CAGLIARI: A DEFINITION OF LIGHT
CAGLIARI: A DEFINITION OF LIGHT
by Emilie Miller
For the rest of my life, I will reflect on what light is.
— Albert Einstein
I am not sure I know where to begin. Or if I know more now than I did before I came.
Cagliari still seems so full of secrets. It is a small city with a vast and complex history. It is built on a hill and surrounded by sea. It is perched on the edge of an island, lit by a quality and quantity of light that I have never before seen. It is not electric, it is not phosphorescent, but this city glows day and night. Here, the light seems alive.
It does not get dark in Cagliari. You should know this. It is not an issue of the sun not setting until very late, the way summer days remain brightly lit deep into the night, in other more northern parts of Europe. That’s not it; the sun sets and when it does it is neither too early nor too late. The sky turns pink, the earth spins and eventually the sun disappears behind mountains in silhouette, west across the Gulf of Angels. Night arrives, but in Cagliari it never gets dark.
My travel from New York City to Cagliari, Sardinia, took two planes, 4,506 miles and thirteen hours, door to door. More if you count the nine months I spent thinking about my trip, which included countless hours spent restless in front of my computer screen, googling the map of Sardinia, zooming in and zooming out, staring at the blue and green. I was searching for something that felt very far away: trying to imagine who I would be when I went there, who I would meet, what I would see and touch and taste, what I would feel, and when I returned home to New York, how and if I would be changed. Far from being in the present moment, I was way ahead of myself, and Cagliari seemed way ahead of me. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I wanted to already be there. I appreciated the irony, that the Sardinia guidebooks, in addition to talking about the beaches, pecorino, and D.H. Lawrence, all spoke of the unifying cultural trait of all Sardinians: Patience.
It was morning when I finally arrived, so I decided it would be better to try to stay awake. I was exhausted from the travel, but eager to begin. I wanted to touch what had, for so long, seemed abstract: Cagliari. So abstract, in fact, that I did not even learn how to properly pronounce the name Cagliari until earlier that morning. Running frantically at the airport in Rome, certain I was going to miss my connecting flight, an impeccably dressed Roman gentleman with very shiny shoes corrected me: “My dear, you are going to miss your flight not to Cah-lee-ahh-ree but to Cah-yah-ree.”
I decided to have a coffee at my hotel before I ventured out into town. I could barely see straight; the jetlag was hitting me hard. A waiter named Carlo in The T Hotel’s lobby bar noticed me staring vacantly into space. When I ordered an espresso, he kindly asked if: “Perhaps you would prefer a double?” I told him I felt delirious, that I had just stepped off a plane. “I can see it in your eyes,” he said, “the look of traveling from far.”
He was excited to speak English and while I sipped my double espresso, trying my best not to lie down on the bar, Carlo told me that he used to live in America. He had followed a girl all the way to San Diego. “You know, for love,” he explained, nodding. It was a long time ago, but “California was beautiful, the Pacific Ocean was beautiful, and for many years we were very happy. But it wasn’t meant to last. When it ended, I came back home, to Cagliari.” I asked Carlo if he surfed. “Yes, in San Diego all I did was surf and speak English! I miss them both. I feel out of practice. I mean, it goes so quickly, doesn’t it?”
Right before I flew to Cagliari, my grandmother died. She was 92 years old and for the last year of her life kept telling everyone that she was ready. She was ready to go. The typical response of most people when you tell them you have just lost someone that lived for 92 years is: “She lived a good long life.” And of course, this was true, she did. This well-intentioned response is meant to bring comfort, but loss is not interested in time. It knows nothing of long and short; it remains that cruel and shocking thief, surprising even those who see it coming and feel ready for its arrival. And so I arrived in Sardinia contemplating how we come and go: moment-by-moment, day-by-day, in and out of life. How we are all, in one way or another, coming or going. I came to Cagliari thinking about my Grandmother, in a way carrying her across the Atlantic Ocean with me: wondering what she would think of this distant unknown island and wondering what it felt like to look back on the 92 years of her life and all that it encompassed, and if she too felt that it had gone by so quickly.
The forecast was for rain that first day, but it was sunny as I left the hotel and walked up the street and turned south towards the bus stop, passing a panino shop, a stationary store, a tabacchi, and a window filled with piles of pastries. It was blue-sky-white-clouds perfection. The world felt very bright. I walked with a brand new public transit card in my hand and a sense of purpose. I had no idea how the Cagliari public transit system worked and only a vague idea of where this particular bus I wanted to catch would take me. But it didn’t matter; I was in motion. I felt the espresso in my blood and knew it was here—I was here—I was on the map.
