Buon Anno? Bring It On!

In which I ramble about the new year, screech like a harpy, squeeze in some fun Italian language trivia, and end up talking about home

Fireworks in Perugia several years ago. All photos © Cheryl A. Ossola

Cari amici,

I’m writing this on December 27. The despised tree is down, and the obsessing about the Liberty House is up, way up. Way, way, way up. And so is my frustration with l’italiano. Before I left the U.S., people who clearly didn’t know what they were talking about told me I’d be fluent in no time, living here. That’s probably true for someone 30 or 40 years younger than I am, and who already speaks more than one language. For me, living here, with everything that encompasses—in-depth and far-ranging conversations in Italian, and constant exposure to the language in more passive ways—does speed up my absorption and sharpen my skills, but not fast enough for my liking. Action is needed.

So I’m trying to shove aside all those romantic images of my tenderly restored Liberty House (excluding all the nightmarish scenarios that would surely come first). True, every time I visit the north of Italy, I feel the pull, as if the bones of my ancestors are calling me. I get a thrill every time I see the surname Ossola on maps and shop signs. (Though most Ossolas probably came from Val d’Ossola in Piemonte originally, now most live in the province of Varese in Lombardia.) But I have southern blood too, and maybe I’ll feel the same pull when I go back to Gioia Sannitica (Campania), which I’ve been to only once, and too briefly. I’m almost afraid to visit Sonnino (Lazio), the one ancestral town I haven’t seen yet. What if I find a tempting ruin there too? I’d better start playing the lottery.

Truth is, I think my house fever spiked because I’m mad at Perugia.

In terms of Christmas this year, Perugia blew it. Instead of a big tree in our main piazza, we have an enormous stage (some call it brutto, some una meraviglia) surrounded by towers of speakers and lights. Cables snake everywhere and barricades funnel pedestrians into narrow spaces. The stage and its encircling towers dwarf the Duomo and overpower our precious medieval fountain, Perugia’s crown jewel, cowering only feet away. This isn’t like the stages built in Piazza Quattro Novembre for Umbria Jazz. This is the Frankenstein’s monster, the Incredible Hulk, the Godzilla-on-steroids of stages.

The stage early on, before it got bigger and the light towers multiplied.

The wisdom of this decision is questionable. Underneath the piazza are empty spaces—the scavi (underground ruins) of the Duomo, and open channels that once carried water to the fountain. Does it make sense to build a stage weighing many tons, not to mention the added weight of 8,000 concert-goers, where a disaster would go far beyond repair costs, sacrificing the artifacts of the city’s proud history, its priceless art? If the piazza caves in, the fountain would go with it. What about public safety? Does it make sense to do this when our traditional large concert venue (far less disruptive and much safer), the stadium at Santa Giuliana, is close by and available?

No, it doesn’t, though some locals scoff at fears like these. Yet the city spent €385,000 of taxpayer money on this stage so that RAI 1 can broadcast its annual Capodanno (New Year’s Eve) concert from our historic center. Yes, I know this concert is second only to Sanremo in importance, music-extravaganza-wise. But we taxpayers have lost the joy of our beautiful piazza at its most evocative time of year—construction started well before Christmas, and the thing won’t be gone until after Epiphany (or so I hear). Just a thought—the city could spend that money on repairing its shamefully derelict streets.

As for the city’s Christmas tree, it’s a live one this year—okay, fine, saving electricity and all that (though the streets are bedecked with overhead lights, so where’s the logic?). Usually placed where the Capodanno stage is now, the tree is jammed into a different piazza, a small one filled with evergreen trees. Barely noticeable and poorly decorated, it’s pretty pathetic. What with the stage that ruins any view of Piazza Quattro Novembre’s medieval glory and the out-of-sight, out-of-mind Christmas tree, Perugia has lost its customary holiday season magic. And then to discover there was no midnight mass at the Duomo this year—I mean, come on.

Of course, I’ll forgive Perugia, eventually. And it’s time to move on, because I digress. If you’re managing to follow this tortuous stream-of-consciousness bit of writing, complimenti.

