Artnotes: No Coffee Today

 Tulip Fields    Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/paper   36 x 19.5"  90 x 50cm   460.00

 The Well in the Piazza   Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/canvaspanel   9 x 7"  23 x 17.5cm  150.00

 Ranuncula  Laurie Fox Pessemier acrylic/canvaspanel  9 x 7"  23 x 17.5cm  150.00

Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas  12 x 9.5"  50 x 60cm   190.00

Baby Kingfisher  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Mixed Media on Paper 17 x 25"  41 x 63cm  175.00

 Restoration (completed)   Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas  20 x 24"  50 x 60cm   450.00

On Tuesday morning, we went to our regular coffee shop – “we’re thinking of going to the beach today,” we announced.  “What?” Gianfranco replied, “you can’t go anywhere.  We’re quarantined.”  I let that sink in.  On Sunday we’d passed a church we’d both like to paint.  “What about painting?” I asked.  “Where?”  “Cantalupo.” “Are you crazy” – everyone in the bar chimed in. “That’s where Rieti’s only case of the virus is!”   It became all too clear this problem was for real.

Then, as if shot from a gun, Blair and our neighbor, Margarita, hopped into the car and made for the supermarket.  They got in on the first round. The unimaginable had happened.  We were locked down.  We needed wine, and more beans and pasta (we’d been eating our survival food for a week).

Since then, the week has churned on ever so slowly.  I have tried keeping a diary, but very little transpires.  I tried exercising – pulled a muscle, but certainly not going to the doctor for help.   We had a bit of a rally with the “Andra Tutto Bene” campaign (everything will be ok) emblazoned in colored chalk everywhere, by (rather unimaginative) children and their mothers.  A high point came Friday with singing from the windows in Siena and Rome, but it fell flat here in Stimi. After I had polished and tuned my ukulele!  I play it out in the piazza while airing Harika. (we are so lucky to have a dog, because we are among the few allowed out and about)

I organized my books in the library.  I painted lots of pictures, mostly flowers.  The sun is out from 6:20 to 6:15 these days, and we enjoy both the sunrise and sunset; days have been sunny.  

I am trying to understand how all this will play out.  An Italian friend tells me this will change the world:  it will be more human, he says.   I am touched that China has sent doctors and nurses to help overwhelmed Milan; Cuba has, too.   I feel close to my neighbors, even though I don’t see them much. 

I can’t calm myself down enough to rationally think about the future.  I could tolerate the quarantine (an Italian word, in fact, from “forty days”), but I have a niggling fear about the virus, too.  That keeps me up at night, when I normally figure out the playbill.   I need more solid data.

The café closed on Thursday.  Harika is furious, and we walk to both coffee shops every day. Initially she pressed herself right up to the door, but now she can smell “no coffee here”.  We still have to look with our own eyes.