Alghero

this one is long, sorry

A bit of the scene going on behind the fortress wall in Alghero

Life hit a routine. By mid-September, I feel settled into Sardinia, which is my fanciest sentence ever. I have a daily cappuccino, a chocolate croissant, a morning reading session of D.H. Lawrence or Virginia Woolf (the books I brought were some really musty choices). Lara and Mary Ellen and I do the crossword at lunch, by which I mean Lara has the crossword app and Mary Ellen knows all the answers and once in a while I correct somebody’s spelling—you know, like the person you stop inviting to things. In the late afternoons, I walk over to the park where Mark is working on his abstract mural. On one of these afternoons, the children of Milis come to help him paint—they do so beautifully, and incidentally outside of the lines, but we coo and beam at their talent and fix it later. Italian mothers and grandmothers hover around the children, scolding them one minute, stroking their hair the next: Leo—don’t SPILL the PAINT. DON’T—ah, Leo, beautiful job, bellissimo, bellissimo. Some of the children take it very seriously; they furrow their brows and summon Michelangelo from their acrylics.

We take our group trips one or two times a week. Megan organizes one to a sacred well in Paulilatino, the Ponto di Santa Cristina. The well itself is surrounded by a network of nuraghe, which are ancient rock mound structures; they look almost like Stone Age tiny homes. We’ve all opted for the English audio tour as we navigate—the English in-person tour option was a little out of budget and also maybe didn’t actually exist—so we’re circling the nuraghe “hm”-ing to ourselves now and then, bright red headphones in our ears, their cords tangled in three or four knots under our neck. 

Aerial view of Ponto di Santa Cristina, I stole this photo from this blog

The well is one of those ancient world anomalies. From above, it looks like a keyhole meant for some enormous, celestial key. (Refer to the picture I stole from someone else’s website—I rewrote an explanation of its construction three different ways before realizing a picture was better suited.) In the early to late morning, sunlight from the southeast pierces the concentric circles at the bottom of the well, where there rests a green, tepid pool of water. The color of the water reminded me of Arizona sprinkler run-off pooling in the dented sidewalks of the Phoenix suburbs, but I kept this observation to myself in case anyone else was feeling spiritual. The Sardinian tourism website is very intent on calling this structure a tool of “cult practice,” which seems a little old-school to me—worshipping or expressing gratefulness for the presence and life-giving aspects of water seems like something they pretty religiously practice everywhere these days, including Southern California. When I discuss this with Carolyn (bear with me, this is a jump in time, Carolyn is an October resident), she remarks also on the signage at Santa Cristina: the structures are called “barbaric,” the well is associated with an ancient “fertility cult.” Anything, she points out, that archaeology decides is not militaristic, is then associated with a primitive matriarchal society, or fertility cult. I find this very funny, and sordidly true.

The exciting bit about the well—the reason swarms of German tour buses pull up to it—is that it’s meticulously angled and perfectly built to perform a bizarre trick of the equinox, where, at the bottom of the well, your shadow will appear twice, opposite each other. At noon, as you stand on any of the last six steps of the well, the autumn light that projects your shadow onto the pool of water accompanied by the light from the tholos chamber directly above the well allows you to watch two shadows of yourself coming towards one another. It would be a lot more interesting to me if anyone had explained in English how this isn’t a regular occurrence, the audio guide did a terrible job, it only reinforced about twelve times that this was basalt, basalt, basalt, and did I know Saint Cristina got chucked down here headfirst and imprisoned? But anyway, it wasn’t a regular occurrence for whatever scientific reason, and I was there, and I only have this shitty picture of it because there were 100-something upset, sweaty Germans behind me. Mark called it in as soon as he saw the line developing—alright, his reflected shadow wasn’t going to be that interesting—and got himself a beer at the nearby cafe, where I quickly joined.

Sort of, theoretically, worth the wait

The highlight of September for me, however, was the mayor’s tour, which frankly none of us were thrilled about going into, having been forewarned he was a big talker. And we thought...if there is an Italian that Italians consider a “big talker,” we might likely be out until midnight with this old man. The mayor is comfortably in his seventies. He wears small circular glasses and a short white beard. He seems equally disgruntled and amused by everything, like nothing happens outside his expectations anymore but he’s not necessarily happy about being right all the time. He whips out an impressive ring of keys, and with one allows us into the big brick-colored building that dominates the town square, the Palazzo Boyl, which has lived lives as a monastery, a mansion, and like all beautiful historical buildings, a late-90’s denouement into government administrative offices, but most recently the building seems to serve the purpose of American garages: holding stuff you no longer know what to do with. 

