That's right, velvet, that heavy fuzzy material largely reserved for overdressed little girls, tacky vintage prom gowns, or ancient theatre-goers in costume jewelry and musty violet perfume. It started when I dropped into Palazzo Madama for coffee last week. One of the perks of having an all-access museum pass Abbonamento Musei 2009 is that I can enter Torino's museums just to visit the cafes, waltz smugly through the miniature model room and Renaissance altarpiece room and ceramics room without once looking around to get my money's worth of passive art appreciation out of an overpriced ticket. Upon deciding to enjoy said privilege on one lazy Tuesday afternoon, I flashed my card at the front desk, picked up a couple of attractive leaflets, and breezed up two flights of spiral stone steps to the high-ceilinged cafe to read them over a 5 euro (waaaay expensive) caffe shakerato, cold shaken coffee. Vaniglia o Bailey's, signorina? So tempting... but I have to pick up the kids from school in an hour... vaniglia, per favore, grazie. I settled into a cushy robin's egg blue chair and opened the "upcoming museum events" brochure to find a 10-hour weekend workshop structured around velvet and its role as a luxury material from medieval times to the 18th century. Make your own red velvet bag, just like the one in the museum's collection case!, it announced. And I read between the lines: Chat with old Italian grandmas and housewives while learning something about a weird history and craft!
Never mind that velvet has long been associated in my mind with tasteless department store girls' dresses, oversized Christmas bows, and general ugly.
I convinced a friend to sign up with me, and headed into the museum on a rainy Saturday afternoon with no idea what to expect. We found the chunky key that opened the glass case in the textile room; we found a nineteen-year-old fashion student and her boyfriend's mom who had signed up for the class together; we found a trio of spunky grandmothers who cheered us on for being gutsy young American girls, unafraid to try this foreign language and old-fashioned handiwork; we found a spacious corner room on the third floor of the palace, whose skylights and paned windows let in enough grey drizzle light to illuminate our chilled, busy fingers. Around 4,30pm a pair of babelicious tuxedoed waiters from the museum's cafe brought in green tea and biscuits on silver trays and white china. I leaned over to whisper conspiratorally to Carmen, a stern but twinkly lipsticked older woman well into her 60s and maybe even 70s, that I thought the cute waiter's deep bronze tan was fake, and she looked up slyly in his direction. Gave a knowing nod. Lampade, she says. Tanning bed.
The twelve of us beaded, stitched, chatted, asked each other about kids and recipes and grandkids and what American universities were like. Three hours on Saturday and seven on Sunday. Every now and then Aubrey or I would say something in English that one of the ladies would ask us to repeat more slowly so she could try it on later for her daughter, who studies English now. All the while it continued to rain, and one of the coordinators put on a Baroque cd in the background, and I had to finish sewing my velvet bag at home today because I spent more time lipreading Italian and beaming dopily at all the new life information being exchanged around me, than down at my work.
25 March 2009
Annie Lennox Reiterates a Good Point
Yesterday afternoon I went to one of the four or five cafès around my neighborhood in which I passed many a snowy afternoon this past winter, and I realised while sitting inside and looking out (with an inward laugh at my own indulgence) that I'll have to find a new set of cafès in which to pass the springtime afternoons. Ones with great iced coffee, and plenty of outdoor seating in the sunshine. Walking out of this cafè, I mentally noted that I would come back to this winter cafe next time it snowed... and then I remembered that I won't have another winter in Turin. Only one of each month, one chance to live each Italian season. An uncomfortable realisation.
March 16th marked nine whole months since I boarded the international plane out of Denver, longer than I have ever been away from home. The first time I stayed away from home for a long period was the summer of 1998, sixth grade, two whole weeks at CYO summer camp. Six years later I moved to Colorado to live away from home for five months at a time. In 2007 I tested the boundaries of distance to study in for five months in Italy, Spain and England, but came home at the end of it. Then I graduated and came here. Talk about rootless. It's all a series of loops, really, that continue to bring me back to Berkeley with a deeper appreciation for the life that waits for me there.
