UMBRiA—ℜEading italO CALvino ' digging sWine & tRuffles & sElf-reFEreNCing a hermitAGE LiBrAryrinth within the many-wor[L]ds interpretation yoU could say If on a winter's night a traveler [Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore] by Italo Calvino is a bunch of stories—or at lEast the BEginnings of a dozen o so «stories»—within a 10-storied book obje't | but it's e[Qually about the TE]LLING of these «stories» | that is ' it in[cludes ∀ functional spec to] the elevator that will get you from 1 fl°°r to aNEitHer | like in Being John Malkovich [whose mug we saw plastered all over Umbria as he's in some local theatre produzione] th∃ℜe are [for ∀ll wHole floors] 1/2-stories to Calvino's build[ing—wedged in be]tween ∃∀ch stor[e]y || [a «story» in ITALiano is a racconto but a STor[e]y is a piano | a piano in ITALian is ∀ lot of cose—{ your KITchen counter | the fl°°r of your build[ing | a mount]ain plain o plateau | qualcosa flat o smooth | a plan | qual[cosa easy | to do qual]cosa slow[ly o quiet]ly } | a PIANO piano [a heavy obje't in fumetti] is a pianoforte | the type of stor[e]y a piano is is nØt = that tYpe of story | nor = [this] type of story ] || & RE:gardeless of cosa you call it ' my take on what it is Italo Calvino is doing in If on a winter's night a traveler is he's DEMOnstratING that story is irregardless & to prove it he starts 10 stories & nEVEr fINishes tHem beCause what's the point of fINishing | yoU don't FINish a book—a book FINishes yoU | you don't FINish an objet d'art—an objet d'art fINishes you | that is if it's «ART» other[Wise it's come un build]ing a ho[Use o a ho]rse sTable | trUE books & art are obje'ts that doNØT ∃Xist & that use yoU to get into this worLd without yoU eve(n) k[nowing it | CAL]vino preSSes ∀ll the ele[vator butt]ons ma only gets off on the 1/2-stories in be[tween to deSCRIBE the be]ginnings of what's on the discrete fl°°rs || & in ogni modo «story» is aPEN[na an eX[cuse for a writer] to write [a book] & an ex[cuse for a reader] to read [a book] so they can easily u[n|d]derstand it & say cosa [it] is a]BOUT if askED || the story i'm riccounting to yoU [here] is about our giro QUESTo finE settimana passato to the Umbria regione of Italy | [this] story has no releVa[le]nce ℜeallY to anY 1 eXcept j & i & forse anY 1 che potrebbe visit[are] la region[e] in qualcosa there could be use[ful INFOrmazioni to glee[n about w]here to stay & cosa to eat & cosa to see | if t]here were ¶ITfallS i would mention dem anche there are no ¶ITfallS in UMbria | eXcept forse dem cracy italian drivers || yoU sh[ould ∀Lways k]now in che cosa state entrando whi[ch is to say k]now the hyStorical etymoLOGy of eve[ry word] yoU use:
[i've been into shad[ows of late]ly | i find my[self reg[u]arding them rather than the obje't casting t]hem | like in this VIDayo i saw on the new Montevidayo site [along[side some awe]some aniMAL hair hats]—if only ∀ll fashi[c]on sHows could be like [this]: ma come [ital]O CALvino i'm getting off t[Rack be]fore i FinISH the stor[e]y—i'm suPPosed to be telling yoU why yoU're [here]—[th[is] A WEB]bed page] & for whateveR reaSon yoU are REading [this] | what i'm doing & GOiNG to do [here] is talk aBout [Italo] CALvino & other reFlections on self-referential writ[h]ing & art in GENEral & sHow you some imAGEs i CaptURED whilst j & i were in UMBRiA this past weekend wHereIN i was REading CALvino & starting to thINK the[se th]OUghts || loGISTically che cosa abbiamo fatto was rent a car [my 1st time driving in Italy] | we had to walk up to Via Veneto to get the car as 90% of Rome is on vacateon | from tHere we drove up to Assisi which is ℜeallY not that far from here (0, 0) | Assisi sembrato come il disneyland di provincial italian villages a me—at least coming from R(0, 0)me everYthing seemed maniCur[at]ed & cLean & calCULated & reFURbished | not that i necessarily like cose sporche ma i like when things feel ℜeal || driving up to Assisi is Ascenic but dificil to CaptURE whilst. yoU're driving [at 150 km/hr & italiani impazzati are tailgating & running yoU of the road for going troppo lento] o when yoU are IN Assisi [here's a pic of Assisi Asscene from perHaps a nearby hill & here's j's pics quale sono better than mine] | Assisi is famous most[ly for St. Francis who was born] tHere & built a church & talked to uccelli o qualcosi | some peeps might feel spiRitual o qualcosa going into the church there | all i felt was molested by annoYing tourists & babystrollers & the monk on the intercom who had to say «silenzio» everY 15 seconds & tell people «NO PHOTOS» & i was feeling a bit like CALvino amidST. it ∀ll:
