Everything craves something: tortilla chips beg for fresh salsa, summer heat lusts for fall coolness like a kid needing a Popsicle, and by mid summer, the part of me that needs quiet and solitude, starts longing for the ring of the school bell that summons my kids to return to backpacks, books and binders....
This painting below called
Primavera by Sandro Botticelli is all about craving. Botticelli fell in love with a married woman called Simonetta Vespucci. She did not return his love, but stayed faithful to her husband. Botticelli's longing for Simonetta can be seen on the far right corner where the blue faced wind Zephyr chases the nymph Chloris. She runs from him. Zephyr forces her to be his wife, and then realizes the consequences. Zephyr because he loves Chloris lets her go and turns her into Flora (flowers). Botticelli painted Simonetta's face as Flora. He yearned for her but tried to let her go. Venus the Goddess of Love, (in the middle), teaches a lesson about longing and love by gesturing to the 3 woman, (the 3 Graces): sexual love, love of beauty and love of fellow man. Despite all our desires, the love of our fellow man must balance out what we want most.
Occasionally, certain words pique my interest and I pick them up and put into the pockets of my brain to carry around and look at later This past week the word "
Bramare" came out with the lint in my disheveled mind, and I stopped to examine it. B
ramare means to
yearn for something. Before we even moved here, I have been dying, yes yearning, to visit the Uffizi Museum in Florence-- to see in real life Botticelli's Primavera painting. The first two times we were in Florence, I chased the dream but the lines were hours long and time was short, and so I couldn't visit the Museum. But, this past week when Trevor's girlfriend Sydney, who was visiting us for two weeks, asked if we could go to Florence, I heard opportunity tapping softly on the door, and I jumped on the chance to return to
Firenze.The whole trip ended up being a lesson in bramare: longing and yearning. This church below called Santa Maria del Fiore or the Duomo for short, yearned for a dome. The builders started in the 1300's and planned to build a dome on it. However, when it came down to it, they didn't have the mathematical skills to build such a huge dome to cover the 140 foot hole in the ceiling. Traditionally wooden scaffolding was insufficient, and there were no buildings nearby to attach Gothic style buttresses to support the dome. One architect out of desperation suggested filling the hole with dirt and coins and build the dome over that, and the peasants when they came to worship would want to cart the dirt away... well, the hole remained for decades.
Meanwhile, three sculptors were entering a contest to make the brass doors for the baptistry nearby: Ghiberti, Donatello and Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi was full of bramare, yearning to create something beautiful for the people and city of Firenze that he loved. He worked long hours working the brass in his vision of the Sacrifice of Isaac, hand screwing each figure into the brass panel. However, after the unveiling of all 3 works, Ghiberti, who learned to form his artwork in one solid piece of bronze, won. Brunellesci discouraged, ran off to Rome to lick his wounds. While he was there he became fascinated with the Pantheon and .... it's dome. He was inspired and came up with a desgin to make a self supporting dome within a dome that could hold 80 million pounds of brick. Time and patience united to fill the bramare of both the Duomo and Brunelleschi.
So when we got to Florence we went to go climb Brunelleschi's dome on this church (the only thing that Trevor wanted to do in Florence) but as luck would have it, the dome was closed that very day, even though it's normally open all year round! So we opted to climb Giotto's campanile bell tower, below, instead.
On the way to the tower, we stopped at the San Lorenzo with the attached Medici chapels to see the tombs that Michelangelo had carved and the library he designed. (We weren't allowed to take pictures of the tombs unfortunately). The photo below is the cloister around the back of the San Lorenzo church that attaches to the Medici chapel. Michelangelo since his youth was plagued by bramare and yearning. His mother died when he was 7, and Michelangelo was sent to live with a stone cutter's family. While he was there grieving, he became an apprentice and mastered carving. He threw all his longing into his work . The Medici's, learning of his skills with marble, opened up their home to Michelangelo, treated him like family. Michelangelo was commissoned to carve a huge scale tomb for Pope Julius II and others in the Medici clan. Michelangelo tried to complete this work, in fact longed to finish these marble tombs for his childhood friends the Medici's, but late shipments of marble, death of patrons, his depression, a Florentine revolution and the new Pope demanding Michelangelo come to Rome and paint the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, left his magnificent tombs uncompleted. Michelangelo's assistance had to complete the design the best they could to Michelangelo's specifications. 
The Medici chapel is the building on the right (below). The tombs inside are called "Dusk and Dawn" and "Day and Night", personified as people, show all Michelangelo's yearning...his wish to stay young like Dawn and his hatred of old age Dusk which robbed him of his strength to create. His yearning for Night when he could work on his masterpieces uninterrupted and his subsequent "bramare" for Day when he could finally get some sleep. He carved a poem in the tomb and one line says "speak softly and let me sleep."
