Permesso, Permesso

Walking the crowded supermercato yesterday I was passed by more than one shopper trying to squeeze by me as I stood gaping in awe at the rows of olive oil. Each jostle, faintly preceded by the sound of a sweetly melodic "permesso" (which I think is Italian for "would you mind wiping the drool off your face and standing to one side, instead of looking like the mind boggled Americana you are!") validating the obvious.

You see....after testy bureaucrats, red tape, much snow, and plane delays, I am finally ensconced in my new abode in Firenze. and if you listen closely....you may even be able to hear a more quiet lubb dubb as my heartbeat slowly returns to a more human pace.

For finally, after what seems like a one year stint in Dante's very own pergatorio, I have at last made my way to a land that has not forgotten what living means, and how, even when things are tough, or when you are ill, life can be better when you take the time to live "in" it and not skip over it.

I have met my new roommate, who has gratefully acted as forward foot soldier and now gentle nursemaid, scoping out Florence three weeks ahead of me so that all I had to do upon my arrival was unpack my trunks and figure out what I wanted to eat for dinner. I have met also the constant in my hectic life.....a person who underestimates his value to me and sometimes measures himself with a too heavy hand. Both of these souls have been saviours to me these days...helping me to feel more like I was coming home than I ever felt in a multitude of moves across the expanse of the US.

Completely protected by these two, I even felt the courage to tackle the questura on day two following my arrival.

Hearing again the word "permesso" yelped out this time by what seemed like a hundred hopeful émigrés, the word took on a second, more threatening connotation as each of us hesitantly asked for permission to stay, having finally been granted permission to come.

For it seemed to me, and every other person trying to navigate the questura, that the odds of being here in Italy legally and with every imaginable correct document, surely couldn't be achieved....yet here we all were, despite once thought, insurmountable odds, two men from Sri Lanka, a Bedouin, a Chinese mother with chubby toddler, a smartly dressed German, three women in chador and hijjab and one grinning Americana who managed to remain smiling even after three hours, simply because I was so glad to finally be making this long held wish a reality.

Looking amazingly stupid I'm sure, but grinning dumbly nonetheless I per favored and grazie'd with the best of them and was told my permesso will be ready "in about a month" and to "come back around then" as casual as that...just three minuti till one, even missing a photocopy of this and that, the tired and hungry questura employee, who graciously had pity on me....and countless others, and showed all us doubting Thomas's that maybe, just maybe, all our hopes and prayers could be answered here in bella Italia.

i don't know where these roads will take me......but if these first two are any example, I think i'm gonna do just fine.

Firenze awaits, permesso, permesso,

Could it be True

OK the airport is open and for now my flight remains scheduled. Will spring for the cab fare down to the airport because I'd be sick with worry asking family or friends to get out in this weather. One good thing about the snowstorm...its kept us all too busy to think about goodbyes and I just don't think I could handle saying goodbye o anyone, and certainly not Summer and Shane.

Snow Conspiracies

So now I am stuck. Was supposed to fly out to Florence today at 5:40 but all flights out of Dulles have been cancelled. Doesn't really matter....even if the flight was still on, there is no way I can dig out from the 32 inches of snow that has me trapped in a friend's house where even the thought of getting in a car would surely be foolhardy.

I had wanted my next post to everyone to be "Hello! I am in Florence!" and instead I am stuck here, dialing United over and over again, waiting for a break in this storm and the chance to fly this coup.

No Time to Panic

OK I don't mean to panic...but I am supposed to catch a plain to Florence on Monday afternoon and the weather man is forecasting up to three feet of snow. I am 20 pounds over my weight limit on my trunks and if I have to give or throw away one more sentimental item I think I am going to have a nervous breakdown.

I am tired and I am cranky. My muscles ache from ten thousand trips up and down the stairs to my apartment and I should be getting ready for a goodbye party instead of whining like I am but I am not in much of a party mood. I hate goodbyes...especially when they involve me going anywhere without everyone I love.

And while this is a glad occasion, I really do not want to let all these people go. Wish like hell there was some way to bridge both worlds.....keeping the dear souls of this one close by, while allowing my itchy feet to wander afield where they seem to need to go.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

And a War looms.....
Arriving to the Italian consulate, I am surprised to find the room already crowded with people. It hasn't been this way on my previous trips here, dropping off document after document for the consulato clerk's intense scrutiny. Usually there is only one or two other souls about, each with yellow folders full of the flotsam and jetsam one needs to navigate the consulate maze of papers and stamps.

