Open Doors Review January 2021 by Opendoorsreview

OPEN DOORS REVIEW

January 2021 N. 1

An Art & Literary Magazine in Italy

The Open Doors Review An Art & Literary Magazine in Italy in English & Italian Website www.opendoorsreview.com Email Contact@opendoorsreview.com Podcast Open Doors Review Podcast Facebook Open Doors Review Instagram @opendoorsreview

Editor Lauren T. Mouat Fonts Phosphate, Minion Pro, Bodoni 72 Cover Image “Open Door” by Robin Mouat

Open Doors Manifesto In popular culture, Italy is frequently seen as two things: a soap opera Mafiosi video game or a picture postcard tourist dreamland of the Dolce Vita. Let’s add more stories to this picture. Let’s look under the surface. Let’s highlight the creativity and skill of the people in Italy. Now. Today. The point is not to produce something Italy-focused. It’s to create a collection of writing and visual art that is Italy-grown. Who do you love? What do you believe in? What do you know? These days, truth is under attack. Reality means different things to different people. While language is increasingly black and white the issues, like our hearts, never are. Art lives in these spaces between. We are cracking open, evolving, breaking up with the old world, breaking down the new. That’s where art grows. That’s where conversations happen. There, in that space, we find our humanity when we share and connect with each other. I challenge you to step into that place and create. Come on in, the doors are open.

Agli occhi di uno straniero, L’Italia viene spesso vista come il paese della pizza, della Mafia e della Dolce Vita. È l’ora di condividere storie ed immagini per scardinare questa stereotipo e dare un’occhiata più nel profondo. Mettiamo in risalto la creatività e l’abilità delle persone del “Bel Paese.” Adesso. Oggi. L’obiettivo non è di creare qualcosa che sia incentrato solo sull’Italia. Si tratta di diffondere una raccolta di scritture ed arti visive cresciuta in questo posto. Chi ami? In che cosa credi? Cosa è reale? In questi giorni la verità è in pericolo. La realtà viene percepita in maniera diverse a seconda del punto di vista delle persone. Mentre il linguaggio è sempre più categorico, i problemi (come i nostri cuori) non lo sono. L’arte fiorisce proprio in questo terreno di mezzo. Ci stiamo aprendo. Ci stiamo evolvendo. Stiamo rompendo con il vecchio mondo e mettendo il nuovo alla prova. È qui che avvengono le conversazioni. È così che cresce l’arte. Qui, in questo spazio, condividendo e connettendoci l’uno con l’altro, ritroviamo la nostra umanità. Non ti resta che entrare in questo luogo e iniziare a creare. Le porte sono aperte.

Table of Contents 3 Open Doors Manifesto 6 Letter From the Editor 8 Interview with Author & Guest Judge Flavia Brunetti 13. Art by Jennifer Lewis Why Do we Create Art 14. Poetry by Cynthia Boorujy Over the Sea Wall 15. Poetry by Charles Edward Carey Il Mare Mi Parla 16. Fiction by John MacDonald Bramito 20. Art by Kelly Medford The Red Bedroom, Quarantine 22. Interview with Author & Journalist Eva Giovannini 28. Letters from Lockdown: Three perspectives on 2020 Essays by Norah Leibow, Sezgi Uygur & Rachel Zitin

37. Art by Maggie Johnson Il Mio Cuore 38. Poetry by Lillia Parker Palestrina 39. Art by Sezgy Uygur Suspended in Midair 40. Poetry by Justin T Walsh Rise 41. Photography by Justin T Walsh Young Eagles 42. Interview with Artisan Laura de Cesare The Art of the loom 48. Article by John Phillips When Poetry and Entrepreneurial Innovation Meet 51. Author Bios 55. Submission Guidelines

Audio Versions of each Interview are available on opendoorsreview.com or wherever you get your podcasts

Letter From the Editor Lauren T. Mouat

Every new year offers the symbolic concept of renewal, a chance to remold and reforge ourselves in the white heat of our new intentions. We look with longing toward our epic future selves that do not know fear or doubt, that are confident, accomplished, radiant and that most certainly have finally achieved flat abs. Have we ever looked forward to a year with more enthusiasm than that of 2021? In Italy, this year celebrates the 700 year anniversary of the death of the great poet Dante. If last year’s motto was, in the words of the poet himself, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” this year’s might be, “My course is set for an uncharted sea.” Whatever heroic visions we have for our future, we are not the same people we were at the outset of last year and we are not living in the same world. In this historic moment of isolation, more than ever we create the reality of the world around us based on what we choose to engage with. What do you choose to imagine? That is where you will live. I have always believed in the importance, the necessity, of creating art. Times like these demand it. Art exists in a place where you can’t compare only the dichotomies of yes/no, black/white, up/down, right/wrong. These superlative places are good for campaign slogans, propaganda and bumper stickers, but they won’t do for our lives. A two-dimensional universe simply doesn’t do us justice. I believe art offers a way to communicate that is subtle, subversive and ultimately irreversible. Peer into another’s soul and know them. Knowing them, you know yourself. As soon as Open Doors was out in the world, it was growing. Submissions started coming in, united by an excitement and a hope that is missing from our news headlines. The pieces in this issue are tied only by their authors’ connection to Italy. Some live here, some long to, some have magical memories of visits to Italy and others have been planning to come here for years. Italy is just the starting point to highlight voices from around the world.

Cynthia Boorujy’s poem “Over the sea Wall,” is a riot of color on a hot day by the sea as memory competes with the desire to protect and prepare. “Il Mare Mi Parla,” by Charles Edward Carey is written in his second language, Italian, a language lyrical enough to capture the “ritmo” and seduction of the whispering sea. Many pieces were related to the difficult year we have gone through, to lockdowns and quarantines. Kelly Medford’s “Red Bedroom, Quarantine” is a meditative perspective on a space that we are all familiar with but which we now recognize in multiple layers of rest and confinement. Norah Leibow ponders the future of an America she is less and less proud of in “The Only thing to Talk about.” Sezgi Uygur details the year spent in Istanbul and its unexpected repercussions on her identity in “Freedom from the Known.” In “Italianizzata,” Rachel Zitin revels in feeling more and more at home in Italy, only drawn closer to her adoptive country by lockdown. Some pieces reflect on Italy directly like in John MacDonald’s “Bramito”, a story about the tragic aftermath of the August 24th, 2016 earthquake that devastated towns like Amatrice, Norcia, and Visso. “Il Mio Cuore” by Maggie Johnson celebrates the Duomo of Florence and “Palestrina” by Lillia Parker paints a lyrical picture of Rome. John Phillips’s piece “When poetry and entrepreneurial innovation meet” illuminates a modern day Italian poet Francesco Terrone. Three interviews focus on authors and artisans living and working in Italy. I can’t thank Flavia Brunetti enough for her participation as the guest judge of the first issue of Open Doors. In our conversation we talk about her book All the Way to Italy and falling in love with Rome. Eva Giovannini, Italian author and journalist, spoke to me about her new graphic novel, “Oriana Fallaci: il Vietnam, l’America e l’anno che cambiò la Storia.” Artisan Laura de Cesare spoke with me about the art of weaving, its roots in the history of mankind and modern innovations and the importance of always following the things that make you dream. “Young Eagles” by Justin T. Walsh takes us to Amsterdam in a split-second capture of pride, grace and exhilaration. We might all feel a little “Suspended in Midair” this year but as this piece by Sezgi Uygur shows us, what an enlightening state that can be. May we find the “right kind of blossoming,” as in Walsh’s poem, “Rise.” It is my greatest wish that this magazine can offer a place of gathering for those out there with the intention to build and create. As Jennifer Lewis pens in her visual poem, “Why We Create Art,” “We’re all linked if we have the empathy to see it.” Thank you to all who submitted to this very first issue of Open Doors and welcome to the new year. -LTM 7

Interview with Author & guest judge

Flavia Brunetti Listen to the interview audio on OpenDoorsReview.com. The full transcript in English is available on the website.

Flavia Brunetti is the author of All the Way to Italy: A Modern Tale of Homecoming through Generations past. The novel tells the story of Little, a girl who, until the death of her father, considered herself a Californian. Now, thanks to half a letter, a symbol she can’t quite remember, and a case of writer’s block, she finds herself back in Italy with a lot of questions about her family and her country. On her journey throughout Italy, Little will enlist the help of the aunt who raised her, friends old and new, and the country itself, in her search for the answers she needs. This is a powerful story that will appeal to anyone who has ever balanced wanderlust with the need to come home, a reminder that although we may be fragments, we are never a lost cause. Flavia is the guest judge for the January 2021 issue of the Open Doors Review. She joined me in a caffe in Rome for a conversation about her book and Italy. You can listen to the audio recording of our conversation on opendoorsreview.com.

Lauren: Like the main character of your book, Little, you have Italian parents but you grew up in California and returned to live long term in Rome only as a young adult. I think moving to Rome is something a lot of people dream about and Italy is frequently romanticized as this perfect, almost magical place of escape and adventure but I wonder….Did you have to learn to love Rome in the same way that your protagonist did? Flavia: Yes I certainly think that I did. I think that it’s a process and it’s an ongoing process but when I was growing up in California and going back and forth, I used to come to Rome and I liked it very much but it didn’t feel like home. There were a lot of things about it that I didn’t like that I didn’t feel resonated with me. About fifteen years ago when I moved back to Rome, there was about six months into it that something clicked and… I loved Rome. And I felt like I resaw everything. When I was a teenager and I would see the Colosseum, I’m ashamed to say that I wasn’t hugely impressed. Now, every time I see the Colosseum, it almost brings you to your knees.

