Coccolare

The Italian verb 'coccolare' means to cuddle. While the English word is cute and sounds a lot like the act that it describes, the Italian version is so much more evocative. But that is what the Italian language is all about - it's not just for communicating, but it is also an art. Something to be savored for its beauty and its utility. Unfortunately, I don't think that English is very beautiful - it serves well for communicating but doesn't roll off the tongue in a way that Italian does.

Another meaning for 'coccolare' is 'to spoil'. How interesting that the word should have such divergent meanings! But then again, perhaps cuddling and spoiling are not so very different.

Tendons

We all have a past, some of us longer than others. Mostly it is buried in our brains, and never resurfaces. Sometimes memories are released, by a smell, an image, a sound. Suddenly they are there in perfect clarity, as if they had happened only yesterday. I like blogging because I can capture these memories when they resurface.

Here's one.

I was in college, Cornell University, winter 1974. My senior year, living in a house perched on the side of a gorge, with three other guys. I slept in a room with my good friend, Tom. We used to talk a lot. I was into photography, took pictures all the time, and wanted to do it for a living. Tom and I were talking about photographing women; I had just shot a model for a photography class.

I said to Tom, you know what I really like about a woman's body? The way tendons look under the skin. Such as the tendons behind the knee, on the sides of the neck. They show you what is really beneath the skin.

He looked at me an smiled. Now I really understand you, he said.

The only time anyone has ever said they understood me. Because I certainly don't.

Il cognome racaniello

If you search google for 'Racaniello', you get a post (see below) from the Italian wikipedia site which provides the following information. If you are interested, paste it in Google translate to read it in English. Looks like the Racaniello name dates back a long time, to a noble Umbrian family.

I wonder if we are related, albeit distantly. It would be great one day to try and track my family as far back as possible. I am sure this would require an extended trip to Italy. Perhaps I should first start in my father's town, Castelgrande.

"Racaniello, famiglia nobile di origine Umbra di cui parecchi membri ebbero cariche pubbliche in Todi. Un ramo di essa si trasferì nelle puglie nel 1412 al servizio del vescovo Dondei di Bari. Un'altra parte della famiglia si trasferì nel 1405 sotto la protezione degli Albizzi per i quali con Ludovico Racaniello capitano di Montecchio svolse il ruolo di procuratore di Arezzo (1419).

Ludovico Racaniello fu un capitano di ventura ( Todi 1352 – Montecchio 1441), primogenito di Riccardo e discendente da una nobile famiglia umbra.

Dopo alcuni anni dedicati, sotto l’indirizzo del padre, agli studi di legge, nel 1376 alla morte di lui, si trovò sulle spalle la responsabilità della famiglia. Abbandonati gli studi, si mise allora al servizio di Ercole I, dedicandosi così alla carriera militare che, grazie ad una notevole abilità di comando, lo vide in breve raccogliere numerosi successi.

Nel 1380 si sposò con la Giulia Albizzi figlia di Maso Albizzi, assicurandosi in tal mondo i favori della potente famiglia che in quegli anni aveva conquistato il potere a Firenze.

Nel 1385, un anno dopo l’acquisizione di Arezzo da parte di Firenze, Racaniello divenne capitano della rocca di Montecchio, base di un potere sempre più grande che, negli anni a seguire, lo videro espandere la propria influenza nell’intera val di Chiana.

Nel 1397 entrò in conflitto con la famiglia dei Casali per il possesso di Cortona, conflitto che si protrasse per più di quindici anni, fino al 1411, anno in cui il territorio passò sotto il controllo di Firenze e rientrò nel ducato di Racaniello. Nel 1419 Rinaldo Albizzi gli affidò la carica di proconsole di Arezzo.