On another note, I read an interview with Annie Lennox in Turin's low-quality daily newspaper, City. Here's my attempt to translate a bit of the piece entitled "Finally Free to Really Communicate":
(AL) I have a lot of ideas in mind. Of course I won't abandon music, but I'm searching other ways as well, especially now that there are all of these new technologies that let you get in direct contact with other people. Like blogs, for example. Internet is a liberation: it has rendered communication both global and instantaneous. ... I would like to tell people the things that I know, that I've learned thanks to experience, about my existential evolution. And maybe use this celebrity, which is disgusting and which I hate, to do something good. To talk about ecological sustainability or women's rights, themes that interest me a lot right now. But without become an oracle.
(city) What do you think about musical talent show programs on TV?
(AL) There are reality shows on TV. Like the one where they filled that poor kid with fake green slime. [???] I ask myself why they do it, and who watches it. The talent shows are better, even I watch them, but the judges annoy me. They're often not musicians themselves, and sometimes they're sadistic, humiliating the contestants. I think of the mothers of these kids sent to Berlin. The way the show works reminds me of ancient Rome, when the emperor could simply turn his thumb and condemn you to death.
Sigh. If only every celebrity could speak out against the dumb things, in favor of great things. Every person, actually, famous or not. Can we all be more awar, more tuned in to one another and the needs of the world? Please? Plant vegetable gardens like Michelle Obama at the White House (hell, yeah!), request that scads of British pounds' worth of condolences be instead donated to needy, worthy causes (Natasha Richardson)? I think the scary thing isn't how difficult it could be, but how simple.
March 16th marked nine whole months since I boarded the international plane out of Denver, longer than I have ever been away from home. The first time I stayed away from home for a long period was the summer of 1998, sixth grade, two whole weeks at CYO summer camp. Six years later I moved to Colorado to live away from home for five months at a time. In 2007 I tested the boundaries of distance to study in for five months in Italy, Spain and England, but came home at the end of it. Then I graduated and came here. Talk about rootless. It's all a series of loops, really, that continue to bring me back to Berkeley with a deeper appreciation for the life that waits for me there.
On another note, I read an interview with Annie Lennox in Turin's low-quality daily newspaper, City. Here's my attempt to translate a bit of the piece entitled "Finally Free to Really Communicate":
(AL) I have a lot of ideas in mind. Of course I won't abandon music, but I'm searching other ways as well, especially now that there are all of these new technologies that let you get in direct contact with other people. Like blogs, for example. Internet is a liberation: it has rendered communication both global and instantaneous. ... I would like to tell people the things that I know, that I've learned thanks to experience, about my existential evolution. And maybe use this celebrity, which is disgusting and which I hate, to do something good. To talk about ecological sustainability or women's rights, themes that interest me a lot right now. But without become an oracle.
(city) What do you think about musical talent show programs on TV?
(AL) There are reality shows on TV. Like the one where they filled that poor kid with fake green slime. [???] I ask myself why they do it, and who watches it. The talent shows are better, even I watch them, but the judges annoy me. They're often not musicians themselves, and sometimes they're sadistic, humiliating the contestants. I think of the mothers of these kids sent to Berlin. The way the show works reminds me of ancient Rome, when the emperor could simply turn his thumb and condemn you to death.
Sigh. If only every celebrity could speak out against the dumb things, in favor of great things. Every person, actually, famous or not. Can we all be more awar, more tuned in to one another and the needs of the world? Please? Plant vegetable gardens like Michelle Obama at the White House (hell, yeah!), request that scads of British pounds' worth of condolences be instead donated to needy, worthy causes (Natasha Richardson)? I think the scary thing isn't how difficult it could be, but how simple.
24 March 2009
I find the following line from Donald Oliver's book "Education and Community: A Radical Critique of Innovative Schooling" somewhat disturbing--
Yikes. The more I learn about the systems, the less I want to have anything to do with them. My host dad told me yesterday morning, as we walked his sons and their enormous backpacks to elementary school, that I should seriously consider going to graduate school for another degree because in his opinion I am not only able to but well-disposed to continue a higher education. Too bad I'm not in any way eager to do it. I replied after a quick, wry laugh that I'm not interested in going back to school unless it becomes part of a longer plan, unless I find a craft that requires specialised education before I can actively practice. Sigh. PhD, Schmee H. D.
