American Girl in Italy

An American Girl (still) in Italy

2010-11-09T13:23:00.005+01:00

For Italians, both her native born and adopted stragglers like myself, Giorgio Gaber’s song ‘Io non mi sento Italiano, ma per fortuna o purtroppo lo sono’ (I don’t feel like I am an Italian, but by good luck or bad luck, I am) paints a vivid portrait of the disillusionment of those who lhave a love-hate relationship with this country.

Last night, this song, sung by Silvestri moved many, including myself to angry tears. My adopted country, as many of my friends and loved ones know, is a place that I have fought hard to live in. A country where work is in short supply, where being foreign doesn’t help and where often, if not daily, one has to fight the urge to not give up, let go or just leave. To go back to America , a place where it’s easier financially and where hope for change isn’t a long forgotten word but one most of its' citizens still believe in.

Modern Italy – a founding member of the EU, Nato and the G8 and Nato, known for its opera and artists, fashion sex appeal and fast automobiles, has become a place where more and more people, feel left out, alienated and abandoned. Where the best and brightest at Italian universities now advise their young acolytes to immigrate elsewhere. Italy is a country where the average citizen, be he a man-about-town or a blue collar worker, would rather identify with their city’s long dead master artists, poets or heroes than their current government and its figureheads. They feel their country and what it stands for, is becoming more and more like one of Rome’s dusty monuments: too tattered, too destroyed and too expensive to fix.

Last night on RAI 3 television two Italians on a controversial new TV show debated whether or not they should stay or go, and gave very personal and very public answers to this question that plagues so many of us.

Fabio - Vado via perché non se ne può più.
Fabio – I go away because I can't take it any more.

Roberto - Vado via perché non mi sento un eroe.
Roberto – I go away because I don’t feel like a hero **this is the author of Gommorah who is under 24 hour national police guard for this story about the inner workings of the Neapolitan crime syndicate known as the Camorra . He is thought of as a hero and whistle blower against mafia and political corruption. To him though, this type of honor belongs to people like Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino who gave their lives fighting the Sicilian Mafia, Cosa Nostra.

Fabio - Vado via perché preferisco i paesi dove ci si può annoiare
Fabio - I go away because I prefer the countries where we can be bored. **In this he means where nothing is happening, where things are tranquil, something that Italy isn't.

Roberto - Resto qui perché non ho proprietà ad Antigua
Roberto – I stay here because I don’t have property in Antigua **this is a jab at Berlusconi's holdings on the island which include a mansion and six other homes purportedly purchased and set aside for for his friends and family. Antigua is best known for its fraud, money laundering, corruption, land expropriation and arms smuggling, not its pristine and sandy white beaches.

Fabio - Resto qui perché non voglio andare a Antigua
Fabio I stay here because I don’t want to go to Antigua **and hand out with thugs.

Roberto - Vado via perché voglio dimenticare tutto quello che ho visto
Roberto – I go away because I want to forget everything that I have seen.

Fabio - Resto qui perché voglio sentire le canzoni in italiano
Fabio – I stay here because I want to hear music in Italian. **interesting because in Italian, they use "sentire" which means “to feel” when speaking of music, where as "ascoltare" means , “to listen carefully”.

Roberto - Resto qui per scoprire chi è stato
Roberto – I stay here to uncover the guilty ones.

Fabio -Vado via perché mi sa che va via anche Cassano
Fabio – I go away because I know also Cassano has gone. ** Antonio Cassano is an Italian soccer player who left Rome’s team to play in Spain and only recently returned to play in Italy again. Cassano is an absolute genius soccer player but an extremely difficult guy to manage in an organization (behaviorally, he was raised orphan and on the street, soccer saved him from a life of criminality to be sure). Fabio is a supporter of Sampdoria, the team of Genova where Cassano grew up and then returned to after many years of wandering in other teams. He is a hero for the Genovese.

Roberto - Vado via perché non voglio più chiedermi cosa c'è sotto
Roberto – I go away because I don’t want to ask what is behind all this **the mafia, government corruption, lies and extortion.

Fabio - Vado via perché questo è il paese che ha inventato il “me ne frego”
Fabio – I go away because this is the country that invented the phrase “I don't give a damn” which is a motto of Italian Fascism first used my Mussolini, as an answer to any opposing question or moral concern about his actions.

Roberto - Resto qui per vedere lo Stato conquistare il Sud
Roberto – I stay here because I want to see the State conquer the South ** ‘Stato here is not meant as Italy the country but rather its organization of citizens, its communityand moral law. He is trying to say he wants to see the control away from the Mafia and given back to the people.

Fabio - Resto qui per vedere il tricolore conquistare il Nord
Fabio – I stay here because I want to see the Italian flag conquer the North ** Referring to Padania, an area of Northern Italy in the valley of the River Po; but more increasingly basically all of proseperous Northern Italy. This area is controlled politically by the Northern League (Lega Nord), headed by Umberto Bossi. This separatist northern Italian political party has proposed that the North should secede from Italy and form their own country. By tricolor he means the unification of Italy's people as represented by her flag, as a whole and not as individual splintered groups.

Roberto - Vado via per sentirmi normale
Roberto – I go away because I want to feel normal.

Fabio - Vado via perché non voglio vivere dove comandano le mafia
Fabio –I go away because I don’t want to live (in a place) where mafias command. **he uses the plural to represent all mafia: camorra, ‘ndrangheta, nuova corona, etc.,

Roberto - Resto qui perché non voglio che le mafie continuino a comandare
Roberto – I stay here because I don’t want that these mafias to continue to command.

Fabio - Vado via perché non sopporto le feste patronali
Fabio – I go away because I hate patron saint festivals. **While sometimes beautiful, these festivals center on superstition, saving face, and appearances, not an real picture of Italy's day to day realities.

Roberto - Vado via perché qui si applaude ai funerali
Roberto – I go away because here we applaud at funerals. ** referring to the tradition in Italy of applauding when the casket passes as an expression of admiration. This is more common when the person isn't a family member but a respected or notorious individual or someone who dies tragically as a way to pay one's respect often when the group is too big to approach those in direct morning but as a show of solidarity. Sadly its usually only when the heroes are dead, as few support them before. The reference is to Falcone and Borsellino, who each had a lot of enemies while they were investigating mafia.

Fabio - Resto qui perché questa sera ho ascoltato Roberto Benigni
Fabio – I stay here because tonight I have heard Roberto Benigni ** Benigni was almost censured from performing on the opening night of Vieni Via Con Me, this new TV commentary, most likely because of hisvery strong anti-Burlesconi political stance. This boycott was framed by station heads at the government controlled TV network in financial terms, saying that the broadcasters didn’t have the money for his high salary. Benigni, then agreed to appear for free and with this their economic ruse was broken.

Roberto - Resto qui perché questa sera perchè mi hanno fatto un regalo Roberto Benigni e Claudio Abbado
Roberto – I stay here because tonight I have been given the gift of (hearing) Roberto Benigni and Claudio Abbado. **These were guests on the show. Abbado is Italy’s cherished conductor and has served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera, and principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (just to name a few).

Fabio - Resto qui perché mi hanno fatto un regalo bellissimo Angela Finocchiaro , Nichi Vendola, Daniele Silvestri e poi perchè voglio ammazzarmi di carboidrati
Fabio – I stay here because I have been given the beautiful gift of (hearing) Angela Finocchiaro, Nichi Vendola, Daniele Silvestri and then because I want to to commit suicide by eating carbohydrates. ** Angela Finocchiaro is an Italian actress famous for the film “The Beast Inside the Heart”. Nichi Vendola is an openly gay, left-leaning Italian politician and the president of Apulia region. He is a strong opponent of the Mafia and organised crime and is pushing for civil rights reforms and cleaning up the environment. Daniele Silvestri is an Italian songwriter from Rome. The reference to carbs is that most Italian food is carbohydrate based.

Roberto - Vado via perché preferisco mangiare peggio ma vivere meglio
Roberto – I go away because I prefer to eat worse but live better.

Fabio - Vado via perché il cinquantennale di Piazza Fontana non lo potrei sopportare
Fabio – I go away because I cannot stand the they way we will support the 50th anniversary of the Piazza Fontana Bombing . ** Meaning the same way we do now. On December 12, 1969 at 16:37 an attack occurred at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura (National Agrarian Bank) in Piazza Fontana in Milan, Italy, killing 17 people and wounding 88 when a bomb that was planted exploded. The same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan, and another was found undetonated. While the attacks were attributed to left leaning anarchists there has always been very suspicious circumstances around the tragedy, at all levels of the investigation. Every year Italy memorializes the tragedy and loss of life yet completely disregards the fact that like with September 11th, it was used to justify more strict laws and to prevent the Communist party from reaching power all the while leaving doubts as to who was actually responsible. Think Iraq and weapons of mass destruction for a similar bell-ringing.

Roberto - Resto qui perché a dicembre ci sono le arance buone
Roberto – I stay here because in December the oranges are good. ** Italy’s citrus at Christmastime is world famous.

Fabio - Vado via perché può bastare
Fabio – I go away because it could be enough. **meaning maybe what he's accomplished is his life here could be enough (to be remembered for).

Roberto - Vado via perché mi è già bastato
Roberto – I go away because it has been enough. ** meaning he is tired of all this.

Fabio - Vado via perché a Milano cacciano i bambini Rom
Fabio – I go away because in Milan they kick out Rom children. **from schools, from hospitals, from their shanty housing.

Roberto - Vado via perché dev'essere bellissimo tornare qui da turista
Roberto – I go away because I think to would be beautiful to return as a tourist here.

Fabio - Vado via perché non voglio veder crollare altri pezzi di Pompei
Fabio – I go away because I don’t want to see the collapse of other pieces of Pompeii ** referring to the collapse of the House of the Gladiators at Pompeii for lack of adequate maintenance.

Roberto - Resto qui finché Mina non torna in tivù
Roberto – I stay here until Mina returns to television. ** A very very famous Italian singer , considered by some to be the best of all time. While she still records, she has disappeared from public life and its an expression to say I will stay until....kind of like in America "Until hell freezes over".

Fabio - Resto qui perché due figli non li sposti facilmente
Fabio – I stay here because its not easy to move my two children. **uproot them from their home, their schools, their city.

Roberto - Resto qui perché sono italiano
Roberto – I stay here because I am Italian.

Fabio - Vado via perché dobbiamo sgomberare il palco per il finale
Fabio – I go away because we need to clear the stage for the finale.

Roma Light and Dark

2008-10-02T00:20:00.001+02:00

I adoped a vine...

2008-09-28T22:37:00.002+02:00

Yes, I know, it seems nuts, but there is a method to my madness, you just have to drink a whole lot of wine to understand.

In the world of on-line dating

2008-09-11T17:16:00.004+02:00

....I think I would be like this Koala.

Reported as being so feisty she once swatted at one suitor while turning a cold shoulder to another, Killarney seems to have a lot of my same social awkwardness when it comes to dating or meeting someone you like for the first time. In fact, she is so difficult to tame that her zookeepers have resorted to an internet dating site in the hopes of finding a Mr. Koala who will love her for all her strengths while still having enough room in his heart to overlook her I-haven't-had-enough-eucalyptus-leaves faults.

Maybe.....maybe...if her handlers are lucky, they will find her a mate who flips her switch enough to want to stay partnered for life.

Yet Australia is full of Koala's and its hard for Killarney to know which of her potential dates really will love her for her big nose and pear shaped body and which dudes only want to add another notch on their tree trunk. Heck, seems that some Marsupial males, like their human counterparts, seem only interested in collecting females for their harem.

In the end, Killarney isn't really looking for anything all that unreasonable or complicated. She's not the type to steal his stash of shoots, nor is she such a pushy broad that she would demand that he stay by her side 24/7, in fact she kinda prefers some quite time by herself to think higher Koalaian thoughts. But it would be nice for her to have a soft bear to snuggle with in the tree at night, someone to hold her paw when she's worried and that she can exchange ideas with. She's really just looking for a fella who will make her smile.

Funny, I never realized Koala females were my totem animal.

Because when it comes to menfolk in the 21st century, I am usually much better at knowing and understanding the rules of friendship than those that apply to dating.

An artist's approach....

2008-08-22T09:45:00.003+02:00

What happens when you give a man a paintbrush and a worthy cause. This one is for all my artistic friends and all you hardworking gals trying to make a difference at FAO and Action Aid International.

The Surgeon

2008-08-21T11:56:00.001+02:00

As warriors of love
Like small children with rolled up pant legs, We could compare our scrapes and scars.

Some deep and permanent,
others fresh
that we pick at absentmindedly.

"I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours!" I'd taunt.
Suggesting that perhaps we could suture frayed vessels with fine laughter instead of catgut.

I wonder, as a practiced surgeon,
scalpel in hand,
what you would think,
peering inside the bisected map of my world?

If I allowed you to open me from navel to chin.

Would you gaze like a thoughtful mechanic, working under the hood of an old roadster?

I can almost see you shaking your head
with brow knitted as you poked and prodded my wet and purple heart.
Noting with precision,
each crack and fissure.
Of the times I failed to perform the proper maintenance and allowed her to be broken.

And if I let you probe deeper,
would you thoughtfully untangle the wire, the bad sewing of my sincere and botched attempts to mend and gird.

And would you knowingly understand
that I had done the best I could, under the circumstances.

Just so that I could slip and fall and love again and again and again.