But today there are seven students, two from Russia, one from Prague, three families, two older couples, surely retirees looking for that long extended tourist visa as they make their way towards extended stay visas to take The Grand Tour and one smartly dressed soldier clothed in US Navy thread. We are a ramshackle bunch, each of us with our paper "now serving" number yada yada yada, and all with eyes affixed both to the counting machine and the small television tuned to CNN where the UN special envoy Hans Blix is reporting on Iraq.

Everyone in the room is nervous. The students each eyeing detailed questions on their visa applications about their place of lodging while studying in Italy, the families who just seem tired and determined to return home, the Navy officer and me.

As the clock ticks away and cob webs begin to form on my waiting body, I promise to keep a watchful eye on the countdown (now serving 76, we are 81 and 82 respectively) while my Navy buddy goes out for a quick smoke, promising him I'll peck on the glass and let him know if his number comes up. When he returns, I ask him if he thinks we will really and truly go to war in the Middle East, hoping that what I am listening too is your standard Washingtonian saber rattling. Instead, he shakes his head with grim resolution, telling me that the Pentagon has already deployed five aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf region.

We talk about the Army's request for cremating soldiers in case of poison gas. And grimly, I begin to worry a little about my upcoming flight on a US Carrier to Florence on the 18th. Wondering if I should have opted for the Lufthansa flight and the lower baggage allowance. We talk about politics and inevitabilities but mostly we talk about the quagmire of paperwork it takes to be granted permission to stay in Italy. Anything to lighten the weight of our previous conversation.

I ask him "What brings you to Italy?" and he explains that he is taking a voluntary pay cut to do a Tour of Duty in Naples, the city where he was raised before his parents immigrated to the US. Appearing to be about my same age, with no Italian accent whatsoever, I wonder aloud what it was that influenced his choices in returning to Italy at his age and was quite surprised when I didn't get the "for God and Country" military spiel. "People in the US just don't get it" he stated simply, and gave no further explanation (though none was needed). And nodding in like agreement, we both talked a bit about the European mentality, which, when looking from the outside in, might seem pretty dysfunctional but on the whole infinitely more natural once you got used to it.

I'm sure all in all, he and I probably saw eye to eye on very little with respect to the world and her politics, but we both stood in single unison in our beliefs that having been a part of both worlds, we willing decided to trade in our cowboy hats, knowing for certain where we fit in the best. This Naval officer was heading home, and I was heading for Florence and as we both gathered up our respective visas, I wished him Godspeed and happiness and he wished me peace.

Hoping like hell we each find a little of both.

Rrrrrrring

rrrrriiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnng (the caller ID shows a DC number....could it be the consulate????????

"Pronto", I whisper with some trepidation and I can surely hear my heart pounding in my ears.

"Mizz.....this is Federico Cencetti calling to inform you that your visa is ready."

There it is....as simple as that.....a quiet, calm, "your visa is ready". Doesn't he hear the fifty piece marching band that is playing Viva la Italia! in my head? I am practically standing on my chair and all he adds is a perfunctory "Consulato hours are 10:00 am to 12:30 pm, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday".

Heck I am ready to go jump in my car and wait outside the embassy all night so I can be first in line!

Hanging up the phone....the news begins to seep in. Furiously at the beginning, with the feeling of conquest, much like when your team scores that last second goal needed to win that ever illusive championship...but then the slower nuances arrive. I really am going to be leaving soon. I really am exchange one life to start another.

All of the plans, all of the dreams, all of the talk, its finally about to become real. I am quirky woman who is going to pack up a few bags and launch myself into a place and a life 6000 miles away.

And you know what? For the first time in 12 months, I am no longer afraid.

Mozart and The Twilight Zone

I am awakened by Mozart. Having sold my alarm clock in the sale of all sales, I am now subjected to really bad cellular phone ditties as a means of telling the time and waking up. Make a mental note to find my eyeglasses and change the ringer before I hurl the chirpy thing right out the first window I come to.

It's Monday, February 10th and as I write this, I am still awaiting word from the consulate as to whether or not they will approve my visa.

Grumpy and eyes glazed, I find myself packing the coffee inside my mocha with a tad too much intensity....a sure sign that I don't want to spend another day in what I have come to refer to as...The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone is that remarkably unremarkable I Don't Want To Be in America (that sounds kinda like an old West Side Story tune!) space or milieu where I am neither completely here in Washington DC, nor in Italy. And it is here , in this tween space that I have been stuck, through some cruel twist of bureaucratic red tape for the last two months. It's an exasperating place where you must learn to let go of one way of living even while you still can't grab solidly hold of anything new. So the sense of unbalance can, at times, like this morning, be especially unnerving.

Defiantly optimistic (or certifiably crazy ) I sip my coffee, standing at the kitchen counter (like the good future Italian, I hope to become) I wonder if my nerves will completely come to fray if this visa doesn't get approved. It was bad enough making this decision to go, finding out that for me, the United States wasn't any more my home, dealing with being ill, but to have finally gotten the nerve to make this momentous change and still have it juxtaposed between wishful dreaming and stark reality, really really, really, really.....