I just finished watching "Rebel Without A Cause" for the first time (well, second, since I watched it in Italian last night, and again in English this morning), and still find it hard to believe that the teenager didn't really exist before the middle of the 1900s. That's just weird. Childhood, it seems, is disappearing; the ten-year-old with whom I live and work knows things that I didn't know when I was fifteen, and his thirteen-year-old girl cousin, even more. Each day I see the long and continuous battle between being a bambino (boy) and a ragazzo (young man) being waged in and around his small head of fine, varicoloured hair, and I want to reach out to stroke a sense of calm into his heart, to tell him that the coolest thing he can possibly be is himself.
This photograph is my personal tribute to whoever wrote those mid-nineties' pop female songwriter lyrics "Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box / religion is the smile on a dog."
She knew.
In sociological terms, an underlying central goal of schooling is to preselect and stratify children to make success and failure within the system seem reasonable, justified, and personally earned.
Yikes. The more I learn about the systems, the less I want to have anything to do with them. My host dad told me yesterday morning, as we walked his sons and their enormous backpacks to elementary school, that I should seriously consider going to graduate school for another degree because in his opinion I am not only able to but well-disposed to continue a higher education. Too bad I'm not in any way eager to do it. I replied after a quick, wry laugh that I'm not interested in going back to school unless it becomes part of a longer plan, unless I find a craft that requires specialised education before I can actively practice. Sigh. PhD, Schmee H. D.
I just finished watching "Rebel Without A Cause" for the first time (well, second, since I watched it in Italian last night, and again in English this morning), and still find it hard to believe that the teenager didn't really exist before the middle of the 1900s. That's just weird. Childhood, it seems, is disappearing; the ten-year-old with whom I live and work knows things that I didn't know when I was fifteen, and his thirteen-year-old girl cousin, even more. Each day I see the long and continuous battle between being a bambino (boy) and a ragazzo (young man) being waged in and around his small head of fine, varicoloured hair, and I want to reach out to stroke a sense of calm into his heart, to tell him that the coolest thing he can possibly be is himself.
This photograph is my personal tribute to whoever wrote those mid-nineties' pop female songwriter lyrics "Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box / religion is the smile on a dog."
She knew.
23 March 2009
In Which Recycling Comes Back
I spent the past weekend with my Italian family, on a road trip for the first time since September. September! Since I've stayed in Torino on the weekends they went away, or I took off on my own weekend trips while they stayed in the city, the five of us were delighted to hit the open road all together again. This time it was to check out five prospective houses/properties in the Tuscan countryside and around the Ligurian coastline, as they hope to purchase a place to spend their summers. We stayed in a bed and breakfast with tiled floors and a view of the Mediterranean; where brown kiwis grew on shady, leafless vines. We ate fresh seafood, I drank too much wine, and we dumped sand out of our shoes at the end of the day.
If my age status were to be determined by the hour at which I got out of bed, with 7am being Kid and 9am being Adult, this weekend I was 100% Kid. The other two dozed off on my shoulders in the backseat of the car, and I chose gelato over coffee.
19 March 2009
In Which A Tower Leans Over the Couchsurfers
But in a protective, not menacing, way.
Last weekend I took a train down to Pisa to meet up with a good college friend, Greer, near the end of her month-long senior project in Rome. We agreed on Pisa as our midpoint so neither of us had to go über out of her way to reach the other, and so she could test out this CouchSurfing thing. (CS is a free online network that allows travelers to stay in peoples' homes rather than hostels or hotels, "surfing" the "couches" offered by willing hosts, and has gained popularity in the past couple of years.) We found two beds in the apartment of five male graduate students located just five walking minutes from the Leaning Tower, and according to former guests' testimonies they had been fantastic hosts, so she and I had high hopes for the weekend. After ten months apart we were glad to simply spend some time together in Italy, checking out the small town with its Big Sight-- and it turned out to be everything we'd dreamed!
The boys were so kind and laid-back for the entirety of the weekend, beginning by meeting each of us at the train station. I arrived first, got acquainted with the apartment and its inhabitants, went out for wine and cold cuts at a great place called In Vino Veritas*, chitchatted in Italian about why I was in Italy, what they were all studying (biology, sociology, engineering), the clay models of mythical creatures that they make and paint and joked about someday trying to sell. Charming, good-natured people. Then we went back to the station to pick up Greer, and she and I defaulted into American Girl Mode, laughing, hugging, talking at top speed in twin excited tones. Clicking arm-in-arm down the cobbled stone streets while Pisan university students began to assemble for the usual nocturnal weekend piazza festivities. Met some people, drank different things, coquetted with young people from all over the world, all the while catching up on the past year of her life and mine -- all that we had accomplished and realised and missed.
