On crafting, drafting, carving, editing and polishing

This article is for people who write and face all the challenges of this profession: drafting a chapter and then going back to it to edit and revise it. This often means to 'kill our darlings', cutting parts of it that seemed to us so well written, such an important and definitive part of the story. Instead, just when everything seems to be ready for publication, there are still steps to take. It still needs polishing. The whole exercise becomes a never-ending and often frustrating process. But from it, we can really learn so much, about writing and about ourselves.

In my article, written towards the end of my MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Hong Kong, I analyse my personal struggles as a writer, but also the famous and complex relationship between the writer Raymond Carver and his editor, Gordon Lish.

As I’m approaching the end of an incredible adventure – the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Hong Kong – my last efforts are now focussed on a specific task: editing my innumerable drafts. ‘Drafts’—immediately my good friend’s words come to my mind: ‘Every chapter, especially the first one, has to undergo at least 16 drafts.’ I laughed at his preposterous advice, but here I am, with about 20 drafts (scrapped, re-written and edited until the very last one) for Chapter 1.

Now, as we polish our thesis, our thoughts go to all the many workshops we attended, in which our work has been sometimes slashed and cut, at times butchered to the very bone. We students have seen chapters of fifteen-twenty pages being reduced by a half, when in reality we thought that the other half was not that bad, and it was at least partly needed too. Weren’t we told, in the first place, to define characters and setting, to use descriptions to let the reader immerse in our work, not to tell but show? Therefore, settings became luscious; characters rich in attributes or faults; and the showing would go on and on…

I am sure that after the completion of our MFA we will come out as better writers, aware of the golden rules of writing, and with more acquired skills in the construction of plot, characters, settings and dialogues. But we will always feel at times confused, in particular about the content of our pieces. We will endlessly question the ‘substance’ of our work and the need for certain information, wondering if that beautiful description of a place is really necessary, or if the dialogue between those particular two characters has any key function at all.

So, shall we, as Michelangelo did, carve perfectly refined sculptures from blocks of raw marble? Michelangelo also created fascinating but unfinished works though, and yet Giorgio Vasari referred to these incomplete creations saying “Rough as it is, this is a perfect work of art which serves to teach other sculptors how to carve a statue out of marble without making any mistakes, perfecting the figure gradually by removing the stone judiciously and being able to alter what has been done as and when necessary.”

Remove judiciously: this is the hardest task during the final leg of our journey and for our future endeavours as writers too. We should be able to carve the best and most polished work out of the many thousands of words we’ve written, judiciously.

Maxwell Perkins

Recently, I had the occasion to watch the movie ‘Genius’, based on the 1978 National Book Award-winner ‘Max Perkins: Editor of Genius’ by A. Scott Berg and interpreted by Colin Firth and Jude Law.

The protagonist of this movie is Maxwell Perkins, an editor from Scribner in search of new literary talents who signed Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and who here takes on Thomas Wolfe’s work, red-penciling Wolfe’s lengthy, opulent and often rejected first manuscript ‘O Lost’, an autobiographical story. During a long and painful process, since Wolfe didn’t want to give up any of the sentences he had written, the novel gets edited and cut, until it becomes ‘Look Homeward, Angel’: it had to be revised and downsized, and about 90,000 words were trimmed before publication. Wolfe obviously felt that he had lost the gist of his work, which was now no longer his only, but Perkins’ too.

The same happened to Wolfe’s second book, ‘Of Time and The River’, for which Wolfe kept writing pages over pages before giving up and agreeing on Perkin’s requests about the maximum size of this novel.

Despite Perkins worked as a mentor for Wolfe and was the man who discovered him, during this collaboration Wolfe was often in a quandary about his own success: did he owe it to his editor? Due to this growing tension, the two men drifted apart and Wolfe eventually left Scribner.

