Driving Thoughts: Trash, Beauty and Naples, Italy

The kids and I were out running errands last week. We had just completed our Wednesday routine of early morning swim lessons followed by a few hours at Carney Park’s playground. It was hot, but the breeze under the shady eucalyptus trees was keeping us below exhaustion levels and my little black cooler with cold water quenched our desperate thirst.

My ceramics lessons had come to an end, the price of childcare combined with the cost of class too prohibitive. My last project – a giant “rustic” lamp – overlapped into summer unfinished. One day the kids accompanied me to a shortened class where I glazed the lamp. Not trusting two kids in a "china" shop, I set the two “bulls” up on the doorstep, lounging in the opened door with books, snacks and my son with his Leapster in hand.

This time we wouldn’t be staying. My lamp was now complete, fired for a second time, the glaze intact, hard, glossy and the dripping affect permanently captured. It liked it. My plan was to drive up to Monte di Procida, leave the kids parked in the car with open windows, and run in for a quick pick-up.

My mind was heavy with driving thoughts. We came through the ‘bumpy’ tunnel – a short, smog-filled tunnel that looks on the verge of collapsing. We Americans have nick-named it such because it is filled with speed bumps every 20 or so feet, to keep impatient beach-bound goers at a reasonable speed.  (But who just fly over them anyway.) Everytime I escape the tunnel, my eyes swing left towards the ocean and distant Ischia. It’s one of those “Wow, I live in a foreign land” moments. But not long afterwards on this particular day I was greeted by yet another reminder of where exactly in Italy I live; not quaint Tuscany and its villages of stone, but Naples.

Competing for parking spaces in the large lot was a giant, rotting pile of garbage, a mound like nothing Americans normally see. A third-world kind of heap. Spots for cars to park had become a secondary purpose now.  The contrast – a bright blue ocean, palm trees leaning into the cloudless sky, and then rubbish; literally tons of it.

I was tailing a young woman on a motorbike. Her sunned Mediterranean shoulders were as smooth as brown silk, flawless in their summer display. Underneath her helmet a long dark brown tail of hair, tinted with summer’s kisses, stretched down her back. It blew side-to-side in the wind, following the curves of the winding road as she confidently handled the bike. She appeared oblivious to the asphalt’s heat, to the relentless sun baking her shoulders, to the stench of rotting garbage. Instead, she was all youth, confident, spirited, and oblivious. I admired her ability to compartmentalize her drive.

A floating empty plastic bag flew by her back tire, like a possessed ghost, catching her back wheel then hauntingly flinging up and across the street, now dead on the ground. Along the tight roads lay white Styrofoam, crushed plastic bottles, abandoned candy wrappers, and a bright blue plastic sleeve with concave indentions like baby pools: the innards of a wood fruit container. Just last week I had bought a slat of perfectly sweet, luscious nectarines sitting in just such a sleeve. That lame piece of trash reminded me of their glossy blood red skin with undertones of deep yellow, firm and crisp with my first bite. Sweetness and freshness contrasted with trash.

By now I had lost the motorbike girl. Still on track, we continued through small commercial areas, tight streets with no shoulder, pausing to pass an African with a dirty baseball hat pushing a make-shift cart exploding with cheap goods from China, his taut black-as-onyx skin shiny with perspiration. I felt sorry for his way of life. 

There is a point on this route out to Monte di that always impresses me. Climbing up a steep hill the road opens up high above the tiled roofs and even with the normal urban haze, you can catch long views out in every direction, up the coast to Gaeta, down to the bay of Baia and across to the Cape of Miseno, inland to the lakes and northeast to the extinct volcano, its crater my children’s playground just this morning. The trash piles seemed far away.

In only minutes I spot a strip of unmanicured cracking sidewalk. Trash sprouts like weeds, so inherent and so indistinguishable from the vegetation. It’s like it belongs there, natural.

Most days, my trained eyes avoid looking down to "spy" trash. Other days, it obsesses me, like a train of cars slowing down to catch a glimpse at a fresh car wreck. I can’t shake it. The innocence of my children laughing in the back seat, momentarily oblivious, and yet outside their windows is a gorgeous place that is tainted, trashed by its own people. A man-made demise. The more I think about it, the madder I get.