* Check out these adorable directions from the "English version" of the In Vino Veritas website: If you arrive to Pisa from the A1 highway, you can turn into the A11 highway direction Pisa, way out Pisa center and then you can find. Oh, the clarity. I give it an A for Effort.
We went to bed late and woke fairly early, went out to take coffee and croissants on a sunny cafe patio and talk at length about deeper matters, about doubts and fears and disappointments. Just one year ago, in March 2008, I was exactly where she is now. Study abroad in Italy still freshly impressed on her brain and heart, outstretched fingertips brushing the tip of an undergraduate degree in literature, teetering at an ambiguous edge. Unsure not only of what lies on the other side of College Graduation, but of where and when and how to jump. Can we, in fact, jump without falling? From behind my oversized Holly Golightly sunglasses I made some lame attempts at wise advice, offering my two centessimi on how unnecessary it is to be certain about anything right now, how this is the perfect time to sit and think and absorb. Doing comes later, when we are sure of ourselves. She nodded, sipped her coffee. Wore her customary pearl studs and Banana Republic cardigan. No makeup. A woman.
We talked also of the small things, of the a cappella group in which we initially met, of a class we had taken together some years ago. The sun moved in the sky, warming the air, and we changed into dresses before visiting the Baptistry (famous for its extraordinary interior acoustics) and eating a picnic lunch beside the Leaning Tower itself. Our hosts showed up at the end of lunch with a five-string guitar, which we played in turns, heedless of the other picnickers around us.
The sun moved again and we moved out of the tower's cool shadow. In the late afternoon we went shopping, walking. I won a game of Scarabeo (Italian Scrabble), to my - and everyone's - surprise. Extravagant homecooked dinner, birthday party at a friend's house, karaoke, 1am scooter rides around the city. I lightly held the ribs of a handsome blue-eyed Croatian boy whose name I never did manage to pronounce and looked over at Greer, passenger on another scooter. We both smiles like idiots, giggling at the absurdity and beauty of our situation. Crossing a stone bridge that's probably older than my own country! Moonlight shimmering on the river! Is that the wind whipping past my ears, or the sound of the motor? Or the beating of four young hearts?
Her train left at 7am the next morning, mine at 3. We shared a bench on her platform, talked about Colorado. Hugged. There is a small fruit tree in Pisa, growing from a squat square pot to about hip height, that is about seven or eight kumquats lighter than it was before my arrival. The Croatian boy invited me to join him for his end-of-the-summer journey home to his island, four hours to cross Italy by scooter and ten to cross the sea by ferry. Every time I come back to Torino, I am different.
And when I come back to California...?
Last weekend I took a train down to Pisa to meet up with a good college friend, Greer, near the end of her month-long senior project in Rome. We agreed on Pisa as our midpoint so neither of us had to go über out of her way to reach the other, and so she could test out this CouchSurfing thing. (CS is a free online network that allows travelers to stay in peoples' homes rather than hostels or hotels, "surfing" the "couches" offered by willing hosts, and has gained popularity in the past couple of years.) We found two beds in the apartment of five male graduate students located just five walking minutes from the Leaning Tower, and according to former guests' testimonies they had been fantastic hosts, so she and I had high hopes for the weekend. After ten months apart we were glad to simply spend some time together in Italy, checking out the small town with its Big Sight-- and it turned out to be everything we'd dreamed!
The boys were so kind and laid-back for the entirety of the weekend, beginning by meeting each of us at the train station. I arrived first, got acquainted with the apartment and its inhabitants, went out for wine and cold cuts at a great place called In Vino Veritas*, chitchatted in Italian about why I was in Italy, what they were all studying (biology, sociology, engineering), the clay models of mythical creatures that they make and paint and joked about someday trying to sell. Charming, good-natured people. Then we went back to the station to pick up Greer, and she and I defaulted into American Girl Mode, laughing, hugging, talking at top speed in twin excited tones. Clicking arm-in-arm down the cobbled stone streets while Pisan university students began to assemble for the usual nocturnal weekend piazza festivities. Met some people, drank different things, coquetted with young people from all over the world, all the while catching up on the past year of her life and mine -- all that we had accomplished and realised and missed.