It is enough to give me a permanent tic.

Heck, I have already given notice to my US employer and sold every last stick of furniture I own! And what I didn't sell, well, it all that went into the nearest dumpster (not that it was really all much but still...) what if at the last minute, they say something like "Signore, we have denied your visa request. "

Taking one final sip of my espresso I think of joining the peace corps, helping the Bonobos in Congo,....joining the foreign legion....naaaah i am a pacifist, maybe a convent!!!!!! Anything so as not to have to admit I have been rejected from the one country that I think I might finally feel at home in.

It must be the work of Satan!

It must be the work of Satan!

ok...i have come to the firm conclusion that the consulate workers responsible for processing visas sell their souls to the devil before pledging to keep the Italian shores as free as possible from riff-raff like myself because surely the woman responsible for giving me back my approved documents has long since lost any similarity with humanoids.

today is February 6th and i am scheduled to leave the US to Italy in less than two weeks time. do i have the little special independent worker visa stamp in my passport yet???????

no!

is it supposed to snow one foot this weekend when i have scheduled my moving sale??????

yes!

really though....all in all, the process has been relatively painless (can you tell i am taking some serious tranquilizers here?).

after taking all of the prescribed items to the embassy for their microscopic examination of my sales and marketing abilities, faxing over additional contracts and bank records, and pieces of identification ad nauseam until i now have the consulate fax number memorized, i have come to the conclusion that it would be easier to ship myself over in one of those darned metal containers under cloak of darkness and sell squeaky ducks in Duomo square with the rest of illegal Italy, than to obtain an independent worker visa.

last i heard, my attorney was promising a liaison for me at some dark bordello in Istanbul if the government would only release my paperwork to let me be on my way.

that said...in my heart of hearts i am a law abiding kinda gal, so i will continue to search for that every distant bottle of pazienza whilst i continue to shave off these thinnest of layers to my sanity. and should i have any remaining sanity left, a few days from now, i'll get my half thorazined self, to Firenze on my proverbial wing and a prayer. heaven help me on departure day.....

tic, toc, tic, toc, tic, toc.
~sparrow

BLOGGER

T-Minus 15 Days Till Departure.

Still waiting for my independent worker visa, which in all its heavy paperwork glory, sits somewhere on some civil servant's desk at the DC consulates office at the Italian Embassy in Washington. Living dangerously, I have booked my flight to Florence for February 17th. My friends and future roommate, (who is three weeks ahead of me on the Great Florentine Escape Plan) keep asking me "Are your excited???????

To be honest....I don't think I can be anything at the moment because everything I feel is mixed and simmered together like some half finished risotto. It is as if I am on autopilot this feeling of do, do, do, go, go, go, pick up dribbles of old dusty drawers, old keys and safety pins, green glass candle holders dropped in the trash because lord knows they won't sell at my upcoming fire sale and I've a mountain of sh*t to dissolve and discard before I can build again. I'm trying to absorb everything, (and ignore the upcoming separation from the two most important people in my life) but like the rice....there is only so much one can take in without time and patience.

This trip has been so long in coming the biggest sensation I feel is apprehension. Fear that all my memories, sewn into the sinews of my fibre like the tough rope of sailboat rigging, will not be strong enough to carry me past my foreignness and safely into this new harbor, I want so desperately to feel at home in.

It isn't the language, or the work that I fear, these things I have enough confidence in. No my fear comes from worrying about how I will manage away from my kiddos and the fact that I want so badly to feel I have "come home" and a piece of me skeptically worries if I will always be cursed with my wanderers soul or at least that is what I have chosen to call it. That feeling that I will always have that sinking suspicion that I am outside of everyone else's looking in. Always creating, in my slightly off-centered mind, a world of rose corals just better, a days walk from where my itchy feet seem stuck in cement.

All I know, is that if I ever felt myself even remotely content and without wandering feet, it has been smelling the warming chestnuts baking in Milano on cold grey November evenings, or the simple hand of god, painting not fine canvases, but simple ochre coloured houses or shaping the cobbled curve of a street with sun beamed bicycles, dropped outside kitchen doors, garlic filled and coolly inviting.

Ruth Orkin once photographed a girl walking hurriedly past a series of appreciative men, taken in Firenze, not far from the hustle of the train station. she captured this girl in all of her rapture and fear, an image of her alone and scared, yet strangely committed to making her way in Florence, alone yet admired and head held defiantly high. she has always reminded me a bit of myself, and now like her, I am about to be "An American Girl in Italy".

a presto,
~sparrow