⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡ My Milano Days ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡
It’s Friday and I woke up and pressed snooze. I dreamt that I was sailing through the Amazon River, experiencing wildlife I had only ever seen in textbooks. Disappointing one’s notions of Brazilianness, I have never even come close to the Amazon. Also, I am a city girl. That’s why I thought a quick getaway to Milano could help diffuse the tension. I was there nearly fifteen years ago, old face Mari, and there are some memorable things about that trip. My mother and I were shattered after walking 15km and having a bath in a nice hotel, for instance: the perks of travelling with family. And, of course, my puffy eyes seeing Il Bacio, searching for romance everywhere although I was taken myself.
Dora says I am always off to the next big thing, and he is correct. It’s what they say: what I want remains unnamed (in Portuguese it hits harder). It’s freeing, really, admitting that you will never be satisfied.
I was expecting rain, but thankfully my first day in Milano was hot and steamy. It all started with a hot customs officer asking whether I model. Flattered, to say the least!!! One of many temptations not to make this a healing holiday.
I started my journey near Centrale, where there is a pizzeria called Big (is moving to Milano) and, strangely enough, Ayrton Senna’s pictures cover the walls. The pizza was delicious, finissima in the Roman style, but I didn’t take any photos. Everyone was incredibly friendly, especially when I pulled out my okayyy, sono brasiliana, mi piace molto Senna. Dora, take notes. Sports are meant to create communities!!! (Formula One is so boring)
There is no concept of calories in Italy. So I wandered through Chinatown and got myself a gelato. Halfway through, I passed by Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, an unquestionably nice building with a free-access library space and a fantastic selection of English-language new releases. Like a giant Waterstones, its travel writing and geopolitics sections were especially rich.
Later I walked and walked. Scaldasole Books, recommended by my friend Giulia, is where I finally purchased a Nero Editions title: Oh, Tongue by Simone Forti. I will write about it later on. :)
As I was on my way to the tabaccheria, I realised I had lost my glasses. Gabbana vintage. First-ever pair. Est. 2007. Bayonetta style. My mother doesn’t know yet. My skinny cigarettes suddenly tasted bitter, and I felt compelled to have a glass of white wine. I’m coping while writing this at Miuccia Prada’s favourite bar, Bar Quadronno. I’m also trying not to think about things that are bad for me.
Yesterday everyone was impressed by how well I can hold my drink, even after nine (NOVE) glasses of white wine. Of course, I woke up with the nastiest gueule de bois, but still managed to make it to Brera for breakfast. I paid over thirty euros for scrambled eggs and coffee. But Marchesi is beautiful, and afterwards I wandered through a series of piazzas crowned by grand monuments, including one dedicated to Alessandro Manzoni. For non-Italians, maybe explaining Manzoni feels a bit like explaining Machado de Assis to the British. Milan adored him, and rightfully so. Standing near the square where he spent his final years felt oddly intimate, as if the city had decided that writers deserve monuments too. I wish we Brazilians treated Machado the same way, to be honest.
Last time I was at the Pinacoteca di Brera I was nineteen. My highlights this time were the paintings by Marco d’Oggiono. The Elevation of St. Mary Magdalene completely disarmed me. There is something incredibly gentle about the composition. The blues dissolve into one another, the clouds’ contouring feels childlike, and the angels lift her upward with a tenderness that feels almost maternal. The painting doesn’t depict transcendence as drama but as softness. Nearby, The Three Archangels had the opposite effect. They stand with such confidence and composure that the whole thing feels like an early Renaissance power moodboard. Thank God the Church had money, right?
And then, in the final rooms of La Grande Brera, ecco Il Bacio. Francesco Hayez painted it in 1859, at the height of the Italian Risorgimento. The young man seems already halfway out the door, one foot on the stair, as though duty is interrupting desire. The kiss is passionate precisely because it is temporary. When I first saw it at nineteen, I cried. This time I giggled, because it feels so impossibly out of reach for me (maybe I'll die alone who knows). What really made me emotional, however, was a sculpture called The Writer (Italian Girlfriend), right next to it. This would have been a fire piece of décor as a miniature, one of those kitschy profession-themed gifts from the early 2000s. This is me, I thought. Sono una scrittrice, però non una fidanzata italiana. Anch’io scrivo sull’amore purtroppo. Duolingo!!!
Villa Necchi Campiglio was such a nice surprise. Piero Portaluppi! Yes! The star-shaped window is exactly the sort of detail my dream house would absolutely have. Built in the 1930s for one of Milano’s wealthiest families, the villa is a masterpiece of Italian Rationalism softened by Art Deco glamour. The books selection was fire, too, although many of its references made me feel ignorant. It made me want to become rich exclusively for architectural reasons.
In the afternoon I went to Fondazione Prada, where several exhibitions were unfolding at once inside Rem Koolhaas’s extraordinary conversion of a former industrial complex. Dash by Cao Fei, the temporary exhibition I've been, was about digital agriculture, life in rural settings mediated through systems, data, and virtual representations. Walking through it reminded me of the Anthropocene discussions that have gradually infiltrated my thesis’ years. Our relationship with land no longer feels immediate. We increasingly encounter places through maps, platforms, databases, simulations, logistics chains, and images. I was relieved to find traces of human labour hidden among all this abstraction, but didn't do the VR experiment (I was afraid of feeling sick). I left listening to chants from agricultural workers and wondering whether technology has become our primary environment. Annnnd I let this conversation to be continued by my friend Grace.
At Pirelli HangarBicocca there was a maze-like installation that left me completely disoriented. Somewhere there is probably a clever theoretical word for what I experienced. Didn’t fuck with that that much.
But I loved the Rebecca installation by Benni Bosetto, where I felt very paranoid. Conceived as an environment to be inhabited rather than simply viewed, the exhibition transforms the Hangar into something resembling a living organism. Doors appear without complete walls, pathways dissolve unexpectedly. I did not feel well there at all. Maybe it was the hangover. Maybe it was something else. Those ceilingless doors gave me the same uneasy sensation that runs through Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. The architecture never felt complete, and neither did the woman at the centre of that novel (please check Bianca Censori's work on architecture and the female body). Everything seemed suspended between becoming and collapse. The discomfort felt necessary. Our bodies inhabit spaces marked by shame, desire, competition, vulnerability, and exposure. Tracey Emin would probably understand with her fanny explosions of Turkish Liras. Her glittering, unapologetic messiness has always insisted that women occupy space without asking permission. Bosetto’s Rebecca felt like the version of that demand.
When you’re travelling by yourself, you somehow receive the gift of paying attention to something for ten straight minutes while listening to music. Of walking into churches and saying a prayer in silence. Of passing stunning buildings and... sighing. I’m so glad I came. I left Pirelli walking around in a see-through skirt pretending I’m on my way to a casting. Happiness is enjoying the passing of time, so I heard.
I almost lost my phone yesterday, so Como had to be chilled. This turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. I sat in one of those absurdly expensive restaurants by the lake and wrote for hours. Watching tourists eat gelato while carrying cameras worth my entire scholarship, I began wondering why it had taken me so long to appreciate long stretches of nothing. Taking a public ferry. Going on a mild hike in ballerina flats, as I survived British festivals in these beauts. Eating an overcooked carbonara while feeling the breeze.
Recently, I engaged in a very personal essay about Italy. Being here feels like a blessing. Prioritising myself, and finding the time to write about it, which is also a way of putting myself first, my words first, wow, it feels good. Like a writing retreat. A blessing and a curse, perhaps.
Grazie, Italia!! :)