Firenze nel 1434 passò sotto il controllo dei Medici e Racaniello dimostrò di essere oltre ad un ottimo condottiero anche un eccelso diplomatico. Nonostante gli anni passati al servizio della famiglia rivale nel controllo di Firenze, infatti, riuscì ad ingraziarsi la famiglia medicea, che non pretese nessun ridimensionamento dei territori amministrati dal ducato di Racaniello e lo riconobbe come garante del potere della signoria fiorentina su quelle stesse terre.

Rule of the day

Now and then I frequent a rather irreverent website whose main function is to make fun of celebreties. I won't post the link because it's not family-friendly. Today I found something interesting there that I'd like to share. Now and the the webmaster publishes a 'rule of the day'. Here was todays:

"...for the ladies, and get this through your head, if a guy cheats on you, it's because he is not committed to you. If you dump him and he begs to get you back, it's only so he can dump you later. It's a power play. Ask Sienna Miller. In the end, you will thank me."

No further comments are necessary.

Second childhood

When I was much younger, I took years of clarinet lessons. I was quite good but never really connected with the licorice stick. Then towards the end of high school I decided to be cool and took guitar lessons. I did this for a few years; I loved it but my guitars were all poor quality and I never developed much talent.

Last year I saw that Fender made an inexpensive electric guitar, less than $200, and in red, no less. So I bought it. Now I'm trying to teach myself to play again, not only chords but picking notes. I want to get really, really good so I can stand outside, turn up the volume, play and have people turn their heads.

Last night I was playing "Go Your Own Way", an old Fleetwood Mac song which in the end is comprised of only five different chords. Very easy. I turned the 'distort' on in the amp and put the volume high. I was having a blast. Then my son Aidan came down and said to me, 'Mom says you're going through a second childhood'.

Perhaps. Does that mean I get to do everything over again? With the benefit of hindsight? Now THAT could be fun!

Balanchine on Ballet

In yesterday's post on ballet, I paraphrased George Balanchine, the creator of the New York City Ballet and choreographer extraordinaire. The nature of the exact quotation has been bothering me all day, so tonight I sat down with "Balanchine A Biography" by Bernard Taper (Times Books, 1984) which I had read many years ago. After some searching I found the quotation I had remembered after all these years.

It comes in the first chapter of the book, which describes how Balanchine created a ballet and taught it to his dancers. Here is the entire passage:

"While Balanchine was working on his choreography and transmitting it to the dancers, he concerned himself little with nuances of performance. The last few days before the premiere, he usually concentrated on that aspect: Getting his ensemble to approach his idea of perfection. Balanchine's style demands unusual precision and energy, and as he worked on his dancers' performance techniques he could be constantly heard exhorting them to more vigor, to more clarity in their attack on every movement. "Audience must be made aware that leg is your leg and is going right there!"...Balanchine's intense vision of beauty as the end result of all this was always present, however, and no one was permitted to forget it. "Isn't it selfish of you," he chided one corps de ballet member, "to expect three thousand people to sit and watch you lift your leg if you're not going to do it beautifully?"

It should come as no surprise that Balanchine's most famous statement is "Ballet is woman". Nearly all his ballets said it, just as they also said that the only way a man can achieve or approach the liberation of his soul is by the homage and devotion he shows woman.

I fear my soul has not yet been liberated....but it isn't too late to start now, is it?

Ballet

This post is not really about ballet, but about Wendy Whelan. She is a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet. In the 1980s, when I lived in NYC, I went to see the City ballet often, and I saw Ms. Whelan dance many times. She is a wonderful dancer. She fulfills George Balanchine's credo: that ballet be beautiful. He used to say to his dancers, when you dance, you always have to look beautiful. If you raise a leg, make sure it looks beautiful going up and going down. I loved his ballets because there were no plots; just beautiful dancing set to music.

Back to Ms. Whelan. She is now 38, and having danced for 20 years at the City Ballet, the question is how she will know when to stop. This is the topic of a NYTimes magazine article today. The article explores her growth into ballet, and also explores her relationship with her husband, an artist. They married last September; the article calls him 'her longtime boyfriend'. Here is the part I liked. They met in 1993, when he first asked her out. Then:

"That fall, like dancers in any pas de deux, they glimpsed their future but returned to separate lives on opposite coasts and got distracted in other relationships. They kept in touch; four years later the timing was right, and they moved in together. They were engaged in Venice in 2004."

