This is where I want to be.

I don't want to say I've found myself, or that I've figured out what path to walk, because saying that would be, well, cheesy, no matter how true it is.  Luckily I find myself in a place where cheese is its own food group.  A place where cheese is respected, even coveted.  

Wandering around Naples alone for six weeks provided me with a number of opportunities that I expected and planned for.  I saw the sights and museums, I ate good food, I spent time with my uncles.  But what I hadn't planned for were the benefits of alone time.  

Sometimes you find yourself sitting under a tree at the Villa Comunale, and you're alone and you can see the Mediterranean and everything is simple and nothing is bad and you start thinking about how to keep that simplicity forever.  

A year ago I wasn't such a big fan of or advocate for simplicity.  Because there was never really room for it.  New York doesn't have room for it, Smith doesn't permit it, and perhaps I never really knew what it was.  The Italians, however, they get it.

Americans live to work.  Italians work to live.  Americans choose a job or a career, and then build a life around that.  Italians choose a life, or rather a lifestyle, a mentality, and their jobs and careers are a part of that.  This became clear to me last weekend.  I went with an old friend of my dad's to Santa Maria di Castellabate, where he has a summer home.  He goes on the weekends before going in ferie, and when he does get his contractually guaranteed extended vacation he stays longer.  At their beach club, I met a lot of his friends and relatives.  They're all there for most of the summer.  Vacation here is not a reward or a rarity. It is a priority.  An expectation.

For Americans that's a hard concept to grasp.  Because America is work.  America prioritizes activity, efficiency.  But there's a reason Italians live longer lives.

I don't want to come home and choose a job- that given my interests would necessitate graduate school which would necessitate passing too many hours of my youth alone- and then build a life around that job.  I want to choose  a life.  I want to choose a mentality.  And pay the bills with whatever job works with what I want.

This isn't the only thing that has been going through my mind, though, since arriving in Naples.  

I've realized that I need to be somewhere old.  Perhaps this is too critical, too mean, but America has no real culture, and it's because it has a very short history.  What's worse is that we tend to reserve said culture for a very small, intellectual elite.  It's not nearly as accessible as it is here.  And that's because we don't walk past ruins on our way home.  It's because we don't teach philosophy and art history in our high schools.  Because we never experienced the Renaissance.  It's so hard to describe, but there's something to be said for living in a place older than the US.  You learn so much more about history, about how interconnected the rest of the world has been for, well, ever.  One of the things I am most grateful for this year is having had the opportunity to study history from a non-American point of view.  America is a very audacious and at times rather arrogant little child, and it would do her well to open a history book and learn a few things about the rest of the world.    

I've also realized that I have a need- not a wish or desire or fancy- but a spiritual and intellectual and otherwise difficult to describe need- to be near my roots.  Throughout this experience, but especially the last two or three months, I've been more in touch with myself than ever before.  I know myself better.  At the risk of being cheesy again, coming here and spending so much time near my roots, near where I come from, has helped me to not feel lost.  Naples, the history and culture, language and people, have affected me greatly.  I feel an attachment to this place and the things and people in it, a longing for them and a desire to learn everything there is to learn about them.  People here always have a reason to laugh.  They are clever and resourceful, loving and funny, wise and aware.  There is nobody else like them.  They carry their history on their shoulders and their hearts on their sleeves.

It's been helpful for me to know that I'm a part of something much bigger.  Because the thing about being Neapolitan is that you're also, possibly and probably, Greek and Turkish and Moroccan and French and Spanish and perhaps a number of other things.  Being Neapolitan means, automatically, that you are Mediterranean, and that's really special.  But I don't think I'd have ever made that connection at home.  Because it's not taught.  America might not practice an isolationist foreign policy anymore, but it sure has an isolationist public education system.

This is where I want to be.  A place with a past, with age.  A place with ruins.  A place that has contributed much, and continues to do so.

This is where I want to be.  A place with culture.  Where Dante is recited at the dinner table by a man who sells copy machines.  

This is where I want to be.  Where people work to live.  Where people buy bread in the morning for later that evening- not for later that week.  Where there are palm trees.

This is where I want to be.  Near the sea.  Where history meets the present.  Where the fish is fresh.

This is where I want to be.  Where everyone is a philosopher.  Where carpe diem is not just a phrase screen printed on to t-shirts.  Where the food is good and life is lived for living.

I want to come back here.  (After graduation, of course.  Don't worry).  Teach English.  Write.  I am choosing a lifestyle.  A mentality.  I am prioritizing feelings and the quality of sleep I get every night.  I am prioritizing simplicity and worldliness.  Words and thoughts.  Books.  Teaching.  Experiences.  Not hours or dollars.  Not grades.  Why should my life not be a poem?     

It's a little odd being so aware of myself.  Mostly because I never really have been.  It's a little scary realizing and accepting that the girl- woman- who arrives at JFK on July 29 is not the same one who left last September.  It's scary because I don't know how people will take it- if they'll believe it.  But I can honestly say now, after almost eleven months of experiencing and growing and reflecting and praying, that I am my favorite version of myself.  I've never liked myself better.  I've never been better.  I've never slept so well at night.

