In Which The Heat Begins

Springtime is fast melting into summertime in the city, and high noon birdsong from rooftops makes me sweat. Everything is too bright and too dry. I'm drinking water straight from the plastic liter bottle, a rude habit we try to discourage in the boys, and trying to justify my lethargic immobility with my previous sleepless night.

Last Wednesday night, two friends and I went out to a french chanson concert in a distant bar, taking a combination of bus and metro to reach what turned out to be dim humid locale without available seating. Nonetheless we enjoyed the complimentary drinks included in the cover fee, enjoyed some live music. Upon exiting the venue, we just missed our bus home. Drat! Poor Balbina had just had a cast taken off her ankle earlier that afternoon, after several long weeks of surgery recovery, but limped along like a real trooper. We talked of the awkward beauty of adolescent female bodies - lithe, sensuous, misunderstood - and about our dream vacations.

A strange young Italian guy happened upon our midnight ramble when we neared a hot taxi spot at Porta Susa train station, and hovered near us as we walked past a busy pub. We three girls, all mascara and sandals, moved instinctively closer to one another against this uninvited escort, unsure of whether to increase or decrease our speed. I didn't even realise he'd snatched her purse until he was halfway down the block and turning the corner, and I suddenly understood the word "crestfallen" when I knew neither of us could catch him. Muscular blurs raced past on both sides; some men from the bar had seen the whole thing and chased the youth for blocks. They returned, panting and triunphant, gold and white clutch in hand! Cell phone, check. Apartment keys, check. Ten euros, check. Chapstick, check. They'd found him crouched in a dumpster, they said, and Balbina's nostrils flared indignantly when she they reported that no, no one had punched him. If I didn't have this bum ankle, I woulda chased him down and kicked his ass! Carabinieri, or civil police officers, arrived around 1,30am, and took her info. The druggie youth was soon caught by another pair of police officers when he tried to snatch another woman's purse just a couple of blocks away, and huddled dazedly some yards away from us in the cop car as the first two officers took witness reports in the most ridiculous, roundabout (read: typically Italian) manner. "Can you describe what he looked like? What he was wearing," the young cop asked while the old cop ogled me and Lindsay lecherously. "He's right over there!," I wanted to yell, wanted to use both hands to indicate the culprit in the dark car. "WTF are we still doing here??" Minutes passed as they questioned the "witnesses" one by one. The muscular witnesses bought the pretty witnesses a round of beers. The pretty ones bought everyone a plate of french fries. We didn't get home until almost 4 in the morning. Hence the aforementioned sleepless night.

On a completely different note, someone recently turned me onto an interview with author and educator Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot in which she addresses the search for meaning and fulfillment in what she calls "the third chapter," the years between 50 and 75 that, in this day and age, no longer mean retirement or slowing down but rather another kind of identity crisis.

All of us [individuals in the third chapter] at this point, to some degree, are on a search for meaningfulness, for purposefulness. And we want to find what this next 25 years, this penultimate chapter of our life, is going to be about. And we're ready for something new. For a new experience. For a new adventure. And I think all of us, to some degree, experience some burnout. Burnout is not about working too hard. Or working too diligently or being over committed. Burnout is about boredom. And so, I think in some ways this is about sort of moving beyond the boredom to compose, to invent and reinvent the path that we're on.

Check it out at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05082009/watch2.html

Move past the boredom and compose... your life!

Cartolina

Hey, y'all!

I know, it's been awhile. Just wanted to write a brief postcard to let you know that no news is good news: there's too much to do, too much to see, for me to sit down to report it all, much less reflect. I have seven more weeks here with the family in Turin before I take off for my month of travel in July. First week I'll fly to Paris to meet up with a good college friend and we'll go together to Taize. After that I'm coming back to Turin just long enough to meet another friend for a two-day long voyage to Marrakech, Morocco, via Milan and Madrid. (The recurring Ms are completely unintentional, an amusing coincidence.) We'll stay in Morocco for seven days and six nights, then fly back to Milan together on July 20th. I'll bum around Italy some more until a good friend gets married on July 26th, then on the 28th I leave Italy for Denver. Denver, Colorado Springs, and a road trip back to the Bay Area. I'll probably be in my own bed sometime around August 4th.