Maybe you could make me famous.
as the focus of some less than dry medical treatise:
having properly diagnosed the reason why my brain shuts off conveniently when my body needs to find its own solace or why what little faculty and reason I seem to possess conveniently escapes like butterflies through an open window each time that I have looked love in the eyes.

If you do, I will send you long letters of thanks smiling when you are published in JAMA.

So trustingly I let you trace this line with your thoughtful fingers tenderly touching upon the paths of my self inflicted bruising.

And as your tears splash upon my navel forming salty trails where once I sought your kisses I am not surprised that you let the shiny scalpel fall to the floor.

Knowing,
without making a single cut
knowing,
like the good doctor Luke
knowing,
that first one needs to heal oneself.

Repeating Themes

2008-08-16T11:05:00.003+02:00

In the last weeks and months I have watched a subtle revival of thought developing in my steamy Roma. A repetition of themes, some old and time honored, others less so and its something that has finally driven me from my heat induced blog slumber in a way nothing else has been able to.

As summer approached, and with the precision of a Swiss Army watch or the ringing bells in the campanile above the church on my street, the Roman collective as in countless years past, has been inexplicably pulled, like bits of metal towards a giant magnet, to the subject of where everyone was going for their summer holidays.

Throughout the summer, the conversations weave and bob, but always surrounding this particular theme and a day doesn't pass where at least one of my Italian-born friends can be heard saying "Ufa!....the city is so hot...I cannot wait until I go [INSERT BEACH ISLAND RESORT OF YOUR PREFERENCE HERE] where I can finally relax and cool off."

Listening to them, I find it increasingly hard not to giggle. Because for the most part, most of us have already ceased to do much of anything in the 40 degree heat.

Damp and sweating, we look for whatever shade we can, eat gelato by the kilo and even die-hard red wine drinkers switch to whites. In an effort to stay cool, even the simplest of mundane tasks can seem like too much to drag us out of our collective heatwave induced coma. Hot, sticky, and miserable our brains are already in summer slug mode and there is little if any profoundly intellectual or challenging work going on at all.

Yet, as predictably as those "Christmas in Bla Bla Bla" movies released every December can be, the season's conversations flow along the same inevitable riverbanks. Year after sweaty year, sooner or later I receive the predictable follow-up question of where I too am going for the summer holidays.

Playfully and as usual, I mess with the status quo.

I watch with humor as certain acquantences all but twitch when I tell them that for as long as I have lived in Italy, I haven't seen the need to bask like so many lizards on a hot sandy beach with 2 million of my closest lizard friends.

And in defensive reflex, it is usually at this point where I receive their annual scolding,

"Aaah but you must slow down.....everyone needs to relax...have you considered going to the mountains instead?"

Yet, each year my responses earn me varying degrees of horrified looks, sometimes even total incomprehension when I explain to them that "Yes, surely they are correct, I should slow down and enjoy life more but not this year".

To shake things up a bit, this year I have told them that I plan to work extra hard this July and August so that can have the time in late October to follow the vendemmia and to work with friends during this year's crush.

Usually it is at this point in the conversation that most people who don't know me well, begin to think that I am certifiably fuori come un balcone.

But this isn't the repeating theme that I want to talk about today, nor is it what has brought me out of months of blogger hibernation on a steamy Saturday afternoon.

The breeze that is blowing is more sinister, and one that increasingly scares and disappoints me.

Fascism.

Always just under the surface, even in Rome's young neo-right youth who are too young to recall the atrocities committed in its name here in Italy, I am horrified to see it creeping out, loudly and boldly, outwardly accepted by so many seemingly normal people, Italian and foreigner alike.

Silvio Berlusconi and his xenophobic henchmen Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, in the Northern League, have begun issuing a draconian series of measures aimed at illegal immigrants, beggars and gypsies -- all under the guise of that increasingly sinister word "security".

No different that the United States and its civil rights violating Homeland Security rules implemented in the name of stamping our the spread of terrorism, Italy has begun fingerprinting all Rom children.

Citing violent crimes, the rule has more to do with Romania's Rumeni (Romanians) and its place within the EU than the Rom people, who have lived in Italy since the 14th century.

Fuelled by yellow journalism and paranoia about security in general, the new rules have overtones that would make Benito Mussolini proud.

With Italian nationalism and xenophobia becoming more and more paranoid the politically powerful blame the country's painful recession on foreigners, seeing them as both rivals for jobs and scapegoats for the country's social ills despite there being statistically no connection whatsoever.

In a nation whose Fascist rulers once helped the Nazis deport Jews and gypsies during the Second World War, the fingerprinting is only one of many new measure being implimented to fight a phantom problem.

3,000 troops have been dispatched to guard railway stations and tourist spots. And judging by the responses I hear every day, the soldiers have won the hearts and minds of the commuting classes.

At a security screening at the last train stop on the way to Ostia, I watched with irritation, as soldiers asked for the documents of everyone in line who was a person of color. Redheaded and presumably Irish, I was allowed to pass, without being stopped for questioning, as every dark haired and dark skinned coconut salesman or tired umbrella seller was shaken down.

Why is this happening and if it isn't racially motivated, why were the Italians and presumed tourists excluded?

As frighteningly frustrating as witnessing this ethnic hatred was, I was shocked further in retelling the tale when the American expat I was speaking with stated that he believed that the stops were necessary. An American!!!!! How does amnesia of this kind set in and didn't we have our own civil rights movement outlawing this type of discrimination 50 years ago?????

With my mouth open...I remind anyone who reads this blog to remember this poem.

Original
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

"First they came…" is a poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group. An early supporter of Hitler, by 1934 Niemöller had come to oppose the Nazis, and it was largely his high connections to influential and wealthy businessmen that saved him until 1937 wen he was eventually imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp.

When English isn't expressive enough......

2008-05-05T10:38:00.001+02:00

Jovanotti ha scritto proprio una bella canzone... più che altro ha scritto delle belle parole.

Non so perchè tutto sia difficile... ma so che lo è sempre stato. E più che il tempo passa e più che le cose diventano difficili. Non so cosa succederà in futuro. Nessuno può saperlo. Ma so che ho anche vissuto delle cose meravigliose che nessuno potrà mai rubarmi.

Everyone's Muse

2008-02-06T16:29:00.001+01:00

Writers, performers, artists, dreamers.....we each draw inspiration from somewhere. Couched in poetry, music, or neoclassic snapshots, we are each trying to say what our mouths often cannot express so eloquently, wrapping our feelings in brightly colored ribbons, monochrome steel boxes, or rainbow colored humor.

People ask me "Is this based on someone you know?" and I answer glibbly "Yes, vaguely, it's based upon a friend I knew when I lived in Zanzibar", politely sidestepping further probes about my black sheep past. Soon enough they will move on to mind-numbing boring talks about how turquoise the water is in East African archipelagos and the true protagonist of my words remains my secret.

It doesn't bother us when our acquaintances are fooled. Sometimes we prefer their naiveté. It keeps us from having to spill the skeletons from our protective closets exposing our naked muses for prying eyes to see.

But when we share something we have created with a loved one, and they fail to recognize themselves in our painful shyness, when we can only speak obliquely, the wounds of their oversight are crushing on the soul. It is as if their blindness has the ability to makes razor thin cuts over and over again, crosshatched up and down upon our psyche. Looking into their eyes, we search, furtively, hungrily, then angrily, desperately, for some small acknowledgment, a glimmer of insight, that gives us hope, and helps us to believe that they really do understand and perhaps love us enough to see through our fictional characters.

Until we finally give up and stop trying.

Our truest friends will read our words, hear our music, or watch our movies, played out like a passion play, and know instantly that there is something more here than just pretty thoughts strung together like colorful pearls.

They are the ones who cry with us, wrapping us in their warming coats when we mistakenly seek acceptance in sugar cubed glasses of peridot colored absinthe. Sometimes they just listen, patiently on cell phones while standing on noisy streets or quietly as the sun comes up, half the world and an ocean away.

I often wonder why it is that that so few can hear what isn't said, see what isn't shown, read between unwritten lines. What gift do they possess that allows them to sense in us something familiar, touching it, finding it beautiful, no matter how vulnerable, no matter how scarred, no matter how naked a soul can be.

E non riuscire ad incontrarsi in mezzo,
e l’orgoglio ci impedisce di
uscire allo scoperto.

Quanto è più facile dare la colpa a te,
perché non sopporto il peso di
guardare quel che c’è

dentro me….

E non potere ritornare indietro,
quanto è alto da pagare il prezzo
per quello che abbiam detto

Far finta sempre che niente sia successo,
ma la volta dopo è sempre peggio
e non troviamo il verso..

Fai un passo anche tu
ed io 1 in più.
Non importa chi ha ragione sai,
non stiamo bene mai.
Fai un passo anche tu
ed io 1 in più.
Non rimane troppo tempo ormai
e il male, gratis, non guarisce mai.

Rabbia e rancore non sono parole,
fucili spianati,
trincea di dolore.

E come l’acqua va via fra le dita,
in un batter d’occhio,
la vita è fuggita.

Fai un passo anche tu
ed io 1 in più.
Non importa chi ha ragione sai,
non stiamo bene mai.
Fai un passo anche tu
ed io 1 in più.
Non rimane troppo tempo ormai
e il male, gratis, non guarisce mai.

Wine and well...more wine.

2008-02-06T11:01:00.000+01:00

OK many people have commented on why I haven't blogged in a dogs age but the fact of the matter is Life interrupted. First surgery, with nasty overtones of pending doom which thankfully have turned out to be less dire and then a boo koo of writing work and personal angst that has kept my creative pen less than dry.

To change that I am adding two links. One, to my most recent wine article, which aside from some HTML problems...I like a lot.

A Multitude of Zins

The second is to toot the horn of a fellow wine aficionado and colleague Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary tilts at the wine world's windmills reminding folks that wine is about taste and not about pretentiousness. His motto is “You, with a little bit of me… we’re changing the wine world.”

If you haven't seen him setting the wine world on end, take a look. He tapes almost daily and aside from actually being reachable by e-mail, he's bound to make you smile. I like his style because like me, he reminds you that drinking wine is about enjoying yourself, not about being pretentious.

The Perils of Policlinico

2007-10-17T16:42:00.001+02:00

To update everyone on the medical hamster wheel I have been running on I just woke up from a much needed 10 hours sleep recovering from my most recent trials and tribulations at Umberto Uno - Rome's largest hospital complex..

To give you an idea of the daunting task and maybe why I am so overwhelmed by this whole being sick/maybe having cancer in Italy thing, I have included a map of the buildings as I am not sure if anyone, even Romans, unless they are sick or work in the medical industry, realize just how fucking big this place really is or that they have separate palazzi for each medical area, ophthalmology gynecology, cardiology etc etc.

My day was supposed to begin by meeting Angelo at the subway stop and then proceeding to the OB/GYN hospital (building 35). Angelo is one of my best friends and it seems that one of his suitors in the head OB/GYN night nurse supervisor and he is going to try and get me fast tracked through some of these tests. Arriving at the metro on schedule, Angelo calls to tell me he is blocked with his car in traffic and to go on in to the campus by myself and see if I can find my way....he will be there as soon as he can, as he is ditching his car as it is totally useless and taking the underground too. He doesn't want me to wait on him as the doctor his friend has scheduled me to see, Dr. Pecorini (don't know if I should trust a doctor named little sheep) has agreed to squeeze me in before for his medical school teaching rounds and his full surgery rotation as he is going on holiday starting today. That said, he wanted me to be there no later than 8:30 and we want to be on time as Angelo has arranged this through his friends. Looking at my watch, I see I have 40 minutes so I think surely....

I then proceed to wander around the complex for 20 minutes because as nice as the attached little map is, it isn't permanently embossed inside my head and there are only about 4 of these posted in the entire medical campus and no staff at any of the four information booths I passed. I begin asking people standing outside buildings with IV bottles and cigarettes dangling from their arms and they keep telling me " piu in fondo" and waving me forward.

I arrive to the OB/GYN building at 8:10 and see that the main entrance hall that says something to the effect of babies and delivery, and information about student residents and where they are supposed to report. The one sign I find about doctors offices says outpatient ambulatory around back. So I exit the building, follow the signs and sure enough, oh happy day, see a sign pointing towards the basement that says OB/GYN Outpatient. At this point i "Vai piu in fondo", taking the steps indicated, and find myself in a scruffy little used alley complete with 10 year old plastic coke bottles and a door leading to the hydro plant. Apparently this disintegrating portion of the hospital WAS outpatient ,......50 years ago. It now serves as a garden shed.

Retracing my steps, I have 10 minutes here, and am starting to get antsy. I go in the main entrance, ask 11 people where is the offices of Dottore Picorini and am told "vai su" to the 1st floor Room 4, I go there and am told "via sopra e in fondo" to Piano Terra, Room 3, I retrace my steps there and am told by a nurse drinking coffee (I am fasting...) he is not here today. Frustrated more by the smell of coffee beans, than by my first round of circle jerks, I call Angelo who has just popped out of the metro and is running the 6 blocks to get to the hospital and he insists that Dottore Picorini is expecting me, not for regular appointments and that I should tell the coffee drinking nurse this as perhaps he is in another location of the hospital.

Going back, she tells me " guarda piu in fondo" but doesn't exactly tell me where in the fondo he is or what in the fondo he looks like. I proceed up the hallway to where she is vaguely waving me, and stumble across what I think is the ultrasound and X ray area (yeah your reading correctly NOTHING IS MARKED!!!!!!!!!!) and see everyone and his brother waiting but am at a loss as to what to do next.

