40. Yogis

I was living at Il Poggio when my birthday arrived and Elisabetta took me to one of her friend's houses to hear a talk about yoga by a couple of young German men who were fluent in Italian and English as a birthday present.

Wolfgang and his younger brother Gunter were good men and very knowledgeable about yoga. They were followers of Swami Rama, the founder of the international Himalayan Yoga Institute, and headed a branch of that yoga school in Ahrensburg, Germany.

Their talk was mainly about the benefits of yoga--mentally and physically--and they demonstrated a few of the asanas and breathing techniques. The Italians at the meeting were quite interested it seemed to me--and several of them wanted to have a more in-depth experience and suggested a week-end seminar.


The German yogis arranged a sleep-over meeting weekend and invited me to attend--they suggested I could give a short evening talk in English about my pilgrimage experiences. It was clear that all persons of a certain class in Italy spoke several languages anyway --English being one of them--so my talk, even in a foreign language, might be of some interest.

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39. Party Me

Personally, I enjoyed Pete's party to the max.


I didn't have to do anything--I was just another guest--except that I was neither so young, so beautiful nor so rich as the other guests.

I fit in as well as I could and enjoyed the idea that I was a part of a scene that I had only watched  before in movies.


The women were charming. They seemed to like speaking English to a real American (like me!) and with my pilgrim's whiskers, long hair and hard-time traveler's outfit I must have been at least a conversation piece.


The men were mostly either young and beautiful and rich or slightly older, beautiful enough and very, very rich.


Leather jackets and silk scarves were in for the men and bare arms and shoulders were the costumes of the women--and the whole thing was really too much fun!


For directing traffic at the improvised parking-lot, Pete even had one of his skier buddies dressed as a professional  parking-lot attendant down to the smart black cap and little leather change pouch they must carry in Rome or Napoli--though I personally have never had a Lamborghini to turn over to any parking lot attendant anywhere!

There was plenty of the appropriate delicious foods and mandatory superb wines free for all!

Truly a world-class molto wunderbar magnifique fiesta!

...

38. Pete's Party

Pete had been working on digging out the catacomb-like cellars beneath the main building of Il Poggio for months.

His goal was to make the space useful again--but it was soggy, hard work.

I offered to help dig and carry out the mud and soil of ages, but he wanted to do it all himself and, like I said,  he was a very creative and imaginative person.

When he had finished his digging work, he built a bar and turned some stone and brick  alcoves into candle-lit roomlets with comfortable lounge seating. But he wouldn't let anyone enter the cavelike rooms to see what he was doing!


He was saving it all up as a surprise  for one grand party!


Pete had more  jet-set friends than you can imagine since he had worked for some years as a very popular young bartender in Interlaken, Switzerland and he invited all his international friends down for his grand  party. 

When the expensive sport  cars started arriving on the evening of his party it was clear that this was going to be the event of the year! Everyone young. Everyone beautiful. Everyone rich. La Dulce Vita come alive!

Pete had created--all by himself-- what to him was the perfect nightclub setting for his one-night bash and it was grand!.
.

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37. Fame

This one-man show at Il Poggio was my third in this lifetime one-man show.

The first was at Gima's Gallery in the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu many, many years ago--an exhibition of oil paintings in a sort of abstract mode I developed during my years as an undergraduate. I grandly thought of the style as "abstract expressionism" and considered myself to be a contender. I didn't sell anything.

The second show was outdoors--no gallery--on the beach near Marmaris, Turkey where I found temporary work one summer at a beach camp for German tourists in "caravans".  I made paintings in house paint on scrap boards--abstract subjects again and Mexican colorful. I sold everything I painted cheap so I could have some traveling money.

This one-man show at Il Poggio was a huge success though I didn't sell anything. Everyone who came to the opening--all Elisabetta's friends--liked my ceramics and the things my friends had created--but nothing sold.

But by this time I had decided that I didn't need any money at all to travel as a pilgrim. In fact, I had discovered that it was more interesting to give any money I had away from day to day so I would start each day fresh without any money at all.

And I never begged for money either. It just seemed that anything I needed would come to me anyway--I still  don't know how it happened, and looking back at those pilgrim days many years ago it does seem rather impossible--but there it is.

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36.One-man Show

I made several visits to Il Poggio over a period of four or five years--an always welcome part-time unpaid worker-- and I eventually accumulated enough finished pottery objects  to have a one-man show in Elisabetta's gallery.

I thought it would be more interesting to have some artwork made by the other artists at Il Poggio, so my show was not a strictly one-man affair.


