venerdì 23 ottobre 2009

Aleatory Elements

“You know, back home they would only think of doing that with a power saw”, my friend said as watched two city workers hammer and try to bend a no parking sign on the cobblestone just a few feet from our table at the Caffè della Pace.
“Your right, but this is much more fascinating.”
It was Wednesday morning, and we were sitting at an outside table, two blocks and one turn from Piazza Navona in Rome. Two empty, cappuccino cups were sitting on the table in front of us. Our second that morning.
The workers had finished pounding and one of them got in the small truck they had arrived on earlier. He turned on the engine and drove a wheel over lower part of the pole. The other one picked up the far and of the pole and started pulling in up, trying to break it like it was a giant wire coat hanger
It was almost raining, a light drizzle that felt more like mist. Large canvass umbrellas kept the rain off our hair and the Italian newspapers on the table.
“At home they wouldn’t even start without the right tools, but these guys don’t care, they’re going at it with a hammer and their bare hands”, I said.
When I was still living in Wisconsin, I would daydream of sitting with friends outside an old café, sipping cappuccinos or wine, talking about creative projects or world events. That’s the way things were in the subtitled movies I loved back then. It is still part of life in Italy, but the rush of work and raising families and paying bills means that most coffee breaks here are quick affairs - stolen from the corners of a busy schedule.
It was good to see that those movies, though fiction, were based on an Italy that was still alive. We were americans watching the random show that plays out every morning around the Caffè della Pace, or Bar Pasquino, or the two cafés in Piazza Sant’Eustacchio. The cappuccinos were expensive, but not more than in a take-away cup in a big city Starbucks. But here the ideas were flowing between as the rain picked up. The workers bent the pole using the wait of their truck for leverage until it made a loud snap. I was thankful my friend had called, and I was once again feeling why I loved living in Italy.

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