About this point it is 8:25 and Angelo arrives, and we both walk back to the not so helpful nurse to see if I am actually waiting in the correct area and what the doctor looks like. She tells him we should go to another area (not where she told me) and ask at the obstetric wing. Racing up another set of stairs we arrive, door closed and locked and after buzzing and pounding we are told he left 5 minutes earlier for emergency surgery, but we can go.....guess where......"piu in fondo" and perhaps catch him when he comes out.

So we sit for the next hour, doctors and expectant fathers waiting and see no one. At 9:15 Angelo needs to leave for work, and thinks that it is hopeless for me to wait for a doctor I do not recognize who already said he could only see me before his rounds began. He suggests we run to his office on the far side of this complex a (He works for the university La Sapienza) and he will call his friend Sergio, who made the appointment and perhaps I can come back late this evening.

20 minutes later we are in the center of an equally large labyrinth of university buildings, where Angelo speaks to Sergio who wants to know why we left, the doctor can still see me. Afraid I wont be able to manage on my own, as I am already looking quite tired, Angelo leaves his office and returns with me to the same place we were before and we sit panting like tired dogs having crossed the equivalent of 5 football fields, where we wait until 10:30 while Sergio calls the head nurse, who talks to the doctor, who talks to the nurse, who talks to Angelo, who talks to me, who says hopefully not much longer. An hour later, the doctor arrives and Angelo has to leave (he is already waaaaaay late for work and he hands me off thinking we are at the end of my misadventures).

I go in and speak with the doctor who wants to do another specialized ultrasound, wants repeat blood work because my color looks bad (probably for running) and he is concerned about platelets and WBC and a few more really scary things. They take me to an ultrasound room where he and the tech stand there (no pretty curtains , no paper gowns, no female nurses guarding you with modest concern) and tell me get up on the table they are going to "Fare una visita" ! eheheheheheh... I'm not really sure if he is going to be having tea and crumpets with me or do a pelvic exam, so totally red faced and still trying to understand words like stirrups, speculum, and KY Jelly in Italian, I drop my knickers in front of god and everyone and pray i don't die of embarrassment or bleed on anybody.

Test shows same results as previous, enlarged masses on my ovaries and perhaps, though he isn't certain a myoma....so guess what, they want a second endoscope! They also want to do an EKG and full cardio and of all sorts of crazy hairball things including a pregnancy test! I have been bleeding off and on since April, have had no sexual partners (aforementioned putting a damper on that) and have already fielded 2 ultrasounds and an endoscope last week. Who do they think I am the fucking Virgin Mary?

Anyways, I pull my clothes back on, and the doctor hurriedly writes three new prescriptions for blood work, Cardio and Endo and then rushes off as his day is a disaster after the emergency in the morning and squeezing me in. Cost of visit € 0.00 , thank you Sergio. I then head downstairs to try and make the appointments alone, again vexed by the lack of signage and the "piu in fondo" which I am beginning to realize doesn't really mean father ahead, but go to hell, I don't want to be bothered with your silly questions about where things are.

After going from second floor, to the first floor I am told the doctor cannot write the prescriptions using the forms he has (they are not the official national Health Care bar-coded pay the hospital ones) ......as I think he was still trying to do these further tests as a friend (i.e., no charge) but I have no way of proving that and of course that would be DEFRAUDING the system.

I go back upstairs, get the official forms (thankfully because if I couldn't have gotten them from him, I would have had to trek across town to my ASL doctor and then bring them back. I am told where to pay (just closed) and where to make the appointment for the endoscope (3 weeks hence). They tell me I need to have the blood work and pregnancy test first, and also the cardio. I then spend another half hour looking for the CA125 lab (closed on Thursdays) and then exit the Obstetrics hospital to find the Cardiology building (Number 7).

Racing there as fast as I can because it is almost lunch time. Again same thing, no maps, no signage just a piece of paper that says building 7 but all the maps say building 7 is plastic surgery, not cardiology. I walk the length of the complex and arrive to Cardiology /Cosmetics, whew it is there, 5 minutes after they close for the day (Labs done only in the morning) and today what the hell, I guess they wanted to go have a coffee!

About now, I start to lose it......find a tree in the shade, sit down and have a good cry out in the parking lot by the motorini. I am tired, I still have another 6 hours worth of tests to do at this godforsaken place that mean I must run around here, there and everywhere and none of them can be done today... two friends call out of the blue and I cry even harder and click cancel, too overwhelmed to talk. A full twenty minutes later, sniffling, I call Angelo and he comes and takes me to lunch, calming me down by the sheer fact that all this doesn't seem at all strange to him. He tells me he will call Sergio and see if I can come in to the obstetric department Thursday or Saturday morning early and do all these tests as originally planned (free) or if not, I start again next Monday at daylight.

We eat, he walks me to the metro (our fifth walk across the complex for the day), I buy a new pair of shoes because my feet now have blisters from running in my sandals and come home and stare at a book by Italo Calvino all evening instead of writing because I am too zonked to be creative.

Well at least its free.

Leaving Behind Something Good

2007-10-15T16:07:00.002+02:00

While I am sitting here, in the cozy comfort of my Rome apartment, complaining for weeks about the horrors of writing about which shoes are must-have's for this years fashionistas, and what color is the THE NEW BLACK, other journalists are out there doing more.

Reporters Without Borders writes on what many of them are doing, the risks they take, their persecution as well as a cold reality tally of those who give everything, even their lives.

To date, in 2007, 75 journalists have been killed in the line of performing their duty, 43 of those in Iraq. Yesterday that number increased again, bringing the number to 76.

Salih Saif Aldin, a reporter for The Washington Post, originally from Tikrit, died while taking photographs in the volatile south-western Baghdad neighborhood of Sadiyah while covering the ongoing conflict in a section of the city plagued by violence.

Shot at close range, Saif Aiden was the 118th journalist killed since the start of the war, 100 of whom are Iraqi nationals trying to get the word out about what is happening in their war-torn beleaguered country.

In my line of journalism, the worst I have to worry about is a corked bottle of wine or being snubbed by a haughty fashion atelier. “Getting the word out” for me means writing a travel guide with the hot shopping spots or making a wine recommendation. It doesn’t mean that my son or daughter loses a parent.

Saif, a determined risk taker, is quoted to have said 'What's life, really, if we don't leave something good behind us?'

Maybe that good is his six year old daughter.
Maybe that good is his reminder to all of us writers that there are more important things to be complaining about than word count rates, slow paying invoices, or boring assignments.
Maybe that good, is that I feel sad. Sad because before I could even finish writing this blog post and verifying facts, that number increased yet again.

Salih Saif Aldin was 32 years old.

The second victim is said to have worked for the newspaper Salahaddin. His name hasn’t been released yet.

Update....
17 October 2007
Number 77

The second journalist mentioned in this blog post was Eyad Tariq Al-Takriti, an editor of al-Watan, a weekly newspaper in Tikrit. Eyad was killed along with two security guards for his news organization after dropping off a colleague at the airport.

When a House can be a home

2007-10-11T09:48:00.000+02:00

Home = The place where a person lives and where one's domestic affections are centered.
House = A building where people live.

Italian isn't specific enough to make the distinction between house and home and even English, though it tries and has 10-20 diverse definitions (try explaining the verb form sometime to an Italian), English speakers still tend to lump the words into two primary catagories.....often, to explicitly emphasize the presence of the former, when you have only had the latter.

This is a good thing in the sense that it is a way for the spirit to recognize when you've found that special place. But coming from an quirky background like I have, where I have moved around a lot (I stopped counting after my 20th) I have come to realize that for me....a home is also a place of refuge, a place where the heart can rest or restore itself, retreat to when necessary, and sometimes grow in ways that it doesn't realize. I have been lucky in that for all the hardship involved in packing up again and again, and never seemingly having permanent roots to any one place, I HAVE found this other definition many times in my life, and in several places. Places where I could lay my head and close my eyes and feel at least that I had a sense of comfort there, even if not ownership or autonomy or even, ahhh the magic crux for us all humans control.

Maybe this is why (for me) where I live is less intrinsically tied to how and why I got there and more intertwined with what I live while I am there.

For me that means my little street in the SVBVRA is home, for now anyway, maybe not for a lifetime, but for now my itchy feet feel comfortable in my Roman shoes.

C'è una strega dentro l'anima

2007-09-08T12:20:00.000+02:00

Letting go of someone you love is never easy.....for some it takes a month, for others years, and then for those really special ones, even a lifetime isn’t ever enough.

With loves that deep, the wounds their loss inflict go deep, cleanly slicing through your best laid defenses, and forever leaving shrapnel scattered about the recesses of your soul.

Sometimes the pain is merely dull, a thudding managed easily enough with a glass of wine or laughter and vervé, maybe perhaps a walk in upon a sunlit boulevard crunching first autumn leaves gently underfoot.

Other times, though, the scab seems securely in place, the wound healing to outside eyes, yet an abscess simmers, feeding upon the very tissue of your spirit. You are never sure when it will spill over to your day to day leaving you quiet and introspective, and quite a few times impenetrable, even to your closest of confidants.

“Tell me about you” you deflect, hand tenderly covering soul as you mop up your leaking heart discreetly with a silken scarf.

You are good at helping others, occupying yourself and them, with your caring. And others neediness usually takes front row quickly enough to allow you the privacy to tend your wounds as you see fit, even if not without notice.

Those closest to you know, and care enough for you to allow you your diversions or silence, so as not to disturb, to push, or better yet, to remind. They want you to dress your wounds as you see fit, and even though they know full well your pain, they are there and ready to help you into your armour, silently respecting your strategy to battle your own ghosts in the way you see fit.

If you look around, you will see there are others that are standing at your flank to help you, and though you hope never to call on them, you are comforted by their presence.

Just in case.

C'è una strega dentro l'anima
Che mi porta dritto a te
La sua magia e la sua pratica
fanno di me
Una preda da stanare
Senza scampo e si va bene
Non sarà la fine del mondo
se ho toccato il fondo
I need a new direction
I need a new direction
C'è una strega dentro l'anima
Che ogni giorno mangia un po di me
Ed è fuori da ogni logica
ma forse c'è
Un messaggio da capire,
c'è una pista da seguire
Noi facciamo tutti parte
della stessa sorte
I need a new direction
I need a new direction
E' tempo di cambiare
di non lasciarsi andare
Di vivere la vita così
Come un angelo o un assassino
Ognuno nel suo passato
Ognuno col suo destino
C'è una strega dentro l'anima
Che ogni notte mi parla di te
Nel suo libro c'è
una formula per me
Che ho bisogno del tuo amore
Ho bisogno di star bene
Io non voglio indifferenza
Voglio più coscienza
I need a new direction
I need a new direction
E' tempo di cambiare
di non lasciarsi andare
Di vivere la vita così
Come un angelo o un assassino
Ognuno nel suo mondo
E' tempo di cambiare
di non lasciarsi andare
Di vivere la vita così
Come un angelo o un assassino
Ognuno nel suo passato
Ognuno col suo destino

Curious minds want to know

2007-07-24T20:49:00.000+02:00

Yeah, yeah yeah, I know I haven't been writing much of anything here in these days....but whilst running away from the Hare Kirshnas, who had just bumped into that rabbi dude who is always conferring with my therapist, who said a hypnotist he knew thought a life coach would be right for me I suddenly found out that I could possibly have the big C word.

And with this panic inducing "oh! shit!" fear I can't even begin to think clear enough to listen to the goodly advice proffered by said stellar life coach Curt. How am I going to straighten out the life that is my mess when said life could be rudely interrupted or at least significantly altered.

And how can I do much of anything at all when 90 percent of my time is spent racing around getting every medical test known to man, (sometimes two or three times each) at two or three different places?

Maybe I should give the idea of coaching up for a little while and spend my remaining days working at a bordello (how else am I going to pay rent next month on top of all these bills).

I think I can learn everything I need to know about life in a house of ill repute. Where else can I spit on such repressed puritanical life threatening fears the medical ninnies have "stai tranquillo'd" into my brain and solve complex mathematical puzzles if not in the presence of all those dirty, half naked, coworkers speaking in fake accents? (French of course)?

Blue, I think I will paint the ceiling blue....

ps...there are not enough batteries in the world to explore the inner recesses of my currently confused mind...

mr. candy

2007-06-29T12:33:00.000+02:00

www.hostdrjack.com

And we wonder why the world is a mess....

2007-06-25T15:04:00.000+02:00

this is one of the most disturbing things i have seen in a while. and i have seen and heard some disturbing things. Be sure and try to suffer through until the end to see the most disturbing part.

http://view.break.com/278059 - Watch more free videos

For Absolution

2007-06-05T12:26:00.000+02:00

Rising again at night under a half-lit moon,
past sleep and the morning still hours away,
I find my way in darkness, following an old habit,
to the working place I have made for myself
beneath the spiral stairs of this apartment.

From his dreams, the man in my bed
moves to the hollow shape of myself left behind
and rests his hand in the place I last was.
I smile as I watch him, Sleeping, he whispers beneath his breath
A conversation with a monarch, a grizzled cat, and a spy.

What fears or weariness keep me from my sleep
I couldn't say. Same old unfinished business in my life,
some imagined or long-forgotten sin, those old regrets
we're never done with until they're done with us.
The interest we pay on the debts only we can remember.

I lean back in my chair enjoying the moonlight and
take from the pile whatever book comes easily to hand,

Rumi, Neruda, my journal
Too tired to read, too undone to write. And so I hold my pen for it's
comfort sake,
something familiar and unchanged, unchanging,
a sense of time and place in a world drowsing.