So I have a lot to figure out- logistically speaking.  But I'm not worried.  I'm not losing any sleep over it.  I'm writing poems and eating pizza.      

          

San Gregorio Armeno

A few days ago I spent the day at my uncle's store, which is located on Via San Gregorio Armeno (mentioned back in September here: http://emiliadoesflorence.blogspot.it/2012/09/una-giornata-splendida.html ).  I figured I'd lend a hand, maybe speak some English with tourists, but most of all I was looking forward to observing.  

Zio Daniele's store is more than just a workplace.  It's a gathering place.  All day long various friends and family members, neighbors and acquaintances, stop by per fare due chiacchiere, which means to chat.  Some had to pass by there anyway, others simply had nothing better to do.  These moments, although casual in nature and not planned in advanced, are completely expected.  Certain faces are expected, and they are welcomed.  They have inside jokes to make, and gossip to share.  Stories to tell and messages to deliver.

What I noticed most about these conversations is the prominence of the dialect.  Neapolitan, although similar to Italian in some ways, is its own language- I, along with Italians from other parts of Italy, understand very little of it- and the day at my uncle's store was the first day since September where I didn't understand the majority of the conversations I listened to.  Florence has a dialect as well, but it's much closer to Italian (Italian was actually based on Florentine).  I never once overheard a conversation in Florence, whether it be on the street or in a store or restaurant, that I couldn't follow because it strayed so far from Italian.  Additionally, I noticed that in Florence there are a lot of negative connotations associated with the dialect (and with those who speak it).  In Naples it's different.  I'm constantly asking for explanations and translations.  A lot of stores sell things with traditional Neapolitan sayings and proverbs.  I even have a Neapolitan-Italian dictionary, and book of Neapolitan grammar.   

I think it has to do with identity.  More specifically, it has to do with expressing identity.  Speaking Neapolitan for many people may not be a conscious choice- it's the language they grew up with.  A desire or need to express their Neapolitan identity may not be on their minds, but a person who wasn't proud of or who didn't like said identity would speak Italian- and that's what makes the difference.  Two of the books I've read so far this summer mention this idea.  Both books are written by authors who struggle with their napoletanita' - it's not an identity or an association they like or are proud of, and in a way they look down on the dialect and those who speak it.  In Naples, therefore, language is a choice, even if that choice isn't made consciously.  Neapolitan speakers don't necessarily wake up and say "I'm going to speak Neapolitan because I'm comfortable with that part of my identity and want to express it", but the result is the same.  Their identity is expressed via their language.       

My favorite part of the day was getting a better understanding of il presepe.  I had never gotten to really see my uncle work and create before, and it was impressive to see not just what he can create with his own hands,  but also the kind of thought that goes into deciding what pieces to create and sell.  They make their decisions based on demand, of course, but also on tradition.  Il presepe dates back to the 1600s (if not earlier), and the people who make them are very aware of their historical significance.  My uncle, and the other artisans like him on the same street, all at once are artists and businessmen, historians and time keepers.  They take the old and make a place for it in today's world.  

I had never realized it before, but il presepe is an incredibly accessible art form.  It gives anyone who dedicates the time the chance to be a poet, an artist.  A lot of planning goes into il presepe- what size, what kind of scenes and people and images.  So much thought goes into the choices made, and each choice is the representation of a feeling or opinion or idea.  Each choice is a symbol of something greater.  At one point, a man came into the store looking for a small chair.  He had two pieces already- a seated woman and a table, and wanted a chair to accompany them.  We had a conversation about what kind of chair it should be, but first it was necessary to decide what kind of table it was.  Perhaps the woman was selling things, or perhaps it was a dinner table.  When the client picked a chair, he put the seated woman on one side of the table and the empty chair across from her.  We then had a conversation about why the chair was empty.  Forse aspetta qualcuno, perhaps she is waiting for someone.  Who is she waiting for?  Why is she waiting?     

Given its centuries long history, il presepe has become  an important part of people's lives.  It's a standard decoration in a Neapolitan home.  I think when a population has centuries of history and traditions (you know, unlike America), even the simplest most modest people prioritize art.  All of the conversations that took place that day, like the one about the empty chair, are conversations that I couldn't imagine having with people at home, at least not outside of a college campus.  At home we reserve this kind of thinking for such a small portion of the population, and that's a real shame.        

The Town Pool

When I was a kid, my mom, like many other moms around the country, took my sisters and I to the town pool.  The town pool provided an easy and enjoyable way to celebrate summer- by providing a place to go, to socialize, to cool off.  My mother always packed lunch, though my sisters and I inevitably always asked if we could buy fries or ice cream or something from the snack bar- just for the sake of buying something from the snack bar.  We played with other kids, ran around, swam in that water that must have God only knows how much chlorine to keep it swimable.  That was, is, our culture.  We were in a controlled environment, under the watchful eyes of parents and lifeguards, surrounded by people we knew or at least knew of.  At the time, that pool seemed huge.  It seemed like it took forever to swim through all of it (though to be fair I wasn't that strong of a swimmer).  Even just sitting on a lounge chair looking out at it, all the different depths and all the people it held.  At the time, that pool seemed huge.