I stop by ceramics class and do as planned. The kids are fine in the car only a few feet from the store. Inside I find my teacher Allesandra. We share a brief moment of kindness, a connected moment in this foreign land, a friend made despite the rubbish.  I leave realizing that I have forgotten about it all. Sheltered in the purpose of an errand and lost in the smile of a friend all seems OK, all is beautiful.

Back in the car we quickly leave the area. I decide to take the scenic way out of Monte di. On the descent down the winding "via Panoramica" – named so because it is just that, a winding drive with a great panoramic views of the water and land. I can hardly fault the restaurant I just passed for naming itself “Dream View.”

It’s a “dream view” as long as you keep your head high and your eyes leveled up and out, a survival trick that living in Naples will teach you.

Finding the beauty around here sometimes feels like going to the weekly markets in Naples. Everything looks good from a distance, flashy and intriguing. Pulls your attention immediately, my head turning like the men that gawk at the women of this area, snagged by all the glitz, tight clothes and high-altitude heels. If you look more closely, you will be disappointed in the quality. Most of it is just poorly made synthetic goods from China. And the people of this area – the market goers – cover themselves in it and fill their houses with it. Bought for only a few euros, these excuses for clothes and household goods will probably only last one or two uses. That seems to be the standard here.  All flash, all surface, but underneath there is nothing holding it together. Women and men constantly buying cheap goods, moving from one cheap version of what's fashionable to the next, season to season, still ahead of the rest of the world, but lacking so much in sustainability – all for the moment.

This approach applies to more than just shopping at the market. It’s a way of life.  In Naples as a whole there is no investment in the future, or for that fact, even the present. This garbage crisis that is all over the international news is real. There is no excuse. You can love this place with all your heart, but you cannot justify such bad behavior. Like a bad boyfriend you know you must condemn and leave, but yet you still adore the heck out of him on your way out the door. Some boyfriends are just too toxic. 

Before I know it, I’ve slowed to almost a halt. A practically dying miniscule Nissan is my nemesis. Packed with three old people, the car is like a clunky relic. The driver, a beefy old hairy man, is animated and deep in discussion, his gestures spilling out of the car, half his story being told out his window, his tanned arm extending in what could be a deadly position if another car passes. I’m not even sure how he is driving or who is holding the wheel. His gestures are so grand for such a tiny car. Hand movements in Southern Italy have a distinct and varied language of their own, and I am certain a local following this conversation could decipher it without ever hearing one spoken word.

I’ve finally lost the chatty car. Coming around near the Baia castle one sharp corner offers the façade of something formerly impressive. The iron gates are firmly closed still doing their job, but this building is the victim of graffiti. Southern Italian teenagers are hyper active with their cans of spray paint. Expressions of love, “Ti amo” so-and-so, elicit innocent images of youthful love, but there is nothing pretty about it splattered across buildings, the insides of subway trains and across marble monuments. It’s all about the immediacy, the instant gratification, the bravado. Nothing long-term here, except the faded colors tattooing places long after the love is gone. Are there any adult examples to convince them of longevity? 

Coming out of Baia nearing the bumpy tunnel once again, just pass the parking lot of trash, a watermelon truck is loaded with green globes, a few quarters cut open and displayed as visual enticement. The cardboard box flattened with a hand-painted message indicates these are going cheaply, get ‘em now! This farmer obviously has got a big load. I wonder about the quality of soil and water that nurtures these little red gems to maturity. 

This country man is invading the area to off-load his bounty. Normally, the local fruit stalls offer the neighborhood daily produce. These stores spill over onto the sidewalks with more goods outside than inside the cramped shops. It all teeters on madness - very half-hazard in appearance - but with a softness of familiarity. No doubt the slow walking old woman in the black skirt has shopped that particular fruit stall for years, though there is another one only a half block away. She won’t go near the watermelon truck. Her loyalty is secure.

The garbage piles don't seem to stop life. Everyone keeps going. 