Here there is a kind of absolution, a sanctuary.
Here I can hear everything. The slow dripping of the kitchen faucet
mingled with the refrigerator's hum
keeping a lazy rhythm with the ticking of my mind as
I try to lay the past’s whispered voices one by one
in their proper place.

until I am forgiven everything -for tonight at least-
and forgive everything that needs it, too, from me.
And give a certain thanks to all the other days and nights
that brought me here and made me what I am;
a woman past sleep, listening to a man dream.

Lynda's Weird and Wonderful Excellent Roman Adventure

2007-06-04T10:58:00.000+02:00

i am beginning to think Rome, a city of 2,500,00+ inhabitants is somehow attached to that mythical place known as "The Twilight Zone". either that or i have the uncanny ability of really having planets aligned in some weird ass way that makes no sense to me.

in the last quasi two years, here are just a few of the weird and wooley examples of things that make me scratch my head and say "what the f.....?"

1.) I move to Rome to live with the mad cyclist and my best friend and former next door neighbor who is living in Pisa, gets a job in Rome working for FAO and finds an apartment 3 blocks to my left.

2.) 3 weeks later, another close friend and ex-flatmate from Florence lands a huge conservation project restoring Papal Carriages in Rome and moves 3 blocks to my right.

3.) My relationship with said crazed bike rider gets bumpy and I start a fledgling literary group to maintain my sanity.

4.) Two days before the second such literary event, I have a chance meeting in front of one of the offices I was working at with someone I dated briefly before moving to Rome and, as he also writes poetry, I invite him to join our little reading salon. He says sure, he'd love to and shows up with his date, (the ex-girlfriend of aforementioned cycling dude)

5.) Admitting defeat, I confess I hate pedaling my way around Rome and move out of said bike infested house, answering an advertisement for a temporary apartment with a gal named Magda. Putting down the deposit, I meet her outgoing flatmate Javier, who works directly with some of my students in my Report Writing classes at Cisco.

6.) Then a few days later, I realize Magda is close friends with my friend working at FAO.

7.) I then invite the editor of the magazine I write for to join us over to my friend's apartment and along with her cluster of friends from the UN we make limoncello and discover that they were all at the same party together the night before.

8.) I go on a date with a friend of a friend and find out he is an Anti-mafia Magistrate. (Too scary for many reasons, we decide to leave it at wine and cheese).

9.) I fix homemade risotto for another friend of a different friend oand he turns out to work for the US State Department in one of those unidentifiable roles that always leave you wondering if they are being groomed for a diplomatic post or if their real work is something out of a Tom Clancy spy novel. What is it with me and gun carrying dudes with death wishes?????

I think my next serious dating relationship (if there ever is one) will include a lengthy MMPI for all applicants.

Hard days for Pier Paolo Pasolini and me

2007-06-02T12:53:00.001+02:00

La morte non è nel non poter comunicare ma nel non poter più essere compresi

Everyday Facts for an Expat in Rome (that would shock your family back in America)

2007-05-28T09:41:00.000+02:00

Your refrigerator freezer must be defrosted by hand and has room for only one manual plastic tray of ice cubes (ten pieces of ice in total, three of which will leap to their death when you try and pry them out).

You are as expert and hanging laundry out to dry as your great-grandmother and have the washer woman hands to prove it.

You think it’s perfectly acceptable to plug in DEET poison into your electric wall socket so you are not eaten alive by helicopter sized mosquitoes.

You have a direct knowledge of just how many electric appliances can be plugged in and turned on in your apartment without causing a black-out.

You keep candles handy and hit save often on your PC for those visitors who don’t.

When visiting friends, it is considered socially acceptable to drool over their collection of English language books and then make pitiful sad faces about the meagre supply at your own apartment in hopes of being allowed to borrow one.

Your house keys look like something a jailer would have in those American Wild Wild West flicks.

You know exactly which buses and metros you have to buy a ticket for and which one’s you can fudge.

Your friend just got back from Philly and you secretly lust over her two blue push-up antiperspirants.

Shortly afterwards, you best friend from DC visits, bringing you your own stash of ziplock baggies, Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap and a lifetime supply of Pappy Van Winkle Kentucky Bourbon and you have your friends over to celebrate your own good fortune (and to share).

You find a 20 minute walk, carrying, purse and laptop a relaxing way to start your day.

You find conversations such as “Do you want to be paid “in nero” perfectly acceptable conversations to have with a future employer.

Your butcher, fruit and vegetable boy, hardware store lady, and Chinese laundry workers all recognize you and greet you when they see you on the street.

Your cat understands you when you speak to her in two languages and your boyfriend doesn’t understand you in either.

You think riding a motorino is a right of passage and can’t wait to own one.

Not Until September

2007-05-23T18:51:00.000+02:00

first days feel strangely out of body, if you can imagine. this i she
first time in my life that i haven't walked out one door with another
one immediately open (as in sustainable affordable income already
waiting for me). that means i am in this unknown zone and that has me
waking with 3 am panics so far that aren't very comfortable but
hopefully the catalyst i need to build up something. Have spoke to
two recent other university staffers and they are both saying, are you
looking now? (one needs someone, the other has inside contacts). a
piece of me...the job security seeking drone wants to say yes, but the
writer in me piped up last night and said...not at the moment,
talk to me again in September.....

felt good and scary.

To boldly go where no fool has gone before....

2007-05-21T21:33:00.000+02:00

Writing....the final frontiere......

these are the voyages of the slightly off kilter on their quest for autonomy.

ok.... so statistics show that most people change jobs several times in their lifetime. Read...[change jobs, not change careers].

If I take a close gander at my resume (frighteningly schizophrenic in its diversity) I can count more post graduate jobs than I have fingers on both hands. And of these steps up the corporate ladder of success, there have been at least five different changes of direction or "Wow I want a do that!" life altering moments.

Each time in the past though, those nail biting, hair brained changes were backed up by healthier paychecks that thankfully came at regular intervals and thus allowed me to continue eating on a day to day basis.

This time though, in seeking to write full time, and without the safety net of a full time job elsewhere, I feel as if I am taking more risk than that a Ringling Brother's Circus clown that is about to be shot out of a cannon.

So how do I begin? How do I turn what has always been a rewarding part-time gig into a life mission? Am I really going to be able to tap the writer in me and turn her into a full time journalist or will my folks just continue to think I am about a half a bubble off plumb?

How does a gal go about ever finding her true calling? And even if I do, how do I keep these fanciful dreams from falling into unrepairable pieces at my feet?

I mean, the bills will still keep coming and it has always been my deep-set fear of failure that has fueled my adrenalin and helped to keep me an over-achiever in the workforce. Am I now being foolish, throwing all that away for the principle of being known as a writer? To work for me, and not always for money?

To not lose faith in my goal, and to also try and minimize some bad habits, I decided this "Under Construction" project needed the help of a professional coach. Today was my first appointment and I think I am going to like this guy. Maybe it is because I knew him first as a friend but he has a gentle and joking approach that helps me to laugh at my shortcomings without feeling so much like a num-nutz and I think if I can stick it out, he will be able to call me on my bad habits and I may be better for it.

Will keep you updated as we venture into unchartered waters.

One Door

2007-05-18T07:31:00.000+02:00

A Sicilian proverb says:

" Si chiuri na porta, si rapi un purticatu"

Italian translation:

" Si chiude una porta , si apre un portone"

We have a very similar expression in English but these take it one inspiring step better. I hope its true.

The title on my business card now officially reads Freelance Writer and Journalist. Guess I really will have to start paying attention to my spelling and grammar if I want to eat two times a day.

To Whom it May Concern in the Lofty Halls of Academia

2007-05-16T16:40:00.001+02:00

"Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be."

George Santayana (1863 - 1952),

I am writing to you to submit my resignation from “omit university name here for fear of liable” and from my position as Academic Coordinator and Coordinator of New Student Programming effective May 19th 2007.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent both students and faculty in a satisfactory manner under the constraints of this administration.

Service at this university should have been a dream job, and when I accepted this position I was pleased to be paid to understand the needs of American collegiate students studying in other cultures. Working with others and developing new initiatives has always been my forte. To be able to seek out potential academic projects, develop them and then watch them prosper sounded like the ideal job to me. With a glad heart, I started this position thinking that while it wouldn’t make me rich, it would cement my position in the Italian community and give me a broader knowledge of its academia and institutional business models. I thought it would also give me the opportunity to broaden my writing styles, the most powerful weapon in my professional arsenal.

As only my second opportunity to work in academia, and the first under an Italian business model, it was perhaps naive (and inevitable) that during the initial months that passed I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and misguided bureaucratic motives institutions sometimes draw upon to shape academic and administrative policies. Human nature is what it is, and I while in previous positions I have been promoted for understanding human nature and harnessing it to motivate people to work with synergy together, here I was too often bluntly told “sit down, do your job, and keep your mouth closed”.

The decisions that I have been ordered to advance are incompatible not only with my own personal integrity but all to frequently with western academic standards in general and as a consequence, I have been unable to protect the very professors and students I was ultimately tasked to serve.

In our fervent pursuit of opening two new campus utilizing too few and often underpaid, underqualified and overworked staff, we have risked to squander our most valuable resource (quality educators) and to eventually lose the very students which are the university’s lifeblood and key to our financial and educational success. Quality education and competent management of academics should be the core foundation of a university’s operating plan, but with the current administrative model in place, we have risked to dismantle brick by brick, the very programs we claim we are trying to build . In doing so, we may also irreparably damage an international reputation that took the founder thirty years to create.

And while I am not so idealistic as to think that the sacrifice of trusted competent faculty and staff never occurs or is never administratively unavoidable, the level of self interest at the expense of academics has often times left me speechless. I realize that bureaucracy and misguided but well intentioned policymaking is nothing new, and certainly not unique to study-abroad institutions of this size and organizational layout, but rather than take responsibility for the difficulties created, we continue to burn through human resources or apply them inappropriately in a disorderly way that breeds low moral and disharmony.

In twenty years of employment I have not seen such systematic distortion of staff resource management or an institution of this size founder in its own self inflicted morass.

For this reason, I think its time that I step aside….better to see if someone else is able to enact the positive change that as much as I wanted and tried, I have been unable to do…

Who am I?

2007-04-01T11:57:00.000+02:00

In his 1928 novel “Nadja,” André Breton cites an old French adage: “Tell me whom you haunt” — whom you befriend —“and I’ll tell you who you are.”

I befriend strays, my first being a “MOM! DAD! look what followed me home” event when I was quite small, but over the years I have had my share of bound-for-the-animal-shelter pets.

When I was younger they had simple names: Calico (she was a calico), Bear and Grizz (they were found in the woods and were more than a bit grizzled). As I got older, I felt I should give them more elegant names so when I was in my twenties and thirties, I had pets named Chaucer and Dante. In my 40’s now…..and having moved to Italy I thought my kitten rescuing days were over, but then along came Beatrice. So animals, of varying sizes, shapes and species….would be the first on my list.

I also befriend strays of the human form. Beth, a homeless women in Washington DC who I used to discuss Chaos Theory and Architectural design with. And more recently, thanks to Angelo there is Lucy. I never know what to do or say around them, what I can really do to ease their suffering, so I generally just talk, sometimes sharing a warm pair of socks or mittens or leave them something to read just to pass the time.

I haunt enotecas…finding them and their owners safe and familiar places to sit and have a glass of wine, to scribble a few lines and in my younger days, before it fell out of fashion and people started telling me they would kill me, to smoke my favorite French cigarettes. Enoteca owners win kudos with me when they know what I want, without me having to ask for it.

I haunt good causes, be they the plight of the Bonobo, my friends one-man-trying-to-move-a- mountain cause to fund Tibetan schools, or to think that some day, some way, we truly can find ways to eliminate world hunger and empower poor women (like my friend Magda so desperately thinks is possible). I want them to find a cure for cancer so more good people like my Mom don’t have to die horrible deaths and I want to believe that there is a cure for AIDS that doesn’t require my friends to take 67 pills a day.

I befriend the struggling, here in Rome, which, more often than not, are others from all walks of life, from Poland to Sante Fe, The UK, Sardenia, Karachi, or even Alabama. The struggling come in all shapes and sizes and income brackets. We struggle with the language, the system, being away from family and with trying to find our way here in this Roman landscape. But what they all share in common is a desire to figure out how to work here, live here and all to often, to love here.

I befriend poets, writers, and artists, usually those like myself who can’t make enough money from the paintbrush, paper or quill to pay the bills with their words or images, but who, if money wasn’t an option, would spend their days scribbling and painting, leaving the world a slightly better place for it. To put food on their prospective tables by day they masquerade as editors and educators, some cloak their artistic tendencies completely, with work on the opposite end of the pendulum…..crunching numbers and writing complicated treaties as programmers, scientists and engineers, Surely each of their scholarly minds take them down varied paths and consultancies but in their hearts, if you asked them “what do you do” they would love to hear their family say loudly and clearly “He is an artist” or “She is a writer”.