After a few years, my parents decided to build a pool  of our own, a much smaller one of course, in the back yard.  Maybe I was ten or eleven.  I haven't been to the town pool since.  In my mind, therefore, that pool has always been as huge as my child's eyes perceived it.

Today, years later, as I am about to enter that nether region between childhood and adulthood that is senior year of college, I realized how wrong I was.  The pool at the Syosset-Woodbury park, in the grand scheme of things, is small.  Really, really small, and what made me realize it was the Mediterranean Sea.

I was walking along the lungomare today, near where all the fancy hotels are.  I stopped for a moment to look out the view,  like always.  It never gets any less beautiful or any less moving.  Not far from the shore, which is actually just a long row of boulders, gli scogli in Italian, there was a group of boys, maybe six or seven of them, sitting in two rowboats.  They must have been twelve or thirteen years old, tops.  At one point as I was watching, they all jumped into the water.  The swam around for a while, splashed and dunked one another, and a few minutes later they climbed back in.  As I looked around, I noticed other people swimming, too.  Adults, with swim caps and goggles, doing laps.  There were also people spread out along the rocks: some people alone with fishing rods, some couples, and another group of boys.  They were taking in the sun, the heat, the water.  And all of a sudden, as I was watching these children swim in bay, I realized that the unofficial town pool in Naples is the Mediterranean itself.      

The concept is somewhat similar.  The school year has ended, temperatures are rising, the sun is out, and people of all ages are looking to enjoy these circumstances.  

There are, obviously,  a lot of differences.  

Although I saw both adults and children today, I didn't see them together.  These kids were out in the water on that boat with just each other.  Who knows whether it belongs to one of their parents, or who brought them out there, or the answers to any other such similar question.  And yet what they were doing never once struck me as unsafe.  It didn't really strike me as anything, really, other than enjoyable.  It just seemed normal, that's because it is, and it probably has been for as long as people have been living here (so, forever, essentially).   

Think back to your town pool, if you ever went to one, or the lake at your sleep away camp or whatever the equivalent is for you.  Now imagine that body of water being able to connect you to literally anywhere else in the world.  Try to imagine the place where you spent your summers as a child being the unofficial capital of an entire region of the world, a place that for thousands of years has been a center of cultural, religious, and linguistic exchange.  A place that has experienced the glory of empire, the prestige of culture, and suffered the hardships of loss, war, exploitation and crime.  Over and over again, back and forth, for centuries.

Kids in Naples, kids all over southern Italy, and in Greece and Israel and Syria, and in Morocco and Egypt, grow up swimming, playing and splashing in the waters that gave birth to culture.  They grow up carrying that history, breathing it and seeing it.  Continuing it.  

Kids in the States grow up swimming at the Syosset-Woodbury pool.  

  

The art of "Straight Up Chilling" has long been practiced by Neapolitans.

.  
I guess in a way Vesuvius is the lifeguard.  He's the only one guaranteed to be watching.  He's always there.  Though lifeguard isn't the right word.  Because the thing could blow at anytime.  

Life is full of morbid metaphors when you live near a volcano.  Morbid metaphors and high insurance rates.    
        

Nothing to do with anything but everything to do with everything.

There are those days where all of a sudden it’s 7 pm. You’ve lost track of time because you spent the majority of your day reading a really sad book that is also a little boring at times and so the breaks you take between chapters are a lot longer than they seem, or than you wanted them to be.  You feel pretty uncomfortable.  Not just because a character died in war and his family has no money and his sister is being forced to marry a man she doesn’t love or the whole town is all up in their business all the time, but also because you didn’t shower this morning.  It was a conscious choice at the time- which was fine given that you knew you were just going to read all day- but by 7 pm you have to remind yourself that you made a choice not to shower, and that you didn’t just forget.  Because there are days where you do just forget to shower.  Or forget to eat or flush the toilet or feed the fish or whatever other thing that is normally, well, normal.  You spend a lot of time contemplating some really sad things- like how small you are in the grand scheme of the whole universe, and how all you’ve contributed today is a decreased consumption of water- at the sake of your hygiene.  You have lots of great ideas though, and in your head you have these really beautiful, articulate and important ways of writing and expressing them but 99% of the time they just stay in your head and never get written down, because the couch is too comfortable or because you’re too tired or because you’re just an intellectual jerk.  Or sometimes you’re afraid of where they’ll take you if you start getting them out of your head.  Or all of those things.  Or none.  It depends on the day, on the instance.  It’s never the same.    