Back to the idea of upping my italiano game. With the new year on the short-term horizon, I feel, as I always do, a sense of renewal and promise and possibility. New Year’s Day is my favorite holiday for that reason. I’m pondering some big questions and reexamining priorities, and if I had anything coherent to say about all this, I’d write about it. But it’s all still a blob of evolutionary thought.

Then there are resolutions, more quotidian, still ambitious but less all-encompassing. I’m not big on resolutions per se—drastic sacrifices or behavioral turnabouts don’t inspire me; I end up starting the new year feeling pressured and doomed to self-inflicted disappointment. Instead, I think in terms of changing attitudes and outlooks. This year, though, I am making one resolution—to return to a more hands-on method of language learning, through workbooks and textbooks and rote memorization. I’ll continue with videos and podcasts like Learn Italian with Lucrezia, Vaporetto Italiano, and Podcast Italiano, all valuable learning tools. (Find them on Instagram too.) But I’m a visual learner. If I hear a new word, I might remember it—but if I see it written (love it when videos do that), or better yet write it myself, I’m much more likely to retain it. It’s time to get back to a more dedicated effort than absorption and on-the-fly exposure through daily conversations. And time to actually read the many books in Italian on my shelves.

An addiction to buying books gets way worse when you can read in two languages.

So, with a rejuvenated urge to learn in mind, let’s start the new year off with some fun Italian language trivia.

Naturally, we’ll begin with pasta. You might enjoy a plate of strozzapreti (priest stranglers; sometimes called strangolapreti), typical of Emilia-Romagna, Le Marche, Tuscany, and Umbria (though other regions give this name to other dishes). There are multiple origin stories for this pasta’s name, and I wouldn’t even try to guess which one might be true. One story says that priests would wolf down the pasta too fast and choke on it; another claims that housewives who’d had enough of their parish priest’s dinnertime visits (and perhaps overconsumption) put a curse on the pasta while making it. There are other stories too, all with the common denominator of commenting on the relationships between peasants and priests, independent states and the papacy, which were, at times [ahem], fraught.

If you prefer farfalle, you’re eating butterflies. Vermicelli, I’m sorry to say, means little worms. Orecchiette are little ears. Bucatini is so named because it’s a tubular spaghetti (buco means hole); in the south it’s called perciatelli (from the napoletano word for pierced).  Malfadine, also known as reginette (little queens) or mafalda/mafalde, is a ribbon-like pasta with wavy edges, named for Princess Mafalda of Savoy, the second daughter of King Vittorio Emmanuele III of Italy who died in 1944 at Buchenwald. You can read her tragic story here.

Moving on from pasta (because we could stay there all day), there’s the well-known dish spaghetti alla puttanesca, spaghetti in a sauce of oil, capers, anchovies, garlic, hot peppers, oregano, and black olives. You probably know puttana means prostitute. No one seems to agree on the name’s origin. Prostitutes aren’t the only folks honored with a namesake dish; there’s also palle (or coglioni) del nonno (grandfather’s balls), a type of salame (salami). If you’ve been to Italy, you’ve probably seen them hanging in shop windows. Poor Grandpa.

If you like aromatic foods, you should check out Puzzone di Moena, a cheese from the town of Moena in Trentino/Alto Adige/Sudtirol. Puzzone means stinky, but in this case (apparently) that’s a good thing. As the cheese ages, di tanto in tanto (from time to time) its rind is moistened with water and salt, which promotes fermentation and creates a pungent odor—and a yummy taste.

Okay, let’s move on from food; I’m getting hungry. Good thing I made lasagne today. Here are a few words with very interesting origins, found on this site (in Italian).

Mannaggia is a mild expletive commonly heard in central and southern Italy, similar to saying “Damn!” It derives from the napoletano expression mal n’aggia (in Italian, male ne abbia), in turn derived from malannaggia, and conveys extreme dissatisfaction or disappointment (previously, directed at oneself, but now used more generally). I love saying mannaggia—those chewy double consonants really let you dig in.

Accipicchio is a euphemism for accidenti, an exclamation that expresses amazement, anger, or frustration. It’s a euphemism because in the second half of the 1800s, accidenti came to be considered vulgar. Why? Chissà, who knows! Anyway, if you want to sound a tad more elegant, accipicchio is the word for you. It’s new to me—I first heard it in a neighborhood group chat—and I plan to adopt it.