Strange but completely normal happenings on my little street in Monti

2007-03-31T10:56:00.000+02:00

Waking-up at 8 AM on a Sunday morning after a night of sampling absinthe with friends being serenaded by the sounds of a 17-piece brass marching band playing outside my window…(and no I wasn’t hallucinating).
Seeing same said marching band a scant 3 months earlier, dressed in matching Santa suits and sporting white beards, playing Christmas carols….and no I wasn’t hallucinating then either.
Having a hole in my bathroom ceiling that is 7 inches wide from which I can look up and into the apartment above seeing the legs of the housekeeper-babysitter working in my neighbour’s kitchen. Estimated time for repairs….2.5 weeks (più o meno) guess I will be sitting on the toilet using an umbrella.
Having fixed the aforementioned hole, and in abject horror finding out an even bigger hole must be cut in my kitchen ceiling to release 17 gallons of water that has pooled under the sub-ceiling whilst they “repaired” the bathroom.
Having a Mexican catholic priest with a Filipino nun show up at my door unannounced offering to give my Buddhist soul an Easter blessing (I asked for an exorcism of the house but they were appalled)..
Knowing the working girls on Via Urbana and Via Capocci by the imaginary names we have given them and their favourite spot for motorino lounging, and niche marketing.
Being able to listen to live jazz playing out my front windows and live classical piano out my back simultaneously while an 11 year old practices piano stumbling through J.S. Bach’s “Little Prelude in C” above my head louder than I can drowned him out with my iTunes playing Dave Matthews.
Making faces and playing peek-a-boo with the little boy who’s grandfather lives directly across from my windows.
Knowing my alarm clock is about to go off in two minutes because I have the timing down pat for the daily dumpster emptying and Hotel Laundry service arrival permanently etched into my sub conscious.
Having a 70 year old man offer to help me carry my laundry to the laundry-mat and feeling special, until I discovered that he has offered, on multiple occasions, to marry both my flatmates.

Hey there really are quite a few of us....

2007-03-30T15:13:00.000+02:00

Discovered a new, old timer expat today whilst research an article on Limoncello. Its nice to see someone else who has been here as long, if not longer than me but who also seems to be scratching her head from time to time with all things Italian and something particularly Roman. Hi Shelly!

specchio

2007-03-09T12:57:00.000+01:00

What’s the ugliest

Part of your body?

What’s the ugliest

Part of your body?

Some say your nose

Some say your toes

But I think its your mind…

I think it’s your mind

My darling

I think it’s your mind.

By Frank Zappa

Wounded Player Out for the Remainder of the Season (or Life)

2007-02-04T08:46:00.000+01:00

I think I am suffering from Post Calcio love game trauma

My luck in the Italian love life arena is a little like a backwater Canadian Hockey team. It shows a lot of glittering possibilities from the start of the opening home game, everybody is excited and things are progressing nicely. Then just before we might be propelled into the high stakes big league, the pressure becomes too much and the much talked about and idolized superstar chokes, usually ending up in the penalty box or worse, with their face and my reputation smudged for their public indiscretion with other women.

kinda like burlesconi...

I’m starting to think that asking for a face to face meeting with the little philosopher was a really bad idea. Not because of the social ridicule or the "L what are you thinking!!!!!" dilemma seeing him again would bring my way, but because there is a really good possibility, seeing that he’s male and Italian and I’m me (and therefore a softy for such), I might just believe his excuses about the whole sordid affair or even worse still, that he will actually take the cowardly way out of it and never actually call and follow through with the meeting.

The only thing worse than getting involved with a little philosopher is being dismissed by a little philosopher. If anyone has the right to be doing the dismissing thing here it should be me right?!

My rank on this calcio team as the older citizen with egg on my face gives me first dibs on that right? And yet, I don't want to.

I want answers. What to know why my karma is what it is and I guess to know that I need to hear what he has to say for himself.

hmmmf!

I don’t think I will get over this soccer literary love match fiasco any time soon. Maybe it’s my fault we lost because I was walking around with my head in the clouds excited to have found someone who actually read and spoke intelligently and didn't just worry about the style of sunglasses that are in fashion this season.

Time to put myself on the injured reserve.

Its all in your Cards

2007-01-19T14:24:00.000+01:00

My friends have launched their own website and I would like to give them a big round of applause and tell anyone interested in astrology to take a look! In Boca al Lupo Inner You!

2007

2007-01-06T12:15:00.000+01:00

in years gone by, i've used the first days of January to reflect on what has happened over the course of the previous year. i don’t feel like doing that this year, i’m just not feeling very reflective.

2006 came and went.

things happend, good, bad, and indifferent.

now it’s 2007 and things will happen this year too. presumably new things but one can never know and that is kinda what life is like. Obla Dee Obla Dahhhh it just goes on....... just like that song. i have closed doors on a few chapters in my life and i have watched others tentatively open, i don't yet know what it all means and i guess that's the thing. maybe i am not supposed to know. maybe i am just supposed to be.

Ode to Wine

2006-12-14T00:00:00.000+01:00

by Pablo Neruda

Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.

Sniffle

2006-11-24T08:43:00.000+01:00

Today I went from being really,really sick to just half-sick. My ears are still ringing, but today, if you call me, you will hear someone that sounds like Lynda on Steroids instead of the wicked witch of the West (you know...I will get you Dorothy and your little dog Todo too!" ). I have been suffering from the bronchitis from hell and I’m still coughing like a maniac.

I hate being sick. I hate not being able to walk into a super all night pharmacy with 37 isles of cold medicine and 56 flavours of cough syrup, plus cheap DVD's and Fiddle Daddle to see you through several days in bed tucked in with Puffs Plus extra soft Kleenex. Being sick in Italy means I am stuck with the well intentioned "Omeopatico" belladonna drops delivered by a bella ragazzo that not only give me the hives but which must also be drunk with copious amounts of Tisana. I think I actually heard myself slosh when I walked down the hallway a few minutes ago.

Something tells me though that I’m going to be paying for my stubbornness though....however will I ever get my North American body to accept (read - trust) Italian cures if I do not at least open my mind to the possibility that one of them might actually work and that the erboristeria really and truly isn't an Italian cousin of the Wild West's Doc Johnson Snake Oil salesmen.

It sucks being sick. Being sick and alone while all your friends go out and have thanksgiving turkey is even worse.

Poor me. Boo. Hoo. I feel a pity party coming on. Dishevelled Redhead in Monti goes on a belladonna strike. Better dead than a woman with water retention.

I don't want to be Penelope!

2006-11-19T10:43:00.000+01:00

Ever read something and suddenly imagine yourself juxtaposed into the same pair of shoes? Over cafe this morning I am gleefully reading Of Cities and Women (Letters to Fawwaz) by Etel Adnan, when I stimble across the following passage....

Penelope is thus to Ulysses what Job is to God: the object that waits, and which by waiting, "divinizes" Ulysses.
And, ever since, in a collective imagination that is brought to date constantly, the woman is that which waits, she waits to grow up, she waits for puberty, waits for her fiancee, her husband, her child, her old age, and her death. She waits for the children to come and go, for them to grow up, for them to marry, for her husband to go to work in the morning and come home at night. She waits for the water to boil, for the war to be over, for the spring to return. She waits to be kissed, taken, rejected, forgotten. She waits for the moment of love, the moment of vengeance, of oblivion, and again, of death. She is the flower awaiting the bee, and the valley awaiting the storm. She is born practically seated, and Penelope does nothing but sit. She is pure waiting. She weaves and unravels her work. She is the one to be Sisyphus. and for the waiting to be perfect, she must produce nothing lasting with her hands.

There you have, In Monteverdi and his poignant accents, the best exponent of woman's fate.

I think I am going to switch to cafe corretto this morning.

Autobiography

2006-11-12T19:17:00.000+01:00

recently Christopher asked me to write a short bio for my new staff profile in the magazine. which, after procrastinating endlessly, all out pleadings to just get on with it and a fair amount of teeth gnashing followed by several failed attempts coupled with an editorly "Lynda this is a bit flip!" we finally settled on something somewhat conducive to journalism that was enough neutral for the purposes of magazine readership, even if it didn't capture my I-HATE-WRITING-BIOS mentality.

having succeeded in baring my soul (well not to the buck nekkid point) for that readership audience, it only seemed fair to tie things up with a nice red bow by doing the same thing here.

so, without further ado and a little kind assistance from my friend, this is the official unplugged Blogger version...

Blogger ambivalente. Poeta contro le rime e la poetica. Memoir-ista alternativamente riluttante ed effusiva. Scrittrice; vice redattrice; femminista; accademica di professione; madre per inclinazione naturale. E' una "hi-tech dipendente", ma allo stesso tempo prova repulsione per tutto cio' che é tecnologico. Cogliona multi-uso in alcune occasioni, per chi voleva e credeva di approfittarsene. Riesce ad amare e voler bene con passione ed intensità tenendo ben distinti i due significati e mai con leggerezza. Non politicamente schierata, ancora devono inventarle la categoria politica dove identificarsi, ma certo é che la notte in cui é stato eletto per la prima volta George W. Bush ha pianto parecchio.
Sa bruciare i suoi ponti ma è anche desiderosa di ricostruirli, con la voglia di continuare per la propria strada e guardando sempre avanti. Cinicamente ottimista, con molta cautela si intende. Tanto profondamente morale ma anche scandalosa. Cambia piu' facilmente idea che l'olio del motore della sua macchina (ne ha distrutte cinque di macchine! ) A proposito, non affidatele le vostre piante in vaso, non conosce il significato della parola " pollice verde".

Seeing your name in print

2006-11-09T16:12:00.000+01:00

its nice to be noticed professionally. in the last week i have recieved two calls and one email from persons in the wine trade congratulating me on my new monthly wine column in The American magazine.

but nicer still than this accolade has been and is the support i often get from the magazine's editor. Christopher has helped me past a few skinned knees and bloody noses to see that writing professionally, while damned hard, is well worth the effort and for that I feel like I am growing creatively and that is something fun to do when you are a late bloomer in the writing world. add to that some sweet text messages and e-mails from friends old and new who like my poetry and prose and who do not think what i write is useless dribble and i begin to feel myself more confident, as well as blushingly proud.

now that is not a feelin us southern gals try and cultivate. it usually leaves us embarassed or worse yet, fully expecting the gods to smack us down for feelin a uppity. but sassy i feel today, and for one day at least, the gods be damned.

Caffè Caffè Caffè

2006-11-05T20:17:00.000+01:00

Thank you Silvana Panero, a professional in the art of italian coffee, for a comprehensive listing of all those wonderful types of coffee i hear shouted out in my bar each morning. I think I am going to carry this list with me and order something different every day.

Caffè normale
Caffè ristretto
Caffè lungo
Caffè macchiato
Caffè ristretto macchiato caldo
Caffè ristretto macchiato freddo
Caffè lungo macchiato caldo
Caffè lungo macchiato freddo
Caffè ristretto macchiato caldo senza schiuma
Caffè ristretto macchiato schiumato
Caffè normale schiumato
Caffè normale macchiato caldo
Caffè normale macchiato freddo
Caffè normale macchiato caldo con un pò di latte freddo
Caffè ristretto in tazza grande
Caffè ristretto in tazza grande macchiato freddo/caldo
Caffè lungo in tazza grande (macchiato caldo/freddo/con acqua calda/fredda)
Caffè americano
Caffè Usa
Caffè normale con acqua calda/fredda
Caffè normale con un cubetto di ghiaccio
Ristretto, ristrettissimo, schiumato
Caffè ristrettissimo con poco latte
Caffè in vetro
Caffè ristretto in vetro
Caffè ristretto in vetro macchiato caldo
Caffè ristrettissimo con tanto latte
Caffè in vetro (macchiato caldo/freddo/con acqua calda a parte/lungo)
Caffè in tazza fredda
Caffè in tazza bollente
Caffè bollente
Caffè bollente macchiato caldissimo
Caffè macchiato caldissimo
Caffè in tazza grande con panna
Caffè corretto grappa
Caffè corretto whisky
Caffè corretto Fernet
Caffè corretto anice
Caffè corretto schiuma
Caffè ristretto in tazza fredda•
Caffè ristretto in tazza bollente
Caffè ristrettissimo
Espresso
Espresso molto lungo
Brodo nero & caffè al volo
Espresso ristretto
Caffè corto
Un nero
Caffè basso
Caffè macchiato lungo con acqua calda a parte
Caffè lungo molto macchiato
Goccia di caffè con crema di latte (paperino)
Goccia di caffè con latte senza schiuma
Caffè marocchino
Caffè macchiato con cacao
Caffè doppio
Caffè doppio ristrettissimo (con latte freddo a parte)
Caffè doppio ristretto/lungo
Caffè doppio macchiato caldo/freddo
Caffè doppio ristretto (con latte freddo a parte)
Una spremuta di brasil
Una spremuta di arabica
Caffè con cacao
Caffè corretto schiuma
Caffè con nuvoletta
Caffè spumato
Un brodo nero
Una spremuta di chicchi
Un caffè con la barba
Un americano macchiato
Un macchiato lungo
Caffè alla caffeina
Mi tiri un caffé
Caffè super
Caffè francese
Caffè al volo
Un caffè leggero
Caffé con fiocco (di panna)

SVBURA

2006-11-04T11:46:00.000+01:00

SVBURA

I have the strange and sometimes noisy privilege of living in the oldest of Rome’s original twelve rione. Just a few crooked narrow streets, less that one mile in diameter, inside the heart of Monti that is sometimes still referred to as Suburra (SVBURA in Latin).

For the last 2,500 years working class Romans (and now much wealthier ones, investing in the "shabby chic") have "abitata sotto la città" in this area that is not only a blend of Baroque, Rinascimentale, Medieval, and Roman architecture but a melting pot of cultures, classes, affectations and professions. And each day I come home dragging my weary laptop or overnight bags, I am left smiling and glad to be here…..a place uniquely Roman and with a history as colorful as it is ancient, and as original as the Roman bricks in the basement of my palazzo. It is a place that is as different as any I have ever had the privilege of visiting and yet, it has also begun to feel like home.