You’re so smart.  And you know that not only because you’ve always gotten good grades or because people have always told you that, though those things help, but you know it because you know that you’re thinking things so many people never contemplate.  You think about your place in the world, your place in the lives of your friends and family and enemies and acquaintances, you think about what you learn in school outside of school, you always have.  You apply it.  YOU are the real life example of the smartass who asked “When am I going to use this in real life?”.  THIS IS REAL LIFE.  USING YOUR BRAIN IS REAL LIFE. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO IT, LIKE, ALL THE TIME. FOREVER.  And you hope so badly that the aforementioned smartass kid is no longer a smartass, and that he learned something at some point, and started using his brain in the way it was intended to be used.  Hopefully he’ll have realized that they don’t teach you history to bore you, but they teach it so that you’ll  be prepared for when it repeats itself, all of a sudden becoming painfully relevant to your present.   The aforementioned smartass will realize that they make you read Romeo and Juliet because one day you’ll fall in love; they make you read The Scarlet Letter because you need to learn what it means to be societally exiled, either so you yourself, should you find yourself there, know how to deal with it, or so that you can recognize the injustice when it happens to someone else.  They make you read books where people die because as you get older a lot of people who have always been in your life are going to die, in a number of ways.  They make you read books about war because those aren’t going away any time soon.  And then they make you read Brighton Beach Memoirs or A Midsummer Night’s Dream or something else that’s funny because it’s necessary to learn the importance of laughter, especially with all that other sad stuff they make you study.  They teach you math and science and physics that seem useless at the time but one day you’ll be driving a car and you’ll accelerate and you’ll be like OH MY GOD THIS IS MATH IN REAL LIFE.  Even all the math and science you’ll never understand, that really hard stuff, even if you personally never use it, it’s present all around you because, the physical world and how it works.  Which is pretty damn important, given that it’s where we all live.  And there are people, a lot of people, who DO understand all that hard math and science and they use it all the time to figure out the world, with the intention of bettering it.  And even if all this didn’t matter,  even if we lived in some odd universe where things just WERE, for no reason at all, they’d still teach all this because WE SHOULD HAVE SOME CULTURE.  What the hell else would people talk about otherwise?  Really stupid things.  Like, objectively and undeniably stupid.  That’s what.  And you, a smart person, and your fellow smart people, are just trying to go through this journey that is life doing the best you can.  And you’re really hard on yourself.  You always think you’re not doing enough, and that whatever you are doing you aren’t doing well, and even though you might lose sleep over it, it’s a good thing to think, because it means you’re thinking.  And if you’re thinking, well, that means a lot of really great stuff.  (THIS IS WHY THEY TEACH YOU PHILOSOPHY).     

It’s okay if your thoughts, when you finally go to write them down, don’t seem to be linear.  Other than actual, physical, literal lines you draw on paper or paint on a road, or a football field, not very many things are linear.  Time I guess, though a bunch of people out there will debate that.   The point is, is that nothing is ever too big of a stretch because everything in your life, LITERALLY EVERYTHING, is related to at least one other thing, though usually very many other things, to the point where you probably couldn’t even wrap your head around it.  But sometimes you will get it.   Sometimes you’ll realize that laziness, and all that’s negative about it, is one of the recurring themes of the book you’re reading, and then you get up to take a break from reading, thinking you’ll get a drink of water and check your email, and then there you are all of a sudden writing something.  Today you wrote something down.

Tomorrow is another day.  You can’t know if you’ll write something or not.  That can’t be forced, no matter how great the ideas in your head are.  Tomorrow, though, you’ll be a better person, even if for only for yourself, for having written.  For having shared.   Because even if nobody else reads what you wrote, by writing you inherently shared those words with some other part of yourself that wasn’t involved.  Because you are complex.  You are made of parts.  Parts that make up one really awesome whole.   Which means you are, just by existing, a reflection of the world.  You are part of this really big web, a web full of other people and words and ideas and foods and things and places, a web which a lot of people like to refer to as the entire universe.  Which is scary, and sometimes sad, but also really great.  And beautiful.   So tomorrow, just try to relax.  Think your thoughts as they come, and act on them as feels right.  You should also take a shower.  

Summer Plans

I suppose I should have written a post about leaving Florence- something about the life changing experience of studying abroad for a year coming to a close, about everything I've learned and seen and become.  And I did think about writing something, but I never sat down to do it.  Final exams were certainly part of the reason, but if I really had something, if there really was something to be written, it would have been written.  But I don't feel as though a blog post would have done it justice.  (An entire book would probably be more appropriate).  I didn't want to summarize, or skip anything, because if I've learned anything from being here it's that every single little thing matters, no matter how insignificant it seems at the time.  And if I leave all of those things out, which I'd have to if I wanted to write something of a reasonably readable length, I'd be negating so much of my experience.

Luckily for me, and to the dismay of some of my friends at home, my experience abroad isn't over yet.  It's continuing for the next to month in a new location (my favorite location in Italy!).  Back in March I applied for a grant that would allow me to stay in Italy for the summer in order to perform a self designed, independent research project.  I designed a two part project that, in short, involves a study of southern Italian writers and a small, ethnographic study of Naples and the surrounding areas.  I was awarded the grant (Thank you, Smith College!) and now here I am.  Today is the first official day of research, and the project runs through July 13 (though I won't be back stateside until the 29th).  

