Back to Italy (2) – Barbecue sausages and cicadas

What obsesses Italian people is the quality of our own food. We apparently eat to fulfil the belly yearns as every other human being, but - more importantly – we wish to warm up the soul. We use food as a social magnet and food becomes always the occasion to gather together, to interlace new friendships, to celebrate, to emphasise, to magnify the importance of a conversation: even a coffee turns into an event, especially if the chosen café combines excellent coffee with superb croissants:

"Cornetto" and croissant are severely different

(picture taken by Barbara Bazzoni®)

Dulcis in fundo, an incredible patisserie

with pretty harsh service:

http://www.pasticceriadulcisinfundobologna.it/

Worthy visiting though: via Murri 39, Bologna, Italy

A very nice happening I was invited to was a barbecue in a joyful location on the Apennines, where we lighted on some chestnut wood and we had the most amazing food: from the grill to the dish. Simon, the friend who organized the escapade, belongs to that exclusive circle of companions I know since kindergarten: he is still very loyal to his true Self. 

If you light it on with Lavender scrubs

a pleasant scent substitues

the chemicals of newspaper 

or other easy tricks.

Besides, the affection for this place is deeply rooted into my heart, cause I used to go there when I was a child and it is absolutely incredible how - after more that twenty years - the same people like to meet up again with the enthusiasm of a new experience. An eternal return of the same, as Friederich Nietzsche would have phrased it:

David Boyd Etching, edition 60, titled "The Eternal Return"

This cot – which now has been transformed into proper cottage - is unique and simple, not even worthy of a picture that will spoil imagination. The whole atmosphere is indescribable: there are woody hills all around and modern vanes, in a distance, that integrate beautifully with the landscape. A little garden hosting garlic, spring onions (although it was September) and tomatoes is often ransacked by wild creatures: unicorns, moles and boars. An abandoned heap of bricks that once was a timbers’ house - my friend’s ancestors – gives a romantic effect and now hosts dark colonies of friendly scorpions.

The wind mills on the horizon

A postcard in the postcard

The enclave of Castel del Rio (River Castel) is nearby Imola, the town where the Brazilian F1 pilot Ayrton Senna fatefully faded out in 1994 (and another pilot, Roland Ratzenberger died the day before, but he was less famous, and a few people remember him, I dwell in this number!) I still keep in mind our primary school teacher asking us to write a composition whether or not it was licit (and wise) to risk human lives for a sport, showing no mercy and compassion to the unfortunate use of courage. It is difficult for me, even nowadays, to express an opinion. The loss was great and both the pilots left a huge void, such as when Hector dies in the Iliad. We, as children, were deprived of a living superhero, and we confronted with a new reality: invulnerability wasn’t an issue anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayrton_Senna

Despite this gloomy memory, for which I apologise, the barbecue went on pretty well: the half-mountain air opens the stomach and the smell of grilling meat attracts wolves from all the woody lands…kidding. There are wolves there, but apparently they come out only during the night, hunting hogs and red deer. An Italian barbecue is slightly different from an American one: if you suggest providing some hamburger, for instance, it is very likely that you will be answered with a cluster of reproaches: especially because ketchup, brown sauce, mustard are seen as an unhealthy dressings. I disagree on mustard, but I shall keep this consideration for a different post!

The Marsican wolf

The typical Italian boar

We had sausages and hand made kebabs (obtained putting into a line on a wooden recyclable spit it different kinds of meats, interrupted by vegetables), we had a vegetarian quiche, roasted aubergines, home made bread by Isabel and John and at least three desserts (two cakes and some éclairs):

Several sorts of meat

Pork sausage

After the never-ending supper, when we all were almost light and energetic as a Michelin boy, we went out for separate walks into the woodland with the person we loved the most: some of us collected wild fruits that grow almost spontaneously and I was lucky enough to spot a boletus luridus (literally filthy boletus), of the same praiseworthy porcini family [I may be utterly wrong]. It does turn blue when you cut into its perfumed flesh:

Plums, four-leaf clover, mulberries, and bited wild apple.

The MUSHROOM (boletus luridus)

Yet in the end, what flabbergasted me was a cicada moult, I came across during late afternoon. When the Sun started sinking beyond the distant foliages, the light hit this vacant skin. I had the distinct feeling that the moult summarised not just that enjoyable day, but the entire bunch of emotions called out to surface by the location: we - with all our scattered impressions and sensibilities - were like that cicada envelope in the dying sun. Our feelings were similar to the golden light, which gave consistency to an empty case:

Poetry in the sun