3. The Red Tenda of Bologna | John Berger
This pocket-sized beauty as a Christmas present from my wonderfully special friend Andy ❤️
*note: if you know me well enough to buy gifts for irl, books are (one of) my love languages.
Friends,
I’ve been to Bologna! I admit out of pure South African ignorance and our butchering of traditional foods, I assumed the Spaghetti Bolognese I’d grown up with & loved was a real, authentic Italian dish. IT IS NOT. I set off for Bologna in the hopes off finding the place where my childhood dish was born and I can say — do not, I repeat, DO NOT ask for spaghetti bolognese in Bologna, they will be deeply offended. And your food may not be safe for eating.
There’s a ton of stuff going on in this little book that I won’t ruin but first, this beautiful poem that we hear about halfway through:
Time will tell.
…The light
Of the future doesn’t cease for even an instant
to wound us: it is here to
brand us in all our daily deeds
with anxiety even in the confidence
that gives us life…
(Pier Paolo Pasolini)
(I love a poem)
Two paragraphs that taught me things I did not know:
“The tradition of the ‘porticoes’, as the arcades were called, began in the early Middle Ages. Each mansion has before it’s door a small plot of land which gave on to the street. A number of households had the idea of roofing over their plots. Like this they could accommodate unforeseen travellers, allow extra servants to sleep overnight, or rent accommodation to poor students from the university.At the same time the public walked from portico to portico, benefitting from the shelter, and leaving the street proper open for wagons, horses and animals.
All the windows I pass have awnings and all of them are of the same colour. Red. Many are faded, a few are new, but they are old and young versions of the same colour. Each fits its window exactly on the inside, and it’s angle is adjustable according to the amount of light desired indoors. They are called tende. The red is not a clay red, it’s not terracotta, it’s a dye red. On the other side of it are bodies and their secrets, which on the other side are not secrets.”