Back to the classroom and during one of our MFA lessons, we discussed the original and edited version of a short story: ‘Beginners’, by Raymond Carver, edited by Gordon Lish and retitled ‘What we talk about when we talk about love.’ The short story appeared on ‘The New Yorker’ in 2007 with additions, deletions, and insertions of paragraph breaks. It has been absolutely fascinating to read these two versions. The story is a conversation ‘about love’ between two couples (Doctor Mel and Terri, Nick and Laura), over gin and tonic at Mel and Terri’s home. During the gathering, intimate details and past stories pop up and, through them, the reader acquaints the characters and their contrasting perspectives when defining ‘love’.

The difference between the two stories is striking. The original version has been heavily cut and the main character, Mel, has been roughened up. Even his language has become more and more vulgar as he gets drunk. I agree with most of the deletions, since the writer should not ‘lead the reader by the hand’, but when three entire pages, in sequence (and then another two and a half at the end), were stricken-through, I wondered if it was necessary to be so drastic.

I was dubious, at first. But then, as I re-read the story, I came to the conclusion that it was needed, because Mel had to be a different man in that context. In the final draft, he comes out as an assertive, at times cynical guy, who tells stories ‘about real love’ devoid of any distracting romantic details that could make them sound too cheesy (as in the three deleted pages). We also find out Terri’s point of view when she talks about her affection for her violent ex-lover, who threatened to kill her after she left him, and who then committed suicide, because ‘he loved her so much’.

In the end, as we get to know the characters better, with all their problems and idiosyncrasies, further details get again deleted, because it comes quite clear now how ‘talking about love’ has become a disheartening experience too.

This is the link of the draft/final version of the story:

http://public.wsu.edu/~bryanfry/Beginners Edited.pdf

Needless to say, Lish’s editorial relationship with Carver ceased after three books.

After experiencing all this crafting, drafting, carving, editing and polishing, I still believe writers should be definitely guided by all they have read, learnt and listened to, but also by their own ultimate inspiration and by what drives their story, so that it becomes hopefully easier to find a compromise between keeping unnecessarily vast, superfluous writing and apply radical changes or deleting. As we learn from Michelangelo’s technique, the biggest challenge is to use our chisel to perfect our final product with cautious alterations, when needed.

Paola Caronni

Sardinian Memories

Sardinia is an amazing land. Just having the chance to explore a tiny part of it let me spellbound. This journey towards the discovery of a place and its culture left its indelible mark.

The fragrance of the helicrysum rubbed between my fingers a few hours before was still persistent, even after driving miles back to the South of the region. I could inhale the zest pervading the air while, since ancient times, local women created their homemade essence from the ‘Helicrysum Italicum’ – one of the many varieties of this shrub that grows in the Mediterranean area. A precious serum, meant to fight skin ageing and cure all sorts of ailments, would be extracted from the delicate flowers and leaves of the plant. As place and memory have their scents, helicrysum became the fragrance of my summer, in particular of my two weeks spent in Sardinia.

Back in my hotel cottage after the trip, I felt rewarded by a tiring but enriching day, the highlight of an otherwise exclusively ‘sun, sand and sea’ Sardinian holiday. The beach of Costa Rei is over 8 km long, the sand fine and the turquoise sea crystal-clear, but my wish was to find some traces of the past in this rich and incredible land. My plan was strongly supported by my daughter.

Therefore, we set ready to go. After a few negotiations with the hotel receptionist – renting a car was going to become a crazy and super-expensive treat – the woman proposed an odd but attractive offer: I could rent one of the owner’s ‘courtesy’ cars for the sum of Euro 40 per day, no questions asked. Despite the dusty and aged look, that car came as a Godsend just when I was almost giving up the idea of exploring at least a tiny part of the mysterious grounds of Ichnusa, as Sardinia was known in ancient times.

