Via Bolognese

Along the winding road that leads out of Florence, towards the luxuriant hills that wrap the city in their tree lined contours, wisteria twines abundant on ancient stone walls. The rampant vine seems to stem from the rocks themselves, and the violet delicateness of the clusters contrasts sharply with the ash grey ruggedness of the stones, yet together they are perfect. 

The vines, thick with age, lay heavy, knotted and twisting like long scaly intertwined creatures among the foliage. From them, soft purple pedicellate flowers hang drowsily, ripe for the picking.

Lower down on those same walls small green caper bushes cling to the mortar. The profusion of buds, when unpicked, form pinkish-white flowers that sway with the closely passing traffic. 

The animate and inanimate, playfully composed,  mortar and vine, now conceal and protect pleasant gardens and the occasional outcrop of homes, newly built - pale ochre facades and red cotto tiled roofs - but once, when along these roads labourers plodded heavily forward, the walls delimited grand manors with towering loggias surrounded by parks and vast stretches of woodland that dominated the countryside overlooking the city.

The odd pilgrim moved to and from the city on foot, the landowners on horseback, noblemen in carriages. The dust that lifted from the sporadic passage of their wheels settled randomly on the shoulders of industrious farmhands, and blurred the air greyish brown. 

Today these tarmac paved roads are traffic-ridden. Not dust, but smokey exhaust fumes fall heavily on stationary cars in traffic jams and on the rows of houses as well as on the city below creating clouds of smog in the winter. In the early morning, Brunelleschi's picture perfect dome rises from the fog in the distant conca.

People no longer walk along these roads on foot. They are not only unsafe but fatiguing. The heavy pendulous racemes of the wisteria vines can be admired only fleetingly; the budding flowers of the caper bushes are disregarded. Life only exists within big wheeled cars, beyond the gates of walled villas, behind tightly closed doors and wrought iron window grates. It is hermetically sealed to keep danger at bay.

However two colourfully clad women tread on these steep wall-lined roads everyday, impervious to the peril. They travel, arms tightly linked notwithstanding the weather, occupying a space that has been displaced by high-velocity modernity. Identical blonde tufts escape from their Peruvian wool hats from which freshly picked sprigs of wisteria sometimes spring; striped stockinged feet move in unlaced men's shoes. They advance whispering sweet nothings, quick paced, side-by-side. Their dark glasses reflect weather-beaten faces and  rotting teeth.  Their conspiratorial smiles shine, enraptured. They are oblivious to the passing cars that graze them down hairpin bends, to the passengers who look and wonder, to the passing of time. 

Elisa, from behind a closed second storey window, behind a stone wall, watches their passage everyday. As they move under her window she hears their laughter. She watches their hands gesticulate in tattered fingerless gloves. She follows the endless movement of their lipstick-stained mouths. She is entranced by their intent faces behind oversized sunglasses.  

Elisa would like to join them in their heedless progression to nowhere. She would like to link arms with them and share their volatility. She would like to trot up and down Via Bolognese braving danger with these women. She would like to stop to smell the wisteria and search for fallen capers.  She would like to take back what modernity has taken from the road and herself. Yet she cannot. 

From within her wall confined haven she can only wheel her car-wrecked body from one window to another trying to capture the spring in their steps, the laughter from their lips, the insane lightness of their being. 

Matilde Colarossi