Out through the back, there is a crumbling amphitheater under some kind of questionable construction. The mayor tells us that it will be ship-shape in a month, which I’m learning is an Italian way of saying: a year, or maybe two, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. He guides us through the rest of the Palazzo, which is unused, and empty except for some scrambled heirlooms; an antique piano, grand chandeliers, dusty portraiture, moth-eaten, ornate couches. Upstairs are bizarre, haunted-feeling theaters and conference rooms with rows of yellow velvet seats and analog technology, like a perfectly preserved set for a 1970’s press conference in a low-budget Jimmy Carter biopic. The mayor finds a tiny staircase out of the side of one of these conference rooms and crawls through a small hole in the roof to lead us onto a balcony that overlooks all of Milis. We watch the town square go about its business as the sun lowers in the sky, and notice for the first time how cradled this place is by the surrounding dark green mountains.

We then walk across town to another enormous, abandoned pink building. We cut through a series of overgrown gardens to the mansion which is pitch dark inside, so we use our phone flashlights to navigate. It used to be, as far as I can make out from my pathetic Italian, headquarters for Italian generals. That explains the bunker in the front yard, which everyone seems somehow unfazed by. Inside, there are beautiful, round windows along the stairwell that look out into the neighboring fields and give a perfect view of the setting sun. The tiling work on the floors is made up of blue and yellow flowers. It’s set up like a hotel, long hallways on either side of the main stairwell, a series of sequential rooms on each floor. Every room is empty, decorated only by holes in the floorboards, or a busted chair in the corner. There is a thick coat of dirt and dust on the floors. We climb up to the top of the building into the open air, and rest on another balcony. I watch a farmer work in the field beneath us, dream of buying the whole place and turning it into some glamorous Wes Anderson-like hotel without the pattern migraine. We turn back just before the sun sets, and travel through an orchard towards singing voices. None of us speak or ask questions, we just follow the mayor towards this male chorus, like he is Christ on his way to introduce us to the angels. 

When we reach the clearing, we see the men’s church choir having their practice in a stone enclosure. We stop and rest on benches for some time, listening to them sing in the darkening evening.

The mayor then invites us for drinks at his house across town, which we accept. You don’t say no here, which my stubborn disposition has struggled with very much. But I’m actually thrilled to spend more time with this man who’s just led me to some of the most beautiful settings of my entire life. His house is steps away from the cafe I go to every morning, and completely stuffed with Sardinian history. It smells exactly as you would expect it to. He pours us champagne and Lara fires off with questions about his work—does he enjoy it? Will he run for office again? No, he does not. No, he will not. He speaks about his recently-deceased wife, shows us pictures of him with Cesar Chavez and a host of international government officials, mentions off-hand almost getting blown up in Libya. He tells us that he feels as if he’s lived, that he could die tomorrow, and could be at peace with it. But maybe he should round out his term as mayor all the same.

We are all politely starving, and the champagne is going directly to our heads and we are exchanging glances that communicate this just as he brings out the Campari. When we stand to leave, some 40 minutes later, I am sure one of us will topple over. But we all make it to the door, slur our grazie mille’s, and head directly for dinner, which we hope is piping hot and at least 3,000 calories.

Drinks at the mayor’s house. From left to right: Mark, the mayor

A few days later, we have the open studios. A band comes out to play at the sports bar where Mark has painted his mural. We have Ichnusa beers at Ichnusa-sponsored, white, plastic tables and each feel strange, I think, that we have already come to the end of this. It always feels strange to share something lengthy and meaningful with someone who will almost certainly become a stranger to you again (like that time I got stuck in the Greyhound bus station in Vegas for 11 hours and made friends with the other stranded nomads, or when I sat in the Taco Bell drive-thru in Winchester, Tennessee for 50 minutes while they tried to reboot their POS system and got to know the 18-year-old girl running the window). We moved then to the studios in town, where Lara and I spent most of the time drinking wine and chatting on the floor while people filtered through the studios, pointing and exclaiming and seeming impressed. 

I began preemptively to miss the artists, actually sort of a lot, and wondered if they were feeling sentimental at all, or if they felt ready to move on to their other travels, other parts of Europe, return home to their jobs or kids, their apartments and their people. I felt aware that evening that I had no exact life to return to, no particular bed or job or person waiting for me. I have friends and their couches to crash on, an interim in Arizona with my parents in their new home, another set of transient spaces and starched sheets ahead. 