At first, we had various doubts about where to go and what to see. Finally, we decided to drive Nort to Barumini, to visit ‘Su Nuraxe’, the biggest ‘nuraghe’ area in Sardinia and a World Heritage Site, dating back to 1500 BC. It took us a good couple of hours to get there. As we got off the car, we were met by a scorching sun that bathed a wide, dry and harsh plain. Above it, the remains of an ancient and complex civilisation were telling the story of towers and fortifications once proudly standing and dominating the nearby area. Following our guide, we visited the towers, peeped into bottomless wells and corbel-vaulted dark and cool chambers, and tried to picture the life in the village that developed around the towers. We also wondered how those huge slabs of stone could have been transported in such a remote area in such remote times. Still today, it seems an unresolved mystery.

After this visit and with our mind endlessly wandering around the megalithic structures, we drove past Oristano and met our Sardinian friends, Ciriaco and Antonello, in Cabras. As it was not yet time for the scrumptious seafood lunch awaiting us, we dropped by a medieval village, San Salvatore di Sinis. Its abandoned houses, called ‘cumbessias’, are only inhabited once a year for three days, during the celebrations in honour of Saint Salvatore. For the rest of the time, the village is a ghost town. What lies underneath the village’s small and charming church – erected in the XVII century – is a pagan sanctuary of nuragic origin, later used as a temple for Roman gods, divided into five rooms. On the walls there are still traces of drawings and inscriptions, in Greek, Latin and also Arabic characters.
We were not surprised to get to know that the eerie village had been often used as the setting for ‘western-style’ movies. As we got ready to move on to our next and welcomed gourmet experience, I could visualise hordes of peregrines arriving at the village, dressing up, opening doors and windows, and gathering outdoors for the religious celebration.

As expected, the seafood lunch was delicious and it was followed by another detour suggested by our friends, so that we could get a feeling of the nearby area. We reached a sandstone quarry – an open and vast space where concerts take place in the long and breezy summer nights. Surrounded by silence and huge brown-coloured vertical slabs of stone – which were once used to build the ancient city of Tharros – we walked one level up to enjoy the spectacular sea view. It was there that I made acquaintance with the helicrysum and its persistent and unusual scent. This ‘turning around gold’, as the name suggests, dotted the area with its discreet presence and painted it with yellow brushstrokes.

I was not able to see much of Sardinia in one day, I admit, but I appreciated how even quick visits of unexpected places gave me a perception of the region. Very near the quarry, we drove into a tiny dirt road leading directly into a big pond with salty waters. In summer, the water evaporates and the area becomes dry and covered by a thick layer of salt. The name of this small lake is Sal’e Porcus and it appeared to us as a vast white desert. The pink flamingos find this place attractive and suitable for nesting. It seems that every summer one might get a chance to watch thousands of them, as they migrate from the African coasts. The lake was a weird and mysterious place where I would have loved to spend more time: during the day to watch the flamingos flying or standing on one leg – like elegant ice-skaters wearing a fluffy pink costume – and at night, to get lost in solitary thoughts under the blinding reflection of the moonlight over the crystallized salt.

Finally, after greeting our friends, the last stop of our trip was the visit to the Giants of Mont’e Prama, at the ‘Museum Giovanni Marongiu’ in Cabras. The Giants are towering representations of mighty warriors, archers and boxers carved in sandstone during the Nuragic civilisation, around 11th century BC. Theirs is a fascinating history of discovery and reconstruction, as the statues were originally fragmented into more than 5000 pieces, buried underneath the nearby farmland that hosted a necropolis at the foot of Mont’e Prama, and found by chance. Were the Giants adorning a temple, close to the necropolis, erected to commemorate the victories against the Carthaginian invaders and dedicated to Sardus Pater (a mythological hero of the Nuragic civilization)? Or were both statues and necropolis part of the same complex and reminiscent of the Giants’ graves? Definitely, the mighty presence of these heroic warriors is still transmitting its visitors – as it did its enemies – a message of power and authority.

Ancient history and natural wonders – past and present: the long drive to go and to come back from one side to the other of the region was definitely worth it. And now, my next stop will have to be Barbagia, the area so well described by Grazia Deledda… and Ciriaco. I know I will get there, sooner or later, in search of some more magic, charm, mystery and inspiration, while following the recovered sillage of a familiar fragrance.