For it is within my network of narrow cobbled streets that I can find just about anything or anyone. The president of the republic has a house here, complete with security guards and scary men in fancy suits, sitting in black sedans wearing ear pieces. There is one of Rome’s oldest blacksmiths and the man who has made keys on Via Cavour for nearly 30 years. There is the mosaic artist who created the image in New York’s Central Park for the John Lennon memorial and despite being blind in one eye, still teaches his apprentice to cut the tile using the same tools and methods used since ancient Rome.

Suburra is also the place were Caesar sent his troops to unwind and get randy, where even Messalina and Nero were reported to have hung out, disguised in search of a little anonymous debauchery with the lower classes. Ask around, and you will hear the tale of Empress Messalina's challenge to a prostitute named Scylla for an all-night sex marathon. Scylla gave up at dawn when each of the women had taken on 25 lovers, but Messalina continued well on into the morning, stating that while she was exhausted she was still unsated.

Maybe it is for this reason that even today, you can still find brothels here, and the girls working them who smile at me and say "Ciao! Or "Che freddo!" as windy autumn sets in. I am tempted to invite them upstairs for tea, just to warm them and to understand better just how they do what they do, but I’ve already had to go one or two rounds to convince a few overly curious neighbors that no, just because I am friendly and speak to everyone does not mean I am for sale. Unlike Borgo, the Rione closer to the Vatican, the "cortigiane" here were never the elegant wealthy lovers of Popes, high prelates, or the noblemen long ago. Svbvra’s gals gave solace to tired troops and the sexually hungry of the middle and lower classes. They were even looked upon by the church as a necessary facet of every day Roman life. Even Thomas Aquinas in the Summa theologiae, stated "Taking away prostitutes from human affairs would stir up all matter of licentiousness." And as Aquinas graphically explained, "prostitution is like a sewer in a palace; if the sewer is removed, the palace will fill with filth".

I cannot say I agree with his assessment (girls in my neighborhood representative as sewers) but I do imagine for some of them , life would be infinitely more stimulating in some other line of work that didn't require them to sit perched on motorini for hours on end waiting for their next few euros.

But their presence here as well as their curious johns is a facet of life in the neighborhood, as real as the baskets some of the older folks still lower down on string to the waiting fruit vendors below and as colorful as the smells of minestrone, curry, Mexican and Chinese all mixed together with the paint of artists and the greasy muscle of repair shops.

From my front windows every afternoon I hear jazz, (one of the blessings of living near a jazz school), and at night the occasional refrain from an avant guard film playing at the near-by club. There is a classical pianist who practices arpeggios and the vendor hawking his knife sharpening skills and sometimes, infuriatingly at 7 in the morning, I hear the clickity clack of suitcases from the hotel just down the street.

From inside the maze of my building, I can hear Fabio yelling at his wife (proving once again why I think marriage is for the birds!) or Nina Simone, blaring from a worker’s radio as they refurbish the 4th floor apartment. I also hear the thump, thump thump, of another neighbor’s son running from one room to the next as it mixes with the sound of laughter from Probahker’s family across the courtyard. At night I hear the giggles and drunkeness of the twenty-somethings from the near-by hostel and have been known to shout myself "Aye!" to get them to be a little quieter when they forget that there are folks who have to get up for work in the morning trying to sleep in the nearby flats.

Last night I have walked home from a delightful dinner in the ghetto, past the Roman Forum and onto via Serpenti, turning again onto my own little narrow street. I had Rome almost to myself except for the couple holding hands whispering in "monticiani" the local dialect. Eavesdropping, I overheard him ask if they had bread for tomorrow’s breakfast, and her romantic response, "who needs bread, we have each other".

Ahhh Monti, I think I am in love.

Aegroto, dum anima est, spes esse dicitur

2006-11-03T19:42:00.000+01:00

update on the future of the best Latin classes in Rome. dearest Fr. Reginald Foster has found a home (god looks after spritely Latin teachers, even when members of the clergy don't)
.
in the end this incredible spirit did just as i suspected he would, and rightly so, he chose a school that could give him a classroom immediately, The American Institute of Roman Culture, and i respect that from a man who at 68 (me thinks), instead of thinking about simply retiring, chooses to take only a fortnight from termination to initiation to begin a new post. A brave and charming professor, willing to take on a new post so that the language he loves can continue to grow in the minds of the next generation.

Aegroto, dum anima est, spes esse dicitur.
godspeed Reggie! you rock!

A brush with Greatness

2006-10-31T22:15:00.000+01:00

ahhhhhh one of the nice things about living in Rome is the complete random happiness of moments that jump out at you and make you feel glad you are living here.

today i had the fortune to meet Reginald Foster, who, for those of you who love Latin may already know, is probably the world's most iconoclastic and infamous living Latinists, chief in fact to the last four "Papi".

i met Reggie for the first time, this afternoon at the gates in front of Vatican City on Via Angelico along with several of his current and former students, all who are championing his cause, to find his classes a new home. as he walked slowly over to meet the group for an impromptu lunch, i was almost embarrassed when he said "and who are you???!!!" to which one of his associates responded that i worked for a small local university that perhaps would be interested in hosting his classes post departure from The Greg.

a Carmelite monk with a verve like no other, Reggie was all the things the press, his former colleagues at the Gregoriana and his students have indicated and then something more. i found him to be charismatic, humorous, and exceedingly frank in addition to intelligent. all qualities i admire but in the body of a scholar and professor made me, a diehard thick head around languages ,want to learn Latin. i now understand perfectly why his students are so fiercely loyal to him and refer to him as The Legend" and i count myself profiled to have made his acquaintance.

meeting this man was like being in a room with a shining supernova, who tells jokes, makes you think and is irreverently reverent about the language he loves and the classes he teaches in hopes of slowing its (latin's) demise.

in the end i am not sure our little upstart University is what Reggie is looking for or needs (i hope it is but we are small and not the most prestigious) . but wherever he lands, there will be a group of smiling students and i would like to be there to see it.

any of you out there with any idea on where to find a philanthropist for a Latinist, I would love to hear from you. (present half dead laptop notwithstanding).

I am alive

2006-10-17T23:49:00.000+02:00

Well i got a call from Montreàl asking me if i was alive after the metro crash today......and another from Jakarta, and then a third from London asking if I was ok.

Strangely.....none from blood relations, nor from anyone who has ever told me "ti amo".

sigh,

Goblets talk

2006-09-24T19:28:00.000+02:00

One evening, wine sang out with all its soul:
"I send you, Man, dear disinherited,
From my glass prison with its scarlet seals,
A song of sunshine and of brotherhood!"
--Charles Baudelaire

words words words

2006-09-02T23:25:00.000+02:00

La morte non è nel non poter comunicare ma nel non poter più essere compresi.
La muerte no es no poder comunicar, sino no poder ya ser comprendidos.
Death is not when you can not communicate, but when you can no longer be understood.
La mort n'est pas dans la non-communication mais dans le fait de ne plus pouvoir être compris.
Der Tod liegt nicht darin, sich nicht mitteilen zu können, sondern darin, nicht mehr verstanden zu werden.
A morte não está em não poder se comunicar, mas em não sermos compreendidos.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

it is really about communicating...we communicate with our souls, with our bodies and with our words....sometimes perfectly, sometimes haphazardly, always sincerely.......but i warn you....life with me will always be full of words....e magari........i hope that isn't too heavy for you.

la madre degli imbecilli è sempre in cinta

2006-08-25T16:27:00.000+02:00

just when i think my country's collective IQ cannot sink any lower...... i read the following from Raed who really and truly showed that he has more patience than Mother Teresa. A man of peace, who has given his time and sweat to causes both in Iraq and elsewhere in the middle east, and also in New Orleans....to know his Freedom of Speech rights were trampled on by Jet Blue and for something as simple as wearing this T-Shirt promoting peace leaves me sad, bitter and angry.

Next thing you know our arab friends will be made to wear little yellow stars with cresent moons.

If you are as disturbed by this as I am, write or call Jet Blue using the link on Raed's blog.

* If calling within the U.S., Bahamas or Puerto Rico: 1-800-JETBLUE (538-2583)
* If calling from the Dominican Republic: 1-200-9898
* If calling from outside the U.S. or Dominican Republic: 001-801-365-2525
* Customers who are deaf or heard of hearing (TTY/TDD): 1-800-336-5530

vorrei

2006-08-15T07:56:00.000+02:00

vorrei vivere per costruire un tuo sorriso,
vorrei sentire il tuo respiro,
vorrei starti accanto in silenzio,
vorrei i vedere i tuoi occhi sempre felici
vorrei regalarti tutto ma tutto è sempre poco....

merrily i blog along, blog along, blog along,

2006-08-03T02:11:00.000+02:00

over my morning coffee, i often stop to read the blogs of friends...those both near to me here in Italy and many of those farther afield, like Steve or Jim or Andi....who i miss so much it hurts and who's blog entries of how she is adjusting in Canada help to keep me in a perpetual state of denial about where she actually lives and where i would prefer she still did.

i also read blogs from a few complete strangers....those that i haven't had the pleasure of meeting, but in who's words or personalities i sense something unique, someone who's words or images tap me on my shoulder and say...wow! i really would like to know that person.

I remember the first time I read "Fussy" where the blogger there said:

"A blog can be like a mirror.......to see a reflection of a person I still recognized there after all the changes I'd been through".

for me this thought captures completely the essence of why i started blogging...even if my original focus has shifted and changed it truly was, and continues to be about seeing if Lynda was still here....or if she had disappeared completely (notice use of capital letter here).

when i stumbled across Angelo's blog one year ago ( 11 August 2005) i felt a shock of electricity that nearly made my knees buckle. it was like finding someone you knew several lifetimes ago but that up until that moment, hadn't been able to find in this one. i opened every one of his blog entries, scanning photo after photo, reading each entry as if, in doing so, i could somehow catch up on a lifetime of missed memories in one single sitting.

afterwards, i wanted to write a reply, to say...."Ah there you are my friend, my how i have missed you!" .....but in the end words failed me. i felt shy and stupid. i mean really! how do you tell a complete stranger "gee! i think we probably knew one another back when Nero was still fiddling" without sounding like some deranged psycho web stalker from hell?!!!!!

in the end i merely burbled something banal and stupid like: "stumbled here quite by accident, your stories make me smile. safe passage traveling king"~Sparrow....

then a few months later he wrote back....reaching out, and offering to help with a problem i was having with the Italian Questura and my work visa and his words were comforting like warm cinnamon tea on a cold winter's night. i don't think either of us knew what to expect a short while later when we finally got up the courage to meet face to face. it was not very long after i had moved out of Pooh's house and i still assuredly looked like some half starved kitten in need of affection. but after a few minutes of initial embarrassment i felt that same feeling i had when i first stumbled across his words and photos and i knew undoubtedly that i was sitting across from someone remarkably very special.

Angelo has a way about him that is different from most folk i know.....he can be playful and stern and silly and cute all in a span of about five seconds. he can curse like a sailor when driving and find parking in Rome in the most unexpected of places. but these aren't the traits that draw me to him, even if they leave me smiling. the hook for me was, and always will be, how he treats people and how his positive energy in the face of many many difficulties, reminds me to look inside myself for the answers to my own problems, and to find my courage, because if he has faith in my moxy, then maybe perhaps i actually do have some.

it is hard to say why a person enters (or re-enters) your life at a particular point of time. some would say it is nothing more than random coincidence and that we were just very very lucky.
me, i have my own thoughts....and a ear to ear smile that i haven't had in several lifetimes.

welcome home friend, glad you are here and damn i missed you.

Remembering Khaled

2006-07-31T11:09:00.000+02:00

Lamplight, quietness and flipping pages
naked,
sand
still clinging to our bodies
Khaled picks his way
through
this well worn journal.

and finds himself strangely absent .

troubled,
in not finding himself there,
that he is somehow less
real,
less
important,
less
memorable,

on this hajj through this strange land.

but for me he is everywhere,
as present as the bright blue of the sky over the atlas mountains
or the indigo scarf he so painstakingly
wraps
himself in.

and so for me,
scribbling
in this book seems so unnecessary.

but he doesn’t know that he is my first thought
opening
my eyes
and my last conscious one before
going
to sleep.

he is there in the smell of warm bread and lamb
coming
through opened doors
in the medina

he is there in the souk
ever watchful
protective and thoughtful
discretely following, and a bit surprised
that a small westerner, not even in galabiyya
can find her way home without his help.

he is there barefoot
in the house of new friends
smiling
as he waits for the tea to be poured.

his kisses too
linger,
like the sounds of a Milhûn
played out with handqa and kamenjah
sometimes
on my neck
and sometimes
just along my fingertips.

i wish he would see himself through my eyes
if
only for this moment.

maybe then he would feel himself as timelessly
as i do
and
as life’s moments are meant to be.

for while memories of kasbahs and mountain villages can fade
with time,
becoming less clear,
our particular love
is woven with a different silk

not a mirage,
fading
in the desert heat.

it was real,
even if only for that moment
when it thirsted.

for understanding.

2006-07-22T14:14:00.000+02:00

While happily slurping a wonderful plate of pasta last night with Angelo , Eric and new friend Kim, I was delightfully informed that Carbonara, that wonderfully peppery, typically romano dish, that all North Americans and Romans alike adore, dates back in Italian food history to a mere 1944. A time shortly after the allies arrived in Rome.

