Who am I?

In his 1928 novel “Nadja,” André Breton cites an old French adage: “Tell me whom you haunt” — whom you befriend —“and I’ll tell you who you are.”

I befriend strays, my first being a “MOM! DAD! look what followed me home” event when I was quite small, but over the years I have had my share of bound-for-the-animal-shelter pets.

When I was younger they had simple names: Calico (she was a calico), Bear and Grizz (they were found in the woods and were more than a bit grizzled). As I got older, I felt I should give them more elegant names so when I was in my twenties and thirties, I had pets named Chaucer and Dante. In my 40’s now…..and having moved to Italy I thought my kitten rescuing days were over, but then along came Beatrice. So animals, of varying sizes, shapes and species….would be the first on my list.

I also befriend strays of the human form. Beth, a homeless women in Washington DC who I used to discuss Chaos Theory and Architectural design with. And more recently, thanks to Angelo there is Lucy. I never know what to do or say around them, what I can really do to ease their suffering, so I generally just talk, sometimes sharing a warm pair of socks or mittens or leave them something to read just to pass the time.

I haunt enotecas…finding them and their owners safe and familiar places to sit and have a glass of wine, to scribble a few lines and in my younger days, before it fell out of fashion and people started telling me they would kill me, to smoke my favorite French cigarettes. Enoteca owners win kudos with me when they know what I want, without me having to ask for it.

I haunt good causes, be they the plight of the Bonobo, my friends one-man-trying-to-move-a- mountain cause to fund Tibetan schools, or to think that some day, some way, we truly can find ways to eliminate world hunger and empower poor women (like my friend Magda so desperately thinks is possible). I want them to find a cure for cancer so more good people like my Mom don’t have to die horrible deaths and I want to believe that there is a cure for AIDS that doesn’t require my friends to take 67 pills a day.

I befriend the struggling, here in Rome, which, more often than not, are others from all walks of life, from Poland to Sante Fe, The UK, Sardenia, Karachi, or even Alabama. The struggling come in all shapes and sizes and income brackets. We struggle with the language, the system, being away from family and with trying to find our way here in this Roman landscape. But what they all share in common is a desire to figure out how to work here, live here and all to often, to love here.

I befriend poets, writers, and artists, usually those like myself who can’t make enough money from the paintbrush, paper or quill to pay the bills with their words or images, but who, if money wasn’t an option, would spend their days scribbling and painting, leaving the world a slightly better place for it. To put food on their prospective tables by day they masquerade as editors and educators, some cloak their artistic tendencies completely, with work on the opposite end of the pendulum…..crunching numbers and writing complicated treaties as programmers, scientists and engineers, Surely each of their scholarly minds take them down varied paths and consultancies but in their hearts, if you asked them “what do you do” they would love to hear their family say loudly and clearly “He is an artist” or “She is a writer”.