September 10 2023 — Existential Autotrip

September 10, 2023
# 1623

Six days in Florence and its Tuscan surroundings.

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Cover
Florence based Tuscany

While I still have strength enough, I decided to take my daughter and her boyfriend, Will, on a seven-day trip to Florence, including day trips to San Gimignano, Siena, and Pisa.

Why Florence? The "Cradle of the Renaissance," Florence flourished during the 14th to 16th centuries as a center of artistic, intellectual, and architectural innovation, producing numberless iconic landmarks.

Although we were exhausted from the trip, lack of sleep, issues regarding the car rental, and a tough introduction to Roman and Florentine traffic, we salvaged the latter part of the day with a trip to the Pitti Palace, and its collection of Renaissance and Baroque art, featuring works by renowned artists such as Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, and Rubens. We’ll return for the Boboli Gardens.

We had reservations at Borgo San Jacobo and enjoyed a splendid dinner there as well as amazingly attentive and professional service.

Our captain and her staff were splendid. Here she is presenting a wonderful olive oil.

Nice view of the Neptune statue in the Piazza della Signoria while sipping my morning coffee.
Weather has been great and outdoor cafes are a pleasure

Commentary
The human condition.

Life is not always a bowl of cherries. Sometimes bad things happen. Especially when we are already suffering from stress or fatigue, or both. in those moments, it is incumbent for each of us to take a step back and put the ugly moment back into perspective, Or things can go from bad to worse.

Fortunately, my daughter and I did pull back from the several bad moments that descended on us at once, swallowed, and got on with the job of having a great time.

And we did. Once checked into our budget hotel, Kat napped and I went for coffee. The moments in the cafe were rejuvenating and they were followed by a splendid dinner at Borgo San Jacobo. All was right in the world.

Photo of my Ashtanga class. Note how everyone is in a different posture.

Ashtanga Open Practice, or Mysore-style Ashtanga, is one of the most prestigious forms of yoga practice. My body can only handle practicing it twice a week before I crave softer vinyasa classes.

Ashtanga is a series of yoga postures that are designed to open and strengthen the body unlike any other set sequence. It understands the body down to a science and, in my opinion, is the best way to get truly strong and flexible and grounded.

Instead of being led by an instructor like in most popular yoga classes, students simply show up sometime during the open studio and begin the series of poses. The instructor walks around the studio, offering advice and hands on adjusts and assists. She is intimately aware of where you are in your practice — a tight left hip, a strong backbend, etc — and can offer very individualized feedback.

That’s the key: you come to understand your body and your practice in a heightened way that simpler vinyasa practices simply cannot offer. Now I can show up to vinyasa classes and confidently be the most advanced yogi there.

In Ashtanga practice, I haven’t even finished the first sequence. There are four. I’ve been doing yoga for years.

I guess that’s why they call it a life long practice.

BOOK LAUNCH

Our 51st reunion will provide the backdrop of the book launch.
Tickets are $10000 for a multi-course dinner that will feature tripe. We’ve topped the hundred-mark in sales for the event and anticipate getting to 130. Sweet.

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Do You Believe in Magic? Anthology of Stories from the North End
Edited by Dom Capossela

Preface
I publish a weekly magazine: existentialautotrip. While thinking about content for upcoming issues, I thought an article on the North End would be rich. Then, I thought, not just any article, but a cover story; then, no, an entire issue.

I pushed away from my screen, rose up, and paced. None of the above, actually. The Italian North End needs its own book – our childhood was special. As I paced, I asked myself, seriously, Why? Everybody has a childhood. Why the North End, especially?

Here’s what I answered. Most people we know remember their childhood fondly, ready, at the drop of a hat, to relate stories of the good old days. But there is something in the childhood memories of us old time North Enders that is so passionate that the passion is its own, a separate story. But why, I asked myself, are we so passionate?

Thus, the conception: a story that answers to that Why?

Do you believe in magic? Because we’ll tell you about magic that’ll make you feel groovy, make you feel happy like an old-time movie. So suspend your disbelief because, if you do, you’ll get the ‘why so,’ as in ‘passionate.’

We begin by setting the scene: a Prologue to put us in era, era starting in the 1950s. Scene set, we pull in memories, in the event, those of more than two dozen writers recounting more than fifty stories and observations, all evidencing the magic. We end with an Epilogue summarizing our roles in that era, what we took and what we returned, in spades.

