Hope and doubt,

doubt and hope

Single-digit crowds

of friendly misanthropes

Indiscrete count

Unambiguous bet

My world is half-round

and mostly half-flat

It was an early autumn Florentine afternoon – fragrantly warm, gloriously sunny, the air sparkling with freshness born out of yesterday’s rain. We had climbed the steep streets of Oltrarno, the less noble but dignified Florence neighborhood on the other side of the Arno River. We took a roundabout way that led us up, then down, past the stone wall surrounding the southwest side of Forte Belvedere. Just as we were descending the narrow, olive-tree-lined road, church bells spilled their music into the air. Our eyes followed it to the distant sight of the Romanesque façade of the San Miniato al Monte basilica, residing gracefully atop a hill across from where we had stopped in our tracks, quieted by this sudden bel canto. 

We promptly made our way to what turned out to be a most remarkable vantage point for anyone lucky enough to escape the nauseating sight of the tourist-bus-infested Piazzale Michelangelo in search of a more private opportunity to take in Florence’s beauty from above. We spent time in the church, cooling off by the columns in the dark nave and admiring the pagan Zodiac inlay. Then the awareness of the sun-filled day drew us back outside and we discovered the Porte Sante cemetery, tucked inside the defending walls, built by Michelangelo to protect the church during the 1530 siege of Florence.    

As I child, I had a controversial relationship with graveyards. One of my earliest memories is of my grandmother taking me to the cemetery in my hometown on the right bank of the Danube River in Bulgaria. She said she needed to tend to her mother’s grave and brought a small hoe with her. My young imagination did not realize she meant weeding the flowers, surrounding the grave. I thought she wanted to dig out the coffin with her mother’s dead body. I must have been five or six and I remember how equally horrified and fascinated I was, and ultimately disappointed when all Grandma did was spruce things up on the surface.

On this warm September day, Cimitero Delle Porte Sante was elegant and inviting, without a hint of the somber finality associated with life’s end. Tombstones were adorned with pictures and graceful statues. The many rains had streaked the monuments with delicate patina. Moss had lent its velvety cover to tombstones. Black, white and grey were interlaced in a nearly art deco pattern. The obligatory cemetery cat was strolling haughtily among the graves, stopping here and there to bask in the late afternoon sun.

I wanted to have known the people resting under the tombstones. I could imagine their unapologetically bourgeois lives where elegance and indulgence were a required element of social form. In their lifetime, the crude art of poisoning of the Medici clan had given way to the less lethal weapons of gossip, melodrama, and scandal. Before settling in for eternity in this beautiful piece of prime Florentine real estate, they had spent their mornings reading Corriere della Sera over a cup of espresso at Caffé Gilli, offering a polite nod to Maestro Boccioni and Maestro Severini at the next table. At night, they had shared boisterous laughs and succulent bistecca alla fiorentina with friends. The men had kept mistresses with sultry looks and sinful minds. The women had carefully sidestepped their husbands’ affairs with their elegant narrow feet, clad in Ferragamo shoes. Was the handsome American, smiling so boyishly from his tombstone picture, a journalist or a diplomat, who first visited Florence as a post-war twenty-something, fell in love with the city and his future beautiful dark-haired wife, and never ever left? I thought that maybe if we hung around long enough to await dusk, we’d catch a glimpse of a couple of slender signori, heading down to Via Calzaiuoli for an early evening aperitivo before the premiere of Mascagni’s I Rantzau at Teatro della Pergola.

In one corner, a modernistic rendition of the crucifixion stood tall. The larger than life body, made of metal, seemed to be slowly melting, streaming down toward the earth in wide, flowing patches. Only the year of birth was recorded at the feet of the statue: 1968. I hoped it was just a case of long-term planning.

Later I learned that among Porte Sante’s occupants for eternity was Carlo Colodi, the father of Pinocchio. I still have not found confirmation that the chapel with the “Fam. Franco Zeffirelli” inscription is the burial place of the family of the famous Italian director of the same name. 

* Do not stand at my grave and weep is a poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye

To borrow heavily from the White Queen, sometimes I have defined happiness in as many as six different ways before breakfast.

Happiness is:

• Sleeping in
• Waking up to the smell of fresh coffee
• Outdoor jog on a sunny morning
• More coffee + reading the New York Times
• Leisurely breakfast
• Knowing I can immerse myself in a good book for hours

It’s that simple.