I finally reach the tangenziale - the main multi-laned road cutting though the city - and pop out onto the highway without looking. There is no shoulder or long merge lane. It doesn't matter. I’ve adapted to local customs and like everyone (and everything) in Southern Italy, I just hit it going full-speed. I’ll deal with whatever greets me when I get there - an oncoming truck that forces you to ride the skinny shoulder or stop, or wide-open road, free for speed. No need to adjust until you must.

I hit the stretch home and stop looking for trash. I’m a bit mentally worn out, frankly. An old Hootie and the Blowfish CD still works and plays. It takes me somewhere else.

Time, you left me standing there
Like a tree growing all alone
The wind just stripped me bare
Stripped me bare
Time, the past has come and gone, gone
The future's far away
An hour only lasts for one second, one second

I’m back to contrasts. This Italian landscape is so different than my carefree days in Charleston, South Carolina when “Time” was only relevant on the radio. I used to visit the southern town rendezvousing with my love of that time. We’d spend countless hours on the clean beaches with a cooler of beer, lazy days that spread for hours, not much really going on, the focus more on what the night-out would offer; a hangover for certain.

My mind quickly shifts back to the littered landscape of now. I fly by an emergency lane pull-out. It’s busy collecting dead tires, bags of trash spilling open and limp cardboard boxes. The only “emergency” here is the crisis of this horrible trash epidemic that no repeat-Berlusconi pledge has solved.

Mentally, I’m out of here again. I remember. Later, after that Charleston love crumbled and became another (my husband), and when I worked instead of only played in the city, I became a fundraiser for the Coastal Conservation League. The group was a well-established and respected non-profit that took the earth-given beauty of an area seriously, and sought to preserve it indefinitely. We were (and they still are) about stewardship of the land, the buildings, the history, in all their purity. This was an organization that wanted to impress upon people the value of long-term, verse short-term, and of the gift of our landscapes and habitats – and our duty to preserve not destroy them. That the mighty buck and the latest highway or golf-course development is not what we should be all about. About NOT being all for the moment.

The irony was not lost on me at this moment, driving home from errands, my kids eating snacks in the backseat.

I live in a place with such amazing "bones." Breathtaking natural assets. For several thousands of years this place has fostered human development on the small and grand scales, from Greeks to Romans to a slew of warring tribes and greedy countries, to the peasant wanting to just survive with his grape vines and fig trees and clear ocean views. This soil has witnessed a transformation of humanity, fed it, graced it. Yet in the last 20 or so years - *just a blip in the timeline of humanity* - a group of inhabitants has caused – and continues to allow - such destruction, such disrespect for what has always been here, way before they even arrived.

I know that not every person from Campania is culpable, but enough are, and especially the treacherous and despicable mafia who have destroyed this area in more ways than one. I am saddened, and so I keep my eyes on the road, turn-up the music, and go back to Charleston in my mind. I too shall escape the obvious, if only for one second. 

Comments

[Maggie]

This post is so amazingly well written and descriptive of the tragic conditions in Naples. I totally agree. You have summed up Neopolitans perfectly. I want to know how they have become numbed to their surroundings and how it is the mafia have overrun everything. I just don't understand how they allow this to continue. I read your post and I miss so many things about Naples, the amazing views, the shopping at ceramics stores, the FOOD, friends, but not this ambivalent attitude. Wonderful post. Really A, you should write a book. =)

LIVING IN THE BOOT -- AH, thanks my friend and long-faithful blog follower. this piece really came to me and i felt like it wrote itself, so i am glad it resonated with you too. i am saddened, more and more as we stay here. you know i am a lover of naples too!!! but i dont think you can talk about this place, all the wonderful things it has given me without also talking about the trash, which has become more and more problematic and pathetic. i dont understand how the mafia, who is all about loyalty and family can't realize that their world will come to an end if they dont help - or at least get their hands off - the trash problem. it is sad sad. my landlord - 70+ yrs old - has a 17 year old grand daughter who has lived her her entire life. she has a tumor on her chest. her uncle, in is 40s, had cancer too. don't they realize that this is the cancer "triangle" of death????