Lauren: What was the turning point in your relationship with the city? Flavia: I had to learn to Love Rome again and I think I learned to love her through my roots. Growing up I did not feel so connected to my roots but being in Rome is what awakened in me this sense of generations past. When I fell in love with the city I was, in a way, falling in love with the story of my family but also the families of people who told me their stories. Friends of mine who grew up Italian American perhaps and this sense of identity that they brought with them when they left and the way that it changes when they’re in a different country and the way it changes again when they come back. And so the story kind of merged and became something new that I built off of. And so yes, now I’m madly in love with Rome. Lauren: Your book is fiction but knowing a bit about your life, it’s clear many elements of the book are autobiographical. Did you set out to write fiction and your real life snuck into the story or did you purposefully choose to write something that combined fiction and autobiography? Flavia: I think I always knew that the story I wanted to tell came from stories that my aunt used to tell me when I was a little girl and that I grew up hearing about her and my dad. That was something that I wanted to put down into writing. Primarily the book for me is a love story to Rome but it is a love story also to the type of love that comes from family and friends and identity and I think for me personally, I always knew that that was going to be a mix of fiction and what happened in real life. Lauren: There’s a lot of satisfying armchair travel to be enjoyed in All the Way to Italy. Little has her home base in Rome but at one point she goes on a roadtrip that includes Florence, Orvieto, Naples, and she also spends a lot of time in Sperlonga and the region of Lazio. Which of the places described in the book captures your imagination the most? Flavia: The place that I thought of immediately when you started asking this question (even though it’s impossible to pick a favorite) was Giardino di Ninfa and Sermonetta. That whole scene in the book, including the meal that’s described in Sermonetta at that restaurant, stayed in my mind and I wrote about it like that because it was just something that was so magical to me and because Giardino di Ninfa really feels like opening a door and stepping into another world and so does Sermonetta. In a way they kind of embody all of your best hopes of what Italy will be like when you come here.

Lauren: While I would describe the book as romantic from a certain perspective, I know that including a traditional romance was actually something you did not want to include in the book. Why is that? Flavia: I didn’t cut it out of the book because I don’t think traditional romance is important. It was just that for me in this book it was really important that Little finds herself and her identity and that the love that is focused on in the book is her bond with her aunt, the love that carries her through which comes from and to people and places. I wanted it to be about love but about a different type of love. I’ve had this question quite a few times because when the book was first going through an editing process, it was suggested to me several times: you have to have a romantic lead. And for me it was really important that the book did not have that kind of romantic lead because Little saves herself and not even just that she saves herself, but that the love that is so present in the book that I hope comes across is all different types of love. Lauren: Something I personally loved about the book is that alongside this beautiful version of Italy that the rest of the world might be familiar with, you address some of the more complex sides of the country. For example the rise of fascism during the first half of the 20th century and the current economic crisis and lack of opportunity for young people in Italy today. There’s a whole scene with Little’s Italian friend Barbara in which Little expresses the optimistic, I would say more “American” perspective of “if you just work hard you can achieve anything” and Barbara kind of opens her eyes to the difficult realities faced by so many people looking for work in Italy. How important was it to you to include this side of Italy in the book? Flavia: That was something that struck me very hard when I first moved back here from California. I was that American saying “If you work hard…” or “But why don’t you go ahead and open your own business?” Spending more and more time here I realized how crushing that can be. I think it’s something that’s important to discuss, I think it’s important for young people to talk about it and to generate change somehow but I think that it very often does not get talked about internationally speaking, when you’re talking about the dream of moving to Italy which I think is still a good dream, I wouldn’t discourage someone from moving here. But there are realities we need to bring to the light and talk about and I think this is something that Little talks about at the end of the book when she’s writing that article for the newspaper because I think it’s something that she’s trying to explore as well and I think that it’s something that Italians looking for a future and searching for a future are also trying to explore. Hopefully that is the kind of conversation that will generate some kind of real change for the future and for the type of work that people are wanting and demanding now and the fact that people prepare themselves for a future that they sometimes cannot grab. Sometimes people in Italy are incredibly well educated and they’ve worked really hard and they have to leave the country - actually the brain drain was my thesis for my first degree. There should be a choice about whether you want to leave your country. If you want to leave it, great. But If you want to stay here and still be able to apply the skills that you have learned you should be able to. So I think that that’s a change that is important to discuss. Lauren: In recent years, you have moved again and spend much of the year in Tunis working for a humanitarian organization. Has this changed your relationship with Rome again? Flavia: Yes, it absolutely has. I have fallen more in love with Rome since I left. They say absence makes the heart grows fonder and I’ve learned that when I go to another place I love it very much and I can fall in love with these other places and I do think that somehow they change the color of my heart. But ultimately within five weeks I am incredibly Romesick and I want to come back home even just to walk down the street or go to the piazza or see the Colosseo or Piazza Navona or even 11

just get lost down the streets of Rome and see the people and have a real espresso because there is no other coffee! ... It changes the way you think about the place that you belong. I think that moving someplace else also expands the way you think of where you belong which is beautiful thing and then I come back to Rome and after a week or two I get antsy again and I’m ready to go, but I also know where I want to come back home to. Lauren: Flavia, thank you so much it was awesome talking to you about All the Way To Italy. Flavia: Thank you so much Lauren. It really was such a pleasure. I wish you the very best of luck with Open Doors. I cannot wait to see all of the amazing places and voices that I’m sure you’re going to get to highlight. Lauren: I’d like to leave you with a quick round of rapid fire questions I asked Flavia to start off our interview to get an idea of who Flavia Brunetti is as a reader and writer. Lauren: Short Story or Novel? Flavia: Short Story Lauren:: Mystery or Romance? Flavia: Mystery Lauren: Historical Fiction or Fantasy? Flavia: Fantasy Lauren: Read to escape or read to delve into the big questions? Flavia: Ooh… is it an either/or? Lauren: Yes, you have to pick one or the other! Flavia: How could you blindside me like this? Um, read to delve into the big questions. Except in 2020! Read to escape! Lauren: Happy ending or complicated ending? Flavia: Complicated ending. Lauren: Writing or Editing? Flavia: Writing. Lauren: A real book or a kindle or digital version? Flavia: Oh real book. Lauren: Do you write with music in the background or silence? Flavia: I have to have total silence. I’m super easily distracted. Lauren: Reading books or writing them? Flavia: (laughing) Um, can I just drop the mic and leave? Hmm...Reading books. Reading books is a prerequisite to writing them so if I have to pick one I’m gonna go with reading them. Also because then reading the really good books is what makes you want to write one right?

“All the Way to Italy” by Flavia Brunetti can be purchased online around the world. 12

Why do We Create Art?

Jennifer Lewis Black Ink on Paper

Over the Sea WAll

Cynthia Boorujy

I bought my daughter a scarf to wrap round her head She wanted blood red like mine Not the sweet pastels we dress the young Thinking we must ease them into The searing violence of color We are led by these saturations My law school professor Whose rhetoric was as crisp and elegant As the moss green suits he had cut in Paris The fire eater I met in the city square I followed him up the hill He played guitar in the grass Looking out through round violet shades Or the one who never cut his hair And favored t-shirts with tangerine surfboards But she still has years Before she is drawn to siren men The sun is searing Drying the water that splashes over the sea wall Leaving rough salt on our forearms on catsâ€™ tails and faded motor bikes Cover yourself I tell her We have far to walk

il mare mi parla

Charles Edward Carey

Ritmo Senza melodia Mi colpisce Come le onde sulla riva Il mare mi parla Il vento balla sull’acqua Blu indaco, turchese, verde Il sole splende La luce scintilla sull’acqua Il mare mi parla Mi chiama Un invito a entrare Non posso resistere Sono immerso Il mare mi parla Io nuoto, mi tuffo Avanti e indietro sott’acqua Sorretto dall’acqua salata Chiudo gli occhi E poi, solo allora Sento la melodia

Bramito Fiction John MacDonald

The young wolf paused at the forest edge and read the air. Behind, in the darkness, she could hear the stealthy movements of the pack; nearby, but hidden. Ahead, the open meadow sloped up to the skyline. Here, the still air was heavy with the testosterone, breath, and blood of the rutting stags that had belled and clashed there all night. The lighter female odour meant that the hinds were coming into season. The bloody mucous sacs of their new-born would feed the pack next spring. She carefully scanned the empty meadow before moving forward slowly, but directly, towards the craggy ridge. Tussocks of grass, boulders and stunted bushes; each held the scent of local and transient animals. * A porcupine passed earlier, three chamois had visited two days ago, and the traces of the brown bear that had moved into the territory a year ago were still there after almost two weeks. The wolf stopped, listened, sniffed, and noted the

*Bramito is the Italian word for the bell of rutting stags, or the roar of a bear

position of vole nests that would become an important food source in the coming winter. She investigated an owl pellet, carefully gauging the proportion of mammal to beetle remains to add to her knowledge of prey density. The pack was still adjusting to the sudden destruction of their territory, when the land shook, moved and cracked open. That night trees fell, rock faces collapsed, earth became liquid and slipped, paths were blocked, streams either changed course or disappeared. And their prey animals fled. One of their temporary dens had collapsed entombing an elder that was guarding a stockpile of food but the covering rockfall meant that it had been impossible to dig out. Her restless search for food was given extra impetus because she knew that she was now of age to have her first litter. She already sensed, like the start of an itch, the minute changes that would soon overwhelm her natural restraint and propel her into the urgent frenzy of coitus. The pack leader had noticed too, and recently had begun to spend time near her, both to establish her receptiveness, and to deter other males from approaching her. Her readiness would depend substantially on how much food she ate during the winter months. If food was scarce, her season would be delayed for a whole year. Behind the silhouetted ridge, the sky began to lighten, and the early morning dew rose to fill the meadow with a gauzy, drenching mist. The wolf set off across the stagsâ€™ tillage for the summit and cut the trail of a fox where the vegetation thinned, and the surface became bare and rocky. She stopped. No urine or scat, only the scent from its pads as it ran, a few hours

before, under the ridge line avoiding the lower slopes and the forest where her pack lived. Reaching the narrow, rocky outcrop, she shook her coat dry and lay down, to survey the terrain falling steeply away on both sides. Nothing unusual, no danger, nothing amiss; nothing that is, except the one thing that she could not work out. The thing that she could not explain. The scent that had disappeared completely from her world. The scent of her man. He was her man because she had always known him. He had adopted her while she was weaning; since her mother was killed. He had taken her and her brother to his den, an open but enclosed place with a lair where he had fed them, first milk, then solid food. The pack knew where they were and visited every night after the man had gone away; close, but unable to reach them because of the enclosure. They could smell and lick the older wolves who would throw up warm, digested meat for them â€“ even though they could smell the man on them, and in their surroundings. As she and her brother grew bigger and stronger, the man visited less often and only threw whole rabbits or deer haunches into their enclosure. Now, when the pack visited, it was sometimes they who threw up food for the older wolves. One day the man forgot to close them in. They waited in the lair until he had gone then escaped and ran to find the pack. Their coats still carried the manâ€™s scent so, understandably, they were set upon. But they were stronger now and able to defend themselves

