the grace of no a/c

“I think air conditioning is a little like…” I said to someone the other day. “You know how they say when someone takes drugs at first it gives them a high, then they have to take it to feel normal? I think we’ve gotten so accustomed to air conditioning that we have to have it to feel normal…” Not that I would compare air conditioning with drugs. Except that I just did. (And yes, I know that in some places, it is much more “necessary” than here.)

I do have an air conditioning unit in my apartment, and it is nice to know it is there in case the heat becomes unbearable. It’s just that I’ve found I can bear so much more than I think I can. I haven’t turned the A/C on, because now I forget that it’s there, and I’m afraid that if I remember it will be hard to turn it off again.

Brea and I went out for a pizza the other night, and asked if there was air conditioning in the indoor part of the restaurant. “Sure,” the waiter said. “It’s ‘conditioned’ by the oven.” We sat outside.

I went for a walk a couple of evenings ago, and watched the reflections of the lights shimmer in the river, then the shadow of a person moving between the lamp and the dark water. I smelled the moisture of the grass under a sprinkler. A cool breath of breeze lifted off the water; a merciful respite. No—the breeze hadn’t stopped the heat—it was still there—so it couldn’t be mercy. It was a thing-in-itself; a grace.

There are other graces that I wouldn’t be aware of without the pressure of the heat: coldicygelato sliding down my throat, water, ice cubes, electric fans, the movement of air when I ride my bike, thrilling cold showers (how spoiled must I be to want them warm in the summer?). Life isn’t air-conditioning, and summer isn’t punishment. Life isn’t the pain in my leg, it is the grace of having one, two of them—what superfluity!

I was reading two books where the characters were overwhelmed with awareness, and hence gratitude; but in one, “god” was everything, and so nothing, in the other the man was grateful because he realized that life came from outside of himself.

Today, after a month of holding its breath the sky let it out with a cool breezy laugh, and walking was almost floating, or dancing. I can see the stars from my balcony; they are an unexpected boon. I remember to water my basil, and the night smells green with grace.

Here and Now

I had to go to Carpi the other day to run an errand, and couldn’t catch the morning train because of an appointment here, but I would still make it in time if I got the afternoon one. So I got to the train station 15 minutes early, because I still needed to buy my ticket and I like having lots of time. I would have, too, if the self-service machines had been working, but they weren’t, so the line for the real-people ticket counter was long when I joined it. Everyone was a little tense, since we’d all had the same plan. A large group of soldiers (out of uniform; they looked so young I thought they were a soccer team until I read the duffel bags) were all trying to figure out how to get their tickets, yelling at their buddies farther up in the line to get them one too. A man cut in front of me where the line turned the corner (corners are hard to protect) and I glared at his back. The dark foreign girl in front of me glanced sideways as he cut her off too, and she and I smiled at each other, listening to all the tension around us. It wasn’t going to make things go any faster. Finally it was my turn and I quickly said what I wanted, paid, grabbed the ticket and started to run without grabbing the return ticket. “Signora,” he started calling me back, and the soldier next in line brought it to me. “Signora, your ticket.” I thanked him and ran, realizing that I must be getting older, since everyone used to call me “Signorina.” I made the train.

Walking through the piazza a veritable Signora stopped me. “Signorina.” (Not Signora, notice.) I paused, my mind running through the possibilities as I looked at her. She probably wasn’t begging, since she was an older Italian lady. Maybe a Jehovah’s Witness—they like to stop me on the street to proselytize (but so do the evangelicals—I once had a very difficult time trying to convince one that I did in fact know Jesus until his friend recognized me). So I stopped and smiled. “Signorina, you’re very pretty.” I laughed, ruefully thinking of how un-pretty I’d been feeling earlier in the day, and realizing how foolish that was to fret over; realizing that sometimes it takes eyes looking for beauty to see it, and wanting to tell her that; wanting to tell her that it is God who creates beauty and who is the beautiful. Some mixed-up version came out of my mouth.

“Don’t you have anyone?” she asked, and I started to shake my head, accustomed to old ladies asking about a boyfriend, but she went on, “A mother or anyone?” “No…” I smiled, “My mother isn’t here…” “Come with me,” she responded. “Oh—I’m sorry—I can’t…” “Why not?” she asked. “Well, I don’t go with strangers…” I said. “I’m not a stranger. I would be like a mother to you,” she urged. I shook my head and smiled a little, wondering how lonely she must be, and what I ought to do if she continued to insist. But she just smiled and started walking away. Ciao, bella.

I rode the train back, in the late evening light which is so helpful for seeing things the way they are, with Aldous Huxley’s Island beside me for company.

‘Here and now, boys,’ shouted a talking bird.

‘Shut up! Will shouted back.

‘Here and now, boys,’ the mynah repeated. ‘Here and now, boys. Here and…’

‘Shut up!’

There was silence.

‘I had to shut him up, Will explained, ‘because of course he’s absolutely right. Here, boys; now, boys. Then and there are absolutely irrelevant. Or aren’t they? What about your husband’s death, for example? Is that irrelevant?’

Susila looked at him for a moment in silence, then slowly nodded her head. ‘In the context of what I have to do now—yes, completely irrelevant! That’s something I had to learn.’

‘Does one learn how to forget?’

‘It isn’t a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past. How to be there with the dead and yet still be here, on the spot, with the living.’ She gave him a sad little smile and added, ‘It isn’t easy.’

I stood at the open window, and looked, at the sun on the leaves, at the hares darting through the deep furrows in the fields, at the rainbows made by the sprinklers irrigating the corn, at the people sitting on bikes, waiting for the train to pass. I listened to the crickets and the squeal of the brakes and the greetings of friends, and smelled, yes even the manure. They weren’t just blurs outside the window of my life; they were there, and would be even when I wasn’t present to see them. Even when I wasn’t paying attention.