Sunday Street Fire
After we got into chatting about faith and religions on Saturday evening, Elena and Giampaolo invited me to join them the next day at 2pm at their temple for a ceremony celebrating their founder’s 116th birthday, well, the anniversary because he’s dead. I woke up at 11am a slow-moving dinosaur, slightly hungover from prosecco and white wine at the dinner.
Coincidentally (or NOT?!) my AirBnB host Helena was also Buddhist but a different type; she had an altar in the living room and did chanting over Zoom daily, which she’d warned me about upon arrival - just that I might hear it. And I did and it was a very grounding soothing droning to me because I couldn’t pick up the words. So of course I shared with her that my hosts from the dinner were Buddhist, too. There seemed to be some inter-Buddhist competition when I told her Elena and Giampaolo’s temple was near Porta Romana; she was like Mariah talking about J.Lo: “I don’t know her.” But she said the chanting she does brings good luck and everyone who visits her house has good luck so I will excuse the shade.
Made my way to the Shinnyo-en temple via Metro with slight detours (Milan Marathon was finishing up) and a quick stop into Castello Sforzesco to see the Michelangelo Rondanini Pieta which reminded me of I Prigionieri Scavi at Accademia in Florence – unfinished but very much alive.
I met Elena outside the temple a bit late because I’d quickly stopped to grab a piece of pizza (fior di zucca) and a Coke Zero. As we chatted outside for a minute, two policemen popped out of their car parked nearby. In Italian, one of them started asking Elena if the temple was open because he had a friend who worked or prayed there, I couldn’t quite catch it, but she recognized whatever name they’d said and invited them in. The temple isn’t open to visitors as usual, due to Covid – members can bring guests but have to reserve a spot but it seemed the police were given dispensation. Their police boots didn’t seem easy to get in and out of, so they borrowed those hairnet looking covers for their shoes and tromped through a tour: me with no shoes, Elena my new 50 year old Italian bestie who I met 18 hours prior with no shoes, and two Italian policemen with bags on their feet walking through a Buddhist temple.
With industrial mauve carpet and overhead lights, the ceremony space was unremarkable except for the altar with gold statues of Buddha and the founder’s family and bowls of oranges and incense and candles set on red and black lacquer furniture. Elena showed me how to hold the wooden prayer beads, looping them around my middle finger of the left hand with a certain bead at the top, then crossing hands, and I thought of how we learned in grammar school to hold the Rosary and which bead meant which prayer: so other traditions also give a reverent specificity these inanimate items. Elena explained before prayer, they rub the beads between the palms three times before ‘throwing’ outward with the top hand the bad or sad things, giving them over to the Buddha.
The ceremony including chanting and also the viewing of a pre-recorded service that’d taken place in Japan a couple days prior. It was dubbed in Italian, but one of the temple’s monks gave me a printout of the transcript in English so I could follow along. A lot of praise for the teacher and the sect he founded (not sure of the words used for the various Buddhist denominations; someone please correct me), alternating between speeches by the current master who is a woman!, and chanting in real time. Elena sat between me and another new person, Jack, pointing out which chants we could participate in, and which were only for initiated members.
After the ceremony, Elena went to do meditation or shessin, so Jack and I went downstairs to the lobby to wait. Jack from South Korea also spoke English so we immediately started chatting. He very politely asked me what brings me to Italy, and I came in hot with “oh well I just got divorced so I’m doing this trip” and he said “so like the movie…Eat, Pray, Love?” We laughed and I said yes, and two days in, I’m at the pray already.
Is that a rom-com meet-cute or what???
BUT alas, there was no apparent love connection between Jack and me, though we did have a lovely afternoon into evening talking about Major Life Events, expectations of self and others, the addiction to external validation, jobs and careers, etc. We wandered around Milan having drinks and pizza for almost 8 hours. It was nice to remember how to act with new people, to remember that I can be funny and interesting and go beyond small talk with humans who aren’t related to me or friends from my first act.
So the story about my calling Italian 911, which is 112: as Jack and I walked to the metro to part ways around midnight, we saw smoke coming out of the sidewalk. Getting closer, because yes, walk toward that, we could see full-on flames licking 10 feet in the air out of a subway grate. It wasn’t a crowded area, but some groups walked by nonplussed. We stopped, because yes, stand right near it, and decided I should call Italian 911 because I could ‘speak Italian.’ Jack looked up the number, I called and immediately said in English “Hi I don’t really speak Italian but there’s a fire on the street?” Sirens blared from around the corner and it was evident someone must have called; I guess they just know better than to stand there. I hung up with the operator and the firemen started running over. By now a small crowd had gathered to watch and film it, of course, while the firemen seemed to just…look at it? They eventually pulled the hoses over and cleared us away but for some reason I felt very American imperialist for calling 112, like this self-aggrandizing sense of duty or propriety like oh something is amiss somewhere? Let ME intervene!
I’ve been here a week now. I’m realizing that for this blog I’m not interested in recounting every detail of every day because there’s an assignment feeling to that. And the step by step doesn’t make sense when I try to capture it. This week of adjustment has been one of realizing how much performance I’ve done, instead of existence. I’m making decisions most times for an audience that I’m trying to get to like me, instead of saying or doing what I want regardless of that external validation and expectation.
Again, the issue of ‘they’ and their approval looms. Here I’m trying to be approved of by Italians – to be found pleasing. Not sure what etymology of ‘approval’ is, but it sounds like provare: to try. To try to be part of the group. My fear is being rejected for existing, for not dancing the choreographed steps and getting fired from the chorus, and being left out in the wings solo. But this performance of trying to be accepted by basically…everyone... is a set up for feeling like I’m failing. The generic ‘them” is inherently not able to be satisfied because it’s not able to be defined. More later.