Perdindirindina is another euphemism, this one a replacement for perdio, which because of the word dio tucked in there, could be considered blasphemous. Perdio expresses impatience or wonder; perdindirindina conveys wonder or disappointment, but it’s a light, half-smiling sort of wonder with no room for disappointment. With all those (in English) “ee” sounds, it’s such a musical word, and fun to say (the accent goes on the last di). Definitely a keeper.

Oops, it’s the 28th now, and my brain has given me whiplash. (How’s yours doing?) The good news is that I’ve got my Liberty House lust in check. How? Well, the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging there is one, right? So if I look at what’s driving this urge to buy a crumbling villa and fix it up, I realize it’s pretty much a nesting thing. (I thought that only happened during pregnancy, but whatever.) And I can do that, or come close to it, right where I am.

What’s come back to me is something Helgi Tomasson, the longtime (now former) director of San Francisco Ballet, often said during the 16 years I worked with him: use what you’ve got. He was talking about choreographing, using his dancers to their best potential, challenging them to grow as artists. And he, in turn, was quoting his own director from his dancing years at New York City Ballet, George Balanchine. And now I’m passing it down to you.

Use what you’ve got. It’s simple, elemental, even sustainable. Rethink, reimagine, reuse. There’s always another way to solve a problem. In other words, I can feed my desire to create beauty from chaos without buying a house I can’t afford that’s six hours away.

My house here in Perugia has charm and history—and limits. It’s oddly laid out in an L shape with a looooong corridor, and with handicap-access bedroom doors that swing wide, limiting furniture placement and usable space. (This, in an apartment that’s not reachable by someone in a wheelchair. Go figure.) Pocket doors would be ideal, but that would mean rebuilding walls. Instead, I’m going to look into double doors (the kind with two narrow panels that open like shutters.) Fortunately, most of what needs doing is more cosmetic. I can repaint the enormous and brutally ugly (but extremely useful) 1960s armadio in my bedroom that irritates me multiple times a day. (To be fair, I did try, and discovered that no brushed-on paint will stick to its finish. Either I hire someone to spray the thing or I sand off the top color and reveal the cream color beneath. I’m tending toward doing the latter.) I can continue to chip away (literally) at the ongoing wall restoration project in my studio. I can finally hang the art I’ve bought that despairs of ever being seen. I can search for the perfect shade of green to paint a niche and a small wall along the staircase.

My ongoing studio wall project.

And I can do what I’ve done since I took down the Christmas tree and banished it from my house—rearrange the furniture, buy a floor lamp, rethink the placement of important objects that give me pleasure, like glassware inherited from my mother and grandmother and favorite pieces of Umbrian pottery. Designate one shelf of a small bookcase for the books I’m either reading now or are next in the queue. (Because if I put them in with all the other books, I lose track of them.)

I could go on and on, but the particulars of my house aren’t important. What’s important is to banish what bugs you or fails to bring you joy. (Yes, I’m going all Marie Kondo on you, though I stop short of espousing minimalism.) Simplify and prioritize, turn the ugly into the beautiful (or at least acceptable). Recognize that experiencing malaise or ennui doesn’t mean you have to uproot yourself. I have friends here, a community. Bottom line: I don’t want to leave Perugia. There will always be places that set me to dreaming, but hey, that’s what travel is for. I’m the kind of person who finds Liberty Houses wherever I go, and that’s okay—as long as I remember I can’t live in all of them.

I live in The Priest’s House for a reason—it called to me and said, “Stay.” It’s time to build on what I’ve begun in creating my home here in Italy. Improving my environment will make me happy, but what will make me happiest is fluency, or close to it. It’s time to get to work.

In this new year, I wish you new aspirations, fulfilled dreams, and the joy of being exactly where you are.

Buon Capodanno! Buon Anno! Tanti auguri a tutti!

© 2022 Cheryl A. Ossola

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Poems of the week:

• “I Am Running into a New Year” by Lucille Clifton

• “Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye