Angry spaghetti, music, secrets, courage and, of course, chillies…
I’m so grateful to all of you who’ve shown such love for, The Proxy Bride, thank you, grazie di cuore. ❤️
It was an honour to write about these resilient, spirited women.
Buona giornata a tutti! 😊🌶️🍝
Tag Archives: Zoe Boccabella
With time…
A week ago, this was a scrawny,
three stalks of unopened buds
left at the supermarket that
no one seemed to want,
but today…
Hope you have a lovely Sunday.
Filed under art + photographs
Stars, circles and crosses…
Thank you for joining me here throughout the year – for your wonderful interest in and support of my books and for sharing your own experiences and memories with me.
For me, the best part of writing is the connection when those words are read or heard and that magic happens of a story shifting from one mind to another. I love this also when you share your own stories with me. Grazie e auguri. xx
I understand all too well that this time of year can be one of joy, challenge or mixtures of both and my heart goes out to you all. Whatever your beliefs or experiences may be, I hope this time rests gently on you and that the coming year is a kind one.
Warmest wishes, baci e abbracci, Zoë 💙 x
* Pictured are painted tiles from the San Donato ceiling, 1615, in the village of Castelli, Abruzzo that lies on Gran Sasso, the highest mountain of the Apennines. The 17th century stars, circles, suns and crosses actually go back much further to ancient times in Italian folklore and are part of a little of the magic of the area that I’m hoping to write about in the coming year. ✨
Filed under art + photographs, inspiration + history, italy
Remembering…
My House, My Truth, 1989 by Mariya Prymachenko (1909-1997). “My house, my truth… my mother did it all and gave me. She sewed, spun, baked bread and pounded millet.” Mariya Prymachenko.
Family. The older generation, having lived life, passes on their experience to their children. Prymachenko’s mother passed on her love for art and taught her to embroider and be herself. – From the Odessa Journal, 2022.
Recently at the charity auction ‘Benefit for Ukraine’s People and Culture’ in Venice, this artwork sold for 110,000 euros to become the most expensive of Prymachenko’s paintings. The entire cost has been donated.
(In the first few weeks of Russia’s war on Ukraine, invading Russian forces burned down the museum that was home to 25 of Mariya’s paintings. The war has now been ongoing for five months with tens of thousands of casualties.) 💛💙🌻 памьятаюші
Filed under art + photographs, inspiration + history
The ghost town after the earthquake…
This is the most recent footage of Fossa since the Abruzzo earthquake of 2009. It is called, ‘Town Disappeared Overnight’ by Broken Window Theory and shows the ghost town that it tragically is today. I admit, I did find it hard to watch at times – the place where generations of my family lived for centuries and many parts of the village where I’ve walked and lived and of course written about in both my books. It gave me goosebumps to see and I felt bewildered, sad, captivated and protective all at once. For this is not just a curiosity, it is where people’s lives were lost and for others where life, as they knew it, ended.
I look at the streets overgrown and neglected and at the same time I see in my mind back when they were well-kept and clean and full of people, cats, dogs, cars and vespas. Incredibly, at 18 minutes into this 20 minute footage, my family’s house with its little balcony fills the screen. It is deceptive because from that side wall the destruction inside the house is concealed. If you have any link to Abruzzo, I warn that this footage may be hard to watch as those filming go right into the most intimate parts of homes, which may just happen to be yours or of someone you know. That said, the young men filming have done so with respect, have only entered houses where the doors were already open and have concealed the name and whereabouts of the village. (Considering my own family’s house is one of those looted since the earthquake, I appreciate this.) By the end, they also appear to be overwhelmed by all they’ve seen.
I’ve always held hope to return to the village and my family’s house even if it is still a ghost town. However, most of all, I hope to see it and the other towns affected by the 2009 earthquake once again as they were. Vibrant, full of people of all ages, cooking aromas, vespas going past, cats asleep in doorways, women shelling peas, tvs blaring, kids playing football in the piazza, birds chirruping among the lanes and the church bell clanging, everything that was beautiful and glorious about Italian village life. xx
To watch footage… click here
For more about Fossa, how it once was and the earthquake…
Filed under inspiration + history, italy
Dolci con il caffè…
The dilemma of what to have with a coffee… took this in the gorgeous Gran Caffé, Assisi.
{Music: Coffee Cold by Galt MacDermot.}
Filed under italy