La Dolce Vita a la Bella
Toscana
With the deepest irony, Ed
called up to her, “Are
you home? — the love of his life with whom
he revitalized the abandoned old
house Bramasole
in the hill town of Cortona in
la bella Toscana
that his new wife Frances
Mayes had made world
famous with her romantic novel
Under the Tuscan
Sun that was made into a Hollywood cult classic
with Diane Lane, and which she
followed up with
a travel memoir that in my
lassitude I was nudged
to read (it was sitting on
my sunroom bookshelf for
years), reacquainting myself with my own native
land, though I was born in rustic
southern Calabria;
but not until page 100 did I
see that Bella Tuscany:
The Sweet Life in Italy was so much more than a
travel memoir of la dolce
vita a la bella Toscana
with her new husband that it engaged
me on a whole
new level, as books often do
when they speak to my
soul; and Frances Mayes spoke
to that long-resolved
part of myself (having found
my own home in beautiful
Georgian Bay) when she quoted the then Attorney
General of the USA Ramsey
Clark, who reflected
her deepest longing: “When I
die, I want to be so
exhausted that you can throw
me on the scrap heap,”
a philosophy that she adopted
and exhausted every
single day without reservation
from the day she
resigned her position as chair
of the Creative Writing
Department at the San Francisco
State University
that failed to nourish the deep
longing in her soul for
wholeness as she had hoped, echoing
the Preachers
words in Ecclesiastes—
“What is replenishing? What
is depleting? What takes? What
gives? What rings you
out and, truly, what rinses
you with happiness? What
comes from my own labor and creativity,
regardless
of what anyone else thinks of
it, stays close to the
natural joy we are all born with
and carry always.”
Indeed, “What profit hath a
man of all his labors that
he taketh under the sun?” And Frances Mayes went
back to her love of teaching creative
writing and poetry
to her students and doing what
satisfied her longing
for wholeness, travelling to the
ancient Etruscan town
of Cortona in la bella
Toscana and bringing back to
life that abandoned old farm house
Bramasole,
which she had foreshadowed early
in her memoir
when she quoted one of her favorite
books, Nabokov’s
Speak Memory, revealing the deep hollow in her own
soul like the godless author of
that scandalous novel
Lolita: “The cradle rocks above the abyss, and common
sense tells us that our
existence is but a brief crack
of light between two
eternities of darkness,” and she
revealed to her more discerning
readers when she
brought her soul-searching travel
memoir Bella Tuscany:
The Sweet Life in Italy to happy literary resolution
when she quoted her fellow professor
husband and poet
who serendipitously called up to
her from the hilly
road to Bramasole “Are you home?”
that she was
letting the whole world know
she was home,
in every sense of the word.
