Birthday Loot
The exchange of gifts at holidays and birthdays has become a thing of the past in my circle. We are all getting older, and realizing that the future presents problems of deaccessioning. We all buy what we want when we want it, and confine gift-giving to those rare occasions when we're dead certain that the recipient is going to be either very interested or very amused by something.
But with PPOQ there are no rules. I make them up as we go along; then I shred them. You have to understand that my old friend has spent most of his life in a state of low-grade exasperation, brought on by the capricious demands of near and dear ones. At present, sadly, I am the only one en vie. I have to work overtime.
When the four of us - PPOQ, LXIV, Kathleen, and I went to the Metropolitan Museum on Boxing Day, we had lunch, toured a few shows, and then bid farewell at the Gift Shop, which I didn't even think of dragging Kathleen into. I did remember, however, that I'd meant to buy a sale book, an enormous and heavy collection of aerial photographs of Italy. Then I had a brainwave! I'd impudently demand that PPOQ buy it for me, as a birthday present, and - I didn't work this part out right away - do the heavy lifting and bring it to our place.
Well, I never did work out the delivery scheme, and on Saturday night I had to schlep the book from LXIV's to Jules and back home, but as both of those relays were taxi-borne, I cannot really complain about the dislocated shoulder that voyage by subway would have guaranteed.
I've cropped a small part of the photograph on page 259, showing Trinità dei Monti atop the Spanish Steps. It all looks rather small, doesn't it? Delicate and small. The drama of the scene is completely effaced by the aerial angle. At least, I take it to be. I myself have never set foot in Italy. The possibilities of a trip there are so boggling that I can't even think about it. Rome is not even on the list of my top-ten Italian destinations, and neither is Florence. It's the North that I want to see: the Po Valley, the lakes, and the Veneto. (If I were a Northern Italian, I'd be rallying for the Lega Nord and "Padania.")*
For the time being, though, I'm happy to feast on the extravagantly beautiful pictures in Italy From Above (White Star, 2005). Antonio Attini and Marco Bertinetti are the photographers; Alberto Bertolazzi provides the (pretty minimal) text. There's a forward by Giuliano Urbani, and a preface by none other than Franco Zeffirelli. I don't recall how steeply the price of the book had been reduced, but on sale it was no longer an expensive item. Get one while you can!
And thanks always to Fossil Darling - as I've decided to rechristen PPOQ. Uni - got it? - laterally.
* Regular readers know that, as a New Yorker, I already advocate separate-state status for the Metropolitan Area and its watershed. At a minimum!