One of the young German woman potters also did clever needlework--decorating old blue jeans and shirts which I thought was very interesting--so I asked her to show some of her creations along with mine.


Elisabetta's sister Dora did some very unusual animal decorations on-ceramic  plates and large salad bowls--so I asked her to show some of her work too.


Occasionally Elisabetta would make suggestions to me about the exhibition and about what to include and the show shaped up into a nice eclectic selection of work, but she left me pretty much alone to do what I wanted.


There was no stress or pressure at all in the preparation and I was quite oblivious to the passage of time at Il Poggio--doing my usual chores and adding to the show pieces as I wanted.


One afternoon Elisabetta asked me to carry some trays of sandwiches and fresh fruit out to the gallery and I was happy to comply.


"Who are these things for?" I asked her.


"For the opening of your show this evening. I have invited some of my friends which I think would like to see your exhibition."


Of course she had told me the date of my show, but I had so completely lost track of calendar time that I didn't even know that my big evening had arrived!

...

Vacation

Hi Fans!

I'm gonna take a short vacation.

See ya back at your favorite computer monitor in a week or so...!

Fun to you!   

Tomasito

35. Granite Porch

Pete was doing some work on his cottage and--just like him--there was an impossible but fun task which he had decided to accomplish.

He had come by a BIG slab of dressed granite somewhere--it was about three by five feet square and about four inches thick. It was a BIG, solid, heavy slab of granite!

He had decided that it would be fine as his back porch floor--you would step out of his back door-- which was about six feet over the ground level--onto this slab and then down some regular wooden stairs to the back yard. 

When I arrived he had already built four sturdy pillars to support the slab so the porch floor, resting on these pillars, would be just a little over shoulder height to a person standing on the ground. When the slab was in place he himself would carpenter in some wooden stairs and add a handrail. Perfect!

But--how to lift this mighty slab up over the pillars and into place at the door--remember this is a small Swiss village--not a California ranch-style suburb with lifting machines and contract laborers easily available.

Solution: wait until you get six friends visiting at the same time and they can lift the slab into place by brute force.

Pete was especially  happy to have me visit because I was his sixth man. The rest of his crew were strong looking skier friends who had just skied over the mountains from Interlaken where he had been a very popular bartender. 

I didn't think it would be possible, but we did it! No smashed fingers no hernias--by golly we just did it!

Pete got his solid granite back porch!

...

 

34.Old Switzerland

After walking about the village for a while, talking to a few of the residents and visiting the chapel, Pete said he would like me to meet some REAL Swiss folks--an old couple who lived about a half hour's walk further down the valley.

This elderly pair lived year-round in this most isolated part of the country. They owned a few cows and grew their own food as much as possible. They had lived in this valley their entire lives 
and lived almost as the Swiss people did before the  modern world encroached so thoroughly with railroads, highways, tourist resorts and ski lifts.

We left our bicycles in the village and walked the little-used path on down the valley for a half hour until we came to a green meadow pasture, unfenced, of course, with deep lush grass sprinkled with pretty wild flowers-- and at the foot of the pasture a postcard view alpine cottage where Pete's friends lived.

We walked up to the low doorway and Pete knocked lightly.

An old man dressed in what looked to be coarse but soft  hand-made clothing and hand knitted sweater answered the door and welcomed us in with a delighted smile. His wife rose from a cozy-looking hand-made chair to offer her hand and to turn off their television set.

To my great surprise--they were watching Dallas when we came in!

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33. Swiss Shangri-La

After an hours ride on the paved highway, Pete and I turned off at a dirt path leading into a side canyon. We walked our bicycles along the fairly level path.

The surrounding jagged mountains and forest were as beautiful and pristine as you could want in this picturesque country and before long we arrived at an antique village of perhaps ten cottages and a chapel of the typically Swiss alpine construction.

Perhaps forty men, women and children presently lived in this village but they were not the original residents.  Since it was not on the highway and only reachable by footpath, the village had been abandoned for years but had been bought entire lately by a small religious community.

These current residents were some folks who had decided to band together and live apart from the hustle and bustle of the modern world. 

And they had found what seemed to me to be a perfect refuge.


There was no sign on the highway that the community was here. No visitors or tourists were encouraged or expected.

They made no attempt to recruit new residents and they had no propaganda publications  extolling their unusual village or way of life. 

They were just here. 

They were friendly and welcoming to me, I think,  because I came with Pete, who spoke Swiss-Deutsch, knew everybody and was, it seemed, everybody's friend.

I felt very fortunate to visit this modern Swiss Shangri-La

...