If on a winter's night a traveler ALTernates betwine chapters of the BEginnings of these fictitious novels [each by a different fictitious author] preceded by chapters [told in 2nd person] prepping yoU [the reader] on how to read [the overARChing story aRound the cirCUMstances of the WRITING of the novel | these exposés on] the process of reading & writing sia che cosa ispirato me più ma just as in physics it's necessary to have THEorists & EXPerimentalists ||
[of course what i'm offering here are TRANSlations of CALvino paSSages as i read tHem] aftER Assisi we [back]tracked down toWards the town of Spoleto | then we cont.inued up this hill over[looking Spoleto on the road] to Monteluco to some hermitage-cum-hotel [Eremo delle Grazie] that was founded by some hermit friars in the 5th century A.D. & subSEQuently was a hideout for Michelangelo in 1556 & was then evidently occupied by Napoleon's army in 1806 [who scribBLed on the walls in spots] | in 1918 it was bought by a Jewish dentist [Professor Arrigo Piperno] whose patients included Pope Pius XII & Mussolini | during WWII Mussolini tipped him off that the Germans were coming allowing Prof. Piperno to hide out at the hermitage | così è un posto with some hiSTOR[e]Y yoU could say | there's a maZing cavernoUS wine CELLar carved into the li[mestone & the maze of rooms were in f]act «cells» for the hermit friars | ma the best room is the LIBrary of book obje'ts cullected by Cardinal Cybo who also evident[ly lived t]here | here's a sort of driving-to & walk-thru VIDeo of the hermitAGE & surrounding umBRiAn sites: riconoscente loro LIT the bRidge & didn't cLose it AFTer hours as 1 notte CAMmINatO attraverso to have dinner & then CAMmINatO indietro dopo || questo tipo che we met at a dinner party in Rome [Max Brunelli] was the 1 who tipped us off aBout this place [& he warned us to aVoid touristY Assisi] | if yoU are interested in photography & seeing the ℜeal Italy & whatnot Max does these photography tours of Umbria that seem cool—yoU dovreste provare || through one of his fictitious narrators CALvino says: «the author of every book is a fictitious character whom the existent author invents to make him the author of his fictions.» & «since for him artifice is the true substance of everything, the author who devised a perfect system of artifices would succeed in identifying himself with the whole.» | ... speaking of IDentity—the subje't of my last post | yoU [the writer] can try to DistANCE yoursELF from your narrative ma it's still yoU—inevitabl[y yoU are] proje'ted || i should mentION that il cielo di UMBRiA er a cauldron of cuRRents & cLoud format[IONs the air charged] with QUAlcosa we couldn't SEE || quale knØt to say [all these personages are] yoU & ∀ll the[se personages BEcome the] reader & ∀ll the hermits that inHabited this HERMitage became absorbed by us | in CALvino's parole:
now we have departed the hermitage & are driving about on back roads after going thrU a 5 km tunnel thrU a mountain that took us to the next valley over | we s[topped in a p]lace called Norcia | the guidebook we were following was The Food of Italy by the aptly named Waverly Root | j would read to i'driving aBout what towns & regions were known for cui foods | Norcia is famous for it's pig-products & black truffles [tartufi] & also little lentils [lenticche][i'm cooking up some as we speak] | we also brought back some truffles & truffle oil & wild boar salami | we didn't have much luck eating in o around Norcia though—it seems italians were flocking from all over Italy to pork out on porchette & procini & tartufi & they had the HINDsight to make reservations | we finally found a place that gave us the last tavola & it was near the kitchen door & a waitress came out & dumped a plate full of oily eggplant down j's back & didn't offer the slightest word in apology so [after being ignored for 5 more minutes—j simmering in oil] we walked out—j with a ruined shirt | we sampled plenty of swine & truffles elsewhere in the region though cooked up in all sorts of yummy ways || after Norcia we took some other back roads past all these other quaint hilltop villages & scenic views looping back a different way to Spoleto & inStead of sTopping at our hermitage we cont.inued up the road to the top of Monteluco & then got out & hiked around some & found an abandoned castle & lots of trees & flowers & stuff || CALvino got me to thinking some about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics [that views the universe as a sort of infinitely-branching tr∃∃ whereIN ever(y) possible outCome is just as ℜeal as the 1 ℜealized by yoU o i inStead of a single enveLoping uniVerse that kills ∀ll other possible outcomes with each interval of time t | anch∃ ℜeally it's the «many-worlds interpretation» in reVerse [wHereIN da 10 stories conVerge to [SPOILER ALERT] 1 singularity—name[ly a para]graph inSpired by 1001 Arabian Nights SEQuenced from the titles from each chapter:
this holoGraphic paraGraph contains ∀LL the INFOrmation of the whole book & each title [making up the paraGraph] enCompasses the chAPTer [& if you want to drill further each word contains information about the sentence & each letter to the word just like you can IDentify an organism from a uniQUE snippet of their DNA] || CALvino also got me to thinking more aBout self-reference which at this poin(t) in time might be worthy of BEing a genRe into itSelf [apart from postmodernism which has tried to absorb all that is self-referential & self-reflexive & basically any other literary DEvelopment in the past 100 years rendering it vaguely saturated & deVOID of meaning] | If on a winter's night a traveler was written in 1979 beFore most authors [with the eXception of Borges & Beckett] were bold enough to step outside of the books they were writing o bold enough to ask the read[er to step out]side of the book & see it for what it was | forse CALvino was 1st chi sa at least so DIREct[ly in 2nd per]son unaFrayed to adMit his role as author—that possib[ling the book was in & of it]self greater than «he» | some L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets were around perhaps BEfore CALvino but i'm not sure who was speaking so blunt[ly in f[a|i]ct]ion or verse at risk of full disClosure of the man behind the curtain of TEXT | eve(n) as far back as Lucretius writers [poets mostly] were writing about writing & including themSelves & were letting in on their COGnizance of the fAct but i'm talking aBout qualcosa differente ℜeal[ly i'm talking a]Bout when an author in a narrative refers to h[im|er]SELF in the conTEXT of the narrative obje't itSELF & now that i think of Cervantes deFinite[ly beat]s CALvino to the punch with Don Quixote & yoU could say Don Quixote jousted open this 4th wall for certain but it was still fictional story-telling & CALvino goes even deeper in deConstructing this windmill & blowing it oPEN eve(n) wider questioning this ridiculous preTense of story-TELLing & susPENsion of disbelief | we're all adults here & kNow [though if the book o movie is good enough we often forgeT] there is a writer writing the book & tHere are people right off the set of the movie so why not just speak dire[ctly to the audie]nce? when i think of self-referential films Woody Allen comes to my mind 1st | if he was not 1st he definitely perfected the art in my mind | & of course Fellini | & more recently the aforementioned Charlie Kaufman is taking self-reference to new levels enough to make your head hurt | in fine art of course Magritte infamously declared «ceci n'est pas une pipe» but i'm thinking beyond that to as Lee Krasner infamously said: «Pollock—you've blown it wide open» | what Jackson Pollock blew open i think was this 4th wall of painters TRYING to paint things & reducing himSelf to someone that was just slinging paint on a canvas | in music i think self-reference is EMbodied in the feedback of Sonic Youth & other noise bands—noise for the sake of noise feeding back on itself into snake-eating-tail loops of self-perpetuating beauty | & of course there's Art Brut's self-referential [if ironic] anthem: Formed A Band & in a synchronistic postmodern coincidence as i'm writing this [on shuffle] Bauhaus is singing to me [from Spirit ]:
abbiamo rinviato all'eremo per un siesta then went back out to Spoleto walking across the aqueducting bRidge to get there | we ended up on some road that circumNavigated the hilltop below the castle which was turned into a prison for many years & only recently was restored back to [more o less] it's original state ||
& then we woke up & drove home a different way past lake Trasimeno [where Hannibal killed some 15,000 Romans on it's shores before he pressed on to Spoleto only to be stopped in his tracks] & then into Tuscany to Montepulciano [now made famous as the site where Twilight: New Moon was filmed] & we stopped at some wineries & bought back a bunch of wine [of the Nobile variety—not to be confused with Montepulciano d'Abruzzo which comes from the Abruzzo region [& Montepulciano refers to the type of grape]] & a final quote from CALvino:
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