That night trees fell, rock faces collapsed, earth became liquid and slipped, paths were blocked, streams either changed course or disappeared.

and find their place in the pack. From time to time she saw her man or tracked his spoor, but, since the earth moved, he, like their prey, had fled. She looked at the first rays of the new sun on the horizon, threw back her head and howled. The pack replied and she loped down across the meadow to join them. * The man stood on the roof of the apartment building. He felt the slight shifting of the terracotta roof tiles under his weight and threw out his arms like a tight rope walker to adjust his balance. He inched forward until his toes overhung the gutter then lowered his arms to his sides. From here, over the ridged rooftops, he could see the serene Adriatic, darker than the sky. The air was still, its silence respecting the sea’s gently imploring hush, hush. He could smell the sea’s faint odour and follow the twinkling lights describing the path of a small fishing boat. Directly below, in his fourth-floor apartment, his neighbour, Signor Bartolucci, brewed coffee and smoked his first cigarette of the day. The squeaky pulley wheels below and left meant

Soloists in the town’s daily symphony, each brought in by an unseen conductor, they played their part; they belonged. The man played no part. He did not belong. that Signora Betti was hanging out clothes that had been washed using the cheap night time tariff. Silvia’s alarm went off even though she had been retired for five years and, as always, she stopped it after the third ring. At the corner of the street the light went on in Carloni’s alimentari. In a moment Roberto would deliver today’s fresh bread from the local bakery.

Soloists in the town’s daily symphony, each brought in by an unseen conductor, they played their part; they belonged. The man played no part. He did not belong. Rehoused here after the earthquake, along with his wife and all of the people from his town in the mountains, they had lost everything. Buildings that had stood for centuries, the church, its bell-tower, all had collapsed fully or in part. Ugly cracks scarred ancient facades. Water, gas and sewage pipes suffered compound fractures. Roads were cut lengthways for miles making access, or fleeing, impossible. Politicians promised immediate aid – funds, shelter, new homes – everyone would be fed and taken care of. After days of living and sleeping in tents and makeshift shelters outdoors, days of entering shops, still in danger from aftershocks, for food and water, days without help or resources, the army arrived; first by air, then in trucks. They registered and accounted for everyone before loading the entire mountain community into the trucks and driving directly to the coast. The government had commandeered hotel accommodation. Hoteliers were pleased to have the low season business and the earthquake victims were relieved because at least their community was together. At first, those with livestock despaired that they could not get back to tend them; sheep needed to be milked, poultry and dogs needed to be fed. The authorities thought that a pittance could compensate for generations of husbandry – as if an algorithm could understand the value of sheep hefted into a hillside for a century. The community talked dialect together, ate together, wept together, went to church together – although fewer than before – and celebrated Christmas and New Year together. The man sat apart; from the community, from his wife. A ranger in the Sibillini National Park, he 18

spent his days facing the distant mountains, reading the weather and anguishing over the managed wilderness he was forced to abandon. His nights, devoid of sleep, were filled with tormenting images of the two wolves he’d raised from cubs. How difficult it was to achieve the equilibrium between contact and distance, gaining their trust while perpetuating their natural fear of man; necessary precautions to ensure that the siblings survived long enough to be able to re-join the pack. He tried to imagine how his animals made sense of a world suddenly torn apart by the earthquake. He had to return. His desperate call for permission was met with a terse, uncompromising refusal from an indifferent young man whose call centre script did not permit referral to a supervisor. It did, however, contain a warning that the army would shoot, as a looter, anyone found in the area. The youth told him to apply in writing for permission. The application ran to forty-six pages and the man despaired at the effort bureaucracy had made to thwart him. When they finally agreed, he joined a small group of town officials, escorted by soldiers, which permitted a two-hour visit. The landscape, the habitats, the forests, mountains and open spaces that he loved so much were contorted, tortured, ugly. And silent. All that he was allowed, accompanied by his personal, armed, chaperon, was to visit his house; not the forest, not the mountain tops – not his wolves.

He returned to the coast, to his wife, to his community of exiles; at least in body, for his spirit remained in the broken mountain landscape. Walking alone, at night, along the palmlined esplanade, he spurned human contact and withdrew into a catatonic solitude where neither sustenance, nor his wife’s tender embraces, gave him solace. News that the hoteliers wanted peak season prices provoked an immediate response from the government. The terremotati, whose sense of community was their only remaining possession, would be dispersed over a vast, flat, hinterland, where cheaper accommodation had been found. The man slipped out of bed and, looking at the sleeping figure of his wife, dressed in his National wPark uniform before making his way to the roof. He looked at the first rays of the new sun on the horizon, threw back his head and roared. In the silence that followed, he closed his eyes and stepped off the roof.*

He returned to the coast, to his wife, to his community of exiles; at least in body, for his spirit remained in the broken mountain landscape.

*Massimo Dell’Orso – my friend – committed suicide on 1 May 2018. Orso is the Italian word for bear.

The Red Bedroom, Quarantine Kelly Medford Oil on Panel 40x45 cm

Interview with Author & Journalist

Eva Giovannini Listen to the interview audio in original Italian or english-language version on OpenDoorsReview.com. Full transcripts of both the English and Italian are available on the website.

Eva Giovannini is the author of the Graphic Novel “Oriana Fallaci: Il Vietnam, L’America e l’anno che cambiò la Storia.” It’s part of a series called “Donne sul Fronte” (Women on the Frontlines), the first large series of graphic journalism published in Italy by PaperFirst and the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. The series of seven volumes puts women at the center of a journalistic work in which journalists tell either the stories of previous war reporters or recount direct experiences from their own reporting. The first volume, written by Eva Giovannini is dedicated to Oriana Fallaci, the internationally famous Italian journalist who, in addition to being a war reporter at a time when women were almost never considered for such roles, became known for her fearsome political interviews with such figures as Yasser Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Gaddafi and Deng Xiaoping among others. Of his interview with Fallaci Henry Kissinger admitted it was a disastrous decision after she got him to admit that Vietnam was a “useless war.” Eva Giovannini is an Italian journalist, born in Livorno. Reporter for RAI, the author of the book: “Europa Anno Zero: il Ritorno dei Nazionalismi,” she has also been the presenter of two editions of Italy’s famed Premio Strega prize ceremony and the winner of the Altiero Spinelli Journalistic Prize for European studies. “Oriana Fallaci” is her first Graphic Novel.

Photo/pensavopeccioli.it

Lauren: Could you you describe Oriana Fallaci? Eva: Oriana Fallaci was the most important female Italian journalist in the world. Today she remains the most famous journalists that Italy has ever had. She was the first journalist from our country sent to war and the only female Italian journalist sent to Vietnam. Oriana Fallaci had an enormous international fame. Her books were published in 30 languages. All of them have been translated in English. She lived for part of her life in New York on the Upper East Side. She had a very difficult childhood because she was born on the eve of the second world war and along with her family she was a partisan, meaning they fought against the Nazi Fascists. This experience influenced her entire life. She was always deeply libertarian, some would say anarchist, certainly anti-fascist but never communist. Unfortunately, in the last years of her life, her fame was linked to her last works that were pub-lished after September 11 (she died in 2006). In the last five years of her life she wrote terrible things about Islam, very intense and virulent things that she has been strongly criticized for. I also did not share her opinions on her last works ... more than anyone else, the Left ripped her apart. This is why the Italian Right have since appropriated her name but I think if Oriana Fallaci knew that Matteo Salvini had gone to place a flower on her grave to make her a symbol for his party, she would be incredibly angered by that. Lauren: She was indeed very criticized for her opinions on the Islamic world. Considering todays tendency toward “cancel culture,” many have written off her work. Do you feel it’s necessary to justify what she wrote at the end of her life or is possible to focus simply on one part of her life? Eva: In my opinion it would be very wrong to reduce Oriana’s work to the last years of her life. She wrote many intense things but they are just one part of her journalistic and literary works. She wrote many books that are extraordinarily beautiful and that changed the very idea of what Italian journalism could be, especially female Italian journalism. She was a pioneer from any point of view. Books like “A Man” or “Nothing and Amen” or “If the Sun Dies” … these books are immortal. Lauren: Why did you choose to focus the Graphic Novel on this particular period of her life – the first years she was in Vietnam?

Oriana Fallaci: photo credit: Wikipedia.com

Eva: I was asked to choose a period from Oriana’s life that would represent one of her wars. I could have chosen the final part of her life which she described as the war against “the alien” which was the tumor that eventually killed her. But I chose Vietnam because it seemed like such an interesting and exciting part of her professional life. She was already very famous but not super famous. She was at the dawn of global fame when she left for Vietnam. In fact, “Nothing and Amen,” her book 24

about Vietnam that came out in ’69 would have an incredible success and be translated all over the world. I chose Vietnam because in those years, Oriana wasn’t the only one experiencing fundamental changes. It was the first really important war she followed, but America was also changing. There were the university protests in ’68, man on the moon, the assassinations of Bob Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Oriana went back and forth between Vietnam and the United States, reporting on these two fronts that were very different but incredibly interesting. So, it seemed like a period in which many things happened and from which everything changed. Lauren: “Donne sul fronte” is a project in which Italian female journalists, document other female journalist – why do you think this is an important project?

