Milano

I am on the top floor of a two-level train, speeding away through Milan’s suburbs on my way to Bergamo, where I may stay two nights. My feet are sore and throbbing from the miles of walking through the muggy streets of Milan today.

Some of the miles were intentional, but many of them were because I spent so much of my time quickly lost and slowly getting found again. I had a harder time in Milan than I do in most places (and let's face it, I'm no directional genius ordinarily), because there’s no orienting feature, no giant skyscraper, no harbour, no grand avenues bordering a central park. Instead it is a criss-cross of streets that bend in every direction and often change names, just to keep things interesting. I knew that Venice was a place where people spend most of their time lost, but I didn’t know that Milan would be that way too.

Still, I did the three things I set out to do. I visited the cathedral, lit a candle and prayed for those who are sick or hurting, and climbed the steps to the roof. Being on the roof amongst the hundreds of spires and statues was like climbing across an enormous wedding dress, lacy marble carved so delicately you could almost see it sway in the wind. I was struck by the gratuitous beauty up there on the roof, in this, the 4^th largest cathedral in the world (and largest Catholic church). I balanced on marble roof tiles high above the city, and marvelled at the carving there, little statues which would never be visible to anyone except those who climbed the 165 narrow stone stairs. What were the craftsmen thinking when they carved the bas relief stories onto roof supports? How do you get the energy to carefully sculpt a statue that peers out over the city far below it? What was their rationale for investing their time and resources in this way? I, having just paid for a renovation myself, would no more decorate the roof than I would hire artists to paint the underside of the house. But I didn’t spring for the gargoyle downspouts, either.

Just as powerful but utterly different was another marble carving—this one at the Castello Sforzesco. In the interesting museum that fills the Ducal rooms, there is the last statue Michelangelo ever carved, the one he was carving when he died. It’s a pieta, the standing Madonna holding a dead Jesus. But it’s not at all finished. Out of a lovely carved block of marble stretch Jesus’ perfect legs, the marble rippling like flesh. But as your eye moves higher, the carving is more and more rough, until the faces show as indications of what Michelangelo hoped he’d carve. You see the artist’s mind at work, too. Christ has a third arm, delicately carved and perfect except for the fact that it’s just barely attached to his body and was clearly going to be removed—maybe next week. The replacement arm, hanging at an entirely different angle, roughly dangles behind. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen, and brought the artist into the room in a way that no finished carving every could. I could see the thousands of chisel marks in the stone, almost hear the process of chipping away at layer after layer of marble. [Oh, and now, on my train, my first glimpse of Alps in the grey distance—yea!] I could almost hear him sigh at the end of the day, putting down his tools and complaining that his eyes weren’t what they used to be, his imagination not as sharp as it had been. And then he shuffled off to bed, expecting to tap off that extra arm in the morning, define a little of the Virgin’s left leg. Instead, hundreds of years later I stood in an empty room in a nearly-empty Castello, and felt Michelangelo with me, right there in the room. I stayed there and watched him a long, long time.

And now that’s behind me, and the suburbs have given way to fields. The Italian version of the McMansion pops up now and again as scars in these fields, but so too ancient brick buildings, marking their place in the swath of green these last 500 years. Tonight I’ll catch my first glimpse of this walled medieval city, and tomorrow, in the rain, I’ll walk it. I feel both guilty and delighted that my jetlag doesn’t seem to be much of a problem, and mostly my mouth waters at the prospect of my first real Italian dinner. Vive Italia!