MU Talk

Ysidora Pico 04:04 on 11/02/2014 Permalink Reply
Tags: 1850 Charla ( 9 ), Twitter ( 10 ), what's on [My] mind? ( 12 )   

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  Isabella Medici 05:03 on 11/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

  Welcome Ysidora!

  I don’t know another way to say it, but I probably had an easier life than you. Although I did die at 34, so you may have lived longer. And the last 2 years were sheer terror at the hands of my misogynist / misanthrope brother. Finally, 11 years after my brother Francesco murdered me, my more pragmatic brother Ferdinando murdered him.

  When Ferdinando turned in his Cardinal’s hat to become Grand Duke of Florence, the greatest wedding, the greatest Medici spectacle, the biggest Theatrum Mundi Florence had ever seen, his marriage to Christina of Lorraine (granddaughter of Catherine de’ Medici) was organized as a year-long event.

  In many ways “The Medici Wedding of 1589” was the pinnacle of theatrum mundi. I, of course, had been gone and as forgotten as Francesco could make me, for 13 years by then. But I’d always been the Medici who organized plays, events, carnival floats, commissioned music, and celebrated the creative arts in so many ways and brought so much joy and entertainment to the court and to Florence. 1589 was so me. And yet it wasn’t.

  So too, we’ve all been here prattling on both without you, but also because of you.

  Perhaps it is not the builder’s place to live in the homes and cities created by their impulse. I appreciated the end of the film Bugsy, where he is unceremoniously murdered for his failure, and then the screen wipes to show the money, power, and spectacle of the modern-day Las Vegas that his vision built, but that he never set foot in.

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  Donnie 09:34 on 11/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

  Ysidora, you’ve been haunting my dreams, kid. Good to see you here in the flesh!

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    Ciara Finnegan 09:37 on 11/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

    In the flesh???

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      Donnie 09:38 on 11/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

      Well, geez, if you were composed of a wooden head and a cartoon body, you’d understand “the flesh” as a fairly loose concept…

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  Ysidora Pico 13:33 on 11/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

  Dear Isabella, Such a sad paradox about 1589 being so “you” (so because of you) and yet you were not there to enjoy the fruits of your labors–and MURDERED!? ¡Ay, Dios mio!

  Thank god I was not murdered. But, my son Chico was, the grief of which murdered my husband’s and, soon after, my heart. Although, we were pretty old by then, too, so….

  And what IS it with the domineering brothers? Mine (Pio and Andres) married me off to an Anglo as a way — they thought — to protect their property interests in the newly created Alta California — when they KNEW that I was not a fan of marriage. I mean, I was 30 when I was married — in 1836. Clearly, I was not on the marriage plan, but my brothers had other plans for me.

  I really like the metaphor about the builder not being the inhabitant of the home she builds, although it was her impulse that caused the building to be built in the first place. My granddaughter is a teacher, and this is similar to the way her profession works.

  Also, Mr. Donnie, you have been dreaming of me? de veras? What portents have those dreams revealed?

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    Isabella Medici 02:57 on 13/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

    You know Ysidora, I think the phrase “Bun in the oven” sums up so much of the human condition. Men are “intelligent” beings. Women are ovens. What else do we need to know?

    Who gets to live in the house is a funny question. As a princess in 1550 I enjoyed so much privilege that almost no one in my time ever did. Yet a poor person in 2014 has so much that a 1550 princess couldn’t even dream of.

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  ysidorapico 12:34 on 13/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

  You know what’s fascinating? The disintegration of the concept that time is a line. It’s wonderful that in 2014, we can speak with our voices from 1550, 1850, 2050.

  The idea of a time line seemed at first to me a lie guarded and promoted by murderers and thieves and power mongers — “don’t look back,” they seemed to say, “because then we will have to grapple with the destruction we’ve left in our wake.”

  I wondered, Why not imagine how to order time more from our observation of nature; for example, why are the models for how we live not like a blossom that loses its petals not one by one, not in a linear fashion, but rather in clusters, dumping out its heart as it reaches for the sunlight, as it draws up earth’s moisture through its roots? Why do we not mark time as the sea does: eternal waves swelling and breaking one after the other, sometimes more, sometimes less? Is it because we don’t know how to depict this motion?

  Is each lifetime a wave in a sea? Is each wave a moment in a life?

  These are the kinds of things I thought about while I was growing toward my 30th year, where I thought I was safe from marriage. Instead, in my 30th year, my cultural life replaced my natural life: I became a mother to three children, Marcos, Chico, and Juanon. My days were in no way linear — they were for a long, long while merely endless repetitions of the same thing over and over — feeding and cleaning, cleaning and feeding. Once the boys could clean themselves, it was feeding and educating, educating and feeding.

  Having children reduced my poetic questions to a reality of drudgery. I realized that the idea of linear time is thrilling: it provides hope that things will change, that one’s conditions can change.

  And, of course, we change and change and change and then we die. What’s thrilling is that I have come back to life! It defies my imagination, but apparently not enough to stop me.

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  Patrick J. Sweetman 00:21 on 19/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

  Hi All, I’m coming to the party late. And now that I’m here a little slow to get going. It may be at the tail end of the industrial revolution but I’m still a bit of a ludite. Anyway with party in mind the least I can do is bring the beer.

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    Meg O'Ryan 04:12 on 19/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

    Beer? Hi Patrick! You run a pub? Oh wow! Donnie is going to love you!!

    But watch out for that Oscar, I think he’s a prohibitionist!