They're still talking about it, during the night it was heard very clearly. There in Piazza Farnese , the French that face the square confirmed, that It wasn't a Jacobin; the bustling of the eight reindeer and the gurgling of the fountains blended into a single song. From Campo de' Fiori a drunk poked his head up from the steps under Giordano Bruno and some tourists filmed and photographed. A large-as-life Father Christmas, dressed in red, the right beard, sleigh, the lot. The Council had down a grand job, even the time was precise. The Landlord at Campioneschi came out with a bottle of Frascati and a glass and the ol' geezer toasted joyously, all typical of a Roman Christmas. Well of course, seeing reindeer take off, with the sleigh and Santa in the blink of an eye left you gobsmacked!! From the lovers' Gianicolo they reported a strange vehicle almost hitting the Cupolone and the police were notified; it was since Flaiano's era that a Martian hadn't passed through Rome. The kids that found out were ecstatic.
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Those were times of great drinkers. Under the bushels after fettuccini with chicken offal, stew, puntarelle salads heavily dressed in anchovy and garlic salsa, romanesque artichokes, broad beans and pecorino cheese, all hosed down with liters of tasty white wine. Men and women's jolly laughter echoed as the children watched curiously. There was always some considerate husband that, with tearful and narrow eyes, insisted on filling the ladies' glasses, that till then had avoided, soberly. Cheerful play that became joyous; loud laughter moved the air, languid glances were omens of passionate hours to follow. Those beautiful women with rosy cheeks were now equal. They drank their wine like those that were re-confirming an oath. That was the party; ties signed and sealed once again and sins forgiven. The alliance was united and the world was a happier place, when the women drank.
A flash of lightening, rumbles of thunder and a water-bomb storm. Tv gone, internet, electric lights, heating. The virtual world gone completely. Thank goodness the fire was alight. Us poor souls that still keep a lit fire to see flickers and flames, whilst others have replaced them with sterile, similar, false and fake electric fires. Ours offers us a glimmer of primordial light and intense warmth. Where are the torches? The candles? Nothing... taken completely unprepared by an unexpected rebellion of nature… What's the point of you going around flicking the fused light switches up and down, or making improbable conversations with stuck telephonic recordings that ask you for series of unknown numbers and letters? I put twenty chestnuts, survivors of the newly arrived parasite that has come from the other side of the World, onto the embers and I breathe in the intense perfume of Autumn. Get that bottle of fruity and mellow red wine will you? I'll bring the peeled chestnuts. Get under the blankets. The pelting outside is heavy, almost vindictive. Let's shut ourselves in here, skin to skin, and wait till it blows over, that it gets back to normal, or maybe not. Maybe this is normal life. That helps us in the wait for nothing. Too many questions, hand me my glass, don't get crumbs in the bed, caress me. It had turned dark at the Osteria there in Campo Marzio, I was eating bruscolini and drinking Frascati, when Giggetto from Monti approached me and comes out with something like this ''You know Adele left me for Sorcio, from San Giovanni'', and he's really upset. Giggetto is a good bloke, stocky but a loner and always polite enough.
''Don't let it get at you Giggè, drink this Frascati, not much you can do about it. Leave it out, Adele didn't deserve you.'' ''Who cares about Adele'' he says '' a man that after 5 minutes is still thinking about a woman aint' a man..but what about my honor? what will people say?'' ''Don't bother about that'' I tell him, ''Sorcio is a bright spark, I've seen him as fast as a bolt of lightening. You know Giggè I'm not frightened even of the Devil, but leave it out..have a drink, cop a hold of these bruscolini.'' The day after I found out that Giggetto had challenged the Sorcio in a shop in Trastevere and the rat had killed him, just like that. A week later when I went dancing on the boats down at the Tiberina. Maria, my girl with pubes as black as a crow, tits as white as milk and silky legs that are all mine, was all dolled up. The night was going well, everyone knows my breath ain't sweet and a troublemaker tried to rub me up the wrong way, a dark haired guy from the Casilina started to pick a fight. I've had to deal with that before. He tries it on with Maria, he wants her to dance and shows off. So I go up to him. ''So, what's up with you? Got something to say have you old man?'' Maria clings to my side and everyone stops dancing and silence falls. She says ''Here Romolo, I reckon you need a knife''. But I don't pick it up, I look at it and then turn to the dark haired guy and I say, ''Pack it in''. Try saying that I'm scared if you want, say what you like, but I turn and leave. I'm gone. I've lived in the Castelli ever since. People are quieter. Bruscolini are salted pumpkin seeds Tiberina refers to the Tiberina Island in the middle of the Tiber River. Bets and Perfume I would have thrown in the towel then. Fuck you Post office, and you bald old boss with your stink of peanut butter. Get out of bed Buk, I told myself on the third day. Dig out your sweepstake, the track has already answered plenty of your most complicated problems. I betted with cunning, no shit, just how a real winner should. Five in a row on a couple of martingales I managed to hit. Little on the loser, a lot on the favorite with an eye on the tote…horses are for professionals, not like posting a few letters chased by dogs or jotting down a few ass-licking lines! That was a real inspired period, Tuesday and Thursday I'd raise my couple of hundred bucks, then you bet the bed welcomed me happily, sausages and white wine kept me company. Then one