It's nice to know that they glimpsed their futures but still did other things and even got distracted, but in the end realized their initial feelings were correct.

I suppose you could say they believed.

i carry your heart with me

I remember reading the poetry of ee cummings when I was in high school. It was my mother who explained to me that he used the arrangement of words on the page to enrich the message of the poem. My Mother, so conservative, got it! Now and then she would surprise me.

Today I was looking at some of ee cummings poetry when I found this one, which I particularly like. It seems to strike a chord with me these days. Hai capito?

Remember, the arrangement of words (missing spaces, lower case letters, funny grammar) is part of the poetry. That's why ee cummings was a master.


i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

by E. E. Cummings

Trial and Error?

This past Sunday I read an article in the NY Times magazine entitled "Trial and Error". Its thesis is that the scientific publishing system does little to prevent scientific fraud. I happen to agree with that; but another part of the article I strongly disagree with.

The author writes: "John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist, recently concluded that most articles published by biomedical journals are flat out wrong."

Che cazzo dici!

I am sorry, John, but your research is what is wrong. I do not agree that most articles are 'flat out wrong'. I have spent my career reading articles about viruses and I can tell you that most of them are correct. You just do not know how to do an experiment, John. You cannot possibly have sampled all the biomedical disciplines to make this conclusion, because you simply do not know enough about each one to determine whether the article is right or wrong. You probably never even looked at an article about viruses! Look at my publications - I would say most of them are right! I'm not trying to boast, it's just correct!

This is the kind of garbage that makes the public distrust scientists. It doesn't matter if the conclusion is patently ridiculous; the public cannot distinguish. They come away from reading the article thinking we all publish junk. Thanks a lot, NY Times. Nice work.

Believe

At the end of the movie 'Matrix Revolutions', Seraph says to the Oracle, 'Did you always know?' He is referring to the saving of Zion. She replies, 'Oh no... No, I didn't. But I believed... I believed.

I believed.

It may seem like drama, but in our everyday lives, believing is everything. If you do not believe you can do something, it will not happen. If you do believe - in yourself, in your abilities, in anything at all - you are on the right path. We cannot know the future, but we can believe.

I have always felt this way, and try to apply it subconsciously to every aspect of my life. For some reason, in the context of this movie, it made a particulary strong impression on me.

Cracked Cup

This morning, I was drinking my cup of coffee alone in the kitchen, as usual. I was using a large coffee mug, made of ceramic with nice blue designs on it. I used to have three of these mugs; then a few months ago one cracked. This morning I noticed the coffee was leaking from the bottom. So I took out the coffee and looked at the bottom of the mug, trying to find the crack.

I noticed stamped on the bottom of the cup: "P.B. Made in Italy".

I found the crack on the side, and threw out the cup. It made me quite sad. The reason is quite personal.

But there is a happy ending. Later my son saw the cup in the garbage, and asked me why I was throwing it out. I told him. He said, 'Why not use it as a pencil holder'. Great idea! So I rescued the mug, and now it sits on my desk, next to the monitor, full of pens.

Don't you love happy endings?

Heartbreak

A few weeks ago my daughter Nadia asked me what heartbreak is. I tried to explain it to her with some examples.

A friend of mine read my last post ('After') and told me that I really cannot tell Nadia what heartbreak is, because I have never experienced it.

I had not thought about that. I guess I was telling Nadia what I had read about in books, or have seen in movies. Not the real thing, of course. I am not sure I want to learn about it.

After

I stumbled across a blog by Doran Damon called 'Come Again'. He writes some very nice poetry. I was particularly struck by the following piece:

After
Doran Damon

Look at my hands.
See how they shake,
How they tremor?

Do you know
What it takes
To forget you?

