From a restricted Italy, an artist’s eye on the coronavirus
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The Post has enlisted Emiliano Ponzi to draw and write about daily life in Milan during the coronavirus outbreak. Italy offers a glimpse into what the United States may face if the virus is not contained. Ponzi will be updating the post regularly.
March 18
We can’t go outside. But we can. Truth is never black or white, so we embrace the shades of gray. We have a form for it: a self-declaration module from the government that is downloadable.
Beginning March 9, swamped by the dying, Italy clamped down on personal movement for its 60 million people, imposing a curfew and confusing rules for leaving the house that included carrying an “auto-certification” form. Penalty for violation: a hefty fine or three months in jail.
Infected
35,713
Deaths
2,978
(As of March 18 in Italy)
One the form, there are four boxes with reasons to be outside:
1. Work needs.
2. A situation of necessity.
3. Health reasons.
4. Coming back home.
Plus, there is a blank space.
Regarding this, I declare that:___________________________
The form offers some examples of reasons to be outside: “I work in this or that place; I’m coming back to my home (address required); I’m going to the doctor … other specific reasons.”
My wife has to walk our dog Las Vegas later, so she will write: “Vado a pisciare il cane,” which, loosely translated, means, “I have to take the dog out to pee.”
I saw a woman stopped by the police. She was carrying some bags from the grocery store, it appeared. They argued, and I wasn’t sure how it all ended. What you can prove of your rightful business to move about your neighborhood is limited by what the police officer is willing to believe.
Those on patrol seem to be doing their best to punish those violating the law, in the interest of limiting further spread of the virus, but they also seem to be indulgent with others.
And so I wonder: How can I prove that I have to walk five minutes to reach the studio? How can I prove that, in the studio, I have pencils and brushes and markers and an atmosphere that can’t be built from home but that is essential to make me function to produce artwork and pay the bills?
Is that an acceptable reason for leaving the house? I don’t know. I think that our habits sometimes keep us alive more than medicine. But still, I’m sure there is a way to reshape our daily routine, starting from scratch; spending a weekend with your in-laws whom you can’t stand isn’t going to do it.
This is our new “situation of necessity,” and it’s going to last a long time.
March 17
Milan is a ghost town, or perhaps better, a ghost metropolis of 1.3 million people. I can cross the streets without waiting for the pedestrian green light.
My house is a five-minute walk from my studio in one of the most popular areas, the Navigli, so named for the system of navigable and interconnected canals designed by Leonardo da Vinci. It is a district full of laughter and aperitivo, bars and restaurants, one after another stretching along both sides of the canals. Now it’s all gone — people, tables outside, neon lights, fragments of music and conversation floating by.
Infected
27,980
Deaths
2,158
(As of March 17 in Italy)
I walked back from the studio at 8:30 p.m. It made me think of the movie “The Omega Man” from 1971 or the 2007 remake with Will Smith, “I am Legend.” I wondered whether I should expect to see some zombies coming from the alley to attack me.
At the end of the canal, I saw a figure that looked familiar. It’s the drug dealer of the area I see quite often, going around with his gigantic Amstaff terrier.
How quickly my perception has changed: Two weeks ago, I noticed him among hundreds of young people hanging out at night, and it was disturbing, a discordant note in an harmonic melody. Now I feel relieved by his presence, somehow. Seeing him still here lends a sense of belonging.
Like this is still the same place, we are still here, it’s the same reality, we are still alive, no zombies yet … breathe.
What you need to know about the coronavirus
March 16
“Hi, Mum. How are you?”
“I’m good. … And you? Do you have enough food in the fridge?”
My mother was born three years after World War II ended, in a village in the south of Italy. Her generation grew up amid the wreckage of bombed buildings and the anxiety of hunger. For them, food is precious like little else.
When I was a teenager, we had a stash to last for months. I remember that our basement was packed with jars of tomatoes and eggplants, dozens of bottles of wine, any kind of supply. I remember my father was upset every time we threw half a plate of pasta in the garbage because we were full. “Don’t waste food!” he would say.
Infected
24,747
Deaths
1,809
(As of March 16 in Italy)
I’m sure this started as a genuine concern because of his survival heritage. And I’m also pretty sure this became an excuse for him to eat what me and my sister left on the plate.
[Hello from Italy. Your future is grimmer than you think.]
My parents don’t live in Milan but in a small town about 200 miles from here. For my mother’s 72nd birthday, we gave her and my father tickets to hear a famous singer from their generation. The concert was to take place in Milan on March 3. But by the middle of February, the virus had spread and it became dangerous for older people to use trains and gather in crowds. We decided to cancel their trip.
Italian mothers are exactly as you imagine them: caring and overprotective. Sometimes, it’s hard to have distance because your mother will regard you as her child even if your beard is white. And a mother who grew up after the war will always want to feed you because fat means healthy and skinny means sick.
We are not at war. Seeing people assaulting supermarkets here and in the United States is insane; we won’t starve. The food industry is still producing way more than we need.
But I thought about our country’s past and my mother’s childhood when I went to the supermarket and found a line today. The new law imposes limits on how many people can be in the supermarket at once: 10, to maintain social distance.
So people spend 15 minutes in the line outside just to buy a salad or a sandwich for lunch, or an orange juice. Automatic doors no longer swing open; there is an employee with a mask letting one customer in as soon another walks out.
She says good morning to everyone, but the tone of her voice says something else — probably it’s not going to be a good morning and not even a good day. Just another day in this bubble, without your mother’s jars of eggplants in the cellar.
March 14
I am Emiliano Ponzi. I’m an illustrator and author who lives in Milan, a place lately described as the wealthy economic engine of our country and a place also lately unrecognizable to me and my fellow Italians.
The escalation of infections in our country from the novel coronavirus forced our government to severely restrict our personal freedoms. It is a plan to save 60 million of us by pushing us apart. It is as if we have been suddenly cast in some surreal movie that affects our daily routine, the way we relate to other people and our interior dialogues. Each day, a small but startling bite of our personal freedoms.
Infected
17,660
Deaths
1,266
(As of March 14 in Italy)
Right now, I’m in my studio. It’s 7:34 a.m., and I have this impulse to stand up and go to the coffee shop around the corner, where every morning I eat a handmade chocolate croissant still warm. Habits are hard to kill.
[These simulations show how to flatten the coronavirus growth curve]
But all the coffee shops and restaurants were forced to close yesterday. The whole country of 60 million went to “Red Zone” on March 9, locked down to the outside, prohibited from travel between cities. By March 12, when 1,266 already had died and more than 17,000 already were infected, daily life shut down, and people were told to stay at home.
None of this is in our nature as Italians, as humans. “I have been thinking of what my friend Umberto, screenwriter of “The Great Beauty,” a 2014 Academy Award-winning movie, told me about how screenwriting had changed.
“We don’t write in advance all scenes as we used to,” he said. Now “we write the scenes as we shoot them … in order to have a more dynamic film.”
This column is an illustrated chronicle of Italy now, sketches and observations about the good actors we need to become as we improvise the new screenplay being written each day.
Emiliano Ponzi has created artwork for The Washington Post, the New York Times, Le Monde, the New Yorker, Apple, Louis Vuitton, Moma NY, Hermes and Der Spiegel. His latest book, “American West,” was published in 2019.
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