Donne Sul Fronte. Photo/ ansa.it

Eva: I didn’t choose this connection. The idea came from Luigi Politano, the editor of Round Robin who had the insight to have female journalists writing about other female journalists. I think that it’s importnat for women to not always write about the “women’s issues” but to write about the whole world. Too often, in our papers, women’s names come up when the subject is babies or discrimination or the victims of femicide. I want to find wom-en’s names associated with stories about Iraq, Siria, Libia, international tensions, Covid… I want to find women’s names associated with world-relevant topics not just “women’s topics.” That’s what makes a real difference. Lauren: Fallaci wrote about some of these “soft” maybe more “female” topics like the life of Hollywood actors but also about war and she became known for some incredible interviews with powerful leaders around the world. Considering your personal experience today, do you think female journalists have more opportunities to write about any argument or are they too often relegated to these “female” topics? Eva: The road is still long, but there’s no doubt that there has been enormous progress in comparison to the ‘70s when Oriana wrote for l’Europeo, the paper where she was the only woman to appear on many topics. In those years there were only two or three female journalists in Italy who wrote about politics. She was the only one to go to the frontlines. Today no. Today, we are 25

many, we write about everything, we report on wars… I personally have worked for many years in international politics, following European issues and extreme right terrorism. I can’t say I have ever been discriminated for my sex. Lauren: What was your personal path to enter the world of Journalism? Eva: I graduated in Pisa with a degree in international literature and then I did two years of journalism school in Rome, after which I did an internship and then I got some contracts with Sky TG 24. From there, I really began. I did a very standard path because I worked in Livorno with the daily il Tirreno, but let’s say that the jump to national work was possible through the journalism school that gave me the opportunity to become a professional journalist. Lauren: So you always wanted to do this work? Since you were very young? Eva: Yes, since I was little, I have to say I was very curious and I loved words. I was extremely curious about many different things. In 1989, when the Berlin wall fell I was 9 years old and I remember watching the live coverage by RAI with Lilli Gruber, the journalist in Berlin speaking about how the wall fell… and I remember thinking, this is the most amazing job in the world. Lauren: Was Fallaci a point of reference for you as you became a journalist yourself? Eva: Yes, she was an unreachable model. A true “Maestra” with a capital M. In my parents house we had “A man” and “Letter to a child never born,” which is a masterpiece, and I thought basically that she was just untouchable. Then when I was older, after September 11, I was 20 years old and I criticized her a lot. But I never lost sight of the fact that people are never one thing, they are always many things and should be viewed in their entirety. Lauren: I’ve been reading a biography of Fallaci’s life and I noticed that the details included in the Graphic Novel are very accurate down to the dialogue and specific events. Was this project the work of biography or did you fictionalize anything? Eva: No, I kept very faithfully to reality. I really just had to work on making cuts so in that sense, I took the liberty of choosing which things would be included but I didn’t invent anything. I studied a lot and didn’t invent anything. Lauren: How was the experience over all of creating a Graphic Novel? Eva: Fun. Tiring, because of all the revisions - I did ten drafts. Fascinating, because I learned how to make a Graphic Novel from research right up to designing the vignettes, like the process of saying, “Ok, I’m going to tell this episode” – that’s already a choice… but then, What do I tell exactly? Everything? No. Because the vignette has to say everything in ten words so… ok… how do I arrange the scene? Whose point of view is it from? Are we seeing through Oriana’s eyes or someone else looking at Oriana? Is the scene seen from above or below? Is this panel silent or do we have her say this line here or do we keep it from the next panel? These kind of questions… for 67 pages. 26

Lauren: The story you included of Oriana’s attempt to adopt a child in Vietnam really struck a cord with me. Why did you choose to include this detail to illuminate her character out of all the years she was in the war? Eva: Because in the book “Nothing and Amen,” she wrote about this story in a way that was masterful and that really hit me. And also because I think it was an episode that changed the course of her life – she was 38, 39 years old, she wanted to be a mother, she was in love with François Pelou but he was married. Their love story lasted many years but they never had children. She says at one point that she has a strong need for life and decides, “Ok, I’ll adopt a child.” Then she had the great misfortune to not be able to do it because the girl she chose turned out to be blind, they wouldn’t let her adopt her, there were complications. Then Oriana never got pregnant, well, she did but she lost the children through miscarraiges. Who knows what would have happened in Oriana’s life if she could have brought home that Vietnamese child and become a mother. Who knows if the path of her life would have been the same? We can’t say but I’ve always been fascinated with these turning points. Those moments in which anything can happen and can change the direction of your life and you’ll never know if it was destiny that something didn’t go as you wanted or because you made a mistake. Lauren: Oriana argued with an editor at the beginning of her career because she didn’t want to write an article with the explicit angle of the newspaper. For her, uncovering the truth about a person or situation is always the most important thing. At the same time, she said that a journalist can never be completely objective, that you can never fully separate yourself from your work. What do you think about that? Eva: She was a free journalist, first of all. Free, very prepared, she studied a lot and she was never detatched from the things she wrote about. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t intellectually honest, she was intellectually honest, but she had a bias, in the sense that in every situation she had her opinions. She said that so-called Anglo-Saxon journalism, or journalism that didn’t take a position didn’t exist in her opinion. Because we all have a filter that is cultural, or emotional or biological or familial, that influences our point of view. What is the difference between a deceptive or manipulative journalist and Oriana Fallaci? It’s that Oriana Fallaci declared that she had a point of view. She didn’t pretend not to have one. She declared it. And this was what made her great because she was always as sharp as a knife but she didn’t take orders from anyone. Her point of view was hers, never of whoever commissioned her to do an interview, it was always just Oriana.

“Oriana Fallaci: Il Vietnam, L’America e l’anno che cambiò la Storia” by Eva Giovannini and the other volumes of “Donne Sul Fronte” are available for puchase online at shop.ilfattoquotidiano.it.

Letters from Lockdown Three perspectives from 2020 “With nothing, ultimately in your control, your mind is your escape, your front lawn, your art, a book...” The Only Thing to Write about by Norah Leibow

“Walking for equal rights in the midst of a pandemic is stressful, doing this under a threat of police using force was even more so.” Freedom from the Known by Sezgi Uygur

“Often, I found myself torn between how Italian I felt and how American I am.” Italianizzata by Rachel Zitin

The Only Thing To write about Recently, I have been fascinated with the Mediterranean. The crisp beaches, the white sailboats, steep cliffs, drinks on the terrace, old beautiful cars, relaxed days, warm nights. Not America. Flower beds and cobble stones and crumbling buildings. Those countries that have seen monarchies, war, border changes, name changes, power structure changes, currency changes. When the arc of your existence is so long, when your history has survived and persisted, maybe thereâ€™s less pressure on the big picture of your life, and the focus is instead on the small, the simple, the slow. With nothing, ultimately in your control, your mind is your escape, your front lawn, your art, a book, a walk around the block. Dinner is ritual, breakfast is revered, a bath is to be cherished. Maybe these old cultures are appealing because they represent that ability to span hundreds of years, to have seen it all, and to come away from it all with an understanding of what really matters. Contemporary American culture of optimization and go-get-em going on all the time leaves no space for that realization. Except for now, weirdly. As we enter second lockdown and there is nothing happening outside, there is a lot happening inside. It turns out that our universe is infinite and now instead of paying attention to what happens over there, or over THERE or across the street or down the block or by the place that one time, I am focused on the oranges sitting on the table. In the fruit stand. The cats sleeping on the couch, the sun in my room.

Norah Leibow

The contrast to my interior old-world bubble and the bi-product of our stupid, youthful country is the starkness of how our culture does not value people at all. Built on the genocide of its indigenous population and enslavement of another, the path was set. To ignore that foundation makes it impossible to build a culture that sees human life as valuable. American culture does not value self. It does not value labor or creative expression or human interaction. The person is a means to the profit. If your livelihood or career is serving people, or working freelance or doing anything alone or in any way not corporate, everything is slashed right now. Working in a restaurant, working in a gallery, being a photographer, a dish washer, a server, all, these things are all wiped out. It feels harsh, and cruel. The government is not helping people, they are letting people die, they are making it into a reality TV show. Now more than ever, the world can see that America was meant for the educated, wealthy second sons of semi-nobility to craft a country for themselves, to experiment with their armchair philosophies, to declare their own liberties and to craft to their own language. To watch a country built on those things, in the modern world, is to watch a slice of humanity play puppeteer with the people whoâ€™s labor they have extracted their wealth from, with no care at all for the state-sanctioned indentured servitude upheld for their stock market. This is a country that does not function for its citizens. It functions for the people who profit off

the way the laws are created, which in turn, are only created to allow those profits to be made, or are written with the correct loopholes. That is it.

our country has every person been treated as free, as valuable or even with the decency that human life deserves inherent rights. What freedom is this? The freedom of the unlanded genI can see now that anything that exists in try to leave England, leave the taxes of the king, our country that functions as any kind of good, to come and be kings themselves? The rest of us, as any kind of humanitarian freedom or right, we are cogs in that system of corporate kingship. is only allowed if it props up the narrative of And today, the house is on fire, and they stand America. The narrative of boot-straps and outside debating which system to put the fire home-ownership dreams, but all it really does out will maintain their rule. it remove regulations that might prevent corporations and billionaires to profit. If there is a And so I am trying to take a page from the logical, helpful, uplifting policy that is proposed, ancient places. The places that have seen it all. but threatens the rich, it is fought. If the people Maybe we aren’t doomed as a country, maybe in charge all believe the myth so deeply, and see I can have faith when I think that the last 244 the ways they benefit from it, why would they years are just the beginning. And the mythicizever undo it? Why would they believe the people ing heartlessness isn’t final—our arc is longer who are crushed by it? than that. Seeing the small and the beautiful, cherishing someone simply for existing, valuing The myth of course is that America is the the long dinner, the slow walk, maybe we can all improvement of all the old cultures. We all came learn who we are away from the crushing corpohere to be free! to be a democracy! It’s a fairy- rate America, and fight for those things. tale that was never real. Never in the history of

Freedom from the known

Sezgi Uygur

At the beginning of this year I left my home borhood of Pigneto. My main source of income with a luggage packed for a month and I don’t was tourism, at the beginning as a multilingual know where home is anymore. interpreter, then as a guide for tailor-made art tours. My secondary commitment after my freelance job was working as an artist’s assistant Dwelling in Imagined two days a week, taking walking breaks at the and Material comforts historic center to buy supplies and to get inspi ration. I would cherish my moments of solitude Until last winter my life had a rhythm; free- at home, when I studied for my tours, worked lance work and social life, aperitivo in piazza, on new ideas for exhibitions or meditated with big Italian meals on holidays. I lived in Rome my favorite tea from that tiny shop at the Panfor 12 years; in the same apartment the whole theon. Twice a week I would ride to my theratime, in the artistic and working class neigh- pist’s office, then ponder while trail running at 30

the historical Caffarella park, maybe drop by my best friend’s apartment for lunch. I would start Saturdays with a short ride to the neighborhood market, buy whatever my favorite vendor has seasonally, meet friends over lunch, and stay for a drink on the pedestrian street. Even though I was living far from where I was born, I felt at home.

dom to be essential from the moment I moved in, kept separate accounts and paid my share. I left my well-paid office job, refusing a life in the suburbs, someone else’s dream life, with a mortgage, a car and kids. We got a consensual divorce after we fell out of love, meaning that I moved on to my single life with no alimony, but my books, my clothes, my three bikes and the only connection to my roots: a couple of family heirloom kilim carpets. Even though my partner and I began our journey as lovers with legal papers to facilitate my move to Rome, losing my identity as a wife hasn’t been easy. I knew that I was more privileged than most Turkish and Italian women, I didn’t need to ask my parents opinion, I’ve merely communicated I was having a divorce. I was free to refuse the concepts that Goliarda Sapienza calls in her long banned book, the Art of Joy, as “the most rotten”: sublime, duty, tradition, humility, modesty, piety, sacrifice, resignation.