Enjoy the reading, my friends, as we, from the 1950s Italian North End, enjoy the telling. We will make you believe in, as we believe in: magic.

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Tucker’s Corner

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing a truly great movie this weekend. It will certainly be one of my favorites of this year. I don’t really have much more to say as an intro other than that it floored me. This is Past Lives.

As the sun sets on a Montauk night we watch Nora (Greta Lee) and Arthur (John Magaro) prepare to share their first kiss. In these last electric moments Nora tells Arthur about the Korean concept of In-Yun, which suggests that people are destined to meet one another if their souls have overlapped a certain number of times before. Arthur asks if she really believes in all that and the Seoul-born woman across from him replies that it’s just something Korean people say to seduce someone. Needless to say, it works. The loveliest part of this scene and indeed many of the most resonant moments in Past Lives is that they are left to our imaginations. This may be Celine Song’s first time as director, but her instincts betray a far more studied hand.

As this fragile yet crushingly gorgeous film continues forward, we watch Nora and Arthur marry and begin their life together. But this real life runs parallel to an aching “what could have been” between Nora and her childhood sweetheart Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). They haven’t seen each other in the flesh since they were in grade school in Seoul but the ties between them have never entirely frayed apart. In fact, life seems to bring them together unexpectedly every 12 years like a comet returning to Earth’s sky. The closer Hae Sung comes to actually making contact with Nora the more it feels like destiny is stepping in. The film in turn takes on the form of In-Yun, repeating quiet moments like they are a prayer. As if each one of these hushed events represents two souls overlapping. Nora invoking the concept on that Montauk night is played off like a pick-up line but as the film progresses it all feels incredibly heavy like whether or not these characters believe in the idea fate, that idea is very real and every move we make is a turn of its wheel.

On paper Past Lives feels like someone dumped Richard Linklater’s “Before” Trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight) into a stock pot and reduced it down to a single film. But where those films lean into the drama you can display in romance films Past Lives takes a much more realistic (and torturous) approach to how people find themselves with and through each other. That isn’t to say the film doesn’t build suspense around the idea of “who’s she gonna choose?” but by it’s conclusion we’re left with a much more profound recognition of who Nora is and what needs instead of any overdramatized romance film climax. Past Lives is a film more interested in allowing its heroine to reconcile with a past version of herself and decide if that’s who she wants to be going forward or if was just a keepsake to treasure while she continues to grow.

In the film’s first act Nora’s family leaves Seoul for Toronto. By the time she reconnects with Hae Sung in her twenties her Korean is quite rusty. In fact all of Hae Sung’s dyed in the wool Korean-ness is nearly lost on her. Despite the culture gap Hae Sung is still the only person alive that really knew her in such a formative stage of her life. He knows the only Nora that her husband Arthur will never be able to meet and would certainly struggle to understand. Thankfully Song’s screenplay never paints Arthur as a man standing in the way of destiny. The characters in Past Lives are much like the people we know in real life. They’re scared. They’re self-divided. But they’re generally kind and good.

The men are scared, anyway. Greta Lee brings a headstrong poise to Nora. She’s an incredibly gifted actress I believe we’ll see plenty more of before she’s done. Across Past Lives she fills every line of dialogue with a lifetime (lifetimes?) of feeling. Whether playing Nora as an overeager twenty-something or as a thirty-year-old secretly grieving a part of herself she can’t get back, Lee’s performance cuts to the heart of Nora’s divided identity and personality like a surgeon choosing to operate on herself. She uses Nora’s confidence and ambition to shield herself from what might have been so in the rare moments when she lowers her guard, she feels unbearably vulnerable. Lee makes the audience feel every frame on and under our skin which is essential to a film that focuses far more on sense than on story. I should make it clear that Magaro and Yoo have no trouble matching Lee’s tempo. They’re incredibly gifted in their own right. Yoo in particular does such a lovely job of playing a hopeless romantic that his attempts to enter Nora’s life never feel opportunistic.

Past Lives feels tight as a drum at the production level as well. Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner shoots with long lenses creating compressed shots that help visualize the very real threat that distance plays in the backgrounds of these character’s minds. Grace Yun’s production design feels equally split between a high stakes romance story and a fairy tale. Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen’s score gets the audience familiar with the film’s overall tempo from the opening scenes.