* Check out these adorable directions from the "English version" of the In Vino Veritas website: If you arrive to Pisa from the A1 highway, you can turn into the A11 highway direction Pisa, way out Pisa center and then you can find. Oh, the clarity. I give it an A for Effort.
We went to bed late and woke fairly early, went out to take coffee and croissants on a sunny cafe patio and talk at length about deeper matters, about doubts and fears and disappointments. Just one year ago, in March 2008, I was exactly where she is now. Study abroad in Italy still freshly impressed on her brain and heart, outstretched fingertips brushing the tip of an undergraduate degree in literature, teetering at an ambiguous edge. Unsure not only of what lies on the other side of College Graduation, but of where and when and how to jump. Can we, in fact, jump without falling? From behind my oversized Holly Golightly sunglasses I made some lame attempts at wise advice, offering my two centessimi on how unnecessary it is to be certain about anything right now, how this is the perfect time to sit and think and absorb. Doing comes later, when we are sure of ourselves. She nodded, sipped her coffee. Wore her customary pearl studs and Banana Republic cardigan. No makeup. A woman.
We talked also of the small things, of the a cappella group in which we initially met, of a class we had taken together some years ago. The sun moved in the sky, warming the air, and we changed into dresses before visiting the Baptistry (famous for its extraordinary interior acoustics) and eating a picnic lunch beside the Leaning Tower itself. Our hosts showed up at the end of lunch with a five-string guitar, which we played in turns, heedless of the other picnickers around us.
The sun moved again and we moved out of the tower's cool shadow. In the late afternoon we went shopping, walking. I won a game of Scarabeo (Italian Scrabble), to my - and everyone's - surprise. Extravagant homecooked dinner, birthday party at a friend's house, karaoke, 1am scooter rides around the city. I lightly held the ribs of a handsome blue-eyed Croatian boy whose name I never did manage to pronounce and looked over at Greer, passenger on another scooter. We both smiles like idiots, giggling at the absurdity and beauty of our situation. Crossing a stone bridge that's probably older than my own country! Moonlight shimmering on the river! Is that the wind whipping past my ears, or the sound of the motor? Or the beating of four young hearts?
Her train left at 7am the next morning, mine at 3. We shared a bench on her platform, talked about Colorado. Hugged. There is a small fruit tree in Pisa, growing from a squat square pot to about hip height, that is about seven or eight kumquats lighter than it was before my arrival. The Croatian boy invited me to join him for his end-of-the-summer journey home to his island, four hours to cross Italy by scooter and ten to cross the sea by ferry. Every time I come back to Torino, I am different.
And when I come back to California...?
06 March 2009
In Which She Notices the Alarming Correlation Between Monopoly and Real Life
Someone stole my wallet from my purse on a busy tram yesterday afternoon, whilst I tried to keep my umbrella out of the nostrils of the woman in front of me, one blonde boy from falling out of the bus every time the doors opened, and the other from shoving his tennis racket into the crotch of an elderly signore seated behind him. Danged pickpocketers. It of course contained my ATM card and credit card and driver's license, two of which cannot be replaced internationally. So annoying! Not much cash, however, just a brand new 20 euro bill. In the post-thievery flurry of collect phone calls to monetary institutions (and simultaneous instant message chats with both of my parents), I realised that in just a few days this would become just another item in my ongoing column of expenses. Chance card: Wallet Stolen, Lose 20 euro. Pass Go next Monday, collect 100 euro. So weird how sometimes the things that were supposed to teach us lessons about Real Life, actually do prepare us for Real Life.
Today I bought slime from the joke shop/school supply store across the street from the boys' school, one "barrel" of "petroleum" (the slime is black) for each boy. When we were walking home with them the younger one said to me, "Mi sembra acqua ciccione!" Literally, "it seems to be like chubby water." That's adorable.
Today I bought slime from the joke shop/school supply store across the street from the boys' school, one "barrel" of "petroleum" (the slime is black) for each boy. When we were walking home with them the younger one said to me, "Mi sembra acqua ciccione!" Literally, "it seems to be like chubby water." That's adorable.
01 March 2009
In Which She Contemplates Other Birthdays
Excerpt from a letter to a friend.
How did you know that I, too, was just dreaming about another such camping trip [...] ? I would really love that. One option for evading the economic crisis = retreating into the woods to wait it out with cheap beer and good friends. Sounds like heaven.
Lately I've been marveling at the freedom of our age. It sounds like it's hard for you to feel it while at the mercy, so to speak, of your parents' generosity/charity (it is hard to differentiate, isn't it sometimes, when it comes to Them) but to be 23, unmarried, unburdened by children or elderly parents, not yet tied to a steady job yet in fresh and deserving possession of a bachelor's degree. You, whether or not you are fully aware of it, are your biggest priority right now, and that is, for all its daunting terror, delicious. May we find the courage to take full advantage of these sweet years! I know I sure did today, a sunny Saturday in Torino, and here's how:
stayed up until 2,30am on skype with --- to hash out the existential puzzles of this world, then woke up at 8,30am to ready my two little charges for their weekly swim lessons;
[once they had gone] ate yogurt and granola on the balcony in my pajamas, with Henry James' Turn of the Screw in one hand;
gave my host dad some professional English mother-tongue advice about his potential project titles, as he hopes to soon get a couple of grants to form an international research foundation;
met a good friend on the corner between our houses for a long stroll around town to run errands (visit this shoe store, that books store, all the things we postpone until Saturday), and ended up going into a stationary store with so many beautiful delicate handprinted things in the window, and getting a tour of the printing studio; drinking Corona straight from the bottle in a "piazza" (strip of greenish dog-poopy lawn in the midst of a parking lot), eating apples, and choosing songs for her sister's upcoming wedding reception; gawking at sexy men, even if they were with their girlfriends or, in some cases, boyfriends, and laughing in that really exclusive teenage-girlish was about something we both remembered that wasn't even actually that funny; parted ways so she could meet someone for a running date, and I went on alone--
ate lunch alone at an outside cafe, always accompanied by Henry James;
saw a marching band march by, followed by a rather sheepish-looking flag squad;
heard a classical street guitarist named Matteo play to an indifferent crowd, stopped to listen to and sketch him, then offered him a coffee which we took at a nearby cafe with his girlfriend, Francesca;
bought an incredibly cool burgundy long-sleeved shirt that converts into a sleeveless vest via zippers, and a Calvin & Hobbes book for my boys, who are just beginning to enjoy listening to English books read aloud;
walked and walked, and looked and looked, and thought, and thought: This is luxury. This is freedom."
Along with lofty concepts like Freedom and Youth, I have also been lately ruminating on Education, Identity, and Purpose. You know, in my spare time. Coincidentally, just yesterday someone whom I hold in high regard sent me a scholarly reading titled “The Disadvantages of An Elite Education” from which I proceeded to remove a few especially savory bits with all the attentive delicacy of taking a sleeping infant from the arms of another, and set them apart in a clean, dry corner of my brain to ripen, and deepen. To resonate. Yummy bits like "being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas” and, next of all, “thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them." The author gives his two cents on today's university system and how far it takes the individual from her true intellectual purpose, which should be to question the universe around her, to find and cultivate a vision that allows her to best give something back. This message isn't unlike that of the UC Berkeley article about which I recently posted, the one about the plight of the young girl in modern society. Both writings speak directly to me, it seems, supporting this itch I felt one year ago to take the road less traveled (thanks, Margo Watson, for Robert Frost) and go abroad to see some things, to think some things. Nine months after graduating from Colorado College and eight months after leaving the United States, I'm beginning to see that despite all my misgivings, it was the right thing to do.
"The ability to engage in introspection . . . is the essential precondition for living an intellectual life, and the essential precondition for introspection is solitude." Speaking of which I spent a hefty chunk of my birthday alone, this past Wednesday. Ash Wednesday, my brother reminded me, adding that it's my fault that Catholics have to feel so guilty this year. Thought about how different this birthday was from the one before it - 22, when I wore a pink tutu around campus just to wring the absolute most public attention from my special day. Before that came 21, when I shared strawberry wine with other study abroad students in a small pub in Florence, and before that was 20, the Day of Twenty Alcoholic Beverages... yeah... ahem. Even before that came 19, when three friends and I set off the smoke alarm in the freshman dorm making quesadillas, and 18, the 40 person scavenger hunt that so unfortunately ended in a minor car crash. Oh, birthdays.
I'm 23.