In a way my privilege was three-fold. I was white and college educated and thus blended in as an expatriate among others. While my skin color concealed my immigrant identity and protected me from racial oppression in the public space, I was invited to join the BIPOC-only discussions apart from white Italians. Political engagement was possible unlike the country I was born in, either through active participation in neighborhood projects, bike rides, art workshops, self defense classes for women or crowdfunding over meals and drinks. In her article, “Identity, Skin, Blood, Heart,” Minnie Bruce Pratt narrates the place that she missed, which “seemed like a memory of childhood, though it was not a childish place. It was a place of mutuality, companionship, creativity, sensuousness, easiness in the body, curiosity in what new things might be making in the world, hope from that curiosity, safety, and love.” That place existed for me in this gray area between public and private space of autonomous occupied centers. Contrary to the author’s experiences, my sceptical eye never let me have a childish perception of it either, sexism was still a constant battle and transphobia was an issue in feminist and lesbian-feminist spaces. Aligned with the porosity of these places, at the right time, people would create that ideal place Pratt defined.

The Rupture

Last winter I had an operation on my Achilles heel confining me home for about three months, with brief daily intervals outside, just enough to leave me exhausted for the rest of the day. In February 2020 I came to Istanbul for daily physiotherapy sessions while staying at my parents’ apartment and visiting my long-distance partner. The next month my flight got canceled and Italy closed its borders. My ex-husband had my keys to take care of my plants, he was able to leave his apartment on short notice and to take on my rent while keeping my belongings for an indefinite period. I had a choice to make before the closure of cities, between moving back to my parents’ apartment, using my savings on rent Arriving in this state of liberation wasn’t with no plans ahead, moving in with my friends an accident but a choice. I lived with my husliving in the mountains, or with my long-disband for the first ten years and paid my rent for tance partner. the same three-room apartment alone for the last two years. I considered my economic free31

I would advise anyone to take their time before moving in with their partners but this was different. How long would the quarantine last? A month tops, or so we thought. Her studio apartment was in the center of Istanbul, an open-space floor with a tiny bathroom, a bed, a couch, a kitchen and a series of tables in front of the windows. The apartment was connected through an external spiral staircase to another apartment, rented by a friend, a two-story space with a bathroom that we all used. The independent building had a ground floor with an entrance, a laundry room and a dressing room. From the moment I moved in, we started taking extra measures for hygiene with each tiny piece of information we got. To keep the anxiety at bay, keeping a resemblance of a routine was the most important thing. I started doing short yoga sessions in the morning and going to bed at midnight. Every Sunday we were meditating on zoom with dozens of people and drawing together with another artist I’m backing up through Patreon. Twice a week, I had my psychoanalysis sessions over the phone and after that I walked to the organic grocery vendor for a quick chat through the shop window. I never took public transport until summer, leaving home for leisure walks mostly with my partner, or meeting a couple of their friends in the tiny park of the neighborhood, with masks on and distanced. I left home alone only for chores, a terrible decision for my mental health, but the only logical choice for our sanity.

space I inhabit at that moment. Another problem was finding a private setting for my psychoanalysis sessions, with an adequate wifi connection to call my Italian therapist. I’m very lucky to never feel lonely during the isolation period but my biggest challenge was finding a moment of solitude.

Testing the Ground In May I had a certification program for my job in Italy, planned prior to the pandemic. Around the same dates the Italian consulate informed me about an extraordinary flight to bring stranded citizens home, with a tenfold price compared to my suspended ticket. The institute was at the epicenter of the pandemic in Italy, and before I decided to catapult myself to Modena, the program became available online. A friend who wasn’t able to rent her empty apartment on our street in Istanbul, let me use it for free for my classes. Towards the finals of my program I was spending the whole day studying, coming back to my partner’s place to sleep. For a period, they took a bigger part of the domestic labor. This became quite a challenge for us; even though it wasn’t a problem of gender, it was a problem of gender-roles. I was the one leaving home every morning, building myself and identity, doing an activity towards my own future. They were the one remaining at home, cooking and cleaning the space we both inhabited. They told me they weren’t the housewife. Neither of us served men in our lives. I was the one married to a man once but lucky enough to be served meals and divide the domestic labour as I pleased. We worked and continue working on the issue by discussing ways of equal responsibilities.

Previous to the pandemic, I had strict rules for my household, regarding my trash separation and my vegan nutrition, although I learned to be flexible outside, in social settings at my place or elsewhere. Being confined with other people in someone else’s house helped me overTowards summer, it was easier to discern come this challenge, I was and still am in a state our gender for strangers. Walking in Istanbul of suspension, I make every choice in an awareholding hands was a statement we had to calness of the people I’m surrounded with and the 32

Letting Go of Identity

culate while stepping through more conservative neighborhoods. From New York to Mumbai what every woman is frustrated with is street harassment and especially the aggressive verbal sexual harassment was one of the reasons I left Istanbul after finishing my thesis. This happened to me only once during these months, leaving my partner puzzled over my gender-neutral look. Italy is not a country in which the culture of patriarchy is eradicated, but reclaiming public space for a woman in Rome is easier than in Istanbul. Here the concept of public means what the state, the government and the police have a palpable, often visible existence, layered upon the local culture. Europe remembers this spring with the silence of the skies, being able to hear the songs of birds during the isolation period. For me, the decreased number of men I encountered on the streets was a positive change I have experienced in terms of my relationship with Istanbul.

At the end of May, I applied for a grad school program in architecture and urban studies. Towards midsummer the travel ban got lifted. But I still needed to take my GREs, pass the language exam held by the university and be present during the enrollment days, which remained a mystery until the last possible moment. As my colleagues working in tourism know too well, we live the summer in the city. This year, I wasn’t working, yet I had to be in Istanbul, waiting for the announcements. Going back to Rome, even to get some more clothes from my wardrobe was out of question. Thinking of one’s own clothes seems capricious in such a moment, but what they represented was the comfort of my life before the pandemic.

When my partner left for Bodrum, a summer vacation destination, I started house sitting for friends. Between pet sitting, plant sitting, What I have considered as simple acts of visiting my parents or just spending time with advocacy in Rome like walking at the Women’s friends, I moved 16 times, sleeping between 12 March or carrying a pride flag on the pride day, homes. I used to get anxious when packing for a here are powerful manifestations against the weekend trip, I got comfortable packing a small government. Walking for equal rights in the backpack for a week or two. midst of a pandemic is stressful, doing this under a threat of police using force was even more After my enrollment, I took a flight to Bodso. In 2013 I was in Istanbul by sheer chance, we rum to spend a few weeks with my partner, walked the Pride Parade together with the Gezi bringing only cabin luggage. We house-sat a movement becoming more than 100.000 people. friend’s villa on the shore until the second-wave. In 2015, Turkish police used a water cannon to When it was time to leave, we realized we don’t disperse the parade. Since then the parade is want to be in Istanbul during the new isolation banned and tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests period. I chose again where my heart led me, were a common occurrence. This year we gathand this time we are seven people and a dozen ered on a street surrounded by police officers cats in a two-floor house. Consistent with my outnumbering us. We had to put our pride flags pattern this year, I have just enough stuff and in our bags to be admitted through them. Our no more. Since I left my apartment, I never had pride walk was six women walking from Tunel the luxury to decorate my space, although now I to Mis Sokak. The public space is not a place I can alter the room I share with my partner. belong as a woman or a queer, but a place I exist momentarily and subversively.

Embracing the Chaos

Last New Year’s Eve we were reading Rob Brezny’s astrology forecast for 2020 and one of the stories he wrote for my sign was of the czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke. There was a four-year period when he lived at fifty different addresses mostly as a houseguest. This was to warn me to seek more stability and security than usual. I did tell this story many times this year to make fun of my unsteady inhabiting choices. While the year’s coming to an end, finally it’s clear for

me that I did seek emotional stability and a fertile moment to grow, only inhabiting my body and the moment I live. *This paper was developed in ‘ARCH511 Readings in Society and Space’, a graduate course taught by Assoc.Prof. Dr. Didem Kılıçkıran and Assoc.Prof. Dr. Ezgi Tuncer as part of the ‘Architectural and Urban Studies Graduate Program’ of Kadir Has University, Istanbul.