Paola Caronni

Li-Young Lee on writing poetry, listening to the unknown and mastering silence.

During one of our classes at the MFA in Creative Writing, we were lucky enough to have renowned poet Li-Young Lee as our guest speaker. The conversation with him was relaxed and full of insights. A true inspiration for budding poets like me...

On Saturday 21st of November 2015, during one our classes of the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Hong Kong, we had the honour to welcome the renowned poet Li-Young Lee. It was an enlightening session, where Li-Young Lee talked, among other things, about writing poetry, clashing with an inconvenient profit economy, discovering the creative process in our unknown self and exploring silence.

Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta to Chinese parents. His great grandfather was the first president of the Republic of China, Yuan Shikai, and his father had been personal physician to Mao Zedong. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Lee family escaped to Indonesia, where Li-Young Lee’s father helped found the Gamaliel University, a college of religious thought. He was arrested by Sukarno and consequently jailed (and tortured) as a political prisoner for 19 months. Finally, the Lee family escaped Indonesia and settled in the United States in 1964, after five years spent between Hong Kong, Macau and Japan.

Li-Young Lee won many awards, recognitions and honors, but despite being a well-known poet, he has been trying to find a balance between two dimensions of his life that became evident as he started to gain wider recognition. He defined one of them as marked by scarcity, and the other by abundance. ‘Scarcity’ because there is not necessarily money or fame in the life of a poet, writer or artist and ‘abundance’ because the more you grow and practice your art, the richer you become and get to know about yourself and the world. This inspiring dimension is unrelated to the life of scarcity.

Once he became a published author, Lee experienced that contracts, time constraints and publishing deadlines were not necessarily a positive experience for him. Good but also confusing things happened and created a conflict within himself. According to Lee, art should be practiced just for ourselves and, in his case, this meant that the publisher had to wait for a few years before getting a new book to publish.

Poetry for Lee has been intensely intertwined with his past. His family’s history had been painful and complicated, and he inherited suffering, from which he could not escape. Due to his initial experience in the USA as a ‘foreign’ boy whose name could not even be correctly pronounced, Li-Young Lee felt at times invisible and he was therefore and gladly ‘kidnapped by poetry’ very early in life.

Poetry allows us to see a primordial reality and puts us in touch with our unknown self. Each of us, according to Lee, has four selves: the public (how we express ourselves in society), the private self (the way we are with people closer to us, when we adopt a different verbal and body language compared to what we use in a social context), the secret self (which is only ours and that we find when we are alone with our own language) and the unknown self. We can get in touch with this last one only through art, which allows us to find our primacy as human beings. The other three selves are composites, because of the way we are and change when in the presence of others or when alone, but not necessarily in touch with our unknown self. Art teaches us that we are composite and primal being at the same time, but our being ‘primal’ is what distinguishes our form of art from other people’s. This only happens when our unknown self talks to us.

Lee thinks that practicing poetry means using language, but the real medium for it is silence, which is what he wants the reader to experience. He gave us a beautiful metaphor: ‘We look into the dragonfly’s eyes and we see the mountain over our shoulders’. In this sentence, the universal is enclosed into a tiny detail. And we have acquired the ability to put so much information into a small space, quietly.

One of the masters of silence is, in Lee’s view, the poet Emily Dickinson. Silence is expressed in her poems through colour, size,temperature. The unspoken and the unsaid are the real subjects, because silence is the ultimate reality. As poets, when the unknown speaks and we realize it, then we marvel and transmit this marveling to the reader.

Lee also mentioned that while crafting poetry, both pattern and randomness should be welcomed, like in reality. But it is important to recognize what is ‘Art’ and what is ‘art-like’. Art-like expressions are bondage, not freedom.

Poetry is everywhere for Lee and it is what opened his heart to love. He sees inspiration in whatever surrounds him, even in what could seem insignificant, like the bed sheets of an unmade bed.

