Thoughts on Thanksgiving, 2023

The trees are naked and vulnerable, not full and proud as they were only months ago. Summer trees make me think of British gunnery sergeants with their chests proudly puffed out. Winter trees make me think of that stone corpse writhing in agony in Pompeii, twisted limbs, trying uselessly to protect himself from the fiery ash falling from the sky. However, this, ironically, makes me think of the most beautiful thing I experienced while living in Italy. 

I had taken it into my mind that I wanted to write a screenplay. Yet, since it was the very early seventies, nobody knew much about such a thing although everybody had advice. After listening to a variety of opinions, I decided the best thing to do would be to go live some place where they didn't speak English. I spread a map of the world out on the floor and went through damn near every city in the known universe from Abu Dhabi to Zanzibar before deciding on Florence. Why Florence? I had staged managed for Edward Albee just a few years prior at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, and so I knew enough Italian to ask for the men's room but not enough to entertain anything serious like, e.g,  criticism of my screenplay. Hey, it was 1972. You didn't know any more than I did. 

So - my ambition at full court press - I jumped on Icelandic Airlines, trained down from Luxembourg, got an apartment, and moved in with all my dreams intact. Once one got used to the constant aroma of horse manure, each step and every street was charming. It was as if I'd been painted into a work of art - Sunday In The Park With Stephen. I was there in the grand tradition of glorious ex-patriotism, subject to few rules but my own. 

Since I've been a gym rat all my life, I figured there had to be one in Florence, and there was, basically, right around the corner. Nothing fancy. More like a small garage. Ratty work out clothes. No cruising. Just a few guys pumping vintage iron and babbling incessantly. Point is: in order to get to the gym I had to pass by a building called the Academia. Who cares? Right? Well, folks, the Academia had one and only one inhabitant: Michelangelo's David. Nowadays people need to book tickets months maybe years in advance for the opportunity of spending maybe an hour with the David, yet I got to see him every day, casually, walking by, dodging inside, a minute or an hour, my choice, for a year. 

I became addicted to my visits with him, his warrior grace, the way he dominated the space around him. His beauty itself was lethal. I'd see that penetrating stare focus on a point in the distance, studying something crucial, the enemy, his height, his girth. I'd see the round stone in his free hand and wonder about its weight, wonder which river he got it from, wonder if he used special stones for special purposes or shaped his own, wondered which one would kill Goliath? What must he have been thinking? I'd do his monologue. "Goliath's helmet has a flaw above the brow, and, if I can penetrate that flaw, I've got him." His sling is over his shoulder. He seems calm and pensive. Is he calculating trajectory? Wind factor? Distance to target? His is not the face of an innocent.