I wanted to post a scene but instead I went on this ride. It helped me out. But at least I can share a little about it, because the sport itself is…beyond.
I think someone said this was what he preferred, and I thought that was because it was the most alive but it’s Naples.
I just want to be done. I don’t want to do this anymore.
I suppose the point is, which was the point from the second I got out of the airport—I do not remember myself.
I go upstairs and unpack and hear Carmine play and meet the band which is just what happened.
He can’t do it, you can’t not do it. Race car driving.
Then, I meet the band. It’s Christmas. What the fuck? It’s the eve of the immaculate conception which, right now, the band is there for, but I can also memoir it, like me, ten years later.
Just thinking about the structure of it, if the “My Way” welcome back feast happens before, that’s a different track. Right now, that’s the feast of the immaculate conception. But if that happens before…
The topic sentences of my life land that morning, type of deal. Fireworks going off. I was given away to a total stranger when I was four for four years My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s though it was Parkinson’s first after that and did not tell anyone.
It’s a totally different feel “connecting with so much more than them,” the tradition itself. Christmas in Naples never let me down.
You see, they still don’t believe me. At times. Ten years later, I heard “what do you mean he had Alzheimer’s?” I came through the door with that information. I’m more just sharing that.
Right now, I find myself with Carmine. His band situation. A band is like a family no? They were a real crew. What does it take to make it? That too. I’m not sure. I’m interested in finding out though.
Whatever, right now, I go to the Eve and then Sorrento where the basics of my life come out to DOUBT. That’s the feast of the immaculate conception right now.
That’s, at this point, a ways in.
When it’s about that. I don’t remember myself…sure. The music. The whole thing. I’m trying to get out of “them” though I find them and our convos great.
It’s straight out of the airport I don’t seem to remember myself. So that’s feasibly a step one and then, this is why.
I meet the immovable object bulldozer Franco Franzese the next morning the second I opened the door. That’s after those phrases.
He’s waiting for me with a plate and he doesn’t like my story one bit…so this is the “foreign” scene of “parents” showing “concern.” Awkward. I go to Naples to intercept Carmine with this medical school business and to go to Naples immediately. I have to. I suppose it’s…unexpected that I would love life as much as I do? Joy. That’s my mother’s name ish.
The structure of this has been challenging for me but I’m figuring it out.
I just needed to walk through it a second.
Right now, I go intercept Carmine at the medical school, the day after the first feast, whenever the fuck this was, I have another meal…where they begin pouring music into me, which they did on day one, so maybe that is the feast of the immaculate conception, instead, because that’s a conception though it was a rediscovery.
I get the family on board to give me the ancient language. I need it. It’s also to give us a collective objective that’s not about my story and fosters connection in that they enjoy giving me the culture.
I’m telling them this story, too, which is sort of the point, they keep pushing buttons, singing a little My Way again. How cute I was. They don’t get it. So, then, long story short…they watch me furiously point to fruit, Carmine trying to understand and translate “rotten, when fruit is not good, bad…”
That…they call my foul. And I defend her. The Brazilian mother. They don’t understand. I had problems. So I mean, I guess, I have many scenes right because I’m telling you this story…
What made this story challenging.
They don’t understand. I can’t tell them why, I mean, money, sure, and I get a bit sharp. But I’m not saying child molester, sorry. Why I was there for four years. But all this was still disconnected. She was crazy. A pathologia. And in my case, that’s the term. Maybe I talk about the lambada, the good nights, how fun it was. I just have to figure out the mechanics of this. I have all the pieces, basically, I think.
I guess I go to do the Christmas ritual of trying to walk in a straight line then. And it’s the time of my life at the trattoria. I learned the lambada to this song. Rosa will join us. And that “my song for Maria” my song, will have a new meaning…because I just came out of these four years when I met my cousins for the first time. Vico sings me this song to greet me back—regardless. My Way came after that. Rosa was my age. Just saying.
And Angela always said what an inspiration I was, you know, so thanks.
I run maybe…I’m very fast. Every day. Okay? This Christmas is crazy and they do not know it. “Christmas is coming,” and I am not wrong. But whatever, it’s the night before the feast of Santa Lucia and I get interrogated, by Franco Franzese. The second family comes out because this man has a crazy good memory somehow.
AND THEN, he also wonders about my drinking habits. So then, I’m triggered. Then, I reveal not wanting to that my mother was a grande alcoholic. For now. Why is this, learning how to communicate regardless, somehow, always put on me? You think I would have problems. THE AUNT MARIA THE AUNT? LA ZIA JOHANNA RAFFAELLE, and picturing Gennaro, because he’s funny like that, eating an apple, “LA ZIA Maria, La zia…” and then I’m in a fit of chaos…over this other family. It happened again!!! And it happened like this.
