Evenings in Scorzè

There is something about the light in Italy.  The sun is such a powerful force.  It can draw you outside like a poor man to hot food, and it can scold you like an angry mother.  

Every evening the sun sets slowly.  The sky darkens its hues of blue, and the clouds stand out in their enhanced dimension.  My eyes get drawn to the reflections in slow drifting rivers.  The backdrop of sky outlines orange tiled roofs.  Then I have to look up.  Which is better, the reflection or the original scene, is subjective.  I prefer the rippled, lightly contorted version given by the river.  Bugs landing, fish surfacing, and the light breeze pushing grass down; it gives a bit more character to the image.  

It is the evenings that make Italy. The mornings are silent, and I can appreciate them.  The cool air from night is refreshing.  Breakfast achieves very little praise.  Coffee in Italy is not meant for mornings like brew coffee is.  Mid day has perks as well.  The heat, when not unbearable, is a reminder that plants growing wild for a reason.  People are pulled toward one another by it, I swear.  I feel almost ravenous with hunger, in many ways, at midday.  But evenings are the Italian specialty.

Aperitivo has no perfect translation in English.  You just describe it to people, and hope they understand the concept.  A pre dinner drink is nothing new to my friends in Colorado; or Sweden, Australia, Austria and more for that matter.  Italians just understand it so well.  

It is an ultimate drinking culture, the Italian one. Like almost everything else in day to day life, drinking is based around food.  The wines you drink match the meal, the aperitivo is designed to ready you, and the digestivo is a compliment to the multitude of masterful plates you have been pampered with. And what is a delicious meal without a dessert drink to balance you out?

During dinner, my current host family keep the windows open.  The leaving sun shines gorgeous as it sets.  In the distance I hear church bells ring at the hour mark. Whether it is timed so perfectly or not does not matter, because we are always at the table for over an hour.

Any brutal heat of the day has by then died down, and the shadows of bright leaved trees fall far.  The banter is always lively, and any arguments are resolved without a pause in conversation.  The emotion of the night reigns higher than any pinch of words. I can enter the conversation whenever I like, and choose to do so often.  Sometimes in Italian, sometimes in English, but always I spend some time purely listening.  I could listen to Italian speech for a decade with no pause.  The fluidity, and rawness, the unfiltered passion that is exclaimed in the sound alone is incomparable to English.  

When the meal is finished, and the digestivo drank, the quiet that I think impossible during dinner blankets over the family.  I help clean the dishes (it took me almost a week of insisting before they let me) and then I sit on the couch.  The sun is set by then, and soon I am ready for sleep.  The others will stay awake, beginning to speak again after half an hour of digestion.  The cool darkness relaxes the urges of before, and the day is accepted as done.  

It is a beautiful experience.  Every evening here is a memorable one.  It affects how I think of life, how I expect to live, and how I want to find myself when I leave.  I find myself happy for bed, and excited for the next dinner by the time I lay down.