la fontana

This is just outside my door in the little lane where youths drink, smoke and make out.

Lea arrived on Monday evening. We wasted no time in beginning to plan what we are going to do to the fountain. The fountain is a plain circle about three meters in diameter and 700mm deep. The wall is about 200mm thick. Lea had it made and then went and saw Gaudi’s cathedral in Spain. Now the plan is to make a more organic form that will be mosaic-ed, with a sculpture in the centre.

We went off in search of steel and materials on the pushbikes. We found an everything to do with cement and concrete supplier, and began the pantomime of ordering what we wanted. Lea has a special way of getting what she wants. She explains it like this- “I always get there in the end, always stay positive.”

The man said there was no truck to deliver the steel, impossible. So we said we wanted bags of concrete as well. He went away for a while, came back and then a truck appeared, which he loaded and drove. It was threatening rain so we put the bikes on the back of the truck and got a ride back to Pietrasanta.

When we got there the heavens opened up and it pissed down for the entire time the poor man was lugging the 18 bags of concrete up the path about 50 meters uphill. My job was to hold the umbrella over him, attempting to keep the bags dry, not being allowed to lift heavy things (feeling useless).

Lea gave him a bottle of wine and we joked that we’d see him again tomorrow. I thought he must have had some Karma to pay off and got us as punishment, Lea said he had earned some credits in the big scheme of things.

It stopped raining when he finished.

We started on the armature the next morning according to Lea’s model that she has made. We found that it was a bit busy so we reduced the number of bumps from nine to seven. Figuring out a system took a while. We got a basic shape set out to work from by bending 6mm steel and anchoring it into holes we drilled in the sides of the existing form.

That took all afternoon and by the end of it I was pretty sore in my back, hips and neck. Have to learn to pace myself according to what my back can handle. A bath, a good night sleep and some Pilates and yoga stretches as well as some self-massaging with Gretta’s Chi ball and I’m rearing to go again, sort of…