On my second to last day in Florence, I went to get a sandwich at Pino's (I mentioned him in a post a while back).  When I was telling him about my project he seemed pleased at my interest in the subject.  "People like to forget that culture started in the south [of Italy].  We invented culture".  Then yesterday, when I was buying books for the project, the man at the bookstore was quite excited to hear about my plans, and started rattling off a list of literary suggestions.  That kind southern pride, for lack of a better or more creative way of putting it, is something I'm familiar with, but only informally.  My (summarized) goal for the project is, via the literature I read and the local people I meet and talk with, to formalize that familiarity, to put it into a new context (new for me, anyway).

I'll be sharing some of  my observations here, as I've done, or tried to do, all year.  If you've read any of this blog during my time in Florence, thank you.  I hope you'll stay tuned to this next leg of my adventure.    

Spring Cleaning

Note to reader: Think of this post as a spring cleaning of my brain.

In Italian, there are two different ways to say "you".  If you're talking to a friends or family, or other people you're on good terms with, you use the word "tu".  But if you're talking with a stranger, especially someone older, or to someone who holds some kind of important position, you'd use the word "Lei".  It is, in a way, a sign of respect.  But that's not the only thing it is.

Back in the sixth grade when I learned this for the first time, eleven year old me was told the Lei was a thing of respect.  But the other day I watched a film called Buongiorno, Notte, which tells the true story of an extreme left wing group who in 1978 kidnapped and killed the then Prime Minister of Italy, Aldo Moro.  Throughout the film the kidnappers, when talking to Moro, always use the Lei form.  To me this seemed odd.  If they Lei is about respect, why would they use it?  In my mind, the kinds of people the characters were based on wouldn't have any respect for Moro.  

Naturally, I emailed Alfonso about my linguistic predicament, and he explained to me that the Lei is actually a lot more than just a sign of respect.

Firstly, and most simply, it sometimes just comes naturally, as Italian children are taught from very early ages to use it.  But more than that it's about space.  In a conversation between two people, if the Lei is used, there is a metaphorical space between them, regardless of their physical proximity.  There is a distance.  Think, for example, of a job interview.  The interviewer is on one side of the desk, the interviewee on the other.  Desks are not that large.  There are only a few feet between these two people.  But when the interviewee addresses the interviewer with the Lei, that desk becomes the table in the board room.  Thus there is not only an acknowledgement of the figurative space between the two people, but there is also the recognition that this space represents the dependency of the interviewee on the interviewer.  All under the veneer of being polite.  Going back to the film, the kidnappers in real life probably didn't have any respect for Aldo Moro.  But addressing him with the Lei form helped to create a figurative but very important space between them.  Given that these conversations took place in an incredibly tiny secret room built behind a bookshelf (where Moro was kept for over fifty days before before being assassinated), the figurative space provided by the Lei is even more significant.   

I then started to think about the relationship between space and respect.  In some instances, and not just conversational ones, keeping ones distance could be interpreted as a sign of respect.  Perhaps you're at a museum and you don't get too close to the paintings.  Perhaps someone you know wants to be alone and you respect his or her wishes.  Or, to give a linguistic example, using the Lei, that space could provide for a recognition of status.  If you ever met, I don't know, the President of the US or the Queen of England, that respect via distance would be warranted.  

There are moments, though, when distance can be quite have very strong, negative implications.  Distance can demonstrate a number of things, both in conversational circumstances and otherwise.  For one thing, it's an effective way of showing dislike for a person, or showing that you think you're superior.  It can also imply the lack of desire to interact with, or even to acknowledge, something or someone else.   

I find it almost peculiar that the Italian language allows for such creation and acknowledgement of space, because Italian people don't appear to be actively thinking about it.  When Italians talk to you, regardless of what form of the word "you" is being used, they're usually taking up more of your personal space than Americans would in the same situation.  Additionally, the concept of privacy is virtually nonexistent in Italian culture.  The language, in fact, doesn't even have a word for it.  It's only within the last number of years that they've adopted the English word.  If  the people in your life aren't trying to be in your business, or if you're not letting them in on it, then they're busy trying to find out about it from someone else  If you ever have any sort of embarrassing experience while with a friend or family member, chances are at the next big gathering or function, he or she will tell everyone about it at the dinner table.  The issue of space manifests itself in other ways as well.  Almost all Italians live in apartment buildings.  Two story houses are rare, and even when you do see them they are often still in some way connected to another home, or another home is found in very close proximity.  In Italy you will find two-way streets that are only wide enough for one car, and drivers continually find ways to fit said cars into unthinkably small parking spaces.  That being said, traffic jams due to misjudged parking spaces can and do occur.  (You can watch an amusing example of it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/feb/06/naples-parking-fiasco-holdup-video ).