Three days before our Master class with Li-Young Lee, I also had the chance to take part in a public reading of a selection of his poems, at the Hong Kong University Museum. Not always poets love reading their own works, and not always they might be gifted with a deep and distinctive voice. While listening to ‘To Hold’ (http://poemsoutloud.net/audio/archive/li-young_lee_reads_to_hold/) we can experience, through his voice, how the simple action of making up the bed conveyed deep feelings to the author.

(To hear more from Lee, you can also check this link from the Poetry Foundation website

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/video/9).

On the night of the event, I was soon immersed in his words and in the rhythm of his voice and I felt captivated, especially when Lee recited his nine-page poem: ‘The Undressing’, a deep and intimate dialogue between Sophia (in Christian mysticism, a female aspect of God representing wisdom) and the author.

Lee explained during our class that when an author reads poems for an audience, he/she should not speak directly to it, but rather to God. This special communication will, in turn, benefit the listeners. This was exactly what happened during that night: his reading was quite an otherworldly experience.

Once back home, I continued to enjoy Li-Young Lee’s poetry with the exploration of ‘Book of My Nights’. The opening poem,‘Pillow’ (see excerpt below) anticipates how the sleepless night becomes the hamlet for ‘speaking and listening’, a vulnerable fortress full of memories and personal visions that transmit their universal echoes to all of us.

There’s nothing I can’t find under there.
Voices in the trees, the missing pages
of the sea.

Everything but sleep.

And night is a river bridging
the speaking and the listening banks,

a fortress, undefended and inviolate.

There’s nothing that won’t fit under it:

fountains clogged with mud and leaves,

the houses of my childhood.

Paola Caronni

Li-Young-Lee is the author of The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon & Schuster, 1995); Behind My Eyes (W. W. Norton & Co., 2008); Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (BOA Editions, 1990), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (BOA Editions, 1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His other work includes Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (Edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, BOA Editions, 2006), a collection of twelve interviews with Lee at various stages of his artistic development; and The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), a memoir which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He has been the recipient of a Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, the I. B. Lavan Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. In 1998, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from State University of New York at Brockport.

(Source: www.poets.org)

On The Theme of Distance

When  ‘Cha, An Asian Literary Journal’ announced its poetry submission on the theme of ‘Distance’, my first thought went to the refugees who daily try to bridge the distance between their land, the sea and the coast of a newfound country, in search of new possibilities and of a new life. The process is long and not always successful, but hope is always the last to die.

Distance is not only the physical length of space between two points. It’s also a gap, a rift.

It often creates a sense of craving for a place or for another human being – for a distant ‘entity’ that cannot be immediately reached – and it churns restlessly inside us. This feeling of longing might also subside and turn into dangerous detachment or indifference: distance has thus generated a chasm and nothing can bridge the gap between where we were and where we are now. Other times, distance becomes loss and takes us to a long forced journey of renewal and rebirth, to another dimension or place.

The Mediterranean Sea lies between the land of war and desperation and the land of hope. In summertime, the distance from one to the other seems to be narrowing, but it is only an illusion. Unavoidably, not far from terra firma is where many migrants find an undeserved burial, swallowed by the merciless waters or washed ashore. Often, as we’ve witnessed, a lifeless body is no nuisances to the daily routine of holidaymakers, lazily sunbathing on the beach and swimming in the clear sea.

Distance is the result of our indifference and apathy, and of the richest countries’ political inaction towards the migrant crisis.

All these daily journeys, daily failures and unjustified deaths had been my first thought for a poetry submission – centred on the theme of ‘Distance’ – to “Cha, an Asian Literary Journal” (http://www.asiancha.com/). The story I tell is part of the countless tales that in their sad recurrence leave many of us disinterested and unsympathetic. Sicily and the Island of Lampedusa – due to their close proximity to the coasts of Africa – are amongst the migrants’ target destinations. These people start their journey crammed in flimsy dinghies and travel with no luggage but faith.

Once reached the shore, they will never know if their life will take a turn for the better or for the worse. They can only hope, and have a dream.

