The Answer? It's Blowing In the Wind

La colpa del vento

Over the last few weeks, I’ve realized that I might be the last person on earth still making New Year’s resolutions. People make a point now of declaring that they have abandoned the practice entirely, or at least reduced it to “what I’m really hoping to try to focus on this year”.

I did notice that this year alot of people want to focus on spending less time looking at their phone. Bad news for Substack writers I suppose. But of course, everyone is quick to add that they probably won’t succeed anyway. Sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, I’ve been busy creating a two-page To Do list for myself that covers everything from eating (do, but less) to exercise (do, but more) to speaking Italian (do, but better).  In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, my mind’s eye sees only a wall of self-improvement Post-its:   

Spend less on eating out. Try yoga. Clean up my Google Drive. Get rid of this crick in my neck.

Because really, nothing undermines the whole New Beginnings, Master of My Fate, Captain of My Soul routine more than a crick in the neck. It’s an unblock-able banner ad reminding me that not only will I likely fail to bend the future to my will, I can’t even look behind me to see where I’ve been.

Although I’m unclear as to how this whole neck thing started, I’m painfully clear as to when it did. Three days before Thanksgiving, while we were at the house in Italy, I woke up at 4 in the morning and found that at some point in the night,  I had mysteriously fossilized. Suddenly, my whole upper torso seemed to be set in stone, giving me the range of motion of a Roman emperor’s marble bust.

Panic set in, to the extent that one can register panic without moving a facial muscle. Imagine Lurch from the Addams Family careening around the bedroom,  trying to get dressed quickly and get himself to the Emergency room.

Which is easier said than done, when you live in the wilds of Le Marche. And your wife— as New York as they come— doesn’t drive. In this neck of the woods, any ambulance would need at least  45 minutes to arrive, if they could find you at all. So the journey to the hospital would be just me and C, zombie driver and co-pilot, for an hour on a pulverizing, pretzel-like path through the pitch dark.

Much of the adventure is lost now in a haze of jaw-grinding and Google map re-routing. But I do recall the dramatic highlight was bouncing down a winding gravel path only to find it blocked by a mudslide. That meant doing the whole thing again. In reverse. I almost called for the helicopter.

Of course, once we arrived at the hospital, the miracle of medical science and an elephantine shot of muscle relaxer restored me quickly to something of my original form. I left a few hours later with two working shoulders, a neck that crackles like kindling  but does eventually pivot to profile position, and of course, prescriptions for more muscle relaxers.

What I did not get was an explanation. A program. A call to action. “So maybe you try to moving the pillow more under your shoulder…” was the only suggestion from the doctor, as she showed me to the exit.

Americans generally prefer a more activity-driven approach. Everyone in New York chimed in immediately with suggestions:

Get an MRI. Have you tried acupuncture? It’s probably your posture— you should spend less time looking at your phone.

Our Italian friends, and indeed every European with whom I shared the story, arrived at a different, but unanimous diagnosis.  “Eh, but of course,” they would conclude, as if they’d had a similar case just that morning.

“It is the colpa del vento.”

The what?

“The cold wind, you know…it strikes your neck and makes the problems.” And then with a little wave of the hand for emphasis,  “this is why you must always wear a scarf.”

Colpa del vento. The fault of the wind. I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the idea, though I didn’t know its proper title. I’d encountered it only as the malevolent force that makes Italians swear off air-conditioning even in a sweaty, Sicilian summer and Spanish tourists in New York change tables three times to avoid a draft from an open window.

At first, I considered it a ludicrously unscientific analysis from a continent full of draft-dodging, throat-cosseting opera singers. But when several subsequent examinations with New York doctors yielded more expensive but equally ephemeral answers, I started to think that maybe there was some truth to this theory. I’ve found now that I quite like the idea of colpa del vento.

It’s just such a relief. Here’s a problem not solvable by expanding the To Do list. It requires no physical therapy, no vaccine. It can’t be explained beyond a wave of the hand at the randomness of human existence. It seems my only fault in the whole matter was my choice of neckwear.

Interestingly, about two days before my Night of the Living Dead performance, I had been working in the garden when our neighbor Peppe stopped by. Incredibly, I was wearing a t-shirt in mid-November, as the temperature was nearly 80 degrees.

But as we spoke, what had been a balmy breeze turned abruptly into an unexpectedly frigid blast of air. Peppe noticed it too, and warned me that it was a sign. The cold weather was coming in from the mountains. Winter would arrive in the next few days.

Later that day, there was an earthquake in our area. Nothing serious, and unfortunately nothing too uncommon in this region. But in retrospect, it seems a kind of warning shot, a reminder of the unseen dangers bottled up somewhere in Nature. Clearly, the cork was working its way out of the bottle.

This is the lesson of the colpa del vento. It turns out that the universe is not merely a stage upon which we act. It’s got its own thing going on. Occasionally, we get in the way.

While I’m not ready to surrender my custom of New Year’s resolutions, I think what I really hope to try to focus on this year is taking whatever comes my direction with more acceptance, and a humble understanding of what may fall outside of my scope of work. The search for cause and effect is human of course. The tendency to make every cause about me is something I should probably work on.

I’m not giving up my American optimism and self-reliance quite yet. Just tempering it with a little Old World wisdom:

It’s cold world, and full of pains in the neck.  Wear a scarf.

Buon anno, tutti!

The scarf and hat collection of Luciano Pavarotti