May Letter: A City in Bloom
It's jasmine season in Rome and it smells so good!
If I had to sum up May for you it would be in the form of a perfume, specifically jasmine. How I wish I could bottle up the fragrance and send it to you! It is peak jasmine season in Rome and the blooms are intoxicating, climbing up gates, cascading down walls, disappearing into the night. At dawn their sweetness floats in through open windows and settles on forgotten laundry and I wake up wanting to eat these puffy and perfumed white stars for breakfast.
I feel like I spent May smushed between people on buses and metros. If only I’d pinned a few jasmine blooms on me it might have been more pleasant. It’s getting crowded out there but surely I mentioned that back in April?Â
I started the month with a photography exhibit at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere. I went to see the Hilde Lotz-Bauer show featuring her prints of her time in Italy. She is considered to be one of the first women street photographers and along with glass plates carried a Leica across the country between 1934-43. I complain about how heavy my camera is and am lucky to snap photos with my phone nowadays. I was most struck by her artful compositions, the story each frame tells, as if perfectly planned. Did she anticipate people lining up just so or was it sheer luck? It was comforting to see her photos of favorite places in Rome realizing that I’m not alone in this angsty love of place. Every repeat photo of a ruin or a favorite arch I think okay basta how many photos of that do you really need?? She needed just one.Â
Along with preservation photography as an art historian, her work documented rural life across Italy. Peering into silvery portraits of Southern Italians making miracles from white stone and parched land I placed my ancestors toiling away on that timeline, aware that each child could have been my father. Are any of them still alive?
May was for keeping close to home and spending time with everyday people in my neighborhood. From the tailor to the old-style trattoria still run by the same family, every errand and outing seemed like travelling back to simpler days. This week I had a vest that needed cleaning and repair. I could sew on my own buttons but I like taking it to the tintoria nearby where the couple who own the laundromat still smile at each other and Maria yells out to her husband Salvatore for help with the POS machine: Salvatore!!! That name takes me back to memories that aren’t even mine. It’s worth it just for that. Salvatore*, save me, save us - can these small shops be saved? I know their daughter will sell the place when they are gone. Running a business in Italy is hard. Â
Speaking of doing business and getting anything done in Italy, particularly Rome, along with a group of friends I have formed a fledgling (soon to be) non-profit that will partner with the Botanical Garden of Rome for upgrades and preservation of one of the oldest botanic gardens in Europe. It is in a bit of a tired state and we are hoping to support their efforts in keeping this downtown green space alive. Located in Trastevere, it is a lovely quiet space, perfect for gentle walks and lying on the grass to read, channeling your best Bloomsbury vibes. There is even a butterfly garden. If you are interested in knowing more about our group you can check it out here.
I closed out May with a trip to Venice. I almost didn’t come back to Rome. La Serenissima is so decadently beautiful that I am just barely now shaking off her spell. More on that trip next time.
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Grazie e a presto!
Michelle
*Salvatore translates as Saviour, one of those names we unfortunately don’t have in English.
In case you missed it:
The Romance of Laundry
Photos of fresh laundry hanging from windows, balconies, and rooftop terraces across Italy are all over social media and are also a staple in travel guidebooks. I don’t know when laundry became so popular. Tourists look up pointing at laundry in awe as if they were at the foot of a temple. I agree that watching a white sheet billow out over narrow and winding cobblestone streets is mesmerizing; it makes me feel like I am sailing the Tyrrhenian Sea in summer. Why are we in love with laundry? Or is it just pretty when someone else does the washing?
Your words once again sweep me away across the planet to hover in the jasmine-filled spaces of Rome.
I found myself breathing in the sweet scent of Jasmine wishing I could be liberally sprinkled with the perfect white stars