I exited the bus on Via Roma; to my left, to the south, was the sea. I immediately headed north: upwards, into the hills, all the streets headed up up up. I felt like I had no choice, this city draws you in and upward; it beckons you to climb. And because the guidebooks said the views of the city at sunset at the Bastione San Remy were spectacular, that is where I went to end the first day in my life that I had ever spent in Cagliari.
I didn’t know it yet, but a precedent was set that day, as to how I would spend my time. I spent most of my day, my week, my time wandering. And climbing hills. And riding the bus. And wondering if it would rain, which the forecast predicted every day, even though it is supposed to never rain in the “City of the Sun.” I never had any real idea of where I was, but between the sea and the hills, I never felt lost.
I finished every day at Bastione San Remy, with its solid perspective of city and bay and sea. I waited for the sun to set and watched the colors around me shift. When the sun was gone, I waited for the moon. I waited for the darkness, but the darkness never came. This made perfect sense the first few nights because when I arrived the moon was full. This made less sense as the days passed and the moon waned.
In fact, everything began to make less sense the more time I spent in Cagliari. The more I checked off the “must see destinations:” the Roman Amphitheatre, the Archeological Museum, the San Benedetto Market, Stampace, Marina, Villanova, the Castello, the more Cagliari began to confuse me. I knew I was in Italy and it sounded like I was in Italy, but it didn’t feel Italian per se.
My friend Trish told me that when she was in high school her mother took her to see a career counselor. This counselor gave Trish a comprehensive personality test to determine which career Trish’s interests, strengths, and passions would be most suited. This was intended to be a helpful tool when she applied for college. But at the end of the test, the counselor did not have good news; Trish had somehow failed. He had never before seen this happen, but the results did not yield a single recommended profession. It instead yielded three, random, and unrelated professions. “Useless,” he apologized.
I asked Trish what the three professions were and she told me, laughing:
“Flight Attendant, Nun, and Lawyer. How do you fail a personality test? But, my whole life, I’ve always felt in between worlds.” These results may have not been useful for college applications, but to me, this test captured my friend—perfectly. Trish has a passion to know and see and understand the world, she is generous and compassionate to a fault, and she did, in fact, become a lawyer.
I think, according to Trish’s career counselor, Cagliari would also have failed the personality test. This notion begins to reveal itself when you attempt to unravel its history, of which there are many layers. This city has seen a lot of action: claimed by many, only to be claimed and dominated over and over again. And then there were times when the island was left entirely on its own. During World War II, Cagliari was bombed and nearly all but destroyed, including all means of transportation to the mainland. No one came to or left Sardinia for two years. And so this city, like Trish, like so many of us, will never fit neatly into one category. It is many things simultaneously. It is Cagliari: independence, self-sufficiency, patience, beaches, churches, and sun. It is Italian: the way it speaks, the food it eats, and the team it roots for in the World Cup. It is its tangled history, a blend of all those who came and went: the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Spanish, the Pisan, the Tunisian, and several Medieval Kingdoms of Spain. All these pieces are Cagliari, woven together by the constants: ringing church bells and that mysterious light.
I saw Carlo again, later in the week, during a breakfast in the hotel. I asked him to speak to me in Italian. I told him I could feel some of my Italian returning, that I had even spoken Italian in my dreams. He did not seem impressed at my progress: "Dreaming in a language is not the thing. You know you have mastered a new language when you swear spontaneously and with passion. You are no longer thinking about your new language, but speaking it from a place deep from within your chest. Then you know. The language is no longer in your head, but flowing directly from your heart.”
I left the hotel after breakfast, carrying an umbrella since the forecast was once again for rain—wondering if it would ever actually rain—and thinking about things that flow from the heart. Appreciation, recognition, and exultation of all things heart-related, seemed to me, profoundly Italian. As an artist, I think it was one of the reasons I fell in love with Italy when I first visited during a student exchange when I was 15. I felt like Italy understood my secret soul. Nothing seemed too dramatic or too beautiful or too delicious. Life was short, and sweet, and now.
Later while I was wandering around the Castello district, I met an older artist named Antonio, who had a studio on Via Genovesi. Every recorded generation of his family was from Sardinia. He invited me into his studio for a tour—a tiny windowless room—probably used as a stable in the castle when it was built during the 1200s. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with photos of his family, Cagliari, and basketball players. “We love basketball in Sardinia.”
