things are coming to an end in the kitchen sink. yes. that is the affectionate term that i have found to relate to this pied-à-terre right smack in the middle of the swiss capital.
i call it a pied-à-terre only because although i spend a lot of time here and it is a rented, not an owned place, i do not consider this home. i am here often, this has been my office for the last few years, and i have rented the place from a very nice art gallery owner for almost eight years. this is the longest that i have ever rented a place. otherwise the family owns plenty of property, and what i call my beach apartment has been in family hands for almost twenty years, we (i.e. they, the family) still own the house where i was born. now you know, i was born at home and i never went to kindergarden. in a way, it explains a lot about me, although it does not explain why i am so poor and struggling to make ends meet.
i was in italy for a few days at the end of last week. one of my long standing fantasies has turned into reality, or at least the reality of last friday fairly closely approximated one of my fantasies. there is a man in my life, i call him a representation of paradise, and last friday my paradise had a few meetings in town - milano - and i had a few hours to spend in said town. you know the scala, and the galleria, the duomo, and all those things, that is milano.
he dropped me off by a metro station and i headed to the center in search of the american bookshop because there was a book that i was looking for. paradise, himself an english speaking gentleman, did warm me that it was unlikely that i would find that book there, but i had to check it out. forget armani, forget prada, i head for the bookshops and the cafés. i did the lunch thing at peck and then wondered around towards the castello sforzesco. indeed, the book, the said book, which i do not feel at liberty to mention here, was not available. just a couple of weeks i had met the author of said book at a conference, and i ended up publicly disagreeing with the fellow. now to my own embarrassment i realize that i do not have a clue of what i was talking about and i ought to read his freaking book, if i am to get into an argument with him. being much too something-or-other to simply order it from amazon, i prefer to either buy it at the bookstore or yes order it online, but from my local bookshop. simply i have not gotten around to it - it reminds me that i am supposed to be packing my other thousand or so books - thus the wild goose chase for the book in milano, a most unlikely place to go book hunting for a book by an american author. this author is well known, however not that well known that his most recent book would be stocked in the american bookshop in milano.
eventually, i had taken enough of the city for one day, and it was time to sit down, that is, reading and making notes. i gravitated towards the galleria, and walked by the hyatt park hotel. i was more in the mood for a chaotic and down to earth drinking hole, but after poking my nose in a few, i did not find that one that i had wanted to find. for want of anything else, i went into the hyatt's bar. it was empty. i ordered a coffee and a mineral water, sent back the complimentary biscuits with a smile and after being reassured that they were home made - at the hyatt - again i smiled and explained that i was allergic to the stuff. got lots of sympathy from a young and handsome italian man, the waiter. there i spent a couple of hours until some american television presenter or something like that came in with two friends and their conversation got much too interesting to allow for any of my own spin. eavesdropping on americans abroad remains one of those perversions of mine. that is not what made my day.
after his meetings we met again at the same metro station, and we quickly decided to go out of the city for our evening. he took me to one of this favorite places on the lago di como, and there we contemplated the sights and exchanged impressions on the events of the day and the past weeks, a conversation that we had already started on our drive out of the city. the usual friday evening thing that two middle aged adults do, an aperitif and the dinner, some conversation, some laughter, a few glasses of wine and grappa. still, the whole day was as close as i have come to a very old fantasy of mine: spending the day doing autonomous activities and coming together in the evening with no expectations. it sounds so absolutely banal, and what made it precious to me was the intent of the day... it was a day without much of a purpose for me other than to just be there, to be with him. to be with him even when i was minding my own exploration of milano. trivial, simple, pleasurable, and marked by a sense of freedom that i do not always taste. it meant not thinking about the kitchen sink, forgetting blogging, ignoring the internet, and yet doing what i like doing: watching people and places, and being with another unromantic soul who loves to just unwind on the lake' shore.
still here.