I’ve never disliked a year enough to feel truly happy to see it go and I’ve never been able to master too much enthusiasm for a new one on day one. January 1st falling on a Sunday, my least favorite day of the week, doesn’t help any. So without much ado, I do what should always be done when one wants to do a reserved yet decadent rendition of welcoming the New Year. I go for a run, followed by champagne, accompanied by homemade buckwheat blini with crème fraiche and a recession-appropriate amount of caviar. Hell, maybe I’ll even finally see “Casablanca”.  

Loving autumn did not come easily to me. As far back as I can remember, for me there was only one unquestionable definition of the good life – summer, sunshine, beach time. I grew up in a small town on the right bank of the Danube whose population inflated every summer to include bunches of big-city-kids who came to spend their summer school break with Grandma and Grandpa. We played in the streets all day and late into the night. We biked, played hide-and-seek, and stole figs from our neighbors’ yards because everyone knows thy neighbor’s figs taste better than those in your own grandparents’ yard. Around the age of fourteen we began to secretly fall in love and sneak our first cigarette. And we went to the beach. Boy, did we love going to the beach. It often took an entire year of begging and convincing our parents we were old enough to go to the beach by ourselves. It was a hard-fought win.

Fall was when all the beach fun ended and the subjects of my summer love went back to the big city. How could I then learn to love the season that was the end of the three pillars of my precarious young happiness? It was a slow transformation. It started with graduating from college, which changed the definition of fall as the start time of tough semesters, filled with descriptive geometry and convective heat transfer principles. Then came my first job, which brought about disposable income and the ability to become part of party life in the big city, which sort of kicked off in the fall, when everyone returned from their Black Sea summer holidays. It had a lot to do with growing up to acquire the wonderful ability to enjoy being by myself and to appreciate nature. And it culminated when I moved to New England, where fall is an indisputably glorious affair. So there, you have it. The rise of fall explained.    

Such a beautiful morning for a run. Cloudy and quiet, the only sound that of crickets singing in overdrive. The approaching rain did not feel as close as it turned out to be. The first cool droplets met me when I still had a mile to go.

August is like that peach syrup I remember from my childhood. A neighbor had made some from the peaches in her garden and treated me to an unforgettable glass of it. And so this is how I always imagine August – its color is burnt-yellow, it’s thick with sweetness, and it has none of the frenzy that July is branded with. August is nonchalantly elegant and artfully laissez-faire. It calls for biking with a straw hat on and afternoon naps in a hammock. August is synonymous with unintentional indulgence, innocent extravagance and gentle hedonism. It is to be savored by the sip and devoured by the spoonful. Go forth and spread the word while we still have twenty-eight precious days left to delight in the blue mornings, sultry afternoons and cool evenings of the most splendid of all summer months.

“In his second year, Leo decided, after mature reflection, that it was a lion’s duty to roar. He was not awfully sure how to go about it, so he would retire to quiet corners of his cage and practice softly to himself, for he was rather shy of this new accomplishment and would stop immediately and pretend it had nothing to do with him if you came in view.”

I grew up incessantly loving any book Gerald Durrell ever wrote. So when I recently came across one I hadn’t read it was a nice treat. “Menagerie Manor” is yet another priceless opportunity to indulge in Durrell’s wonderfully fresh sense of humor. His love of animals seeps through every page and the drawings by Ralph Thompson are unsurpassed.

  {Source: http://www.roadcycling.com Photo: Fotoreporter Sirotti.}

As I was watching the Tour de France team time trials earlier today, I kept thinking the stage offered great lessons for any business leader. Here’s my business interpretation of the Tour de France rules for the team time trials (scroll to page 38 of the document for the applicable rules in English):

• Le Tour de France rule: Classification for the stage is established for each team according to the time achieved by the rider crossing the line in 5th position. Business interpretation: Your team’s overall results are only as good as the median performance of its members.                                                                                 

• Le Tour de France rule: An identical time is given to all team members arriving at this same time, or before. Business interpretation: Having a few outstanding performers on the team won’t compensate for the team’s median performance.

• Le Tour de France rule: Competitors who finish outside the cut-off times stipulated by the rules are eliminated. Business interpretation: You need to set some cut-off criteria and address performance that falls behind.

• Le Tour de France rule: In the case where a team no longer has at least 5 competitors, those remaining in the race are obliged to finish the course within the established cut-off time. Business interpretation: Even if you are down a team member or two (or more), you still need to hold the remaining ones to the established performance criteria.

• Le Tour de France rule: Assisting team-mates by pushing is forbidden. Business interpretation: This was the hardest for me to interpret. I choose to think it means that collaboration should not be translated into a need to pick up someone else’s slack. Granted, in the business world this is often necessary but if it’s the norm, then your team has a problem and you need to work on it.