Shining Through The Grit

The children from the rione di Sanità surely live in rather spare and dark conditions. At least that is what I gather from walking the streets. You can peak here and there into the ground floor apartments, where, when we pass by, there is likely to be someone cooking in the front room. But the streets are full of color and noise, unruly children, and more unruly motorbikes, many fruit and vegetable vendors, sidewalk shops of cheap sunglasses, gaudy children’s toys and backpacks for sale, glitter and rhinestone encrusted baubles. Italians love their rhinestones! Igor, the giant golden retriever lies in the doorway at the base of the hill in the same position everyday. Friendly and silky, with an enormous block of a head, so lethargic and uninterested in the hubbub surrounding him that you would add ten years to his actual age.

La Sanità is lively, and in the sunshine, not at all depressing, but we are just visitors. And when we return to Pieve we will be overwhelmed by the relative calm and the spotless streets.

Everywhere you look in Naples, there is trash. All kinds of trash. Unexpected objects. There’s a brown bra at the corner of Via Sapienza, just before you turn right to head down to Pizza Street. How do you get to via Tribulnali? Turn right at the brown bra. But don’t look down before you reach the corner because there is a dead rat there. I haven’t allowed myself to look again since I first spied it, but I’m quite sure it is still there (update, I checked today and I believe someone may have thrown a pizza box over it. RIP). Things are left to deteriorate, like snow is left to melt in Portland because there is no mechanism to remove it.

The eighteen years of waste management crisis, due to the camorra’s grip on that business, and because regions all over the country were allowed to ship their refuse and toxic waste here, filling up the landfills, so there was no where left to dump the city’s waste, are officially over.

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naples_waste_management_crisis).

The pictures in the New York Times of mountains of garbage from that period no longer describe the current situation. There are no mountains of garbage. There are instead, rows of four or five enormous bins defacing beautiful Piazza Dante, Piazza Bellini, Piazza You Name It, and they are overflowing. I have seen pick up, but it is never enough, and so there is a constant overflow. Meanwhile pushed up against curbs that line the streets, if not mountains, then hillocks of debris rest undisturbed. At least in Sanità, but honestly, everywhere in the city center to a lesser degree. I can say confidently that whatever we see on the streets today, we will see on our last walk from the school. It will be left to ripen and discolor and transforms to a point where one can no longer recognize its original purpose.

Naples is a beautiful city. The palazzos are impressive, enormous. The architecture reflects the stream of conquerors and the weave of cultural influences. Everybody wanted this bay. Who could blame them? It is a stunning natural wonder. Mt. Vesuvius imposing in the not-too-distant background is part of a rugged landscape that includes other smaller mountains and hills that make the city so interesting, their juxtaposition to the water so lovely.

I’m reminded of a trip to Odessa when the Soviet Union still existed. With my sisters and my parents, I took a guided bus tour of the city. It reminded me of other European cities in its architecture. You could almost squint your eyes and see the bustling cafes, the flower boxes full of red geraniums, the human interactions on every corner, Except there was none of that. This was a seaside “resort” where the Russians of means went to take the cure, relax, replenish. They were so proud of it. But it is not what I saw. It was as if I was looking through a black and white lens or a dirty windshield. If this is where people come for a good time, I thought, Che peccato!

I realize that what makes Naples so beautiful isn’t just the mountains and the bay and the lovely architecture, but the relentless activity of its people and if Odessa was in Grayscale, Naples is in Kodachrome, Even in its shabbiness, trash and all.