I’m coming to realizations for the first time too. It’s funny, they made me laugh so hard, that too. Me blurting. Lost in a real space. But I can communicate like this. They see it, they recognize what chaos is. I know that the second family comes after that. can spread that out but I wasn’t adopted!! That’s a realization but I was sort of, right?
Like picture a boxer losing his ability to see.
I never spent Christmas with my father…
Sort of.
All that is dawning on me. And Christmas in Naples requires aggression, okay, which might make me twinkle brighter for these fuckers. Lol. It’s hard not to explode. I can’t get mad at them, I can’t tell them stop. I don’t have the ability yet.
But the second family is harder. And they are obsessed with Johanna Raffaelle. So I guess I’m opening up, which isn’t the problem, you see? I’m cleverer than that. I don’t mean that as a compliment. It’s my understanding of all this that is whack.
Let’s say second family comes out the night before.
No one makes any connections between what I said: he was sick the whole time.
The Feast of Santa Lucia is its own thing. Music…the Sorrento cousins wash onto her shores. Ignazo technically comes in cutting off Johanna Raffaelle and then Carmine throws me under the bus with “Maria felt time change…”
Dec 13th. the land comes alive. I like that. Vico and Angela live in a house in a garden, they are farmers. I go to Sorrento…totally different vibe, so I guess that’s Al Tennis, which I have, Joan, cocktails, lunch….maybe I’ll move the dinner scene with Rosa and friends singing “seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind” earlier, since for me, some of the “this is just what happened” at Christmas in Naples is fun. Just what happened. Which is sort of what it is.
Anyway.
San Gennaro why not? I pick up Carmine…I do interact with the city a little, I do. I take him to the music school…which I did. I was very very there for Carmine. I didn’t want him to do something he didn’t want to really do. WHAT he did was not my concern.
I just couldn’t tell.
Maybe Ignazo barges in then. He technically did it on the Feast of Santa Lucia.
“OH BA MA”
But like, um, life goes on. Like, who the hell is DINO? This BIRETTA CON DINO, Franco says no. The man’s NAME is DINO, goddammit! NO NO NO no father shit. NO FATHER SHIT. This is what I mean. My goal, personally, is to NOT get adopted. This happened while Carmine is away. Flora has more FISH than you’ve ever seen in your life. That’s before.
Rosa gets her NY cap ready. Time to see the presepe.
Anyway, I’ll stop there. Again, that’s just what happens. I’m almost done in a sense but I just want to figure it out. I have a good feeling about it as an account. It’s just, I want to move on so that’s why I’m just beginning to think about how to put myself and my stories about my life forward….
I don’t know what I learned, I do, that’s part of I guess what Maruzzella is about…Vico finds my song. A battle in the heart. They love it. They just didn’t stop singing to me. I think I’m somewhere around the 16th, 18th. and my instinct is…we’re dancing, it’s party. Not sure where this goes yet.
I have short scenes like Bukowski. Again, Franco Franzese pointing across the bay. “Maria you know the siren?”
I’m amazed. They don’t get what’s so unbelievable about it.
“Right.”
Gennaro and co. comes in…they have a special role right now in my head because they can help me…
Basically, the eve before Christmas Eve, the third family comes out. And what am I supposed to do? They are like, what? He’s in love with you, Vico said it before I even fucking started. And that convo I had with my ex-brother, just forget it. What he did.
So much I “cannot say.”
So, now, Christmas happens. Three feasts nonstop. That’s pretty much done. Are you going to call your mother? After all that. You don’t talk to your mother on Santo Stefano. Gennaro can play sort of the um, what, don’t even know but don’t do that!! Please why the fuck are you doing this to her? Did you not hear her sentences? I guess I made that little sense, you see but like, why are you doing this to yourself? In a language you don’t know?
I know…in any case don’t know yet but that reflects the learning- hard but necessary.
I’m just sharing. Then, there New Years Eve, Day, more food. Double pork feature, after risotto for the love of Christ. It’s not that it’s not delicious but it’s an adventure in itself. Emma and I go to Paestum, a meeting of romantic love and belonging or something because of the conversations we have.
But more so than that, I suppose I keep connecting with ancient history, my roots. And then it’s the feast of the witch to be brief. Angela thinks I’m an inspiration and Vico tells me the story of Hades and Persephone…aka Gennaro and Persephone…I have to promise to return. Can I make that promise?
I can. So I returned for ten years and this goddamn story..:I’m telling you. Then Carmine and I climb my Vesuvius I think that’s right.
And like right now, I (with Angela) understand that I have to leave my current family to deal with my parents…they are, were my parents. So…
That was my day today. I gotta post Dr. J videos. Miracle mile.
I just want to get this done. I’m getting there.
Thanks for reading,
Let me tell you though. I had a lot to work out back there. I’m happy to be where I am now where I could do a variety of things. This book and how I went about it was challenging.
I’ll post the immaculate conception scene. Just the dinner. Wow. Just wait. Wow.
Then I’ll post my videos.
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