Permit of Stay

Well, it happened. I haven’t learned the language yet, I don’t know the pledge of allegiance (or even if there is one) and I can only name about 5 of the 21 regions in Italy (hey, at least I know there are 21) but I’m a legal resident and no longer clandestino. On Monday I picked up my Permesso di Soggiorno from the Questura. I now have my permit to stay.

It’s a big deal. I don’t know why exactly, but it is. Maybe it just means they know where to send the tax bill or that I have another card to carry in my wallet. I do know it means I can get a full-service bank account, health care (it's free and universal, like America!), and access to other social services (state funded day care for instance). On a personal level, it means I conquered their bureaucracy. Well, conquer probably isn’t the right word. That’s like saying the guy who is helicoptered to base camp conquered Mt. Everest. Considering the number of offices we had to go to (six), the number of people we spoke to (umm, lots), and the different forms and applications involved (umm, lots) I guess I can declare a moral victory. I fought bureaucracy and bureaucracy won but I can feel good about losing.

I just can’t seem to let the lucchetti go. Tiziano Ferro is an immensely popular singer in Italy, maybe in all of Europe. At least that's what I'm told. I haven't found anyone besides a certain German female who admits to liking him. Perhaps he's Italy's version of Celine Dione. I don’t know, and I’ll leave the music criticism to someone else for now. Anyway, Tiziano sings the title track in a movie taken from a book by Federico Moccia with the same name Ho voglia di te. In this fabulous video, the lucchetti, the Ponte Milvio, Tiziano, and the film’s main actors Laura Chiatti (steamy!) and Riccardo Scamarcio (dreamy!) all feature.

And in our second installment of Italian culture for today, the tourism board of Marche, the region in Italy where I happen to live recently released this spot as part of a promotional campaign featuring Dustin Hoffman. I happen to like it; it shows some of the prettier parts of the region including the inside of Ancona's opera house as well as another American struggling to speak Italian.

But those same struggles have stirred up a bit of controversy as well with people saying his accent and pronunciation are insulting to Italians and the money could have been spent making a more effective ad. (Although the whispers coming from polite society say most of the criticism is coming from Robert De Niro who was allegedly passed over for the part in favor of Dustin.) Everyone's a critic. Boring educational bit follows...

In the video, Dustin is reciting a very famous poem called L'infinito (The Infinite) by Giacomo Leopardi (born in Marche) one of Italy's greatest poets. It is from the 19th century, when poetry was like rap but with better metaphors, and is required memorization for all Italian school children.

L'infinito

Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle,
E questa siepe, che da tanta parte
Dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete
Io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando: e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa
Immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
E il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.


The Infinite

It was always dear to me, this solitary hill,
and this hedgerow here, that closes off my view,
from so much of the ultimate horizon.
But sitting here, and watching here,
in thought, I create interminable spaces,
greater than human silences, and deepest
quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.
When I hear the wind, blowing among these leaves,
I go on to compare that infinite silence
with this voice, and I remember the eternal
and the dead seasons, and the living present,
and its sound, so that in this immensity
my thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck
seems sweet to me in this sea.