Stealing Beauty: a lifetime of inspiration

Stealing Beauty: a lifetime of inspiration
November 30, 2018 From that blog I started but closed again

I have to say, I knew very little about Bernardo Bertolucci. I didn’t personally “follow” him, his work or his life. But one of his movies, “Stealing Beauty,” seriously affected my life.

I saw it by chance; I don’t recall us renting it at the video store (you may roll your eyes towards the heavens, yes, this was in the 90’s when you rented your VHS bricks and put them into your video player back home!) but I also don’t know if it was playing on TV. All I know is that we were 19, Nicole and me. We’ve known each other since we were a year and a half roughly - our parents bonded over the terrible fact that their two little adorable barely walking, blonde and blue eyed little innocent toddlers had escaped the nursery, saying they were “picking flowers for their mammas,” which I today suspect was one out of many lies we told the world together.

The film was first shown in the US in 1996, and we were 19 in 1998. Doesn’t really matter, all the technicalities. It’s a moment in my life that I’ll always remember. I was in Nicole’s house where I’d spent many, many Saturdays of my childhood- almost all my life we’d alternated Saturdays. One in her house, next in my house. Her little cute house was located on Apelgatan 24 in Malmö. The TV-room was in the basement. We were afraid of the basement, but that’s another story. We also observed Nicole’s friends taking LSD for the first time in that basement. They were throwing letters. “Here, catch the B!” “Quick, here comes the N!”

We were still seeing each other regularly at the age of 19. We had moments with hard, cold breaks. She had her teenage issues; I had mine. Her mother passed away unexpectedly, suddenly, when we were 12. Kerstin, smelling as always of Anais Anais, wearing blue mascara, suddenly fell on the kitchen floor one early January midday, while preparing for visitors. She was pronounced dead the next day. Nicole’s house had been a difficult place since then; Nicole being a difficult teenager and Nicole’s father being a difficult father, too, with many women passing through his life. And yes, Nicole had her fair share of boys passing through her life, god knows. But despite our issues and our differences, we always stayed friends- and despite our lives today being as different as the sun and the moon, we know today we will be friends until the day we die.

So, back to the point. We were watching this movie, and we found it SEXUAL. We were almost EMBARRASSED to be watching it. But we GOT IT - the ENERGY of the movie was STEAMY. ARTISTIC. BEAUTIFUL. But one thing we both agreed on was that one day we’d be living this life, this dream, this Tuscan lazy artistic beauty reality. We promised each other we’d go to Tuscany, to find a house like that, and spend some time living that kind of life.

Inside myself I made a pact. I will go to Tuscany. And it will be just as special as this movie.

Well, life parted our ways. I ended up leaving Sweden on the 1 April 1999, going to live in Spain to work as an au-pair. Nicole came to visit me, and in fact, as I resigned from that horrible job, she escorted me all the way home, like the friend she really is. She never failed me. She protected me like a fierce mamma, always taking my side in public, but in private, always telling me the truth. Like a friend should do.

The movie was always at the back of my mind. But life kept happening, and I kept being attracted to Spain. And then I got an offer by my best friend Kriss to come to London, and the other best friend, Carro, was also coming. The three of us moved to London, with great success following us. From there, I moved on to my next life phase of tropical backpacker’s travels - probably the most exciting thing I’ve done in my life. South East Asia, baby. Wow. Doesn’t get much more tropically humidly darkly exciting and daring than that when you’re 21. Leaving on a life changing journey - knowing that life will take a massively different turn because of this eye opening trip.

Italy, and specifically Tuscany, always felt as if it was something that would come “later,” like when I’m “middle aged” or something faraway like that. But destiny had other plans for me- Tuscany came to me already when I was backpacking, but not in the shape and form that I had expected. Not on that first backpacking trip - rather on the third, or fourth - I can’t remember.

Tuscany came to find me - in India!

It came in the shape and form of Giulio. The Tuscan young man who saved my life when I had cerebral malaria in India. He’s one of the main characters in my book, and he’s one of the most important people in my life, I swear to god. No one has played such a lifesaving role; not only physically, when dying of malaria, but TWICE MORE; when stuck in awful relationships with controlling, narcissistic men. Both times, I passed through Tuscany and he literally released me. Woke me up. Saved me. Like my own personal karmic lifesaver.

Giulio from Tuscany. My savior. My Tuscan karmic dream and life guard. My soul connection.

In fact, I met him very shortly after I’d spent time with Nicole in the Philippines where her father lived with his Filipina wife, Giegi, in a small village in Cebu. I’d finally convinced Nicole to come to Thailand and now that her father lived in Asia, she had no more excuses. Little did we both realize that shortly after parting ways in Cebu, she’d be running from the 2004 tsunami in Ko Lanta, waiting for help in the mountains for three days, shaking from cold and fear and hunger, without any connection to the rest of the world. I had to wait three days to know if she was alive or dead. I scoured lists of thousands of names of Swedish citizens during those days from a tiny, messy, dusty and overcrowded internet place next to the main food market on the little island Siquijor. I felt a mix of relief and guilt for having listened to my inner voice telling me to stay in the Philippines. I abandoned Nicole and her boyfriend in favor of spending some time alone on a small bewitched island.

The first time I arrived in Tuscany was 2008, the same year that I graduated from SOAS in London. I had just read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and I was trying to break up with my current controlling husband yoga guru. To escape him, I lied about going to a yoga teacher training. “Honey, I’ll be living and working alongside you, we’ll be living your yoga teacher couple dream before you know it!”

I bought a one way ticket to Florence, and landed on the 28th September 2008. In my bag I had home made cinnamon buns by my dear Kriss, and it happened to be the birthday of my brother Martin. I still remember the spectacular autumn light that seemed to softly envelop Malmö airport.

I stayed in Florence a couple of days, savoring my newfound freedom, and then I made a surprise phone call to Giulio from the payphone in the hostel. “Bella!! You’re in Italy!” he said, with that beautiful Italian accent.

The next day I was on a train, heading straight into the Tuscan countryside. His standing invitation to come visit him was still open.

So my Tuscany experience came through Giulio, who took me on the back of his Harley Davidson and in the passenger seat of his canary-yellow Volkswagen surfer van. Through villages and vineyards, to starlit drives at the stunning Viale di Cipressi, a “strada” with kilometres and kilometres of proud cypress trees reaching for the moon and nearly touching the bejewelled night sky, leading up to the cute medieval village Bolgheri. Not just that; he brought me along to meet his friends, family, his dog, his mamma and nonna, his cute sunbleached surfer friends and everyone else in the village. Drinking Campari Spritz at 11 am and espresso at midnight- it all seemed perfectly normal. No wait- it all was heaven.

The beauty of the landscape, the beaches, the people and the food. The passion for family and tradition. The architecture. The joy for life. The perfectly lined vineyards. The art. Wow, the art! And that weird little cemetery in Bolgheri, where that old man stood hidden amongst the thorny brambleberry bushes, reciting poems about Il Viale di Cipressi. Surreal.

The second time I visited him there had similar lights turn on inside me. Always remembering who I am, again, because it seemed as if I had forgotten. Italy in general pulls me back to myself, to the moment, to what’s important.  But Tuscany in particular. And specifically, Giulio- my karmic lifesaver. He helps me remember the beauty- the beauty that was stolen from me. The art of living and loving each moment- Italian style.

Thank you, grande Bernardo Bertolucci. You affected my life, and I am sure that of many others. I don’t think I would’ve recognized Giulio if it wasn’t for your stunning movie.