Well, I think we’re done. Oh I know we’ve only been working on the dialogue for an hour, but you know as well as I that the director is going to change it all in the first rehearsal. Besides, it doesn’t matter how we do it, as long as we can tell him that we got together to talk about it…that we have IDEAS…that we’re committed to the PROCESS…
…oh, theatre…
Prosecco? You read my mind! Tell me, why are you debasing perfectly good wine with Amaro? A “spritz” you say? Learned how to make it in Venice? I can tell we’re going to get along famously. What a perfectly sensible way to spend a Tuesday afternoon! No apologies! If you ARE a bohemian, you might as well LIVE like one….And pasta Puttanesca! I adore it. You know what Puttanesca means don’t you? Noodles in slut-like sauce! Apparently the ladies of the night needed something quick and spicy to sustain them…so they came up with this...but it sounds so much better in Italian.
Shocking…..
Oh Hello! You never told me you had a girlfriend (shit shit shit shit shit)….she plays the flute? How lucky for you - understands the angst of being a musician but will never be competition. Oh I don’t mind that she doesn’t really speak English. Just today I was wondering when I would get to practice the second person informal plural. Do you (you + girlfriend) like noodles in slut sauce?
And yes I will have another spritz, now that you’re asking.
Delicious….
If I close my eyes I can picture Rome. Every Sunday I would go to this ancient trattoria for lunch…“Der Pallaro”, if I recall correctly…located on the exact spot where they killed Julius Caesar! It is things like this which make it impossible to compete with Rome. I mean, what are they going to do in Berlin… build a Starbucks on the Hitler bunker? Decidedly NOT poetic. I have no idea what a Pallaro is, actually. Neither did the waiter…he just shrugged, but then again he shrugged at everything. He was 80, after all. There was no menu… you just ate what they gave you, and I think the menu hasn’t changed since Caesar…you know… Imagine the absolute bliss of sitting on a quiet piazza in the height of summer, shaded by a plane tree, sipping cold white wine, eating lentils from a chipped earthenware dish. A date with eternity - the closest I have come to communion. One day the cook – an ageless woman in a turban – saw me enjoying her food and kissed me on the cheek. She had tears in her eyes.
This is why I want to move to Italy.
And the pasta! Spaghetti carbonara every day, and I never tired of it. They always brought it to me in a mixing bowl, told me they had run out of dishes. I think they were trying to insult me because I was ‘straniero’- a foreigner - but they told me it was a special honour. This is typical of Italy…they wrap an insult in gilded paper and you only realize too late…
But they made carbonara with real guancale…crunchy and salty and piggy – the apotheosis of pork. Oh but I do eat pork, and I don’t feel bad about it in the least. I have committed so many grievous sins I can’t possibly worry about what I put in my mouth.
Besides, I was eating ham at Stephens United Church in Fisher River Manitoba for years before I even know what a Jew was. My parents were both school teachers and we lived on a reserve.
How much do you pay for this gorgeous apartment? 500 Euro! You know, if you tell anyone they’ll want to kill you. God, you can live in Berlin like a king for almost nothing! An apartment like this in Winnipeg costs more.
What’s Winnipeg? My home town...not so bad really, just cold sometimes, that’s all. How cold? Well, on the weather channel they often warn you “exposed skin will freeze in a minute”… I never paid attention…couldn’t bear to dress for that. Besides, I had a vintage camel hair coat…fabulous. I froze my ass off, but looked great…which would explain the missing fingers.
KIDDING!
Oh lunch smells divine. You’re not putting raisins in the sauce? I think they do that in Sicily….must be the Arab influence. Never been there, mind you, but I would love to go. In Italy they call Sicily “Africa”. Isn’t that horrible? But why, I wonder. Africa’s not horrible, is it? Well, it is…but Africa as a concept really isn’t horrible. Anyway, my friend says that Italians from the north will tell you that Palermo is the only third world city without a European quarter. They even look down on Rome: in Milan they say the only thing Romans know how to do is have lunch. Is that so bad? If only Berlin were notorious for the way its citizens took their meals.
No, but I love Berlin!
Well, actually I don’t…it makes me think of death.
I love you guys though!
And so I raise my glass.
To long life…and drinking on Tuesday afternoon.
God… the last time I had prosecco was after a performance of Ligeti’s “La Grande Macabre”, also in Rome – at the opera… friends of mine have a box there. I know, what a life. Anyway, it was all rather grotesque (macabre?). The set consisted of a giant naked woman in papier maché, and the characters would come out of various…orifices. I asked my friend “how much do you want to bet that in the second act, they’re going to turn that girl around have the singers come out her behind?”
Needless to say, my friend bought the proescco!
Oh, and another time….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………………………..
……………………………………………………………………
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
caro I bought the prosecco because I was celebrating having you with me not because of some paper mache broad excreting shrieking sopranos. And what the hell you'd shriek to if yo had to.. oh never mind you're in Germany, you'll probably have to do worse on stage than that!
Oh, don't you know it!
This mighta been the most fun I've had on a Saturday morning in years. I'd gladly take second or third helpings.
Post a Comment