***

I’m writing all this now in October because I ran into a bit of a hiccup most commonly known as having your heart broken (yes, the same boy, the same breakup over again, I’m not calling it healthy), which made me feel skillfully incapacitated for some time. But for the rest of September I remember there were many evenings spent in the courtyard of Casa Bagnolo; pigs roasted, malloreddus, a traditional Sardinian pasta type, very wormy in nature, wolfed down with variations of tomato sauce, a man named Nello arrived on the scene to make us pizzas in the wood-fire oven and he never left, I see him now every day. A crop of men in their late twenties were doing a permaculture workshop Nicola organized at the nearby beach, Is Arutas, and came a few nights to drink wine and grappa and I taught them about noodling—which is fishing for catfish, before you get any ideas. Nicola’s partner, Javier, had a birthday party (buon compleanno, Javier). We ate a tres leches kind of cake and danced something called the “mussel” dance which is where you rub your butt on a stranger’s to no evident rhythm at all. Which is to say: I’m getting to know the locals intimately.

My loneliness forced me to decide between a) watching Modern Family, eating biscuits and wondering why I suddenly can’t hold down a man or b) getting ripped and learning to grill and listening to Sky Ferreira in an empowering and Not Upset way. I’m sort of straddling the decision still, running off the biscuit calories and trying to begin things like Jackie Brown or the Rupert Murdoch documentary before being too overwhelmed by the constant thought of what my ex-boyfriend would think of these, and surrendering to Modern Family again.

Do I cry in the evenings so hard that a rash appears! Yep! Do I now have to listen to wave sounds while I’m trying to fall asleep to try and sonically distract myself from the sound of getting a text! Yep! Am I sleeping at all! Nope!

In the first days of the re-wounding, I would wake up at 7am, run as fast as I could, and literally yell the lyrics to a number of Dua Lipa songs, come home, have my cappuccino, read my Virginia Woolf, and take to the internet, where I would read my little articles and pretend all the rage of the early morning never happened. I’m just a regular girl, with a stable life, taking small, polite sips of my frothy espresso. I focus very hard on the color and texture of the crema—what an impossibly even caramel—and specifically do not hit my head repeatedly on the table. 

The most difficult part of being heartbroken, I always have thought, is how long the days begin to take. I start to wake up later and later so I have less of the day to spend thinking about how my chest feels like a pin-cushion, less of the day to wait for a text or consider texting. I apply to at least three jobs every day. I take 35-minute showers. I begin drinking red wine after my second run of the day, at 5:30pm, and don’t stop until it’s time for my sleep meditation, which I spend thinking about my ex-boyfriend. I do a morning yoga, a post-workout yoga, a quarter of a Glutes On Fire session before tearfully collapsing onto my yoga mat. I can’t focus on reading anything—any empty moment is absorbed by thoughts of my six-times-ended relationship. Phase one is that acute, youthful despair where you feel as if you’ve lost the one love of your life, as if you’ll never meet anyone again who you feel has any idea of what you’re talking about. In phase one, you’re staring at the bone-chilling expanse of solitude, where you will sleep on the packed, freezing snow, the only sounds in the landscape are your chattering teeth and the howling of the wolves. 

I’m joking. I only mean it will be a long time of sleeping alone, no prospect of coffee ready for you in the morning, no more themed playlists or sleepovers or movie recommendations or daily check-ins from anyone, a new drought of the natural, consistent concern and investment of another person. Which is, obviously, a hard adjustment. All you can really do is what I love to do in the face of emotional adversity: flee. I went to Alghero, where I, ironically, accidentally, took myself on a whole-ass honeymoon. 

A very romantic Aperol aperitif situation in Alghero

***

I will spare you the logistical details of the trains and buses, the hours spent trying to get to Alghero, which is an hour and a half by car, and five hours by “public transit,” but the trip at least gave me ample time to notice the thing I love most about Sardinia, which is the scrappiness of its landscape; it’s covered with dry brush and tall grasses, all the low-growing fruit trees are tangled together in the shadow of the hillsides. The land is completely unmanicured, so much of it undeveloped, but the whole place looks and feels lived in, every part of it more beautiful for being broken-in, the way a pair of legs are better-looking for their scars and scratches, their mysterious bruises. The hills are cast in unshaven shadow, the grasses sway and stick directly out like flyaways. There’s a Wild West quality to it (and some spaghetti westerns have been filmed here, there is a small town near Milis used repeatedly as a set for such films) between the ruggedness of the landscape and the people in it, but like if the Wild West was full of oranges and then also by the beach, so, to my mind, another kind of Eden.