I've been up to the usual shenanigans of late, with some old characters and some new. There are two newbie au pairs on the scene, the first being a tall bearded creative writing major from Ohio who drinks wine like water and speaks English to his Italian family with a curious accent, as though they are more likely to understand an English that sounds somewhat like their native tongue. Seeing how unusual a male nanny is, he coined a new term for himself in celebration: a Manny. The second newcomer is a hip hapa Hawaiian who wears flat sneakers with black tights and thick eyeliner under thick glasses. After a year of odd jobbing in Korea, she nannied in Germany for several months before coming to Turin. Restless, easily distracted. "I'm running away," she says matter-of-factly, lifting the tiny espresso cup from its tiny saucer. "From just, you know, everything."

I just started to read Jack Kerouac's "On The Road," whose rugged, ragged prose eggs me to stay up later, write more furiously, and generally care a lot less about anything than I usually do. Can someone please explain to me the difference between careless and carefree?

Am feeling self-conscious about writing a blog, feel that to spit out so much unedited reflection is somewhat pompous of me. I hope someone out there (besides you, Mom, because I know) is getting something from this.

Anyway, will be back in the Bay soon enough, with thirteen months of European living behind me. Forward all mail to Oakland.

Riding Home At 3 a.m.

After working as an au pair for one week short of eleven months, I was reprimanded for the first time yesterday evening after my youngest charge wiggled out of sight and crossed a busy six-lane street by himself. His parents, home early from work, watched the whole thing from the balcony and called my mobile, demanding to know where I was. It was all resolved in the end, but the best way to finish this particularly traumatic Wednesday was to go out for wine with three other au pairs at a nearby jazz bar. Each had a nanny tale worse than the one before, and one glass of red wine gradually became four bottles. For the better part of four hours we bitched and moaned about our jobs as one only can when surrounded by people who completely, absolutely sympathise, saying all the things we can't say to people back in the States because they always trump us with the smug "But you're in Italy!" card; and all the things we can't say to people we've met here because they're either friends or co-workers of our employers, or held at emotional arm's length by the language barrier.

The more we drank, the more American (loud) we became, and the creepers at the counter absolutely loved it! Corner table. Saucy redhead from Virginia, blue-eyed brunette from Indiana, a quirky southern California blonde, and yours truly. The bartenders closed the doors and pulled down the exterior storefront. "Are you closed?," I ask in Italian. "For you, no. For everyone else, yes," they smile. I go behind the bar to choose the next song. My friend is getting Arabic lessons from an older Moroccan guy for our upcoming trip in July. Another girl is dancing with a flaming homosexual in silver tank top, wine glasses in hand; the last is sketching on a paper placemat and talking with the computer programmer from Milan who claims to have lived in Miami for some months and that's why he knows to speak English so much well. I rode my bicycle home at 3 a.m., and managed to carry it downstairs into the cellar without falling on my face. Almost a year in Europe, and you think my alcohol tolerance would have risen. It hasn't.

Slept four hours before waking to ready the children for school (no longer Bad Nanny, previous day's transgression had been forgotten), and went back to bed until 11 a.m. No hangover! But no appetite, either. Found a pretty sweet matchbox in my pocket, which I vaguely remember having admired when me and old Moroccan guy shared a cigarette. The cute short bartender with the fauxhawk drew a picture in my journal - he calls me San Francisco Girl - next to which the tall one with a cousin named Caesar, wrote, Anticamente ricordo di avere pensato che il mondo potesse comprendersi tutto in un solo momento e vivevo contento di averlo compreso. Ultimamente piuttosto considero tutta la vita un gelato che viene leccato da tutte le lingue di un mondo schifato ma ancora goloso. A long time ago I remember having thought that the world could be understood all in one moment, and I lived content with having understood that. Lately, though, I consider this life to be an ice cream being licked by all the tongues in a disgusted, yet gluttonous, world.

Eight more weeks. Lick the gelato.