Here’s the link to my poem, ‘Ahmed’s Chimera’: http://www.asiancha.com/content/view/2364/554/

Paola Caronni

In collaboration with Health in Action, a Hong Kong charity that promotes community health and wellbeing through the empowerment of the underprivileged, Cha is publishing a special section of poetry on the theme of “Distance” in its June 2016 issue. The publication of this special section will coincide with Health in Action’s Refugee Week Art Movement (week of 20 June 2016) to raise awareness for asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong. (20 June 2016 is World Refugee Day.)

Reflections and conversations under the snow

I am not a mountain person. I much prefer the heat of a holiday under the palm trees to the blizzards of a snowy winter. But I have to admit that the mountain landscape, especially under a white mantel, is stunning and fascinating. So, lately, I have been convinced to spend some time up in the mountain during Christmas holidays. And when it snowed and snowed for three consecutive days, I was inspired by all the whiteness.

It all started while reading ‘The White Book’, by Han Kang. The writer’s thoughts and remembrances – as heavy as an avalanche and as light as a snowflake – expressed in ‘all things white’, ignited my desire for whiteness.

I am not a mountain person, and I hate the cold weather. I cannot fathom the thrill of sliding down a snowy slope with my feet on a board or on a pair of skis. The long and tiresome process of dressing for sub-zero temperature is enough to leave me dazzled: ski-pants and underpants, layers of socks, thermal underwear and turtle neck shirts, scarf, fleece and woollen jumper, down-feathered jacket, cap and gloves with under gloves and finally…snow boots. By the time I’m ready to leave the house, my thin-framed body feels caged in a spacesuit, like an astronaut —minus the thrill of space exploration. As I finally approach the door, ready to face the polar winds, I have a vision. I am at the beach. My naked toes draw doodles on the fine grains of sand, the sound of the waves wetting the shore inspires peaceful thoughts, and all I wear is a bikini, sunglasses and a hat…

But we must acknowledge beauty – always – when we encounter it.

Therefore, the place where I spent part of my Christmas holidays deserves a special mention.      

After a tiresome search on the Internet, on November 20th 2017, I bumped into a ski-area I had never heard before: Valgrisenche. It is a narrow valley in the Valle d’Aosta region – an autonomous region located in the north-western part of Italy, at the border with France. Valgrisenche takes its name from a legend that tells the story of a grey cow which, once taken out to graze, disappeared every day from the herdsmen’s sight only to come back, after a while, with its stomach full. The herdsmen, suspicious of its behaviour, decided to follow her up the mountain. Once there, as they looked down, they discovered a valley unknown to them before, rich in streams and pastures, and they called it ‘Vallée de la vache grise’ (valley of the grey cow), a name that later was contracted into Valgrisenche. Valgrisenche is known for being a cold valley, and its particular micro-climate ensures that there is always an abundance of powdery snow. And of snow, this year, there has been indeed plenty.

There is a passage in Han Kang’s book dedicated to the snow. In Warsaw, a snowstorm erases the outline of its streets, but while falling on a black coat sleeve, it will ‘reveal its crystals even to the naked eye. Mysterious hexagons melting clean away.’ 

There is probably no other graceful, more beautiful and soft white miracle in Nature than snow.

Still, my biggest worry was the freezing weather. Nonetheless, driven by unconditional love for my children, too eager to perfect their snowboarding skills – and bearing always in mind Winnicott’s theory of play and cultivation of meaningful interests as crucial to the development of authentic selfhood – I finally booked the place where we would spend five days: Valgrisenche.

As the snow fell heavily and we climbed up the hairpin turns while treading on a white and soft carpet, in four-wheel-drive mode, I started to appreciate the view of the blanketed pine trees and of the mighty mountains, and I felt more at ease.

In Chinese culture, white stands for the metal element and also symbolizes purity. However, it is also associated with death and mourning, and it is often worn during funeral ceremonies. White is the dove, white is the bride’s dress and in the Christian tradition white represents purity, virginity, innocence and birth. White are the many objects and memories Han Kang focuses on: a good way to ponder upon a colour and to relate to it, bearing with the pain those recollections bring forth, and overcoming it in a process of regeneration, through writing.