I made it to Alghero in the early evening and walked from the bus station to the humble AirBnB I booked myself. My host was immediately creepy to me, unsurprisingly, pointing out my age on my passport, verifying a number of times that I was alone—the booking was not for two? For just one? By yourself? You’re traveling alone? C’est la vie, he only knows where I’m sleeping and has the keys to my room, but I have, for years, been practicing an acute and callous disinterest to protect myself from the unwanted advances of men, ready to tar and feather any ego that oversteps. While traveling, I’ve been fostering what I have before called an unfuckable confidence, by which I mean a sort of sexless, disinterested expression, gait, and presence that indicates total unavailability. Sometimes it works, sometimes it definitely does not. Being 5’2”, I look very distinctly, non-threateningly snack-size to the wrong sorts of men.

I changed out of my bus clothes, and led my vacation with that most essential of explorations: finding if there was any Indian street food around this place. I was elated to find there was a 3-star Indian kebab place with damning reviews about cleanliness and food quality, 0.4 miles away. Perfect. One sloppy piadina-kebab-burrito mash-up later, I began to wander the streets of Alghero just as the sun began its cool descent back into the water. The light was orange and generous and undemanding on the cobblestone streets and pink buildings with their quaint balconies decorated by late-afternoon smokers. Paper lanterns hung above the streets and plazas. The Old Town was drowning in coral beads—Alghero is apparently ripe with coral—every shop window full of them, lush with beaded jewelry, purses, coasters. The bars and shops were all crowded, and the streets were sticky with gelato, huge scoops served in enormous waffle cones, two or three on every small street. Everyone, it seemed to me, was glowing with the golden sheen of final summer, a last vacation. Everyone also seemed to be on a weekend getaway or girls’ trip or family vacation, and I felt that they were skeptical of my singular presence, too watchful of it, or too perturbed.

Alghero coastline

It is strange that last time I was traveling alone, I was 18 in New Zealand, I never considered my loneliness. I didn’t find it interesting. But now, I suppose because I’m walking out of some kind of long-term dependence, my loneliness feels much closer, more relevant, like some heavy history circling my life. And the question of why am I alone is ever-peripheral, especially as traveling solo makes you more aware of the way the world is designed for twos: the empty place setting, the full bed, the two sets of towels, etc. You can’t help but begin to consider what equation was it, really, that brought you alone to the moment. The answer, as far as I’ve figured, is complicated, not worthy of a newsletter, the sort of thing you let ruminate until you’ve had too many tequila shots and it’s been a horrific two hours since you sent him the last text to which he’s brutally not responded, and you end up blubbering all of your concerns at once in the bar’s toilets to poor Nellie, who has had as many tequila shots as you, and isn’t feeling strong enough to lift your sticky body off the floor. Or something.

For dinner, I climb up to the fortress wall (Italy, smh) that surrounds the Old Town. I take a long walk along it, examining its various restored catapults and cannons, judging the long-haired beauties that flip their hair to the salty breeze and pose along the stone walls for glitzy Instagram posts, and observing the silent older couples as they stare at the sea, who always seem to me to be thinking about death, but surely are not, surely they are thinking of an email they need to respond to, or that they are craving culurgiones tonight, or remembering just now they’ve forgotten to wear deodorant. 

A street in Alghero, here the paper lanterns were replaced by bird cages

I choose the smallest restaurant along the coastal walk, open my Natalia Ginzburg, and order a glass of “vino bianco,” a local Alghero type I can’t pronounce, to which my waiter says, “Americana?” I relent to English immediately, apologetically, and too emphatically because I think my waiter is attractive—and three minutes later he brings out my wine with a complimentary series of fresh fish appetizers, which, if you know me at all, is precisely my love language: Free Fish. I dive into my pity appetizer, which features two kinds of white fish, one with a roasted red pepper sauce, another with pickled onion, and a bruschetta cracker with sweet tomato sauce topping, olive and zucchini.

In the morning, I wake up early and walk to Spiaggia di Maria Pia (Maria Pia’s beach), a brisk 4 miles from my AirBnb. Early morning Alghero is silent except for a few old men sipping their espressos. No one is yet set up on the beach except a circle of seniors, who wade into the temperate sea for their water aerobics, and the beach restaurant staff, who are disassembling the summer tourism set-ups today, October 1st, the season now over. The beach is mine, then, and I collect all the shells I’d like under no environmentalist’s scrutiny (and leave all but two because of my conscience). I spent the day wandering Alghero, visiting their absolutely tragic archaeological museum, repeatedly considering spending 50 euro on a coral necklace, repeatedly not doing it. For lunch I ordered a squid-ink ravioli with king prawn, a drizzled pesto, and white wine. They give me so much bread I barely, god forbid, make it all the way through my ravioli. I walk again through the old town and along the wall, climb down to the water and sit there for, I realize as the sun hits the water, hours, watching old fishermen cast their lines and mend their nets. I have no idea what I thought about.

