Letter

A couple days before I left for Italy I went to Manny’s for a pastrami on rye. I’ve been going there for decades at this point and always get the same thing. Gino, the guy who makes those amazing pastrami sandwiches, has been there over thirty years. I took my parents there years ago and he still always asks after their well-being. When I told him I was headed to Italy to spend time with them, he asked that I send along his regards. I asked if he wanted me to bring anything back and he said San Marzano tomato seeds without missing a beat.

It took some doing but a worker of my folks’ hosts in Fiesole finally located a couple packages a day before I was to return home. Gino couldn’t believe it when I handed them over. He’s an avid gardener and these tomatoes allegedly make for the best sauce. It was good to’ve had an assignment while I was away and to’ve been able to accomplish it. It made the trip relate back to life at home, however tangentially. 

A couple months back I found two homemade driftwood-looking frames at a Goodwill in Wisconsin. I used one for a painting I’d done at the Skylark awhile back and offered it to the owners. On Thursday it was hung in the alcove by the entrance, right above the table where it was painted. Having a piece of mine as part of the permanent decor of that bar is an honor and makes me feel like I’ve contributed a bit to its history. Now when I go into work I’ll see it out of the corner of my eye and be reminded that I’ve been there long enough to become part of the scenery. This is the polar opposite of the dislocated feeling of travel. Unlike Italy, where driving my parents around and looking for tomato seeds made me feel useful, just walking through the door of the Skylark on a given evening is enough for me not to feel out of place.

—I reviewed a compelling Japanese film about sisters reckoning with their family history after their father’s death and a ridiculous HBO show about a kid who borrows his father’s cab, then gets accused of murder. Also: Here’s a sketch of director Todd Solondz during the Q & A for his great new film Weiner Dog at the Music Box on Saturday night.

The reasons for leaving your home and going other places vary greatly from traveler to traveler. But for most it’s an attempt to shift or refresh one’s attitude towards their lives. Because I’ve been involved in a nearly daily reexamination of my everyday life for many years now, travel to other places has usually felt like unnecessary overkill. I have little curiosity about other places and very little urge for adventure. Almost all the trips I’ve taken outside Chicago over past twenty years have been to visit my parents or the parents of my (rarely-occurring) significant others. Whether these journeys can properly be called vacations is probably debatable, but the idea of just leaving town for the hell of it has hardly ever crossed my mind, so these family rendezvouses must serve in the absence of any alternatives. 

On this visit to Italy, I’ve spent a lot of time behind the wheel as we’ve taken day trips to various towns within an hour or two of Florence. I’ve also spent a good amount of time at the place my parents rented in Fiesole. The idea of renting an apartment in another country for an extended stay, as they have, is an interesting one because the goal is to transcend tourism and to actually live in a foreign place for a time. However, a weeklong visit like mine cannot reach that state, no matter how homey the setting.

On a daylong trip to Venice with my brother Max, we indulged in the unavoidable tourism which is the lifeblood of that city. Between repeated gelatos, we wandered all about, taking care to dodge other aimless wanderers who seemed completely oblivious to others’ presence in their path. We met my other brother Boris and his wife Blakeney and walked about some more, after a meal at a waterfront restaurant. Venice seems like a toy train-set town, an idea of an old city rather than an actual lived place. Still, any direction you look is a postcard-come-to-life and the absence of cars makes for a far less stressful experience in unfamiliar surroundings. 

On the high-speed train back to Florence, I sketched Max as he slept. This felt like one of the more normal moments of the entire trip.

Were I on a CTA train in Chicago, I’d be doing much the same thing. Is there any difference because this happened some five thousand miles away? I couldn’t say. But after nine days it’s good to be going home. Was there any value to this trek other than spending time with family? I truly can’t say. The feeling of foreignness comes naturally to me and shows itself in places I know like the back of my hand. Some people say you leave in order to appreciate your own place. Time will tell whether there has been any shift in perspective. My parents will think they could have done something differently. But they were perfect hosts and did all they could to present a place they love in its best light. It’s not their fault that travel feels like voluntary exile to me.

Now back to the routine: wake up, read, eat, paint, watch movies, write, serve drinks, bus tables, wash beer glasses, sleep. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

—Remember that brand-new sketchbook I wrote about a few weeks back? I somehow managed to lose it at the creepy suburban-style movie theater on Roosevelt before a press screening of a silly rah-rah America agitprop thriller called The Purge: Election Year.

I’ve been in Italy the last couple days. I’m here because my parents invited me to come spend a week with them at a place they like outside Florence. They’ve been here over a month and this is their third or fourth visit. The place they rent is in the hills and is surrounded by olive trees. The owners sell olive oil, in fact. This is called agritursimo here—kind of like AirBnB but out in the middle of a landscape that looks like the background of a Renaissance painting.

I don’t really know how to travel. The only touristy item I had on my agenda was visiting Giorgio Morandi’s house-museum in Bologna, which is about an hour and a half away from here. Half the route is through twisty little village roads. These were my initiation into driving in Italy. No one got killed and the car’s in one piece, so I count it a success.

Morandi’s place is on a nondescript side street called Via Fondazza. He lived there with his sisters for most of his seventy-four years, painting the same dusty bottles, saucers, cups, and seashells, and views of neighboring yellowish stucco houses with terra cotta shingles. The room he painted in is preserved now behind glass like a diorama display in an old-fashioned natural history museum. The only thing missing is a mannequin of the man himself, frozen in action. It has a monastic cell feel to it, this little room. What’s visible are the remnants of a life lived with blinders. The man only really did one thing for over fifty years. I don’t know if such a thing is possible these days—to shut out all the noise and devote yourself to a singular activity until you die. But the idea of it is very seductive. Perhaps, at least in part, because I know I couldn’t do it. 

Before I left Chicago, I painted another dog, reviewed a show of illustrations from the pioneering satirical magazine Puck, and added to my growing collection of capsule film reviews.