All these things, even though at times a little difficult to get used to, only add to the love I have for this place.  So what if your aunts and cousins are putting their noses in your business?  They want to know everything about you because they love you more than you could possibly imagine.  Who cares if they tell your embarrassing stories at the dinner table?  Those stories are funny.  Laugh!  That Italian ability to laugh things off and find joy in nearly any situation is, in my totally unscientific opinion, directly related to their impressive life expectancy.  Being here as opened me up to laughing at myself- something I desperately needed.  (I'm sure my sisters will say that I still have a lot of work to do, and they're probably right, but it's a process).  Being here has given me the chance to see how I can connect the intellectual and academic parts of my life with the simpler ones.  People are born to think.  We're not supposed to do it only when we're being graded.   Since arriving in Italy I have felt more intellectually worthwhile than ever, I am in touch with myself in a way that I've never been, and I am so happy.  I get stressed here (I'm still a Smith student, after all), but the stress doesn't consume me like it does at home, especially on campus.  I've also figured out what I want to do after graduation.  If any of my friends who have held me through my (many) emotional "I don't know what to do with my life" breakdowns are reading this, they'll know what an amazing feat that is.  I want to teach Italian not just because I enjoy the language and the literature, but because I want to share these concepts with people.  Especially students.  I needed to learn how to balance my intellectual self with the part of myself that is and therefore should behave twenty years old.  I do not have to, and should not, turn one part off to use the other.  Sure, there will be moments when I'm concentrating on one part, but they should always be working together.  And that is something I wish I would have learned freshman year.    

I realize that I've strayed quite far from the the ideas I started this post with, but rambling is quite Italian.  That's because, as Alfonso has told me many times before and as I'm sure he'll tell me again, all ideas connected.  Everything is relevant.  Nothing is too big of a stretch.

In a way, though, I'm still right on point.  I've created a distance.  A distance between an initial thought and a final one.  This time, the distance represents thought.  Or better, a thought process.  Reflection.  Reflection requires space.  And reflection is everything.  Learning, and thus living, can't happen without it.  

If you've made it to the end of this, I am rewarding your time and patience with pictures of the Tuscan country side for you to fantasize over.  I took these pictures yesterday in Colle di Val d'Elsa, a town that I seriously considered spending the rest of my life in.

      
      

An Unexpectedly Wonderful Afternoon

A few weeks ago, my boss mentioned that she'd been invited to a blogger meet up.  She asked me if I'd like to go.  I said sure.

I never imagined that this morning would involve a bus ride up a windy, mountain road somewhere in the Tuscan country side.  I never thought about a villa.  And the possibility of eating wild boar for lunch never crossed my mind.

The event was put on by Tuscany Now, a company that offers luxury villa rentals in Tuscany.  They invited bloggers from the area to come and enjoy a lavish lunch, stunning views, and incredible hospitality- for free.  All they asked was that we'd come home and blog about it.  I was the youngest one there, with the least visited blog, eating wild boar and drinking wine.  And I didn't have to pay for the food or the networking.  Essentially, it was a classy college student's dream.

In addition to the food, there was live Tuscan folk music provided by a bunch that was just as much a comedy troupe as they were a band.  I also go the chance to meet some American women living in Florence, all of whom are at the other end of their 20s.  They all have incomes and fulfilling personal lives- which was immensely reassuring.

Today, everything clicked.  Introducing ourselves wasn't awkward.  There was no small talk.  There were people sharing their thoughts and their stories.  Sharing themselves.

An event like this would never happen at home.  It would be too formal, too uptight.  There would be condescending people and fake people.  There would be a lot of small talk.  And there wouldn't be wild boar.

 Time moves more slowly when the bottles are

Uncorked.  Have a glass.  Have another.  Here we diet for our

Souls, not our waistlines.  This is the land of Chianti

Classico, after all.  And whether you've come from far

Away, or just down the street, there is a journey to be had.  I can only

Narrate my journey.  I implore you to make the most of

Your own.  And bring a corkscrew. 

(If you're interested: http://www.tuscanynow.com/?gclid=CNP4n97sgbYCFYKN3godcCcAbg )

(Also- this blog isn't the only place I'm on the internet! http://www.magentaflorence.com/magenta/week-by-week/free-historic-art-show/ )

Sunday Sensibilities- Fiesole

Sunday, after what seemed like endless rain, (not a metaphor), we saw the sun (also not a metaphor- the weather here sucks).  So, like any good Smithie, I took all of my homework and a granola bar to a bench under a tree on a hill.  The hill being Fiesole, a town whose altitude allows for a stunning view of Florence.  

I did some reading for my classes, of course, but I felt the need to write.  I hadn't written in so long- not just for this blog but for myself.  Things haven't been coming to me, and I've been tired and stressed and worried about things that shouldn't make me tired and stressed and worried.  (Story of my life).  I did all my writing just outside the church of San Francesco.  A friar walked by me with an understanding look on his face as he watched me write.  It was encouraging.  

So, as I've done in past Sunday Sensibilities posts, what comes after this is what I wrote, just as I wrote it.
    
The church was built here however many hundred years ago because it was outside the city, way up on a hill, on its own.  Most of the monasteries built at the time were built in comparable locations, because it was believed that in order to be as close to God as friars and nuns need to be, they had to escape the evils and distractions of city life.  Today, all it takes to get here is a bus ride.  I wonder what San Francesco would have to say about it.  I think he'd be really annoyed with us, honestly.  Especially with Italy.  It's a little ironic that he's the patron saint of the country.  The man took a vow of poverty and made every effort to use and have as few material possessions as possible, and he is now the patron saint of a country whose people are known for high fashion, who are obsessed with aesthetics and incredibly concerned with appearances and impressions.     

