An abnormally mentally active Tuesday

This afternoon I had the most intellectually and spiritually stimulating experience I've had in a long time. 

It was our first literature class.  I was expecting to dislike it, actually.  This class is starting a week after all of our other ones, and so the professor sent us reading to do before today.  This reading was very dry, despite being about topics that in other contexts are quite interesting, and the professor's syllabus, which we also received in advance, made her seem very uptight.

This was not the case.  Professoressa Francesca Serra has such an interesting presence in front of a classroom.  She's matter of fact, but not rude or presumptuous.  She asks the right questions- the kind that force you to think even if she asked them in a moment when you were zoning out.  Today was an introduction, and a refresher.  She explained the goals of the course, what she wanted us to gain from it, and then we reviewed what we learned last semester with Alfonso- Italian literature from the 1200s up until and including the Renaissance.  

This seems simple.  In theory, it is.  It's a conversation.  A discussion.  Nothing more.  Right?

WRONG.

Before I go forward, allow me to go backwards.  There were moments last semester in Alfonso's classes where I felt way more connected to the material related to my Italian major than I ever did to government major.  The discussions in both Italian and government classes are, of course, intellectual in nature.  But the ideas, thoughts and works we discussed with Alfonso made me feel like I was using my brain for its intended purpose- to explore, and to question, and to relate everything to everything else!  Discussions in government classes made me feel...practical.  More relevant to a potential future income rather than satisfaction with my intellectual state of being.  Although in class I thought and felt these things, outside of class I never pondered it.  I never let myself ponder it.  Until now.

Since arriving in Italy, the feelings I got from discussions in Alfonso's classroom have been more and more present in my life outside of academics.  People here, and I mean regular people, are so much more in tune with grand topics of conversation.  They'll talk to you about philosophy- whether it be a discussion on specific philosophers and their works or a conversation about their outlook on life, love, God, etc.  Italians will talk to you about literature.  My host dad, who buys and sells copy machines for a living, can recite full cantos from La Divina Commedia, beautifully, from memory.  They will talk to you about history.  And when they do, they won't just list dates and names and places.  They will talk to you about mentalities, identities, thoughts and feelings and beliefs that made those dates, names and places appear in the history books.  Americans don't do this, at least not outside college campuses and perhaps the private lives of college professors.  Americans don't do this because it's too time consuming.  It is easier to go faster by simply memorizing dates, names, facts.  But, as with their espresso, Italians don't rush.  

A couple of days or so ago I mentioned to Ellen that I was considering making my government major just a minor, and focusing on Italian Studies and electives.  I am beginning to worry that there are important classes I haven't taken, important things I haven't explored, and that I won't get the chance to senior year with my double major.  But I told Ellen that I still had thinking to do.  Because I don't all of a sudden dislike politics.  I've always been interested in politics.  I enjoy learning about and discussing political issues.  But it's not my only interest. In high school I sang, I performed on stage and in choral groups, I wrote.  Since coming to Smith, I've abandoned these things.  I don't sing outside of my room (much to the dismay of my neighbors), I don't act, and of the few poems I have written since my freshman year, most are impeccably bad.  The extent of my creativity at Smith has been figuring out new chasers to mask the taste of horribly cheap vodka.

That's a joke, Mom and Dad.  (Though I have come up with some successful combinations).

So, getting back to today.  I don't think it is a coincidence that for the thirty minutes or so before this lecture I was standing in front of the refrigerator at the Smith center.  This refrigerator is covered in magnets.  These magnets have words written on them.  I was writing refrigerator poems.  Well, I wrote one poem, and then a series of unrelated but profound sentences.  (Profound for a refrigerator, anyway).  One of the other girls made a comment about how into the magnets I was.  So I explained my fascination.  Words, I said, are opportunities.  But, seeing as how there are a finite number of words on this refrigerator, there is a limit to my possibilities.  I paused, then shouted "THERE ARE SO MANY METAPHORS ON THIS REFRIGERATOR!".  

I felt very misunderstood.   

You can imagine, then, as I sat in our literature class today listening to Professoressa Serra tell us how the figures we will study this semester were more often than not more than just writers, that I felt very understood.  Did you know that Dante wasn't just a poet?  He was involved in politics, and very learned in astronomy.  Michelangelo wrote poetry, Machiavelli wrote plays!  Historically, Italian intellectuals have not limited themselves to one subject area or specialty.  They were intellectual in the way that I have long struggled to master: they studied everything.  To them, everything was connected, and so one had to be well rounded.  