Tuesday I met her. Lean, with tall withers, her nipples pricked her tight grey jumper, her calfs went way up above the slit in her skirt and her blond hair went down to meet them. She had just recovered from a bad accident, she had had others and I just went head on, consciously, without brakes, knowing straight away that I would have enjoyed the ride but come out really badly, just like a sure winner. I downed a glass of Frascati, there at the track bar and ran to meet her. I pulled it slowly, without spilling a drop. Slowly it rose up the tankard, vermillion red, perfumes of rose-hip, blackberry and raspberry that fill the cellar. The salami sliced thick and fragrant bread, on a dark wooden board, a pagan altar to a simple joy of sharing a sublime pleasure. Sit down. Pass me your glass, I'll pour you a drop of this red emotion, break the bread, take some, friend - taste my blood, establish this not disrespectful communion with me. See, the World that divided us now seems more shareable: a small miracle is happening, we are living a happy moment. Something now so rare in this bedlam that we call life. Drink and eat, tell me your stories. Yeah, we can now truly claim to be blood-brothers. No. Violence had nothing to do with it, it was the way it was in those days. A world with its own rules, hierarchies, honours to defend and fiery passions. You could see them under the pergolas, chatting friendly, in shirt-sleeves, laughing thunderously, playing morra or tresette and drinking golden-yellow wine in liter or half-liter carafes that came and went. Lupin beans and pumpkin seeds, as salty as the sea, accompanied those Roman Sundays. Then came the Passatella, once dusk arrived and the inn-keeper had cut the porchetta and drained the olives from their brine. A perfidious game that determined who was a winner and who was a loser. The poor stooge having to suffer watching the cocky way the leader could drink while he couldn't! At the very least they'd go home tipsy and ready for another hard-week's grind. But if the wrong word flew here and there and got taken the wrong way, igniting an argument, in just a moment those jackets hanging casually over their shoulders would get wrapped round their arms, as shields, defending from long flashing knives that could easily turn red. Ancient times, no more violent than those of today. Stories of men of honour and of knives. Men of vanished inns, lost in times gone-by. A Rome that is no more. Picture of an etching by Meo Pinelli. Eternal Wines. I'm old enough now that the vineyards that I plant will outlive me by a long way. But I'm used to this thought, I've been aware of this now for at least a couple of decades. Harder to accept is the fact that some bottles will have that same possibility. I can only hope in a faulty cork or the gratitude of those that will prefer to drink them. Who knows, maybe to my own, useless health. But here a recollection comes to my assistance, of a great 'enotecaro', as we call them here in Rome. Those men that dedicate their work to selling wines and to spreading the verb of the the vine. Well, one day, as he put his hand on my shoulder - we often use physical contact here to express feelings - this man led me, a new and curious novice of the nectar, with fatherly care, whilst I interrogated him on the life span of various bottles, to one of the deepest corners of his cellar. 'Come', he said, 'this is where I keep my Eternal Wines. Special and inconsumable'. I was amazed to see, perfectly ordered, one after the other, hundreds of bottle…empty! Each one bearing a date, with names, memories; we looked each other in the eye, in perfect complicity. I got it. I continued to see him for years, though never, did we ever speak of it again. But now that he is no longer with us, I would so like to ask him; who was that Giulia, Barolo 1959, that I had glanced at and noticed while I saw his eye twinkle mischievously looking in the same place? Certainly, not just an empty bottle. I'll go and toast to that with a tipple…. Eternity exists. Buk and the right to be understood.
I've often been asked, well educated and ravenous journalists, now that I no longer have to struggle at the post office, but can pay for my own sweepstakes and drink with my own pen, whether my insensitivity, denoted by my passion for sex and the glass, are for real, or just for show. Well, once and for all, beat generation or not, Miller or Keruac or whoever they were, my Spoon River is this! Why bother interrogating me whether it was or will be, if we could or shall…Come here honey, kiss me, put up with my long whiskers and appreciate my weaknesses, these are what make me unique, your keepsake, that, maybe one day, you will even mourn. This is my sensitivity and freedom, to have dug through the mud finding a reason to live. You lot, go on producing, burning, skinning each other alive, but leave me here, with my perpetual, convinced, apparent, insensitivity..come here Linda, uncork that white and pour it carefully, Old Buk won't betray you. Meditrinalia, I'll drink to that!
This is a celebration dedicated to the making and tasting of old and new wine - “Novus-vetus vinum libo, novo-veteri vino morbo medeor” (“I drink new-old wine, I treat illness with this new-old wine”). The name Meditrinalia is based on this ancient formula, reported by writer Varrone, and the curative powers of wine. Little information about the Meditrinalia survived from early Roman religion, although the tradition itself did. It was known to be somehow connected toJupiter and to have been an important ceremony in early agricultural Rome. Meditrina was a Roman goddess who seems to have been a late Roman invention to account for the origin of Meditrinalia. The earliest account of associating the Meditrinalia with such a goddess was by 2nd century grammarian Sextus Pompeius Festus, on the basis of which she is asserted by modern sources to be the Roman goddess of health, longevity and wine, or also "healer" as some suggest. |
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