I have learned so much here.  And i don't mean in the classroom, however important and shaping that part of my experience has been and continues to be.  I am so much more in touch with myself than I've ever been before.  The benefits of taking the tiem for serious self reflection and self analysis have been immense.  I arrived confused and unsure, and now I have goals and objectives.  I am newly aware of myself.

It's sad to think how fast time has gone by here.  In some ways I still feel like I've just arrived, and in other ways I feel like an expert.  I do wish I had more time (though I am trying to stay for the summer!).  The thought of going back to Smith- a place where I spent so long studying things that weren't right for me and where I was never able to realize it- terrifies me.  I don't want to backtrack on all of the personal progress I've made.  I'm worried that I will lose myself in anxiety like I've done so many times there.  Don't get me wrong, I loved my time at Smith and the people I shared it with.  I'm grateful for it and better person because of it.  But it was, is, a love-hate relationship.  Education should not incorporate stress and anxiety at levels so high that it reduces people to tears.  Yet I've sat with a number of Smithies as they cry while looking over their to do lists and planners and assignments- and a number of Smithies have sat with  me as I did the same.  Education should not incorporate fear and worry.  How can you learn like that?  These things do nothing good for your brain, and they do serious damage to your heart.  

And I guess it's not odd that I had to come here to make this progress.  Italians in general are much more relaxed.  They don't believe in stress.  I'm still more high strung and stiff than your average 20 year old, but less so than before I arrived.  Much less so.  And letting go of some of that is what has hallowed me to make the emotional progress that I've made here.  It's allowed me to realize what I want to do, both in terms of a career and in other ways as well.  I guess I'm just growing up.  Something I've always been rather apprehensive about.   

   

Sicilia

Part of me feels that I should probably go through all of the places we visited and what I did and saw at each of them and what a wonderful time I had and blah blah blah but I’m not going to do that mostly because for me it’s rather boring but also because we did so much and saw so much.  It’d be a ten page blog post and I don’t want to write that any more than you want to read it.  That, and I don’t even know where to begin, really.  Maybe that’s because it’s hard to tell where the island begins.  It has been ruled by so many different peoples over the course of its history, and each of these rulers have left their influences, their marks and their scars.  

I also have no real segues for the things I'm going to talk about in this post so I beg your forgiveness in advance.

We arrived at the airport in Catania, and by bus we then traveled to Palermo, which served as our home base for the first three days of the trip.  Palermo is kind of similar to Naples: lots of Baroque, of course (which is growing on me) and colorful.  However, it’s easily twice the size and overall to me it felt much more…sad.  On the one hand, it’s pretty cool to see art and architecture from so many different time periods next to or sometimes literally on top of each other, but on the other hand it seems that it is quite a heavy burden to bear.  Walking down the streets of the Palermo, it was clear that history is not easily forgotten, and moving on is a time consuming process.  There was something in the air that served as a constant reminder of something that prevents belonging, at least completely, to Italy.  But can you really blame these people?  They have thousands of years of difficult, unforgiving and powerful history that other Italians, not even other southern Italians, can really relate to or sympathize with.  So when you hear these people identify first and foremost with Sicily rather than with Italy- can you really blame them?  There is no way it’s easy to legally be bound to a nation when you have two different histories.  And I felt the weight of this intellectual, spiritual burden most in Palermo.  In the smaller places we visited you could definitely feel how old they were, but the feeling wasn’t as overbearing.  Though I think those picturesque windy, cobblestone streets with ocean views and cannoli probably help. 

Italy, as I've mentioned before when talking about Naples, has its own brand of Southern Hospitality, and the Sicilians are some of the friendliest, most hospitable and most generous people you will ever meet.  Perhaps they feel a duty to make up for their islands’ problems (like, you know, the mafia), but these are southern Italian characteristics that have existed for generations.  At one restaurant the proprietor talked with us for almost our whole meal, about Sicily and about Italy, about himself and about us, and then treated us to almond wine made on premises.  (We asked about ingredients and process, but he was unwilling to give up the secret).  At a small restaurant in Erice, two men who were sitting at a bigger table got up and sat at a smaller one when I walked in with a larger group of girls.  These are things that don’t happen just anywhere.