Past Lives is divided into three distinct sections and moving between them is done with the lovely words “12 years pass”. Using “pass” rather than “later” conveys the feeling of time slipping away for Nora. It works beautifully to back up the idea that life has little to no “do-overs” and adds weight to all of Nora’s decisions especially those surrounding Arthur and Hae-Sung. Past Lives is about the little parts of our lives that grow so big in the rear-view that they threaten to overwhelm everything else we can see. At the film’s outset Nora’s mother says “If you leave something behind you gain something too”. A beautiful statement but a qualified one. It all depends on who you choose to leave with and what they’re able to give you back in return.

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Borgo San Jacobo
Welcome by the Chef

FASSONA senape rustica, ravanelli e tartufo nero
Fassona tartare with mustard, radishes and black truffle

FUSILLI ristretto di granchio, finocchio, gambero rosso e calamaretto spillo
Fusilli pasta on crab reduction, fennel, red prawn and baby squid

ROMBO CHIODATO lattuga romana, mandorle e prosciutto di Parma
Turbot with romaine lettuce, almonds and Parma ham

MAIALINO DA LATTE in porchetta con porro bruciato, albicocche e senape Dijon
Suckling pig° in porchetta with charred leek, apricot, and Dijon mustard

BABÀ FIORENTINO
Bagna all’alchermes, crema al cioccolato fondente, gelato ricotta di bufala
Babà soaked in Alchermes syrup, dark chocolate cream, buffalo ricotta ice cream

170

Vini in abbinamento
Wine Pairing 95
Premium Wine Pairing 155

A Guide Michelin rated restaurant in Florence, Borgo San Jacobo is at home among our many splendid dining experiences.

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Writing
Our week in Florence demands our attention and so our time for writing is non-existent. Long-term, a break from the book and our other writings is a good thing.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
”If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.”
George Carlin

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Six Word Stories
"Whispers in darkness, hope lights path."

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Understanding Ageing
My age didn’t hold us back on this trip, although I will admit that my first introduction to the walk up to our budget hotel, 47 steps, was a bit daunting.

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Social Life
The time that Kat and Will and I spent together under the auspices of a week’s vacation in Florence was memorable.

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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts, including links.

This from good friend, Anthony Cortese:

Hi,

I read the book, cover to cover last night. Loved it! Your history of that era, and how the NE was intimately an important part, was excellent! You educated and reeducated all of us well. I liked the inclusion of the photos - thought they were well placed. The mix of vignettes, observations and stories made it easy to read. Great book to read in one sitting or read some excerpts, put it down and pick it up again. I am sure folks will want to reread it. I know I will, especially with some Vin Santo to sip! I will, of course, leave a very positive review on Amazon. Have bought more copies and am buying several more copies!

As a friend, the only thing I did not like about book was the picture on the cover. I understand, as a writer, what you are trying to demonstrate which you explained well on the first page. For the average NE reader (who probably would not read your explanation), it doesn’t work - I have heard this from several people (mostly, the bocce crowd) who have seen it online or in the FONE newsletter - of course, their reaction was without reading the actual book! From what I heard, they saw it as a negative portrayal of the Sunday family dinner, which was just the opposite in their memory and in most descriptions in the book. You might want to explain the cover when you do the pitch at the reunion.

I hope it sells a lot of copies! Glad you are getting to pitch it at the reunion!!

Stay well!

Tony Cortese
adcortese@gmail.com

And this from my lovely niece, Stephanie:

Congratulations Uncle Dom! Can't wait to read it.

And this from dear friend and contributor to book, A Cintolo:

Hi Dom.

Tnx for heads up - will order.

With Nino passing, got me thinking how great it would be to have captured stories from other recently deceased "core" North Enders. So tnx for ur efforts in making it happen now!!

And from friend, Frank I:

I got my book and love it!! I read half the book so far!!
great job by you, dom and everyone involved!!''

Frankie Imbergamo

And from dear friend and fellow laborer in the vineyard, Tommy D:

Like you and me Dom. The best! proud of you and what you do.

Tommy

Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
text to 617.852.7192

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Sep 6 September 10 2023