she does not want to know. She might be as scared as you are. But so far, that’s what she knows or wants to know. She’s waiting for me to go tell her that her “other baby” is going to be all right. How hard!!!

Yet, I will go and lie some more to her. I never did, you know. Fed up enough with all the lies our parents told us throughout our childhood, I grew up believing that “truth is always better”.

This time, I doubt it. Not this time. Not for her. Not for a mother who relied specially on you to take care of her, during all these years I spent in America.

I will take care of her now, Marina. Don’t worry. I am prepared to go back and forth from United States as if it was your daily one-hour commute from Bergamo to Milan. And I will come and go for as long as you need me to. So, don’t worry. Take all the time you need for your brain to recover. But remember. I am waiting for you and you get to come back. You got too much to come back. You cannot leave yet.

You owe me a smile. You owe me to reopen those big black doe eyes of yours and reflect all the light of this love.

Tuesday 24th, evening.

I saw Marina again tonight. I felt her very weak and very far, as if she’s gone so far that she’s scared she'll be unable to come back. I held her hand under the thermo-blanket. All I could feel was her fear.

It took me down. I could no longer tell her to come back. I chose to let her free to make her own decision. Freedom is what I’ve ruled my life by. I will make no exception for HER life.

I want Marina to feel free to choose. I just tried to let her know that if she decides to come back, she has many people ready to welcome, accept and help her, no matter what. But it’s a reckless decision, one way or the other.

Recklessness is a very personal matter. Recklessness belongs to the heart, not to the mind domain.

My sister has always been a reckless woman. I admire her courage and respect her ways. That’s why I HAVE to set her free.

But it’s the damn hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I am not so sure I am so well equipped for this endeavor.

I kept myself together so far. Then tonight, I was taking the clothes she had on when she fell out of the washer. I was about to hang them but I could not make sense of a purple garment. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that was the result of  paramedics cutting off the sleeves and front of her t-shirt when they found her laying on the pavement.

They tried CPR to revive her. I could visualize the whole scene, one long second after the other. I could hear the ambulance personnel talking loud and the noise of the stretcher hitting the floor close to my sister’s body.

I could see they lifting her lids and look at dilated pupils that did not reflect light. All of a sudden, I was swallowed in a tunnel of horror, scare and pain myself. I set the music volume higher and broke down in tears, bawling and crying loud.

Ten minutes. That all I could allow myself. And now I am back. The usual efficient, almost robotic, heartless and rational wonder woman who will take care of business and fix everything that can be fixed.

Fixing Marina, though, is not something I feel like I can and should do anymore. 

NOT if she does not want to. Better. Not if she does not tell me that she wants me to.