I felt for Michelangle, his yearnings ---his to create--- mine to admire the creations and leave a better person. Finally at noon we got in one of three lines for the great Uffizi. I had called and reserved tickets but we still had to wait. I felt like a kid counting down for Christmas morning, waiting impatiently to see the Botticelli's, Da Vinci's, Carravaggio's, Rembrandt's, Rafael's and Titian's and even funny mannerist painting of Parmigianino-- priceless Renassiance masterpieces!
You can see the U shaped building that houses the works of the Uffizi in this shot below and the statues of Dante, Vespucci, Machiavelli all lining the long corridor. The line stretches that long.
We spent two gloriously happy hours inside (ok I did) and left feeling lighter than air. Art has the power to transform us...
As we left the museum, and I watched Sydney and Trevor kissing and walking hand in hand on one of their last few days together, I realized my bramare had subside but theirs was increasing, as this was their second to last day together before she returned to VA.
As we walked past this pretty arch to Palazzo Vechio to see Michelangelo's David statue (far right bottom corner), I wondered if all the naked sculptures would only serve to increase their longing for each other. And that maybe I had done wrong bringing them here....
And then we saw this real life nudity and we laughed. And I realized I couldn't rob Trevor and Sydney of this experience of the pains of first love or should want to shelter them...life if all about yearning for something. It's what makes us human and allows us the opportunity to grow and learn from it.
So on we went to see the statues in the loggia dei Lanzi outside the Palazzo, placed there by the Medici who brought them from Rome.
Giambologna's illustrated his longing when creating "Sabine Woman," where Romulus and Remus abducted woman in order to populate Rome.
Above, the Trojan princess Polyxena (by Pio Fedi) is being carried off for a sacrifice so the Greeks would have wind to sail home. And below, Michelangelo's "
David," in a calm stance -- the moment where he decides he can, with God' s help, slay Goliath. Michelangelo saw this block of marble, that had just been laying behind a nearby church for two decades, and he saw a figure in it longing to get out. So, at age 26, he worked for two years letting David lose. (The original is in a Museo Accademia not far away)
While this was impressive, Trevor was more fascinated with the smells coming from a nearby cafe. We followed him over and ate overpriced
panini, an Italian sandwhich with ham and fresh mozzarella cheese.
And for some extra energy, we topped off with sweet waffle sandwiches (ice cream sandwiches)
This has got to be two days worth of calories but worth the gluttony.
Loaded up on calories, we started our ascent of Giotto's bell tower narrow, curving 445 steps. Giotto had bramare for beauty and symmetry. Giotto was called the "ugliest man that walked the streets of Florence" and this pain led him to paint and build incredibly beautiful works. Giotto is credited from breaking from the flat, gold Byzantine painting and making colors and figures more realistic and human.
Giotto's aim with his belltower was to see Florence with different eyes (baptisty above)
and with different views
to see beauty in unlikely places
This is the look down one landing after 150 steps.
This is the view halfway up the tower
We finished the last set of stairs, which got even narrower and crowded
and at points we were smashed up against the wall.
At the top we realized some longings, if you have patience, you get what you desire....
and in this case, to see the top of the Brunelleschi's Duomo-- to see how he placed the bricks in herringbone fashion and how the lantern on the top of the dome was the size of the baptistry on the ground below us.... things we could never had seen had we climbed inside the dome.
We were loving the gorgeous view that stretched for miles.
At 4 pm when we got down, Trevor was longing for quiet time with Sydney, and the comforts of home: air conditioning, a cold drink and a chair to sit down and relax. So we headed back to the train station...but the train was delayed by an hour, and then on the way back alarms went off and we had to sit on the track forever. As if in cahoots, the bus to take us home, sat at the terminal for another 30 minutes, when they are supposed to leave every 5 minutes. This made Trevor almost two hours late for his friends b-day party, but he did get his wish to sit down and to talk for hours with Sydney.
I got to thinking about Botticelli's Primavera painting and contemplated, if we wait and wait some more, until we are blue in the face, yearning until we can't breath anymore, do we finally come to the place where we see things a bit clearer, a view from another perspective? Do we learn greater lessons, learn to see images and beauty locked away in marble or others, how to bridge holes and build talents, and thereby become better individuals, capable of getting past our wants, capable of understanding and loving our fellowman? Is yearning another word for learning...? You tell me....
It is a really rigorous program.
The boys are out running at 6 am and have live wrestling and instruction until 9 pm.
I like the philosophy of the camp as they teach that wrestling is not a sport of brute strength or isolated holds. But, it's about having a systematic approach to maximize effective moves. 
Alot of their emphasis is on learning takedown techniques, leg attack set-ups and finishing strong
While we are excited for all this training, and that this can help Trevor's chance to be European champion... I'm not so happy about the prospect of turning into Kuna Coach Gormley and playing ref at home everynight.... and Brendan, first year wrestler who didn't go to camp, is not so excited about replacing the poor guy under Trevor in this picture. Payload Pax--get out your singlet and get ready to rumble!
