After the fact

At last I feel somewhat calm and serene. I have just sat down at the Wu, my first Japanese restaurant in Milan. Everything looks incredibly authentic, complete with geisha attired waitresses. One has just brought me warmed sake in a small crackle glazed pitcher with matching miniature glass. The lighting is dim, the Japanese minimalist décor is dominated by black, orange and the natural colour of pinewood. My first course of spring rolls has just arrived and I am beginning to feel at one with my “little oriental paradise” hidden away in industrial Milan.

The spring rolls were incredibly fresh and crisp as was my vegetable and shrimp tempura which followed. Hardly a morsel dropped from my bamboo chopsticks. I was very proud of myself. The tempura was a true work of both visual and gastronomic art. I destroyed the symmetry of my “tempura mountain” and discovered it to be even more delicious than its aspect.

This week has been a relatively stressful one for me. My students in Rome and I set up their International Baccalaureate (IB) exam exhibitions on Monday taking over the entire school auditorium to do so. The exams, the following day, went smoothly and the outside examiner from Venice, Joanne Vanin, congratulated both my students and I on their creativity and verbal abilities. I was extremely happy but quite drained from the experience. I have gone through this experience many times and it doesn’t seem to get any easier each year. Am I perhaps doing something wrong?

Photo of my senior IB art students this year – First row….Ingo from Northern Italy, Ms. Endo from Japan, my Arabian princess, Noura, and Ashna from Bangladesh. Second row…..Sarah from California, Thais from Brazil, their wonderful and illuminated teacher, and my Mayan from Venezuela, Laber.

Then the fun began. Exams finished, the last school bell of the day having rung, the party began. To bring closure for my students for these two years of intensive study and their oral exams I organize each year an enormous fete, the Annual Art Vernissage, where their works meet the public’s scrutiny for the first time.

I enlisted the help of the music department’s best musicians and singers to serenade staff, family, friends, wandering ambassadors and stray animals while we sipped champagne and munched on lusciously tempting titbits. You would have loved it. Sorry you weren’t there.

Photo of two of the many musicians who performed at the Vernissage and added to it’s success….Ben from Paris on piano and Jambi from Central Africa as she belted out Summertime.

After the last drop of champagne was consumed with not even a morsel of a titbit of food in sight, the singers hoarse and the musicians exhausted, the curtain came down on this year’s “Happening”. Carefully but hurriedly we took down the show, cleaned up the auditorium a bit and then disappeared as quickly as you could say “Hi-oh Silver”.

That was easier said than done for when I arrived at the school gate and asked the guard to call me a taxi, he looked at me as if I were nuts. He said that there was not one to be had in the entire city. He then asked me if I hadn’t heard what had happened. Somewhat stunned, I asked him what had happened to which he responded that the cardinals had just nominated a new pope and everyone was scurrying to the Vatican.

I couldn’t believe it. I felt a victim and that the forces of nature were against me. This could onlyhappen to me I thought. I was exhausted, weak, stressed out of my mind and my only desire was to get home as quickly as possible to pack a few belongings and get ready for my flight the next morning to Milan. It was already 7:30 at night and I no longer even knew my name from exhaustion, and low and behold what did the damn cardinals do without my permission…. they went ahead and nominated a new pope. Abemus Papum!!! We have a pope.

I collected myself, took a deep breath and in an adult manner smiled at the guard and said to him that I know it is virtually impossible to get a taxi into the city, but just for fun, why don’t we try again? He obviously saw my red eyes about to jump from their sockets and did as I beckoned.

Voilà, the gods were with me and a taxi would arrive in five minutes. Evidently, the taxi driver was unaware too that Abemus Papum!

My meal is drawing to a close and my friendly geisha has just brought me my green tea ice cream.

What a great tangy contrast to all that has just been tasted, savoured and devoured. She smiled cordially and handed me a glass of cold prune Chinese brandy. I definitely need to put this restaurant on my list of “things not to be missed while in Milan”.

I arrived home after my students and I had taken down the exhibition without incident. I did only what was absolutely necessary upon arriving. I showered, shaved, packed, put my exam papers in order, warmed up some leftovers that were hiding out in the dark obscurity of my fridge for dinner and turned on the television to discover that our new pope had a name, Pope Benedict.

Crawling off to bed I thought to myself that it had all been very gruelling but well worth every moment. I awoke the next morning, perhaps night is a better way of putting it, at around 4:00 a.m. as Nazereno, my trusted driver was to pick me up at 5:00 a.m. to speed me off to the airport to catch my early flight out to Milan to play examiner at the two international schools there.

It was Saturday morning and I had just finished my last exams earlier than I had expected and decided to have a “last lunch” at one of my favourite local restaurants, “La Primula”, near my hotel. I felt a great need for the sea, for phosphorus and sea iodine and ordered a luscious plate of one of my all time favourites, deep fried calamari, accompanied by grilled Trevisano from Northern Italy, a kind of hard red lettuce which is scrumptious when grilled. The calamari were incredibly soft and sensual which is a sign of their freshness. I complimented the chef. The slightly frizzy local white wine was a great accompaniment to my well earned lunch.

I arrived early on Wednesday morning in Milan without any surprises. Alitalia had been striking on and off for days and I was a little scarred, at least, I hoped that I wouldn’t find myself in the middle of their union arguments and demonstrations. The gods were once more with me and I got out without a scrape.

I arrived at my hotel which was a little outside the centre of the city and immediately set myself to work. Each of the two schools which I was to examine had sent me the exam materials and research books of each candidate. Each candidate having about three voluminous research books each. I found the sight staggering.

Entering my room, I was confronted by a mountain of exam materials, half of which I needed to read and grade before my first oral exam the following morning. I immediately surmised that this trip was not going to leave me much extra time to “playing in the city” and I realized that a number of dinner engagements which I had orchestrated from Rome with friends living in Milan would have to be cancelled.

The exams went well at both schools. The students were incredibly creative and oozed with that mystical magic of “making art”. It is always fascinating for me to examine the students for there are so many common denominators at this age level which most of them share – acceptance, being loved and understood, a strong desire to communicate and that big one - self image and their place in the universe. I am beginning to call this bag of traits “teenage angst”. All so real, all so threatening and immediate. Art for many of them is used as a therapeutic tool of expression or release…..and I think it works for most!

This year was particular for me as an examiner for both schools had an overabundance of candidates, about 38 in total, which clearly explains the mountain of exam materials awaiting me and the impossibility for me to “play in the city” with friend and foe.

My last night in the city, exams finished, I decided “to go out and play”. A talented ex-student of mine, Tomasso de Filippo, whose grandfather is one of Italy’s theatrical giants, the famous Eduardo de Filippo, is currently studying architecture in Milan and had wanted to meet up with me. I grabbed the opportunity and invited him to one of my all time great Tuscan restaurants in the centre of the city, “La Fettunta”, on Via Santa Marta. A restaurant which had been introduced to me by my dear friend Fabrizia, better known as The Pearl, who is the niece of the famous Italian painter Fabrizio Clerici. Tomasso and I both toasted “La Perla” in absentium!

I arrived back to sunny Rome yesterday, Sunday, around noon time. It was a great and needed contrast to rainy and grey Milan. I think I saw the sun all of two hours while I was there.

I now need to close myself in my apartment for a couple of days and write reports on each of the students which I examined to substantiate the grades which I will give them. I will try to make this process as painless as possible.

Today is Liberation Day in Italy and there is a festive feeling in the air. My windows are open and the all pervasive smells and sounds of the Eternal City are surrounding me. What a glorious, throbbing feeling.

We have a new pope, I am once more back in my city and all is well with the world.