Funny enough, and Wikipedia confirms, the union of these perfect ingredients seems to have been the brain child of intelligent, if frugal roman cooks and well supplied American GI's. The soldiers had bacon and powdered eggs, the chefs their fantasy and so this creamy first course was born.

eheheheeh.

It is nice to know, in these days of "why are we there and when are we leaving?" that there was a time when an American soldier's presence meant positive change.

Sometimes a song

2006-07-18T06:28:00.000+02:00

walking down yet another subway corridor.....MP3 headphones jammed in my ears to make me forget (or remember) my breath is always taken away, when the song that randomly shuffles into my ears mirrors my mood, bringing me to hot wet tears.

i guess this is one of the reasons i listen to music in solitary spaces....because it slices through all my best laid defenses and when played out through instruments or other voices, speaks so many things i often can't find the words myself for.

sometimes life gives. more often however, it takes. and often in red raw strips of pounded flesh. and for me, it is always the goodbyes that are best to be avoided. be they on snowy winter eves, Milan airports, or even a taxi stand near torre argentina. for me they are best remembered with violins and guitars, in a crowded Roman metro, where for once i am glad to be standing, squished with my face against a wall.

l'ultimo bacio

Cerchi riparo fraterno conforto
tendi le braccia allo specchio
ti muovi a stento e con sguardo severo
biascichi un malinconico Modugno

Di quei violini suonati dal vento
l'ultimo bacio mia dolce bambina
brucia sul viso come gocce di limone
l'eroico coraggio di un feroce addio

ma sono lacrime mentre piove, piove
mentre piove, piove
mentre piove

Magica quiete velata indulgenza
dopo l'ingrata tempesta
riprendi fiato e con intenso trasporto
celebri un mite ed insolito risveglio

Mille violini suonati dal vento
l'ultimo abbraccio mia amata bambina
nel tenue ricordo di una pioggia d'argento
il senso spietato di un non ritorno

Di quei violini suonati dal vento
l'ultimo bacio mia dolce bambina
brucia sul viso come gocce di limone
l'eroico coraggio di un feroce addio
ma sono lacrime mentre piove, piove
mentre piove, piove
mentre piove, piove

Celebrating Homecomings

2006-07-16T12:28:00.000+02:00

OK.....in keeping with my, I will now catalog the wine I consume so my faulty memory has a record....I have come across some holes in my theory of completion.

This is a wine my friend Eowyn brought back from Paris that we enjoyed to celebrate are new apartment and finally having some much needed time to sit and just chat and revel in the fact that a panel painting conservator and a lover of books now share an apartment in what used to be a book conservation studio.

While I am a big fan of Saint Emilion, this was a wine producer I was unfamiliar with. Trying to get details, I have discovered that for 2002 there was a marked change in grape blends with 2003 reverting back to only two grapes. Can't find out why. Can't find a link to the vineyards to ask, and, as a result....have on incomplete record of the vintage based only upon previous vintages.

oh well!

Puisseguin Saint-Emilion
2002

Grape variety: Merlot , Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon,

Growing Conditions: Unverified for this year. 20 ha family estate, located in Puisseguin Saint Emilion. Soil is clay limestone. Harvest usually occurs each September where growing conditions are normally sunny, and dry which produces a decent maturity.

Date of Harvest: Usually September 1 to 10 Date of Bottling

FERMENTATION
Method: Unverified this year. Traditional vinification usually occurs in cement tanks with immersed cap.

TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Brix: ---- Alcohol Content (%): 12.5
pH: ---- Extract (g/lt.): 0-5
Color Intensity: ----
ACIDITY (g/lt.)
Total: ----
Malic: ----
Volatile: ----

SO2 (mg/lt.)
Total: ----
Free: ----

Special comment by the wine maker: ----

Tasting Comments: It is a Blending mainly with Merlot, which adds a bit of softness Château Teynac is vinified to keep imperatively the fuity taste, that is well rounded and especially easy to drink. Aging potential 6-8 years.

For those of you in the I can't find good wine hinterlands

2006-07-01T15:43:00.000+02:00

COLVECCHIO

2001

Grape Variety: 100% Syrah

Growing Conditions: Montalcino was subjected to a biting spring frost which significantly reduced yields in many vineyards. June offered some rainfall, however the extreme heat of July onward, even if at a more gradual pace than previous years also affected grape quality. Weather conditions during harvest were said to be “ideal”.

Date of Harvest: September 1 to 10

Date of Bottling: April 2003

FERMENTATION

Method: In stainless steel at a controlled temperature of 24-26° C for about 10 days. Maolactic fermentation in barrique, followed by 14 months barrel aging in French oak ( 38% new) plus appropriate bottle aging before release.

TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Brix: 24.5

Alcohol content (%): 14

pH: 3.9

Extract (g/lt.): 33.2

Color Intensity: 1689

ACIDITY (g/lt.)

Total: 5.7

Malic: 0.02

Volatile: 0.6

SO2 (mg/lt.)

Total: 95

Free: 33

Special comment by the wine maker: “Because Syrah is a grape variety that supports the heat well, in extremely warm vintages such as 2001, it perfectly expresses itself”.

Tasting Comments: Excellent Ruby to claret colour. First nose bouquet is both spicy and fresh, with hints of tobacco, smoked meats, strawberry and red currants. The tannins are notable, but not in an overpowering way. Has good mouth feel and a sufficiently balanced acidity. The wine is well structured, though with some bottle inconsistency noted between tasters. Should be good for moderate aging.

The Guitar and the Strings (If I could be Billie Collins)

2006-06-29T08:05:00.000+02:00

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the guitar and the strings,
the sugar in the bottom of the coffee cup.
You are a westward wind one Tennessee spring
and a barefoot walk under sun dappled magnolias.
You are the salt in my pasta water,
and the brown pants and smart shoes I spy in the shopkeepers window.

However, you are not summer flowers,
the peaches in my painted bowl,
or the slips of paper scattered about my desk.
And certainly not the tapping of keys as a write this
and there is just no way
that you are the rosemary planted outside my kitchen door.

It is possible that you could be a field of sunflowers,
or even that noisy vespa zooming down via urbana,
but you will never be
the bubbling laughter I hear on my evening strolls.

And a quick look through my wardrobe will show
that you are neither the sweaters stacked one by one nor the empty suitcase begging to be taken somewhere.

And you might be happy to learn, speaking in metaphors
that I am sometimes that little smile on your lips
that tastes like apricot honey.

I also happen to be the little bird you feed breadcrumbs to, the one brazen enough to take the crust of bread right from your fingertips,
or the ringing telephone and the clatter of keys
sometimes even, the sip of amber whisky splashed wet inside your glass.

I am also the thorny rose in your garden,
and the new song you listen to on the radio.
But don't worry, I'm not the guitar and the strings.
You are still the guitar and the strings.
You will always be the guitar and the strings,
not to mention the sugar in the bottom of my coffee cup.

signs that i need to go grocery shopping

2006-06-27T23:43:00.000+02:00

there is no chocolate in the house.

and there really aught to be a law against houses without chocolate on a night when you meet, and have prosecco with, a man with wonderful brown eyes and a captivating smile in one of the loveliest piazzas in Rome.

Il Guerriero della Luce

2006-06-18T19:06:00.000+02:00

"Il guerriero della luce crede. Proprio come credono i bambini. Poiché crede nei miracoli, i miracoli cominciano ad accadere. Poiché ha la certezza che il proprio pensiero possa cambiargli la vita, la sua vita comincia a cambiare. Poiché è certo che incontrerà l’amore, l’amore compare. Di tanto in tanto, è deluso. Talvolta, viene ferito. E allora sente i commenti: "com’è ingenuo!" Ma il guerriero sa che il prezzo vale. Per ogni sconfitta, ha due conquiste a suo favore. Tutti coloro che credono lo sanno".
P. Coelho,

Free at last free at last, thank Buddha i am free at last!

2006-05-19T11:30:00.000+02:00

well the apartment is officially ours! had my first battle in Italy yesterday...with the immobliare (who for now shall remain nameless) trying to arrange the contract on my new apartment.

amazing the mafioso mentality and the tricks they tried to pull because my flatmate and i are foreigners. i think sometimes that everyone in Italy automatically assumes that all american expats are rich and stupid (and i am neither).

in the end, we came to a middle solution, with Guido threatening to take me to court for breach of contract and i in turn threatening to walk out and go directly to the Guardia di Finanza for offering me tax evasion as an alternative solution.

i am a small woman, but come on! enough was just enough!

anyway, i feel victorious and have a new apartment as of June 1st just across from a hip jazz school. have no idea how i am going to furnish it or get my things moved out of Pooh's old place, but it is ours for the next 4+4 years and i truly adore it.

ps. for those of you venturing into the waters of Italian real estate rental.....the scale of stress/difficulty for this milestone event rated higher than the break-up with my ex.

un momento

2006-04-29T02:02:00.000+02:00

C'è un momento a mezzanotte.
Non è ieri e non è domani.
E' solo un momento.
Desidero fermarlo,
e viverlo a lungo
in una dimensione speciale
senza ore
senza tempo.
questo è quel Momento.

The Shadow King

2006-04-19T15:44:00.000+02:00

By the mists
Of a distant shore
A fortress sits
Casting shadows
Upon the crashing waves.

Impenetrable
A strong hold
Protected against onslaught
On all four sides

Inside
A quiet hush
Where once there was laughter
Rooms filled with treasure abound
Untouched for lifetimes
By human hand.

In a great hall
Sitting alone
An ancient ruler
Holds his head in his hands
Surrounded by wealth
Bolstered by conquests
His heart is empty

Staring out an opened window
He spies the sails of a distant ship
Sailing on a choppy sea
It hints of magnificent journeys
And calls to him
with beating drums.

He listens,
But doesn’t hear
The whispers of dreams
long sleeping.
Words to music he has forgotten,
Songs that could awaken a soul.

Fear has made this castle a prison,
And no man finds solace,
Ruling a dominion without warmth.

Invisible walls

2006-04-10T00:26:00.000+02:00

Inside, I find the
solace, that takes away
the heavy
burdens that weigh
down a
soul

There is a quiet sweetness
here…one that encompasses
me,enveloping my
fears while keeping
the jackals at bay.

Some say this place is a
prison.
and that I am
a rabbit
trapped in it’s snare
frightened
and waiting
to die.

But this is my place
of refuge, brick by brick
here I
have found
sanctuary
not imprisonment.

It’s solitude gives
me strength..
and its solidness
helps me see
more clearly
the road that
lies ahead.

although there
is
a quiet silence
here,
from it I draw
strength…
find
courage…
begin
to
survive.

Poets and Little Birds

2006-03-31T06:55:00.000+02:00

the picture for

woensdag, maart 29, 2006

makes me want to smile.

Desultory Turgescence

Day four and counting

2006-03-30T07:21:00.000+02:00

so…

i have been duteously informed by my ex that i am now unintelligible when i speak English, and that this evil trait, (not being Italian mother tongue or fully fluent in said second language) is the root of all our disharmonious discontent. this despite the fact that during any given week, the 85 or so Italian mother tongue participants i work with 10 hours a day, IN ENGLISH, don’t seem to suffer from this same malady.

as a result…

i now speak only pigeon Italian with him and if i wasn’t stuffato before…..this certainly brings me a good bit closer.

Something Missing

2006-03-26T09:03:00.000+02:00

you used to stare at my hands,
touching each fingertip,
moving slightly, the bracelets dangling from
slightly bent wrists.

once you even smiled,
carefully nodding at the few lines of verse,
i wore on my arm
like one of those New York Bolshevik writers
of fifty years gone past..

now you don't even look into my eyes.

and i wonder like Kubrick writing Strangelov,
who has disappeared?

me or you.

Feelin' a bit like Don Quixote these days....

2006-03-18T11:49:00.000+01:00

Don Quixote said on a certain occasion to his squire: "Because I know you, Sancho, I pay no attention to what you say

...Those who love me dearly--who are they?They are simply those who want me to be as they wish so they may love me. Love, love, terrible love, which leads us to seek in the beloved for the man we made of him. Who can love me as I am? You, you alone, my Lord, who create me continually out of love, for my very existence is the work of your eternal love. Reader, listen: though I do not know you, I love you so much that if I could hold you in my hands, I would open up your breast and in your heart's core I would make a wound and into it I would rub vinegar and salt, so that you might never again know peace but would live in continual anguish and endless longing. If I have not succeeded indisquieting you with this Quixote of mine it is because of my heavy-handedness, believe me, and because this dead paper on which I write neither shrieks, nor cries out, nor sighs, nor laments, and because language was not made for you and me to understand each other.

She Blogged Me, She Blogged Me Not

2006-03-10T08:07:00.000+01:00

For the uninitiated, blogger.com defines a Blog or Web Log as a web page made up of short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically. A website, who’s essential characteristics are its journalized form and informal writing style.

There are blogs for down-and-out Dot.comers and blogs on the war with Iraq, screensaver blogs and the not to be missed Britney Spears blogs. Not all blogs appeal to all bloggers -- and that's just the point. Blogs represent the personality of their individual author and finding your way through their labyrinth of information can be as informative as reading the entire contents of an encyclopedia in one sitting

So give it a shot….here’s a few to start out with, then let your mind be your guide. Happy Blogging! (PS….they are on no particular order…)

Scripting News Perhaps one of the oldest and widely read blogs on the Web. Whether you agree with him or not, Dave Winer, a devout cage rattler, is rarely boring.