How did you know that I, too, was just dreaming about another such camping trip [...] ? I would really love that. One option for evading the economic crisis = retreating into the woods to wait it out with cheap beer and good friends. Sounds like heaven.
Lately I've been marveling at the freedom of our age. It sounds like it's hard for you to feel it while at the mercy, so to speak, of your parents' generosity/charity (it is hard to differentiate, isn't it sometimes, when it comes to Them) but to be 23, unmarried, unburdened by children or elderly parents, not yet tied to a steady job yet in fresh and deserving possession of a bachelor's degree. You, whether or not you are fully aware of it, are your biggest priority right now, and that is, for all its daunting terror, delicious. May we find the courage to take full advantage of these sweet years! I know I sure did today, a sunny Saturday in Torino, and here's how:
stayed up until 2,30am on skype with --- to hash out the existential puzzles of this world, then woke up at 8,30am to ready my two little charges for their weekly swim lessons;
[once they had gone] ate yogurt and granola on the balcony in my pajamas, with Henry James' Turn of the Screw in one hand;
gave my host dad some professional English mother-tongue advice about his potential project titles, as he hopes to soon get a couple of grants to form an international research foundation;
met a good friend on the corner between our houses for a long stroll around town to run errands (visit this shoe store, that books store, all the things we postpone until Saturday), and ended up going into a stationary store with so many beautiful delicate handprinted things in the window, and getting a tour of the printing studio; drinking Corona straight from the bottle in a "piazza" (strip of greenish dog-poopy lawn in the midst of a parking lot), eating apples, and choosing songs for her sister's upcoming wedding reception; gawking at sexy men, even if they were with their girlfriends or, in some cases, boyfriends, and laughing in that really exclusive teenage-girlish was about something we both remembered that wasn't even actually that funny; parted ways so she could meet someone for a running date, and I went on alone--
ate lunch alone at an outside cafe, always accompanied by Henry James;
saw a marching band march by, followed by a rather sheepish-looking flag squad;
heard a classical street guitarist named Matteo play to an indifferent crowd, stopped to listen to and sketch him, then offered him a coffee which we took at a nearby cafe with his girlfriend, Francesca;
bought an incredibly cool burgundy long-sleeved shirt that converts into a sleeveless vest via zippers, and a Calvin & Hobbes book for my boys, who are just beginning to enjoy listening to English books read aloud;
walked and walked, and looked and looked, and thought, and thought: This is luxury. This is freedom."
Along with lofty concepts like Freedom and Youth, I have also been lately ruminating on Education, Identity, and Purpose. You know, in my spare time. Coincidentally, just yesterday someone whom I hold in high regard sent me a scholarly reading titled “The Disadvantages of An Elite Education” from which I proceeded to remove a few especially savory bits with all the attentive delicacy of taking a sleeping infant from the arms of another, and set them apart in a clean, dry corner of my brain to ripen, and deepen. To resonate. Yummy bits like "being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas” and, next of all, “thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them." The author gives his two cents on today's university system and how far it takes the individual from her true intellectual purpose, which should be to question the universe around her, to find and cultivate a vision that allows her to best give something back. This message isn't unlike that of the UC Berkeley article about which I recently posted, the one about the plight of the young girl in modern society. Both writings speak directly to me, it seems, supporting this itch I felt one year ago to take the road less traveled (thanks, Margo Watson, for Robert Frost) and go abroad to see some things, to think some things. Nine months after graduating from Colorado College and eight months after leaving the United States, I'm beginning to see that despite all my misgivings, it was the right thing to do.
"The ability to engage in introspection . . . is the essential precondition for living an intellectual life, and the essential precondition for introspection is solitude." Speaking of which I spent a hefty chunk of my birthday alone, this past Wednesday. Ash Wednesday, my brother reminded me, adding that it's my fault that Catholics have to feel so guilty this year. Thought about how different this birthday was from the one before it - 22, when I wore a pink tutu around campus just to wring the absolute most public attention from my special day. Before that came 21, when I shared strawberry wine with other study abroad students in a small pub in Florence, and before that was 20, the Day of Twenty Alcoholic Beverages... yeah... ahem. Even before that came 19, when three friends and I set off the smoke alarm in the freshman dorm making quesadillas, and 18, the 40 person scavenger hunt that so unfortunately ended in a minor car crash. Oh, birthdays.
I'm 23.
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