With no more than 100 square feet, he had a dark room, an electric saw for wooden sculpture, and had built a platform in the back of the studio where he had a small movie theatre with a projector to show vintage films. He also had a recording studio; his son was helping him put his music on youtube. I asked Antonio what it meant to be Sardinian: “We are strong. Many people have come here and claimed this land as their own, sometimes staying for hundreds of years. We have been occupied but we have never been conquered.” Antonio bid me farewell with a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” which he sang on his professional sound system.
I descended the steps of the Castello and headed toward the Marina district where I planned to have lunch at a traditional Sardinian restaurant. This meal ended up being a three-hour affair. It comprised of the following: a basket of bread, a wooden bucket of olives, mushrooms, and meatballs, a platter of salami, two full bowls of pasta—malloreddus and culurgiones, a platter of roast pork, a bowl of celery, radishes, and tomatoes, a bottle of sparkling water, and an entire pitcher full of red wine. This feast was followed by espresso (for digestion) and a plate of six different traditional Sardinian cookies. As a solo diner, I had received some curious looks during meals throughout my time in Cagliari, but the stares were truly deserved that day as I sat alone at a table which was piled with enough food to feed a family of six. As I ate, a man approached my table. I had been watching his family from across the room; theirs was a table of about twenty—filled with children, laughter and lively celebration.
“Why are you eating alone?”
I explained to the man that I was in Cagliari to write a story and that I was eating alone because I was traveling alone.
He could barely understand my broken Italian, “You are Dutch?”
“American,” I told him.
“No,” he said, “No. It is very easy. We have met and I will call you my friend. It is simple. It is Sardinian. In Cagliari, when we gather for a meal, we are saying: We are all in this together. And that, my friend, is why we cannot allow you to eat this meal alone. We are celebrating my son’s first communion and you will share our cake and our prosecco and our joy. I will not take no for an answer.”
He shouted something to his family, handed me a glass of prosecco, and ushered me over to his table. Suddenly I was toasting alongside grandparents, cousins, uncles, and children.
The man’s brother took me aside: “You want to know about Cagliari? Here, in Cagliari, we are made of sun. If you look inside of me, you will find only sun. Not blood, sun. Sun in my head, sun in my chest. My heart pumps sun through my veins. Sole, sole, sole.”
I walked for four straight hours after that meal and still felt full. I made the entire loop up the hill, beyond the Castello, past the jail, down past the Roman amphitheatre and back again to the marina. And then back up the hill to the Bastione San Remy for sunset. For the sound of the palm trees in the wind. For the bats swooping at dusk. For the teenagers, slouching with their backs against the graffiti, drinking beer. For the other teenagers, paired off, making out, arms, legs, and lips intertwined. A flock of flamingoes flew in formation overhead. I looked east and among the soft colors of the hills I saw a fire burning in the distance. It was big and even from so far away, I could sense its power and strength. For the first time I felt that maybe I was beginning to understand.
And then the rains came. On my last day, as I left Isola di Gelato shop with my final mascarpone nutella gelato of the trip, it started to rain. I was not carrying my umbrella, because I had decided that it never actually rained. The gelato began to run down my hand and arm; I ate quickly. The city smelled like earth. And despite this rain and dark sky, Cagliari radiated light.
That night at the hotel I wrote postcards at the bar before dinner. I sipped a glass of local Sardinian white wine and felt my cheeks become flushed. As I wrote my cards I tried to figure out how to explain the particular quality of light in this city and I knew I was going to fail. Maybe some things just have to be experienced, touched, and tasted and felt. Maybe that is what I was bumping up against when I was staring at the map of Sardinia on my laptop screen almost a year before; searching for answers that could only be found in motion. Maybe that is what my grandmother would have told me if I had gotten the chance to ask her, how it felt to live 92 years—her good long life.
I couldn’t sleep the night before I left; I was wide-awake. The next morning I was on a plane—thinking about the light, heading home—New York City. Coming and Going.
Cagliari. I spent most of my time wandering. I wandered the streets and then I wandered the same streets again, searching. I climbed up the steps and when I got to the top of this city, I looked for perspective. I looked south towards the Mediterranean and thought of how I’d never been so close to Africa. I looked west and waited for the sun to set. And when the sun was gone, I waited for the moon. I waited for the darkness, but the darkness never came.