I have not, sadly, found a way to be creative or well rounded within the context of my government major.  In government classes at Smith, I've learned interesting things.  I'm sitting here trying to come up with a specific example for you, but the fact that nothing is coming to mind probably says something in and of itself. The point is, there hasn't really ever been anything that I left class talking about and lingering on excitedly.  But with Alfonso, and here in Italy, I do that all the time.  For example, the other day in our orientation language class, Professoressa Merli was reviewing the remote past with us.  In Italian, unlike in English, there are multiple was to say things in the past tense.  There is the passato prossimo, the simple and commonly used tense, and the passato remoto, which you'll see in history books and such to talk about things that happened, well, in remote past.  We then learned, however, that in certain regions of the country, the remote past is used much more frequently.  In certain parts of southern Italy, it wouldn't be strange to hear Andai al mercato (remote past of "I went to the market"), even if the person talking went to the market a week ago.  Similarly, you can use the passato prossimo to talk about something that happened a long time ago if you still feel a close connection to it.  Or, if it happened yesterday but you didn't think twice of it, or perhaps you feel very negatively towards it and thus want to figuratively distance yourself from it, you can use the passato remoto.  Both instances would be 100% grammatically correct.  Do you realize what this means?  This means that Italian gives the speaker or writer the opportunity to imply their feelings about whatever it is he or she is discussing via the grammatical choice they make.  There is no need to explicitly state those feelings.  DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW PHENOMENAL A LINGUISTIC OPPORTUNITY THIS IS?   

No gov class ever has made me want to shout, or type in all caps, a concept or fact I learned.      

And so, here I am now, after all of what I just explained to you, sitting at my computer typing this out more for myself, than for you.  No offense, but I'm having an intellectual crisis here, so forgive me for needing to organize my thoughts on paper.  (Cyber paper, if you will). 

I'm very torn.  That's what it boils down to.  I can either change my course of study from an Italian Studies and Government double major to an Italian Studies major with a Government minor, or I can keep things the way they are.  The former, in addition to allowing me to concentrate on the things- and professors- that make me feel mentally necessary, will allow me to do the intellectual exploration that I have, perhaps unknowingly, denied myself thus far.  It's something that I feel is important to do as a person with a brain that works the way mine does.  The latter, on the other hand, provides me with a better looking resume, more chances for future employment, and a fairly solid understanding of an individual field of study.  The wider array of job opportunities based on my gov major includes a lot of exciting, rewarding things, with more real world practicality, involving today's people, not ones that died hundreds of years ago.  I'm also really good at it.  Just ask my transcript.  Thus, I am torn between the intellectually exciting choice, one that keeps me thinking and feeling connected to something bigger than myself, and the practical choice, the one that has a greater chance of me having regular meals in my future.  It's a dilemma that is not unique to me.  How many people do you know or know of that stay in jobs they get no emotional or mental satisfaction from because of the monetary reward?  TOO MANY PEOPLE. 

This issue, my issue, will not be resolved when I go to sleep tonight.  It will not be resolved magically when I wake up tomorrow.  Luckily, I have plenty of time here in Florence to think about it.  So many things related to this place have caused this crisis, so it's rather fitting.  (Or ironic...?)  Luckily, I have a feeling that my professors this semester will have new ways to stimulate my mind and get it to a place where I can make the right decision.  

What's coming to my mind right now is a tiny piece of Canto I from Dante's Inferno:

Ahi quanto a dir qual era e` cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura!

These are the fourth, fifth and sixth lines of the entire work.  The first three say that half way through life's journey (so mid-age), Dante finds himself in the middle of a "selva oscura", or a dark forest, and it was hard to see the way forward.  The lines that I've provided say, in a very simple translation, that it is hard to think of how dark and foreign and scary that forest was, that just thinking of it or talking about it brings back the fear he felt when it was happening.  What made me think of this passage was the word paura, which means fear.  I am fearful of the intellectual journey I have to take, because I am afraid of making the wrong choice.  I've been here before.  I've thought these things before.  And every time I think about them it freaks me out.  But this time, realizing how fast time has flown- I'm more than halfway done with college and I've already been in Italy over a month- this time I actually need to come to a conclusion.  And that's frightening.   

Okay, maybe the passage is a bit of a stretch.  It honestly is what popped into my head, though, so it has to be relevant somehow.  If I've learned anything from Alfonso Procaccini, it's that nothing is too big of a stretch.  Everything is related.   

Clearly, I have a lot of thinking to do.  This is an intellectual crisis I'm having.  Crises are not easily resolved.  So after I edit this post a bit, and send it off into cyber space, I'm going to lay down and think.  I will probably become frustrated, I might cry, and I will definitely eat chocolate.  

If you've made it this far, I appreciate the time you took to get here.  I appreciate that you started reading at all, because knowing you took the time to read what I took the time to write makes me feel a lot less alone.