Italianizzata

Rachel Zitin

*Part One of this essay “American... but...” is nect as well. My first inclination was to write this available at opendoorsreview.com. from an intellectual standpoint. A discussion on hope and change and the different attitudes There’s a distinct irony that I wrote part one held between my adopted Italians and my naof this story and legitimately never finished it. tive Americans. Rachel is American, but… she It’s as if I knew all along that this day would has spent quarantine and the entire pandemic come. Here we are. Four years later and a sense here in Italy. Over the past year I have written of relief. The biggest relief. We have lived in a so much on my observations of these two culworld for four years where Donald Trump was tures, where they meet up and where they differ. the president of the United States. What has I could easily write an essay where I intellectualhappened in that time? Who have we become? ize from my point of view on the Italian customs More importantly, how do I feel about who I I’ve adopted and the American ones I’ve left behave become? In my first reflection I explained a hind. I could talk about all the ways I am still term that had been applied to me regularly over so American and all the ways I’ve become more the past decade of my life. “Rachel is an Ameri- “italianizzatta” (Italian-ized). can, but…”, the ‘but’ has applied to so many aspects of my life. But, she’s more Roman than I When I think about my beloved adopted am. But, she loves this country more than we do. country I instantly have a desire to write about But, she doesn’t have ‘that’ American attitude. culture, beauty, food, wine, art, and la dolce vita. Rachel is American, but... she feels more Italian. A desire to put my adoration of Italian culture into an essay that reads with the same sweet There is a lot to account for writing in this dreamy imagery as a scene from The Talented current moment. We are in the middle of a glob- Mr. Ripley or the cinematography of La Grande al pandemic. We are more connected than we Belezza. I want to write it all, golden hour light have ever been and yet there is global discon- dancing around on terracotta colored buildings 34

with patina paint and painted green shutters. The perfume of the jasmine flowers that bloom in the springtime and the thick smell of Rome in the heat of the summer, the sun bouncing off of cobblestones and lightly cooking the entire landscape. I want to write about the sensation of living in a world that is colored like honey. This world is filled with beautiful people, beautiful art and a language that drips off of one’s lips like honey dripping off honeycomb. My love affair with Italy has clearly grown even stronger over the years. My inclination is to write it with as much rawness as I can comfortably muster. Rachel is American but… Rome has become her identity.

Indonesia with dear friends from Rome we went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. We ate pasta with seafood that was actually cooked al dente and creamy imported burrata that tasted like it had been made the day before. The whole meal was perfect and it made me cry. I cried because the food was so good. I cried because my Rome friends were with me. I cried because I was happy and because I was homesick and because the shared experience of eating an Italian meal in this context gave me a deep sense of belonging. Rachel is American but… she ‘gets’ Italian culture, Italian food, the joy of a shared meal and why we spent the extra money on the imported Donnafugata wine from Sicily. Despite all my travels, this culture, these people, this food and Almost exactly a year after the 2016 election, these traditions were a part of my essence just as I took one of the most life-changing trips I have much as everything that had shaped me in my ever taken. I had worked especially hard the pre- adolescence. vious year and in retrospect I was on the brink of total burnout. Through working ridiculously Unsurprisingly, returning to Italy after those long hours with hardly any days off, I had earned adventures felt like home. I returned to my beand saved money. That year I visited the Colos- loved apartment and I settled in. I spent more seum well over a hundred times. To be fair, I had time immersing myself in Italian culture. If I was enjoyed my days with clients from all around falling in love with Italy before, now I was italthe world, truly I had. My job as a tour guide ianizzatta. Italianized. I had committed to being provided me with the opportunity to relish in in Italy and I was becoming more Italian in the the city of my dreams. I delighted in explaining, eyes of the Italians. often to Americans, the nuances of the Italians and Italian culture, how they ate, how the groAnd that’s where our story actually begins. cery shopped, how they congregated in piazzas, What does it mean to become “italianized”? how they lived. Through sharing my love of all What does my love affair with Italy have to do things Rome, I enhanced and deepened my ado- with all of this? It is the backdrop, the setting, ration of my adopted city. But I had burned out, the scene. As Donald Trump botched America, I a fact I would only discover in hindsight. lived in a fairytale of my own creation. To be cliche, that trip and yoga changed my life. I worked I spent the money I’d saved and I traveled. I a little less than before. I slowly learned sometraveled to escape myself, to find myself, to es- thing I am still learning: to do nothing. I did cape reality, and to discover it. That trip changed yoga and I danced and I wrote and I dreamed my life. I did my 200 hr yoga teacher training and I socialized and I surrounded myself with in Bali. I traveled to Cambodia, to India and to people I loved. I ate delicious food and drank Thailand. I met people from all over the world. delicious wine and experienced life in Italy with Often, I found myself torn between how Italian the fervor of the Italians. I allowed myself to let I felt and how American I am. One evening in go and in doing so I discovered that the Italians 35

had been living like I was all along. I’d been so blinded by my American identity that I hadn’t actually immersed myself fully before. I discovered how out of touch I was with my surroundings. I finally observed that Italians generally live life in the moment, something I could have explained to a tourist before but never fully understood what it meant. I watched how my adopted culture lives their lives. How they ate with leisure, drank with leisure, spent hours soaking in the company of their neighbors outside in piazzas. I romanticized the lives of these beautiful humans and this beautiful city. I allowed my friends to make fun of my romance with Rome. They’d point out the trash as it piled high in the streets, the chaos of the city, the corruption and the scandals. In a way, I found the flaws as intriguing as the beauty. I spent hours aimlessly wandering around new corners of Rome, soaking in the colors, the buildings, the beauty. I listened to the chit-chat and the ever present clatter of tourists and city life amidst ringing church bells and the hum of traffic. I watched life and people and began to look strangers in the eyes. I’d previously credited my lack of not remembering people’s eye colors to my lack of observing. Turns out I simply wasn’t making eye contact in a meaningful enough way for it to register. Italians are very direct with how they communicate and do not bother with niceties as much as Americans do. I accepted that ‘ma sembri stanca in faccia’ (your face looks tired) was not an insult so much as it was genuine concern. Rachel is American, but you can treat her like one of us.

ty of the Italians in the face of a pandemic. We went into our homes and we stayed connected. Videos of Italy in lockdown made international news. Friends and family from America called me and I recounted with pride the beauty of an abandoned city, the silence on the streets, the sensation of being connected while we were all physically apart. I listened to L’inno Italiano with a sense of pride and my Italian friends teased me that I was becoming a nationalist. What happened next? Rachel is American, but she spent quarantine in Rome. After two months in total lockdown, we emerged. We walked out into the streets in May and I felt sensory overload at the culture and beauty and sunshine and daily life that felt like it was dripping in honey.

The following months felt like being on a movie set. We smiled at each other as we passed by, united in our shared experience of lockdown, united in our fear of the future, united because we were all unsure what the changes were going to mean. Still, the city was emanating beauty. There was a sun-soaked dreaminess and you couldn’t help but soak it all in and stay present. I can’t quite explain how beautiful Italy was. Perhaps that’s for another day, another story. I can say that in the last nine months a lot has changed in the world. I can acknowledge and recognize that there has been suffering, pain, change and excruciating growth. I can also say that my identity has continued to evolve. Perhaps before I was not quite sure if I identified with the culture I lived in or to the culture I came from. This year of living in a Rome without tourists has taught me that I fit into both. So yes, I’m italianizzata. But after the recent US election, I feel a little And just like that, it was March 2020. A global more proud also saying: why yes, I’m Ameripandemic. Rome went from a teeming metrop- can… but... olis filled with people from all over the world to an empty abandoned city under lockdown in a matter of weeks. I watched in February as concern mounted and tourists left. I was in awe. In March, I sat in my apartment and felt the uni36

Il Mio Cuore Maggie Johnson Ballpoint pen on notebook paper 37

Palestrina Lillia Parker

An old woman pushes open the shutters leans out of the window Content painted on her face as she breathes in the countryside air sheets and shirts pinned to clotheslines drape beneath her

Her brown stucco house stands on the edge of the Palestrina the Ancient hill ruins of a grand temple behind her Italy laid before her fields and villages and mountains stretch for miles reaching out to touch the thin blue horizon of the sea

Suspended in midair midair

Sezgi Uygur: Acrylic paint, watercolor, ink on aluminium sheet metal 39

Rise Rise Justin T Walsh I am tender in the morning With your name upon my lips My nakedness revealing only the lazy comfort of living in my own skin I am a strange kind of alive in these moments With the bridge between the large gray of sleep and the fullness of the day Hazy under psychic foot I tread slowly the path of my own opening eyes Careful steps towards the beautiful ritual of waking In my own precious time This is the right kind of blossoming

Young Eagles

Justin T Walsh: Digital Photograph. Amsterdam, September 19, 2020. 16in x 20in 41

Interview with italian artisan

Laura de Cesare Listen to the interview audio in original Italian or the english-language version on OpenDoorsReview.com. Full transcripts of both the English and Italian are available on the website.

Laura de Cesare is a weaver, designer and teacher, with a laboratory and atelier located in Pisa. She works with large wooden looms to hand weave anything from scarves and shawls to tablecloths and decorative objects for the home as well as products in collaboration with high fashion houses that want to bring a unique and personal touch to their designs. Loom weaving has existed since the 5th century bc and during our conversation Laura and I talked about the ancient, even mythical origins of the craft of weaving and their tendency to be at the forefront of modern innovation from the industrial revolution to the binary code that laid the groundwork for modern computer programming. More than anything I was struck by Lauraâ€™s dedication to following the path of most inspiration. Since she was just starting out in her early twenties and questioning her heart to opening her own artisan business in Italy to teaching students of all ages and backgrounds, her mantra is the same: Never stop asking yourself, what do you really love? This conversation has been translated from the original Italian into English. You can hear the original and the English language re-read in audio format on opendoorsreview.com or wherever you get your podcasts. The full transcript is available on the Open Doors Blog.

Lauren: When did your passion for making fabrics begin? Were you always interested since you were a child? Laura: No no, actually I wanted to be a ballerina at the beginning, when I was young. But my father didn’t take this dream seriously. So, that was all a bit difficult. I always loved music and I studied singing but then they sent me to a completely classics-based high school program. It took me awhile before I got into weaving. I was born and raised in Milan but I enrolled to study pedagogy or teaching in Florence because I didn’t want to live in Milan. I had already chosen to live here in Tuscany. So, I enrolled in a university in Florence but then, after a year of studying teaching, I realized that I didn’t want to continue that either. So, I asked my parents if they’d give me some time to think about what to do with my life. I stayed in Pisa for a few months and asked myself: “What do you want to do with your life?” And one day, walking across the bridge in Pisa, I remembered that when I was very young, I used to love costumes and fabrics and clothes. I had already started down a very personal path of discovery, of looking deeper into myself. I already had the key to questioning myself even if I was quite young, just a little older than 20. And the answer was: “Maybe the first thing to do is go and search, go and understand ... how do you construct fabrics?” And from there I began my journey. First, I went to Lucca to a weaver that has since become a good friend, even to this day. And from there, after working with her for some time, I followed a second address I’d found in Florence to a woman that is still my teacher to this day. I go to her any time I need help with something difficult. Lauren: What a lovely story! Laura: Everything in life comes back again. I studied teaching and then I studied weaving, textile design and from there I fell completely in love with fabrics and with weaving. But then, and here the story continues, because in 2005/2006 I decided to start my dream business and I discovered I had a great vocation for teaching. I really love teaching my work to others. I started at the university and took any opportunity that came my way and I’ve never stopped teaching. So, pedagogy definitely came back to serve me in an unexpected way. Lauren: How long did it take you to learn the technique of weaving? Laura: I started in ’87, ’89 and I never stopped. I always say that learning to weave and to design fabrics is like music. It’s very similar because the language is the same. You never stop composing, learning, discovering new melodies and inventing others.

