Fun and Responsibility: Staring into Flames

We meet our friend Gianni in front of the Bar Centrale at Milano Centrale. He is elegantly dressed and we recognize him immediately, even though he seems to be in his natural habitat at Milano Centrale. He has a new suitcase, an Eastpak: “Built to resist” is the slogan written on the pull-out handle. It rolls through the regional train several times, it is built to resist.

It’s pouring rain outside, and you get the feeling that the world on one side of the automatic door is different, darker, than the neon-lit world inside. My ears are closed because we are driving through the mountains, I confuse the dizziness with anticipation of our destination in the so-called Val Poschiavo, which is called “Puschlav” in German. Of course he is both. The clock on the train goes wrong, the passengers are confused, we feel like we are on the way to another, mystical dimension. Since we missed the vaporetto in Venice, everything went wrong. The next day the tide turns.

Our friend Charlotte doesn’t arrive until a few days later, and to welcome her I buy a nut cake, as is usual here – except that the nuts are replaced by chestnuts, in keeping with the season: Torta alla Castagna. Also a porcini mushroom made from meringue, suitable for porcini mushroom season. I later use a bathroom brush to clean the real mushrooms that are served with the deer, Cervo.

Marco, the chef next door, always has an opinion on what to order for dessert: Better Cupeta instead of Torta della Nonna, for example. Cupeta is a local specialty, made with seasonal ingredients, currently: chestnuts. I remember my first visits to Switzerland, big signs said: Heissi Marroni.

Giannina says: There used to be a lot of cafés and restaurants on the border with Italy because there was a lively smuggling traffic. Officially recognized smuggling of coffee and tobacco. A beautiful word in Italian: Contrabando. Next to the disused smuggling border is a huge, abandoned hotel that looks like a castle. It was never really in use, says Giannina.

I think of the best way to steal: with a self-image so great that you almost believe the stolen goods already belonged to you. Then simply carry it confidently past the checkout. Definitely don’t hide. What you hide becomes visible. Trick 17, says Gianni. I smuggle artworks to Art Basel in the same way. These aren’t artworks, it’s just trashy sentimental gifts my friends made for other friends. Three-dimensional that disguises itself as two-dimensional. Mimicry.

Gianni gets boxes from Marco next door and covers them with textiles he buys in Poschiavo, made from traditional linen fabric. The oldest loom in Switzerland is in Poschiavo; you can rent one and weave by the hour. He is inspired by our visit to the Casa Console in Poschiavo, which has an amazing and surprisingly dusty collection: we see Segantini, Spitzweg and Franz von Stuck, who paints his wife in a matador costume. You can see her slight defiance simultaneous pride in having to stand still in a heavily decorated costume.

We also find a book from 1697: “Voluntarily cracked pomegranate of the Christian Samaritan” by Eleonora Maria Rosalia, Princess of Liechtenstein and Duchess of Troppau and Jägerndorf. A naturopath shares her remedies for headaches. »If your head hurts a lot: take roses, marjoram, spicanardi, spica balsam, a handful of each. Let half a portion of water simmer until half boils down. Then dip a cloth in it and let it get wet. Tie it around your head, it will help in the same hour.” I’ve been having headaches all the time lately, you always have something. I’m thinking of Silvia Federici’s “Caliban and the Witch” and the repression and persecution of knowledge, medical knowledge, that has female connotations.

At home we build a fire. I’m learning that the pagoda or stacking technique is more effective than the “pyramid.” I learn from my friend Gianni: making fire is the beginning of architecture. I think of the technique used to stack the wood as an architectural process, log on log. Gianni refers more to the fireplace as a place of gathering. The fireplace: a place where the plenum is held. Difficult topics are discussed around the fire. You look into the flame.

We do a fire ritual and burn things, properties that we want to get rid of. When we can’t think of anything else to say, we look into the flickering flames as if hypnotized. There is little to add to them. Neither do the mountains. When I write, I always sit with my back to the window. Looking into the flame, Gianni says: The beginning of culture was where the injured were no longer left behind, but rather cared for. With these words he goes to bed and I continue to stare into the flame.