Mrs. Dalloway's Coffee Break

I woke up this morning with this memory from many years ago in my mind, and I was laughing all through coffee and breakfast. It is nothing, really, just one of those things. I have no idea if this if funny for anyone else but me who was there. But anyway, here we go, just a small anecdote. I was sitting on a park bench with my friend Alessandro, the man who was in the habit of the nonchalant, pointed yawning when we were going out. This was some years later, and it was summer, and we were spending a leisurely afternoon in a city park. We were discussing Orson Welles, since you know, what else could we have possibly been talking about? Now before I go for the punchline, you have to understand that here is a fellow who is both funny and sensitive, and one of those guys who would never treat women with any kind of disrespect. So, there we were, in broad daylight, talking movies. There had been an Orson Welles movie marathon on TV, and we were trying to bring to mind what titles ...

Since, according to so many songs, summer is crazy, and my life is all about the dancing and the feeling good in the summer, or at least that is what it should always be about, I want to share an intimate detail about the ancient beginnings of this energizing hobby of mine. As most of you know, I was a huge Madonna fan when I was a young girl. Huge! I’m talking devotion here. I thought she was just the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, ravishing, luminous. I collected books, postcards, posters. I cut out pictures from magazines. The walls of my room were covered with Madonna paraphernalia. It was the first time in my life I witnessed a powerful woman make her own way in the world just the way she saw fit, and for that experience I am forever grateful. Of course, I loved her music as well, but if I’m truly honest, sometimes I think it was more about the fact that she was so charismatic, so seductive, so much like a star even when she still wasn’t, that the music itself felt at...

It is a necessity, a rule in life, that an argument is to be followed by tranquility and amends; a short-lived time of clarity and peace, a moment of pure love. How rare and magical these intermissions, bathed in luminosity and translucence! And how badly I need them, require them, to survive this terrible love. I am sleeping a little better already. The weather is breath-taking; windy, sunny, a drop of the season’s end already anticipating in its nooks and corners. Finding the most gorgeous spot, by accident, in our arrondissement yesterday did seem counterintuitive, like sorcery; some insane magic, since right there was where we had the most intense and disturbing portion of the fight. But it had been in the making a while already, and now that it’s over, I am glad. I am glad we had the fight. Here, right now, is the place where I am my best self, where we are our best selves, I muse as we descend the steep slope towards the rest of the city and its arrondissements and La S...

At first glance one might get the idea that preparing Cacio e Pepe is very simple indeed. And it is simple enough, when you know what the hell you are doing. Alas, in the world of pasta, timing is everything, so there are, in the wise words of Mickey Rourke, at least fifty different ways to screw it up even if you are a genius. Of course, Mr. Rourke is referring to WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS killing a man and making it look like arson, in Body Heat. But the same rule, people, applies here. Cooking some legendary pasta that actually turns out well is totally comparable to getting away with murder. After years of perfecting my pasta cooking abilities, I have finally started tackling the classics. Cacio e Pepe seemed simple enough, at first, but I overlooked the simple yet elegant concept of beginner’s luck when I first made it. I was so over the moon getting it right, when most recipes came with some words of warning that went along the lines of "Yes, it does seem like the ea...

Sitting on a bench, watching the ducks and the small birds and the Hendersons, the swan couple Mrs. Dalloway easily spotted swimming on the far side, a couple she knows from before, in the glimmering sun, listening to Kate Bush, looking like a true graffiti painter, only the cans of paint missing from her back pockets. And if she was a graffiti artist, she would carry fuchsia pink and hot purple cans of spray paint and write words like Bananafish and Flashdance and Comic Book Tattoo on the walls of the old school building she passed on her way over, which is waiting to be demolished. Already a bunch of schoolboys considering themselves radicals had climbed on the roof, using an upturned bike stand to get there. When they saw her approaching, the kids weren’t fooled by her street getup for even a second, it was a grownup approaching, all her baseball cap and name-brand hoodie and large headphones camouflage couldn’t cover the fact that she is no school girl, but a grown woman. But...