Lauren: For someone like me (that has never worked with a loom) can you tell me how long it takes to make a piece the size of a tablecloth? As an example? Laura: It depends on the yarn, how thin it is, how complex the design and what type of loom you’re using. So you can make some in half a day or a full day from mounting the frame and doing the weaving. But there are fabrics that take a week to prepare. Lauren: As an artisan, how do you find working in Pisa? Laura: Well, my life choices brought me to Pisa so that’s why I’m here, not specifically for my job. Pisa isn’t a great marketplace, I have to say. It’s hard for a few reasons, first being an artisan in general, anywhere in Italy is difficult. Second, being a weaver is even more difficult as it’s a very niche market and quite expensive if you want to buy a scarf or a shawl made by hand in comparison to the millions of beautiful scarves you can find made by machine at an industrial level. That said, I work with all of Italy and a bit with foreigners too. Slowly but surely people are starting to seek me out here. Lauren: Do you think the presence of tourism helps local artisans to grow or does it not have much of an influence? Laura: Of course it has an influence! Tourism is an enormous source of income all over Italy. We have incredible things in this country and I’m not just talking about Botticelli’s “Venus.” For example, think of Pisa, the Palazzo Reale has three 16th century pieces of clothing on display that are simply incredible. I’ve been inspired to invent hundreds of designs just from one of those pieces. Then there’s a dress of red velvet that was possibly owned by Eleanora di Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I de Medici. It’s one of the few pieces of clothing that has come down to us with sleeves - in the whole world! Then the Lungarno of Pisa, in my opinion, is just as beautiful as the banks of the Seine or of the Tiber River in Rome. It’s a gem but if we don’t promote it, people don’t know about it so it gets taken for granted like so many places in Italy. It’s not just about San Gimignano, the Uffizi, Piazza della Signoria. Tuscany is marvelous. All of it. Italy is incredible. The whole thing! Lauren: For you, what’s the main difference between an artisan-made product and an industrial one?

Laura: Well I’ll say it this way even if some people might not get it… It has a different energy. I think about the person I’m making it for. The difference is in how it’s made, how it’s born, alongside the possibility that it’s something that’s been specifically commissioned. The best things emerge when a client comes to me saying, “Listen I want a shawl to wear on this particular, special day.” And so, we talk about the color and the “how” and the “why” and a unique object is born. I don’t want to compete with industrial textile manufacturers. The textile industry produces wonderful products. I make special, unique things, that’s it. Lauren: You wrote something on your website which I loved: “Each weave can be a thought, a dream, a desire. Tales and stories of threads, fabrics, and weavers in Myths and Fables are the background to this unique experience.” I just love that. Laura: Weaving is saturated in myth and fable because it is, how can I say this… on one hand, in a piece of weaving I put my Jacquard loom “punchcard” thoughts and my feelings into the very weft itself. And on the other hand is the fact that the practice of weaving is an archetypal work because it reminds man of when he started to make plans. It reminds man of when he stopped hunting in a primitive way with a stick, the same as agriculture and many other forms of craftsmanship. They introduce the concept to man that he is capable of foreseeing what will happen. I know that if I plant this seed now, in two or three months, something will grow. I know that if I design a textile and I set up my loom that soon I’ll have a fabric. I always tell the kids I teach to remember that the patron of weaving and of agriculture, not to mention war strategy is Pallas Athena in Ancient Greece. She wasn’t born from froth of the sea like Venus but from the brain of her father Zeus, completely armed. The patron of weaving is also the goddess of intelligence, of knowledge. When you see a person weaving, you are seeing the echo of the history of mankind. It goes so far back. Weaving has always ridden the wave of progress. The first motors were applied to looms. The industrial revolution started in England in the textile industry. Just think of the language of binary code that came from the Jacquard loom: full, empty. Zero, one. The concept of programming came from weaving and was subsequently applied to numerical calculations. Weaving has a unique modernity because it implies planning and design. Lauren: You teach university students and children. Do you also do courses for tourists? Laura: Oh yes, definitely! There are various courses I offer, even a simple half day experience of a few hours or a full day and there’s also week-long courses. They can experiment with ancient fabric designs like the “Lucchese weave” or the “Diamantina weave” … that is the famous one from the dress in the Palazzo Reale that we were talking about earlier. Then we can practice making more modern things too. I tell the stories connected to these designs and also give advice on what 46

museums and places to visit to see these clothes in the original. Through the observation of textiles, you can understand the history of a country, the traditions and the period in which they were born. Lauren: My last question is, what part of your work excites you the most? Is it working on the loom or coming up with new designs or seeing the final product? Teaching? Maybe... everything? Laura: I love everything, but I have to say that the thing that excites me the most is designing the punch cards! That is to say, the creation of the technical cards in binary that express the final design of the fabric, the filled and empty squares that guide the movement of the yarn and the warp and weft of the threads made by the loom. That is my favorite part. Lauren: It’s the part that seems like magic to me! Laura: It is a kind of magic! It’s amazing. That’s where I have the most fun, like a kid playing with Legos. And even now I’m surprised that I enjoy it so much and I wonder where it came from. I mean, I wasn’t born to artistic parents, you know? Who knows where it came from? But it’s a great gift, to do something you love. I always say to the kids, “Never give up asking yourself what you love....What do you love? What would you like to do with your life?” You know the film, Billy Elliot? He has a hard life but he dances. He dances! And when they ask him, “When you dance, what do you feel?” And he says, “I am pure electricity… I don’t think of anything anymore, I just fly.” That’s it. We must never forget that. That’s what gives you the joy of life. Even with all the problems you have every day, throughout your life, if you can do something you love, it gives you strength.

To find out more about Laura, her work, and the classes she offers (from half day to weekslong classes) visit her website: lauradecesare.it.

When POetry and Entrepreneurial innovation Meet John Phillips

rom Salvatore Quasimodo to Pirandello and Gabrielle Rossetti to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, a constellation of poets, novelists and men and women of letters have long formed a cultural avant garde in southern Italy. Nestling south of Naples the ancient port city of Salerno and its surrounding province for its part contributed to the great 20th century hermetic poet Alfonso Gatti and another native son, Francesco Terrone, an entrepreneur turned prolific poet, is the latest bard to sustain this noble tradition of the mezzogiorno. Ingegnere Terrone hails from the Salernitano town of Mercato San Severino whose two most famous luminaries were Gennaro Maria Sarnelli (1702-1744), a priest from the Redemptorist order who was beautified on the first step to becoming a saint, and Antonio Somma (1923-2005), an anti-fascist partisan, director of the CGIL trade union, an official in the Italian Communist Party from 1951 to 1989. As businessman Terrone shared the concern of both Sarnelli and Somma with the development of Italy’s south and his religious poetry recalls the fervour of Blessed Sarnelli for the redemption of the poor.

Much of Terrone’s verse is love poetry that often reflects the profound impact on Italian poets of the Greek classical myths. In his Icaro, for example, he composed: Come Icaro ho indossato le ali Per volare insieme a te E come Icaro è finite Il mio sogno di godere il senso della libertà di amare. Given his extensive engineering and business activities, one might think that Terrone’s poetry is a hobby, but he strongly denies this, calling it “a reason for life, magma that I feel boiling in the bottom of my soul, without which I could not live.” Ing. Terrone defines himself a pitagorico, inspired by the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras. When meeting Ing. Terrone in his studio in Rome, with is immediately striking is his genial sense of humour and subtle sense of irony, evident in this dedication. “I dedicate these literary results to my Land and all those who wish me well,” he wrote. “For those who do not wish me well, I will do my best to make them do so. Personally I love everyone.” A fine example of Terrone’s religious poetry, Mistero, can be found in his beautifully illustrated collection Quando Finisce La Luce 48

(Guido Milano Editore, 2018).

courageous young men he succeeded in creating a service company of national status.” Forbice describes how the engineer poet’s treatment at the hands of racist and xenophobic northern Italians was compounded by his surname, used by vulgar northerners as a term of abuse meaning ‘peasant’ for southern Italians. In fact as recently as 2013, Forbice noted, a Lombardy judge, Davide Alvigini, ruled that calling somebody “terrone” was to be considered “racists” and sentenced a 64-year-old pensioner to pay a 400 euro fine and 2,000 euros in compensation. Forbice, a Sicilian, noted that northerners are known to southerners as “polentoni,” or eaters of polenta. Until the 1990s banter between Italians from the north and south had been relatively harmless but in the 1990s northern racism toward the south was exacerbated by the xenophobia of Umberto Bossi and his Northern League party, which threatened the north seceding from Italy. Francesco arrived in Lecco in April 1993 at age 31, two years after graduating in mechanical engineering in Naples. He was immediately popular at a tech-

Mistero I misteri dell vita Sono I misteri della fede, la fede in un Dio Che si nasconde e tace, Più lo cerchi e piu si nasconde un mistero profondo anni e secoli, che si concretizza nel volo degli uccelli, nel profumo dei fiori, nelle lacrime di un bambino appena nato che cerca la mamma. While developing his literary gifts as a young man, Terrone had to contend with the racism that too often faces southerners making their fortune in Italy’s industrialised north. His adventures as a recent graduate from the Federico II university of Naples when he arrived in Lecco, are described by the venerable RAI journalist Aldo Forbice in his book Il Viaggio dell’Ingegner Terrone, subtitled Il pericoloso percorso di un coraggioso imprenditore del sud (the dangerous path of a courageous southern entrepreneur) (Guerini e Associati, Milano, 2019). “ Te r r o n e , pained by that shocking experience, found the strength to return to his home town, where, with other