I needed some white, at that point, during my holiday, to start the New Year on a blank page and erase some disturbing scribbles that were travelling through my mind. I would not say that I have been successful in this endeavour, because I am still bothered by the scribbles and the scrabbles, but I’ve managed to acquire some inner peace.

The cold I expected was not really as such, despite we reached -15 degrees Celsius. It was extremely dry, so it was not perceived as such. In the morning, I opened the window to breathe in the freezing but crispy air, while admiring the snowflakes falling, the icicles hanging from the roof tiles, and the immobile fairyland landscape in front of me. It seemed too unreal, and I could not recall moments of such immaculate and total silence in years.

It snowed and snowed, unrelentingly, and the whiteness was so blinding and imposing that it almost seemed as if it would never leave that place. It was as if the landscape was forever frozen in time, as if it were inside one of those crystal snowballs of our childhood: turning and turning under the petals of snow at the sound of the carillon.

One morning, we wore snowshoes and went ‘for a walk’, climbing the mountain that overlooked the dam. What was visible was only a part of the concrete structure, and nobody could tell what it was, because the water had turned into ice and the snow had subsequently covered it. Ms Anna explained to me the ordeal of the families that in the Fifties were forced to leave that part of the valley to make space for the Beauregard dam. The population shrunk from 300 to 190 people, and that is now the actual number of inhabitants of Valgrisenche. The way Anna described it was quite dramatic. ‘One entire village was wiped out,’ she said. And for a moment, before I could get what she meant, I imagined apocalyptic scenarios of floods, avalanches.

During our walk, snow dunes took shape, and they were so perfect, like desert dunes, chiselled by the wind’s skilled hand.

The slope of the mountains were in some areas covered with trees, aligned in perfect symmetry, and in others lifeless, completely white and smooth. There was a chilling breeze and the air was more rarefied at 1900 meters altitude, but nothing compared to the sensations I felt on the Tibetan plateau, where even going up a staircase would require a humongous effort.

Too much white, I conclude, is maybe not good. It highlights all the dirt in the world, the slush we step on as we walk in the city streets.

All cities were too big and unappealing to Anna. She told me that she would never leave the valley, where she felt free, and that Aosta was already a chaotic town.  ‘My daughter studied in Milan, and lives in Piedmont,’ she said. ‘My son is now back in this area. My husband also left to attend the University of Padua. When he was young, to pay for his studies, he worked as a guide at a mountain shelter 3,000 meters up, there,’ she pointed at a map. ‘I also moved in with him for 3 years, running the shelter, but only during summertime. Then, we converted this place, which belonged to my husband’s family: it used to be a little house with a stable and a barn, and now it’s a B&B.’

With her husband, Piero, I had an interesting conversation about the language I heard him speak with Anna. The people of Valle d’Aosta have their own patois, the Valdotaîn, a Franco-Provençal dialect, and it is a joy listening to them as they talk, and trying to catch the meaning of what they say by piecing together French, Italian and some unknown words. Piero said that he was not sure if their language could be considered a dialect or a language. ‘It’s a matter of interpretation and of point of views,’ he concluded. But he was certain that it was an important part of their distinctive heritage.

‘And how’s Hong Kong?’ Anna asked me one day. 

Sincerely speaking, I did not know what to answer, after witnessing her enthusiasm for a life lived in solitude and slow motion. ‘It’s a very efficient place,’ I finally replied. ‘We waste no time.’

Anna had been quick in replying to my enquiries, until one day her phone broke down and she was forced to use an old one that had no Internet connection and therefore no WhatsApp.

‘Please send me an sms or call me if you need anything,’ she had written in her last message.

But I did not need to call or message Anna again. I had already decided that I would give a chance to that valley with the strange name, and to the mountains, the ever-falling snow, the cold weather and all the white that surrounded them and that ultimately gave me a sense of peace and quiet, despite the noise in my mind.

Paola Caronni