But my heart will repair
In time.


I wonder...if you are truly in love, can your heart ever repair? Maybe when you do repair, it is because you were never in so deep to begin with.

I can't say that I have ever had to heal in this way. No one I cared for ever left me; I have always done the leaving. It's not a boast, just a statement of fact. I've been lucky, I guess. I hope I never have to experience the hands shaking and tremoring.

Masterpiece

Masterpiece

He drew small pictures for her
Each day
Scribbles on napkins
And notebook covers.

He said,
If I were an artist
I would draw you a masterpiece
Every day.

She said,
But you are an artist
and these are my masterpieces.

What Friends Are For

Each morning, I drive my two younger children to school, where I park and walk them to the front door. Most parents drop their kids off, but I like to walk them - we chat a bit and the kids like it too. And once these years are gone...

Today our daughter was unhappy - she did not like how her pants fit; they were too low on her hips, and her socks were falling down. She was in a foul mood for breakfast, and during the walk to school, she freaked out and started crying. All because of the pants and socks. I picked up her backpack and put my arm around her tiny shoulder, and told her I would fix her socks at the school entrance. But on the way, one of her little friends came by; and my daughter smiled, the tears stopped, and she ran in without further assistance from me.

And that is what friends are for.

Aimee Mann

In my last post, I put up the lyrics of an Aimee Mann song that I like. Afterwards I remembered when I first saw Aimee Mann. It was in a small bar in Boston, called Cantones. This bar was a restaurant in the financial district by day, and a punk rock club by night. I worked at MIT from 1979-1982, and during that time I often went to hear music with a colleague of mine, Ihor Lemishka. One night we went down the the financial district to Cantones to hear the 'Young Snakes'. We sat in one of the restaurant booths while the band played just a few feet away. An odd arrangement, but very cozy and effective. The band was not bad, but I remember very well the lead singer, a lovely blonde with a killer voice. A few days later I bought their record - vinyl - which I still have. And the young lady was none other than Aimee Mann at the beginning of her career. Later on I watched while she moved to other bands and became famous. But I'll always remember that night in downtown Boston when she was but a few feet away.

She's still as good as ever. Just look at those lyrics!

Mr. Harris

I spent more time than I wanted these past four days, painting my son's bedroom. So many other things to do with precious free time....but it's for a good cause; he does appreciate it.

I'm told that I am good at 'mindless work' such as painting. It's the same with plaque assays: I'm never bored because I think about all sorts of things.

But while I was painting the last few days, I decided to listen to music. When I was much younger, I used to do that all the time while doing 'mindless work'. And it made me realize why I like music so much: where else can you find wonderful poetry set to a terrific tune? What is more, you always seem to find lyrics that apply to you in some way. While painting I listened to Alanis Morrisette, Aimee Mann, Black Crowes, Maroon 5, and Counting Crows.

I was struck particularly by one of Aimee Mann's songs; I have not listened to it in years but I recall it striking a chord long ago.

By the way - I'll be 53 tomorrow.

Mr. Harris - Aimee Mann

So he's retired
lives with his sister in a furnished flat.
He's got this suit that
he'll never wear outside without a hat.
His hair is white but he looks half his age.
He looks like Jimmy Stewart in his younger days.

And honestly, I might be
stupid to think love is love
but I do
and you've waited so long and
I've waited long enough for you.

My mother's calling
from where she's living up in Troy, Vermont.
She tries to tell me
a father figure must be what I want
I've always thought age made no difference.
Am I the only one to whom that's making sense?

And honestly, I might be
stupid to think love is love
but I do
and you've waited so long and
I've waited long enough for you.

The day I met him he was raking leaves
in his tiny yard.

Of course I know that
we've only got ten years or twenty left
but to be honest
I'm happy with whatever time we get
Depending on whichever book you read
sometimes it takes a lifetime to get what you need.

And honestly, I might be
stupid to think love is love
but I do
and you've waited so long and
I've waited long enough for you.