Francesco Terrone Photo/Italian Insider

nical institute where he began teaching while looking for engineering work, but elsewhere in Lecco “when it happened to pronounce my name, even if I added that I was an engineer, there was hilarity, irony and often also insults prevailing on those cold, hostile faces of men and women, mostly, I imagined, electors of the Northern League,” he recalled. “They all looked at me suspiciously as if I was an alien. I felt a foreigner in Italy. Now I understand what workers from Eastern Europe can think about our country, without speaking of those who arrive, with suffering and risking their lives, from Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Bangladesh and other African and Asian countries. I felt then that the people from the northern regions had more respect for African immigrants than those coming from the regions of the Mezzogiorno.” At one job interview with a textile engineering company, Francesco was told he should change his surname if he wanted to get hired. His drama made headlines in local newspapers and was adopted by two young cinema directors, Giulia Morganti and Salvatore Metastasio, in a film screenplay they wrote in 2015 entitled ‘caso Terrone.’ Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the Jesuit archbishop of Milan, also heard of the affair, and denounced racists from the pulpit during his next homily in the Duomo of Milan. Fifteen years later Francesco returned to Lecco to challenge League leader Bossi, sending him 501 roses in the colours of the Italian tricolour flag, red, white and green. In a note to the politician attached, Francesco wrote “these 501 roses are to bear witness to the beauty of our flag, our country and our people. I would like to know however, why for 15 years Hon. Bossi you mortify the unity of our nation? Hoping that my surname does not represent an offense for your conscience, I send you my best regards.” Bossi did not deign to reply. It is not known what happened to the roses. Forbice speculates that possibly Bossi gave them to his Sicilian wife.

Francesco took up his case again in 2004, writing to the Italian President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. His criticism of the League eventually was adopted by its new leader Matteo Salvini, who sought to distance the party from open racism to the south. In his youth Francesco returned from his disappointing time in Lombardy to his home town of Mercato San Severino, setting up an engineering firm with a friend which was a harbinger for his ground-breaking Sidelmed company, a name in which med stood for the Mediterranean, underlining its southern roots. Specialising in research and development on job safety and relevant training, it employs today hundreds of people in Italy. Its management system has been adopted in all of Europe and even as far afield as Turkey, India and Kazakhstan. Against this successful background Francesco continues to make time for his other, poetic profession. In 2009 he founded a publishing house, Iris, and in 2010 with other intellectuals, the “Frederic II International Academy for the development of science, art and culture.” In 2012 this was followed by the launching of the Francesco Terrone Foundation dedicated to promoting cultural events in Italy and abroad. Francesco Terrone’s most inspiring publications include I Sette Doni dello Spirito Santo, with a preface written by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, it begins with a meditative poem: Soffio Nasciamo con un respire e moriamo con un sospiro. Vento forte, che riempi la mia vita, fa in modo di colmare il mio cuore di Via, Verità e Vita tanto di poter aiutare chi ha fame, chi soffre e chi muore in galere prive di luce.

Author Bios Fiction John MacDonald: Bramito Mi chiamo John MacDonald e sono uno scozzese appassionato sia dell’Italia sia della scrittura. Tanti anni fa mia moglie organizzò una vacanza in Italia, e l’Italia rimane ancora oggi il suo più grande regalo per me. Ora viviamo circa quattro mesi all’anno nel nostro piccolo appartamento nel sud della Toscana, dove ci siamo stabiliti nella comunità dove anche cantiamo nel Corale Poliziana a Montepulciano.

Poetry Cynthia Boorujy: Over the Sea Wall Cynthia Boorujy is a writer and performer who has performed and has had her writing produced across the US. She has written scripts, plays, poetry, and short fiction. She currently resides in Santa Monica, CA and is working on her debut novel.

Charles Edward Carey: Il Mare Mi Parla I live on a small island in The Bahamas, a world apart from Italy, yet for some inexplicable reason Italy holds me tightly within its orbit. I first visited Italy as a young man with a French lover. The lover didn’t last but my love affair with Italy began and has endured to this day. Early on it was difficult to return but during the past decade my partner and I have been fortunate to spend chunks of time in Italy and we return every year. Until now, that is. In the midst of the pandemic we cannot travel but we continue to dream of Italy and live our version of an Italian life here on our remote island, cooking our favorite Italian dishes (alas without authentic ingredients), reading about Italy and speaking Italian on Skype calls with Italian friends. It’s enough for now. But perhaps next year we will be able to return and savor the excitement of waking up in Italy once again! Non vedo l’ora!

Lillia Parker: Palestrina I am seventeen years old and live in Washington State, where I am a senior at Bear Creek. I went on a trip to Italy (Rome and Florence) with my Latin class two years ago, and it was one of the best times of my life. I had never left North America, and I learned so much from Italy’s culture and history. It gave me a huge travel bug and profoundly changed how I view the world. Rome is now one of my favorite places on Earth, and I hope to return there someday soon. When I am moved by something I write it down, and it usually emerges as verse. Throughout the trip to Italy I typed out pages of poetry on my phone, documenting my experiences.

Justin T Walsh: Rise Justin T Walsh is an image-based studio artist whose primary investigation focuses on the intersection of the synthetic and the organic in the world around us. He is also a poet and writer with a deep fascination for the way that scientific advances expand our shared understanding of what it means to be human now and into the future. Walsh grew up in Tucson, Arizona and completed his MFA in 2016 at Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Indiana. In 2019 he moved to Rome where he currently teaches and is developing a body of images which explores the entropic relationship between space and place—whether amid the grimy beauty of the Eternal City or the vast avenues of internal cartography.

Visual Art Jennifer Lewis: Why Do We Create Art I love art and I love Italy, and for me they have always been intertwined. My first knowledge of Italy came in the form of a family photo of my great-great-grandfather John Jacob, and his brothers, either just before or after they arrived from Italy to live in England. Between Florence, Pisa, Rome, Milan, and the other places I’ve visited in Italy, it’s hard to pick a favourite but it is always the art that draws me in. I am constantly saving my money and making plans to set foot on Italian soil again. I hope, ultimately, that my artwork shows a love of cultural influence, that our perceptions of our contemporary world are always coloured by the influences we have gathered along our journey, and that embracing them is a positive step to be taken.

Kelly Medford: The Red Bedroom, Quarantine Born 1977 in Washington, D.C. came to Italy on a scholarship to study classical drawing on a scholarship at The Florence Academy of Art in 2004 after having studied painting, drawing, and printmaking at Antioch College and then The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. After finishing her studies she began taking her easel outdoors to explore and learn about Italy through painting in both oils and watercolors. The current organizer of the Rome Urban Sketchers and founder of Sketching Rome Tours, she dedicates herself to working and teaching primarily en plein air in Rome and throughout Italy. Working primarily through commissions, her work is in private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and around the world. Her website is www.kellymedford.com

Maggie Johnson: Il Mio Cuore My passion (or obsession) with Italy began long before I reached its shores. I always dreamed of traveling there, and completely fell in love with it when I studied in Florence for five months. Life was not the same when I came back to America, and so I fought to get back as soon as possible. Eventually I became an au pair in Rome, which allowed me three months of exploring the eternal city and seeing more of Italy. I am most passionate about the ability to live a beautiful life in Italy, the daily rituals that feed our soul and allow us to connect with other humans. I hope to return very soon, and stay a while. Website: My blog: TheArtfulEveryday.com.

Sezgi Uygur: Suspended in MidAir Sezgi Uygur is from Istanbul. After an Erasmus exchange in Urbino, Italy and finishing her thesis in philosophy of ecology in Galatasaray University, she moved to Rome in 2008. She is a certified tour guide in five languages and works with art history, archeology and architecture in different fields. She is an artist, working on time and layers. She participated in group exhibitions in galleries and underground spaces. Currently she lives and works in Bodrum, Turkey, following a grad school program on architecture and urban studies.

Justin T Walsh: Young Eagles See bio in Poetry

Essay Norah Leibow: The Only thing to write about Norah grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area—and first met the Mediterranean when she was 16 on an exchange trip. She is a running enthusiast, lover of architecture, art and taking long walks around San Francisco where she lives with her husband Adam and two cats. Sezgi Uygur: Freedom from the known See bio in Visual Art Rachel Zitin: Italianizzata Rachel grew up in Asheville, NC and accidentally moved to Rome in 2009. Her adoration for Italian culture grows incrementally with each passing year. She is an avid yogi and yoga instructor. She also works as a tour guide and is passionate about creating and curating retreats and wellness experiences all around Italy. www.rachelzitin.com

Article John Phillips: When poetry and entrepreneurial Innovation Meet John Phillips is Editor of the Italian Insider. His latest book is White Eagle over Wimbledon, published by Lume Books: https://www.lumebooks.co.uk/book/white-eagle-over-wimbledon/

Editor I’m Lauren T. Mouat. I was born in California but since 2010 Italy has been my home, first Rome and more recently on the Tuscan coast in Livorno. Reading and writing are an essential part of my life. When I write, I think. When I read, I grow. In my time in Italy, I’ve written for numerous publications and I’ve sought to bring writers together in a series of writing groups to share our work and ideas. I’ve also worked for many years as a tour guide and, in discussing Italy’s art and history, I found myself wanting to explore and share more of the contemporary writing and creative endeavours that are growing in and around Italy today. Open Doors is a way to share enthusiasm and encourage the exchange of ideas that only art can bring to the surface. My aim is to connect writers and artists to reveal another side of Italy, a country that is so much more multifaceted than we are used to seeing in mainstream culture. The world is going through vast changes and I believe that what we create now and the conversations we have today, will decide our future.

Submit to the next issue of Open doors! Do you have a connection with Italy? Do you live here? Do you travel here? Do you dream of here? Whatever your connection to Italy (even if itâ€™s just enjoying Open Doors), we invite you to submit to the next issue of The Open Doors Review. We accept literary fiction, poetry and thought provoking essays. Content is up to you. We are NOT looking for things that are specifically Italy focused. If your work happens to be about Italy, that is fine, but Italy is by no means a theme. We accept work in English or Italian. Make us think. Make us laugh. Make us cry. Make us question. Make us swoon. Make us uncomfortable. Make us feel. For details on how to submit and on our next issueâ€™s guest judge, visit our site: www.opendoorsreview.com