A closed-up beach bar at Spiaggia di Maria Pia

The following day, I hit the churches, which were incredibly highly recommended, but after Greece and seeing all my Orthodox dreams come true, it was sort of like: okay, another grumpy, skinny, bleeding Jesus, got it. Also, Italy makes you pay to get into their churches and if there’s one kind of beef I got with god it’s that I think he’s already partially if not largely responsible for making my life expensive, so I didn’t really love tossing euros from my extremely limited funds his way so that I could see back-lit manger displays in the off-season. I wasn’t feeling spiritual, wasn’t feeling any sort of inspirational, life-changing connection—Italian churches could take some tips from Laser Floyd is what I’m saying.

In the evening, after about two hours of flirting with various restaurant menus, I pick one full of old people because I feel less socially threatened by the situation. My waiter repeatedly calls me “bella.” He has black spiked hair and a deep, wrinkled tan. He’s wearing a tight grey t-shirt and sweating all the way through it. His name is Antonio, he tells me. As he pours my wine, he asks for my number and I say “maybe” so my clams will come out untarnished. My clams, in fact, come out with his number on the napkin. He won’t let me pay my check until I return the favor. I write down my number (my real one—I’m a fool after wine and clams, now I know) on the back of my undiscounted receipt, which is all I wanted from this gelled-up clown, and hightail it to the gelato place for a heaping scoop of pistachio. I call my sister, who tells me the sound of my tongue slapping gelato is pretty much the last noise she would like to hear from Italy. Antonio calls me twice in 15 minutes, and texts me “Julia.” I block his number, watch Sex Education, listen to the loud, multilingual chatter of the late-night diners through my open window until I drift off.

This extremely cool cat I saw

The next day I, for some reason, wake up feeling insane, on top of which I drink two espressos and read faster than I have ever read. I then board a completely random bus that I know is heading in the Northwest direction and plan to get off at one of the stops near any beach on the line. I end up getting off in the middle of a back road, standing there with a phone at 31%, having drank all my water on the bus, with no idea what brought me here. I start walking towards the ocean, which is miles away, using my remaining phone battery to determine its general direction. I scramble through brush, round a crumbling lighthouse, crawl over cliffs to find a slender, sandy pathway along a cliff above the beach. Below were people laying out their towels, cutting up their various melons, staring completely blankly out into the calm sea. I crawl down a rock face to a more populated-looking beach, deciding it’s time for a beer, and after ordering, I’m asked to move tables three times, until eventually they put my broke, sweaty ass at a busted plastic table in the corner. 

From there, I watch old women in their blue suits and bucket hats walk through four feet of water, sluggishly, ponderously. I tried reading but found it difficult to concentrate on my book when in front of me were fishing boats bobbing in the waves, babies in their enormous hats playing in ten inches of water, old, fat, toffee-colored men reading their papers and doing their crosswords, ignoring their wives’ request to rub sunscreen on their back, the lifeguards watching videos on their phones and all the teenagers at peace, their thin backs burning in the prime time UV. 

There is something you can see in Italian couples that makes you think they are more in love than you ever have been, all of them paired up and kissing each other everywhere and anywhere. Their world is one of sunsets watched from cliffs and fortresses, white beaches, vineyards. They’re living a kind of romance built on lunchtime wines and bottomless aphrodisiacs, all evenings extend into early mornings with the digestifs served at 1am, all kissing takes place in alleyways under stone architecture from the 12th century, twinkling lights overhead, the smell of pizza or pastries wafting through “Via Roma or Via Vienna”—who wouldn’t be in love all the time, it’s a film set. The bleak American reality is you have to haul your not-a-commitment-type boyfriend 40 minutes out of town to an apple orchard where you eat a cheese board of mild, moist cheddars, wait around until sunset for one picture together, head home and fight over the aux on the drive back, “the new Mac Miller album is really good.”* 

And the thought made me sad, though I’m well-aware I’m being defeatist—heartbreak makes you like this—so I paid my 2-euro tab and headed back up to the cliffs, to Calletta del Lazzaretto which is some fabled cove that fulfills all my expectations. Here, it’s hidden and quiet and the people in this part of the beach want only to be at the beach, you can tell, they want specifically to think about nothing else but the water and sky and sand. I lay out down the beach from these people, far enough that I cozy up to the topless tanning culture and take a nap, the first time I’ve slept well in a long, emotionally tumultuous minute.

The scene at Calletta del Lazzaretto

*I feel it’s necessary to explain that these are theoretical circumstances and I’m not actually dragging my ex-boyfriend publicly here