We saw a lot of Greek ruins in Sicily, and believe me there is something really humbling about looking up at giant, ancient temples.  It’s also sort of depressing.  Because I don’t think we (we meaning currently living human beings) are really doing anything as amazing these days.  Ok, a few individuals are, sure, and maybe some companies…but entire societies?  No.  Not really.  Are we building things that are going to last?  And by “things that are going to last”, I don’t just mean things that won’t fall down.  Are we building anything these days that people from all over the world will flock to thousands of years from now just to look up at and go “Wow”?  I don’t think so.  I don’t know if it’s because we aren’t capable or if it’s because we just don’t care to- that’s a whole other conversation in and of itself- but looking at the temples in Segesta and  Selinunte just made me feel kind of like we as a race are doing a serious disservice to, and seriously insulting, the people who came before us.  Myself included.  In fact, I put myself at the top of the list.  I am the worst.  Here I am, receiving this phenomenal (and phenomenally expensive) education, I am being exposed to some of the oldest and truest forms of culture there have ever been and will ever be, literally walking in the footsteps of those who created it, and yet I don’t change myself.  I guess I could be even worse, I could get absolutely nothing out of all of this, and that would be bad.  I get a lot out of it.  I spent every night in Sicily before going to sleep deep inside my own head having these intellectual conversations with myself (I’m not even giving you guys the half of it).  And what have I done since getting home?  Sleep, upload my pictures to Facebook, and listen to “All Night Longer” by Sammy Adams maybe a hundred times.  (If you're curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOmvUVDeO0I).  And this is why I’m the problem- because I recognize all of this and I question, but I don’t react accordingly.  It’s not that I’m not capable of thinking deeply- all I ever do is think.  That’s why I don’t sleep.  But I don’t do.  I don’t act.  I could pick up a book, hell even read some damn Wikipedia articles, on literally ANYTHING, and it would be a better use of my time not  just for my own personal intellectual upkeep but for the sake of, you know, preparing myself to be a meaningful member of society.  But what do I do?  I sit on my ass in front of my computer refreshing my Twitter feed.  Young people, even smart ones like me who know how to think, who have amazing professors like the ones in the Smith College Italian Department and who have so many resources available to them, are intellectually lazy.  And regular lazy, too.  What’s really bad is that most of the time when I’m sitting there refreshing my Twitter feed, I’m either thinking about really interesting, meaningful things (that I should probably write about), or I’m thinking about all of the other more intellectually useful things I could be doing.  For crying out loud I could even just go for a jog.  At least then when I came back to wallowing in my intellectual inadequacy I would take up less space doing so.   

All in all, Sicily is the most amazing, most beautiful and most unforgettable place I’ve ever been.  I was consistently made speechless, at times almost brought to tears, by the sheer natural beauty of the island.  That beauty is enhanced by a people whose generosity and sincerity are unrivaled, whose cuisine is unbeatable, and whose passion for life and living, despite their history, cannot be eroded.    

  

What do you do to live?

My host dad, to make a living, sells copy machines.

My host dad, to live, is an historian, a political scientist, and a philosopher.  

The beginning parts of these two sentences are quite similar.  The lack of a tiny, one letter word in the second one makes the difference.  The second half of these two sentences, however, are quite different.  Why did I put it like that? What am I trying to say?  

Let's start over.

My host dad's job is selling copy machines.

My host dad is an historian, a political scientist, and a philosopher.

Do you get where I'm going with this?  Let me try again.  This time I'll be more explicit.

My host dad's job is selling copy machines.  Selling copy machines is what he does to make money to pay his bills.  

My host dad, despite his (what many people would consider humble) profession, is incredibly well educated and aware, especially when it comes to history, politics and philosophy.

I sat at the dinner table for about two hours today, talking with and listening to- mostly listening to- my host dad.  The conversation, in I don't remember anymore what order, ranged from the Second World War, German philosophers, Greek philosophers, current day Italian politics, language, laws, and the political theories, ideologies, and cultures behind them.  And it wasn't just  a conversation that mentioned general aspects about these topics.  My host dad went through a number of both German and Greek philosophers, by name, and knew what their ideas were, their theories, when they were written and what inspired them.  My host dad knows important dates and historical figures from all over the world.  These are things that, at least at home, I only talk about with my fellow college students, professors, and adults who were at one point college students like me.  Intellectuals, you might say.    

In Italy it's different.  I'm sure it's partially due to the differences in high school education (no public high school in the States that I know of requires four years of philosophy class), but it's more than that.  Italians, at least the ones I've been fortunate enough to meet thus far, separate their jobs from their lives.  That's because Italians do their jobs to pay their bills, not to live.  To live, they think.  They talk.  They share and discuss and reflect.  Living in Italy is not synonymous with paying bills the way it so often- too often- is in the US.  In Italy, being an intellectual is not a profession.  It is not a title attributed to a certain class or group of people.  To be an intellectual in Italy, you don't have to be a college professor or a politician or a lawyer.  You can be, of course.  Or, you can sell copy machines.        

Why do we ask people "What do you do for a living?" Why do we use the expression "to make a living"? Have we really reduced the act of being alive to merely what we do in order to earn money?  

Had you ever even thought about it before reading this?  Will you ever think about it again afterwards?  I hope you will.  In fact, I implore you to do so.  The next time you meet someone new, instead of asking him  "What do you do for a living?" ask "What do you do to live?".  The words might be similar, but the meanings are completely different.  By all means, if you are actually curious as to what this person's job is, then just ask what his job is.  But if you're curious about the person, about who he is and what he believes and how he thinks, then ask him what he does to live.   

And while you're at it, ask yourself.  Look in the mirror and ask the question aloud.  What do I do to live?

It's a little scary how hard it is to answer, right?  Scary, and sad, and quite telling. 

My host dad, to make a living, as they say, sells copy machines.

My host dad, to live, is an historian, a political scientist, and a philosopher.