For the seventh and eight evenings of our writing and walking workshop, “La Banditaccia” was our agriturismo accommodation. The owner was ill and away during our stay there but we were looked after and fed well by Angela and her squadra di cucina, including three delightful canines.

Here, the dynamics of our group changed. One of the women became ill with a deep vein thrombosis that had hitched a ride on the journey from Australia. She was assessed and treated promptly at the local hospital but for her it meant a return for a medical check up and no more hiking.

We spent the following day in Siena – for some this was a chance to delve into the incredible duomo, for others to get lost amongst art and perfume.

Siena is an MC Escher drawing; stairs, archways, veering streets and wrong turns. We got lost, of course, but, bottle of wine in hand, we made the mini bus with 5 minutes to spare.

On the return to La Banditaccia we were like jittery school girls. We were leaving Tuscany tomorrow to head to the Cinque Terre in Liguria. Our walking and sharing of writing and ourselves was evolving. Our workshops had pushed us to think through darker spaces and with one member who would not be continuing with us and that evening something shifted. It was tangible; we connected and were present as a whole group and, for a few hours, it was like watching a flock of starlings in action, when they all take flight simultaneously and afternoon light catches their wings.

Our morning workshop was a little subdued. We interviewed one another in an exercise for listening, and invisibility. We grouped together in one circle and chanted “aum” a number of times (something I always feel like a dork or a phoney doing, even in yoga class), to the bemusement of the passing caretaker, who then, believing it was music we required, returned with a portable radio playing Abba’s Dancing Queen.

The postcard snapshots below include my first impressions of Siena, a town I returned to later in the year, where I lived for 3 months when I studied the language. I found the Sienese downright rude during my first visit, but that view was cemented when I went, for one month, to the same bar for my breakfast cappuccino and cornetto and assailed them with my improving Italian, and they never once greeted me. I took my business to a bar at the end of the street my language school was located, run by a gorgeous young Albanian couple. I learned from my teachers and students that, with some exceptions, of course, the Sienese can be typically closed off towards outsiders. Even the 17 contrade (neighbourhoods/quarter) are this way with one another; each contrada fiercely competitive and proud of their ensign and colours, especially so during the lead up to the centuries-old traditional horse race known as the Palio, held twice a year in July and August.

The very last poetic postcard refers to a nighttime swim, a delightful skinny dip in La Banditaccia’s pool and the subsequent poetic communion between the women. It was an evening that can only be described as magic, in wildest everything of the artist’s way.

First Published 17 June 2012

“In Siena I buy watercolours and, later, perfume from someone who adores his work. We discovered how long perfume lasts when placed between his girlfriend’s breasts. I feel I know her rather well now and I have never met her.”

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“We sit and wait for an order of coffee that never comes, and move on for lunch and wine. The waiter speaks of two white wines but when I follow him into the bar and show some interest in the wine, he offers me two others and then his favourite.”

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“We sit with our feet in Astroturf – the only thing remotely close to lawn in the city – after lunch at a winebar and the owner gets up and locks the door and moves off. Rude in anyone’s language…but it makes me ache with laughter at the blatant inherent necessity of siesta.”

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“At Banditaccia, with my new paints, I paint a thank you card from a photo of Castello di Potentino, for our guide, Christine.”

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“At dinner, I cut off a slice of cheese with all the professionalism of something with hooves. It lands on my foot. Our host observes my work and pipes up,

“aHa! Lessi!”

“Che Lessi, per favore?” (my profoundly awful Italian).

Our host looks around the kitchen, points vaguely outside and says,

“Si, Lessi, Lessi!”

At this point I grab Christine, our guide, for help. Apparently “Lessi’ is a name. The collie dog’s name. Of course it is. “Lassi”, with an accent.
Formaggio per Lessi.”

~

To Our Night

“We stood on the verge of cold, the girl-children of stream and rhythm, our feet in the warm rot of leaves and earth and season.
Above and around us, the sky’s scarf, embroidered with a sisterhood of stars, waited to collate our howls of laughter into one celebrated note and into that wavering sound, clarion-clear, drawing taut, loosening, the moon threw back her shoulders and applauded.”