Lightning Field A completely different kind of blog by professional journalist and amateur photographer David Gallagher.

Evhead Evan Williams’ personal blog. What goes on in the mind of the co-creator of Blogger and CEO of Pyra Labs.

A few local to Rome

nightingaleshiraz My best friend in Italy who will be leaving Italy soon and me to my own undoing.

Eric J. Lyman A freelance journalist living in Italy. He is a generalist, but has settled on a few areas of concentration that include the lovely city I call home.

Fly's Eyes Rome A fly’s eye view of Rome from someone who probably knows her way around as well as any native born Romano.

And two alternate takes on life in “Occupied” Iraq.

Raed in the Middle A blog about the realities of war, and one citizen’s attempt to stay sane in spite of it.

shut up you fat whiner! The sometimes on again/off again writings of Salam Pax.

Bloggers Bill of Rights

2006-03-05T13:11:00.000+01:00

OK.....after a more than annoying dreary wet Roman weekend where people I am close to continue to not listen to a single relevant word I say, followed closely on the heels of complete strangers that I don't know considering me their new best friend: want my picture; pester me about how old I am; which zone I live in and do I need a fù€k buddy? I hereby wish all the above would kindly get a clue (please!).

Better still, if the latter read "A Blogger's Disclaimer" then perhaps a light bulb might go off in their heads and with that new found epiphany begin to realize that just because you share a piece of yourself publicly, does not necessarily mean you are some lonely misunderstood soul, with nothing better to do than be chatted up for some anonymous dirty lovin'.

For those in the former category...when you do come to the conclusion that I have something intelligent to say and by proxy, therefore something relevant to contribute, you might just begin to understand that a brain can be just as sexy as the sum of a person's parts. Then perhaps it will be clear to you why I get annoyed with being treated like some Barbie doll with only tits to keep you occupied.

Censored in China! WoooHoo!

2006-02-23T20:45:00.000+01:00

I have it in good authority from a friend in Qinghai that my blog has been blocked in China! All for a few words metioned about Tibetans. For what it is worth, we are just trying to get funding for some middle and high school students in Highland Tibet to get a decent education so that they can qualify for university.

Didn't think that was so friggin' political but who am I to say what causes revolutions.

argggghhhh!

(PS:::Its about a guitar)

2006-02-23T09:07:00.000+01:00

A new way to love you.

It happened distantly,

As I watched the way you tenderly touched her,

eyes closed,

passionate.

You have held me that way.

Leaving me weak at the knees

for the love of you.

Breathless in a room full of air.

And now,

Trembling,

Helpless,

I cannot look away.

I know those hands.

Those strong fingers,

Have felt them leave deep impressions

traveling along my body

in the same way

you now caress her spine.

Gentle, guiding,

sweet, yet controlled.

I sense that she moves you,

That in her, you have tasted something wonderful

something perhaps i can never give you.

I promised myself

That I would never share the man I love

with another woman.

Yet here I stand.

and seeing you, banks my own fire.

Your passion for her

stirs me,

sets me to simmer.

in spite of myself.

I watch you dance, kiss.

in circles and down long winding passages

listening silently as her voice rings out,

First happy, then soulful, then loving.

And in that moment,

When you are oblivious to all else

I wish, even if only for a second or two

that it was me you held

Instead of her.

For I will always crave your arms,

wrapped around my waist

in the same way

you lean into her now.

framing the hourglass of her hips.

Later that evening,

watching smoky tendrils

drift towards the ceiling,

spent in our lovemaking,

I will think of her.

And I will remember the passion she brings to you,

Knowing the flames she stokes

can only be quenched with my love.

And as I drift gently to sleep,

It is me and not you

That whispers her name.

“Renata”.

frustrated...

2006-01-29T11:16:00.000+01:00

He thinks he knows me

"I read people well"
and thinking to unseat this bespeckled Freud
i provoke an analysis of just what it is
i am feeling in this circumstance.

and we begin to discuss the demise of what was our love
dispassionately,
he said she said,
like pouring over ancient war strategies
history dryly intellectualized,
like the fall of Ceasar's Rome
until the final version in no way resembles actual events.

On to accounting and finance he says
"You feel cheated out of your investment"
and I think, my God! (Oh if there really was one, he has a fucking great sense of humor!)
positioned like some tight ass accountant
who is disappointed in his lost earnings
poured into poorly chosen Roth IRA.
and I pray that this isn't really his impression of my feelings.

For while it is true he usually is quite perceptive,
he is way off on this one.

what i feel is different,
entirely and totally.
Cheated yes, definitely,
but more like a woman feels when she is awakened at midnight by
uncomfortable police officer who squirms on
front steps staring at his shoes mumbling "Miss, I'm sorry to have to tell you this,
but we found your lover dead over off Highway 99,
seems he was driving a little reckless and missed that curve above San Ysidro"

and as my legs crumble
now i the silence of this room,
his words resonate flatly, with this same death verdict.
transformed into equally fatal realities.

and i am unable to speak, the air
stolen from my lungs,
and the pain stabs at my chest and makes me feel totally helpless.

my sense of loss coming not from what I have given,
even if he doesn't realize it,
my gifts, whatever they may have been,
were just that,
unconditional,
not weighted with their own self worth.

i feel like someone i loved has suddenly died
stolen away before we ever had a chance to turn all the pages, explore all the streets and avenues of one another.
helpless,
i can do nothing to turn back the clock
to give pause, long enough to at least let him know just how much he has meant to me.

in this moment i crave for the simplicity of childhood,
when daddys could make all problems go away,
with a simple touch or word
where the most i had to loose was my barrettes when playing in the sand box.

but then again, i think i was five when i learned
that bombs and grenades come in many shapes,
some nothing more than words, but their shrapnel just as sharp.

and so i sit and wonder,
the leading lady of this production,
how close to the truth will the screenwriter come
when he is through writing our story.

i don't want to be a characature, melodramatic and plasticized
an grotesque cartoon,
barely a sketch of who i am
it is the only story i would ask that he lay down his pen
and pick up mine.

sometimes life gives your jewels.....

2005-12-08T19:02:00.000+01:00

it is amazing to have good friends...it is even more amazing when you feel honored to know them.....

scribblings from my friend Jim who is trying to help fund a school in highland Tibet.

moment of disappointment -- when magic and talismans take the place of Buddhist mind, shove 'sense' right out the door and let the local deities take over. Magic. When a simple request to pray for a dying Trappist monk turns into a search for a red undershirt to be blessed and FedEx'd to a monastery along the Shenandoah in Virginia, where he lays dying. And the lama says it's just a temporary obstruction, that if he wear the $2 dollar blessed red undershirt and eats a specially prepared longevity pill his life will continue on beyond the hopelessness of his failing kidneys. And me saying, "How bout a few bangs on the drum, toots on the longhorns, crashing of the dissonant symbols. Someone there in Virginia could whisper in his ear and tell him that monks along the upper Yellow River were doing a puja for his good next life. He'd like that, he would. I know." But the lama's got magic which I'm not buying it, because the guy who's dying is ready. Really ready A blessed undershirt and a pill the size and color of a single dropping of ship shit will not change the course he's on. But I do the ritual, which ends in drinking barley liquor, which I touch to my lips, wipe across my face, run my liquored fingers through my hair in a special darkened room with guardian deities. And I think, how did it get to this. We die. We all die. I'm not looking for anything more than that. But the lama, he keeps hammering -- get the shirt to VA, and I bury it in my pack and leave it there. Magic. A disappointment. You got to believe, but I don't. And either would my dying monk, though imaging the racket in a Tibetan monastery would please him as his life fades. I left it at that, and the red shirt is now in another room, waiting for someone to fit it. The longevity pill...got no clue. I guess it took a journey all it's own.

FORVM ROMANVM

2005-11-02T18:19:00.000+01:00

so there is this little readers and writers group in Rome that meets the first wednesday of the month at a little enoteca in Centro called Il Goccetto.

its our very own, twisted little Roman version of a quasi-New York City reading event and while the baby is still in its infancy, it appears to be growing into a healthy toddler that only occasionally knocks a wine glass off the table.

some less shy souls bring their own stuff, and with a little encouragement, read a bit in their native tongue. others bring works of names long familiar and we remember why it is they are called masters.

on any given evening you you can hear Romano dialect, or Napolitano, and talk centered on writing, writers, or just life in general.

tonight, if i am brave enough, i am going to dust off my rusty southern girl drawl and read in my best Scarlett O'Hara voice.

here's hopin' they understand me.

I Think I’ve Finally Figured It All Out

Being a good girl,
doesn’t necessarily help you win
in this cotillion
we go 'round callin' life.

I’ve played by the rules…
Actin’ fit and proper….
When I felt bound, gagged and tied.

Been so polite that
butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth
Even bowed my head
when I felt like
kickin’ up my heels…

And where has it gotten me…
Absolutely f uckin’ nowhere.

I look down at my accomplishments
and what I see is half a person,
livin’ half a life…

One day I opened my eyes
and realized I was livin’ life
with my dreams
tucked safely away inside my pocket
like pennies for a rainy day.

How did I ever become so afraid to live?
Where did I get this warped perception
that this was how life was supposed to be….

This little epiphany,
this new found self awareness,
knocked me just about flat on my ass…
It was like swimmin’ at the beach
in a seventy mile an hour hurricane.
Like standin’ in the middle of a wheat field
when that cyclone sucked Dorothy straight up to Oz….

When I finally figured it out, I thought…
"Hey!
You’re not in Kansas anymore Todo"
And a light bulb when off in my head….
Cracking into a thousand shards…
scattered bright like in the corners of my mind.

I awakened, as if from a dream…
with a sense of drive and courage
I’d forgotten I had possessed
and suddenly I noticed the world wasn’t
black and white anymore,
by golly! It was Technicolor!

Excited,
I grabbed hold of this one life
I have to live,
before the dust had a chance to settle
And said…(havin’ figured it all out)…
"On your mark….
Get set….
Go!"

Trick or Treat

2005-10-31T18:10:00.000+01:00

so there was this blinking message on my home answering machine. something i usually avoid answering because A – it usually isn't for me; or B – it involves someone speaking in rapid-fire italian trying to sell me a new phone service or ADSL package.

but there it sat...blink, blink, blinking and strangely enough this time i sensed it might be for me.

pushing the button, this is what mysteriously burbles out. (excuse the bad translation)

"Buongiorno, come questa" -something unintelligible- "questura"
-something unintelligible-
"Prati"
-something unintelligible-,
-something unintelligible-,
-something unintelligible-,
"Permesso di Sorggiorno" -something unintelligible-
"uffico" -something unintelligible- -something unintelligible-
"questa lunedi" -something unintelligible, -something unintelligible-,
-something unintelligible-
"pronti".

are my ears deceiving me????? did i just hear a message from someone at the questura on my home phone?

as my heart begins to beat at a mere 6,000,000,000 beats per second, i try and clean the cobwebs out of my stuck in neutral English speaking head, grab pen and paper and with sweaty palms, try to listen to the message again hoping, this time, to be able to decipher the secret message.

pressing the play button a second time, i hold my breath for 4 horribly long seconds as the machine rewinds...

(repeat same insane garbled message here)

then a third....

(frustratingly non-hilarious Halloween trick continues ad naseum)

and despite my ever growing frustration, i am still unable to make out whether the officer is telling me that my permesso is ready or if there is some sort of problem that i need to come into the office for.

throwing the pad of paper down in frustration, i grab every immigration document i have ever collected in the four years since i came down with the "I wanna live in Italy" flu, took the steps three at a time and raced down to the local police precinct faster than those buggy pushing grannies on their way to a K-Mart, blue light special.

arriving in 2.2 minutes, i am surprised to see a mere twenty pair of hopeful eyes staring back at me. this number of émigrés, waiting to be tortured by the Italian civil service, is smaller than usual, and it suddenly dawns on me that today is monday, which, besides being Halloween for Americans and Ponte for Italians, is question only day for the police at the Prati questura. as this realization sinks in, i dejectedly conclude that today is not going to be my lucky day and that there will be more tricks than treats before this crazy immigration nightmare concludes.

not even bothering to scan the now famous list of who's who in paperwork land, i pull up the last remaining free chair and let the dust gather atop me like the rest of the lost souls already waiting for bureaucratic salvation. sadly resigned, i assume that there must be some other reason for the call, some other detail that needs fine toothed review and so i pull out my paperback and tuck in for the long haul trying to not look forlorn and morose.

after only a few minutes, a woman in white lab coat (better to protect yourself from greasy fingerprint goo) walks out, takes one look at the mountain of documents i seem buried under and reminds me that monday is not a day for requesting permessos.

i stammer to my feet, an explain to her that someone in their office has called me and requested that i come in. she raises an eyebrow incredulously, makes a quick about-face, and says she will be right back.

looking around the room, i see all eyes staring at me in hopeful commiseration. like members of the same spent racing team, everyone hopes expectantly that at least one member of their bedraggled flotsam and getsam will go the longest yard.

Ms. Labcoat returns and asks me to please step back into the inner sanctum, high heels clickety clacking as she walks along the well worn length of the émigré weary corridor. we arrive at a small counter and i remember that this is where the other officer fingerprinted me back in February, this time however, instead of an ink roller, i see that that this angel dressed in white is holding a flimsy sheet of paper with my face stapled to it.

totally awestruck, she must remind me twice that it is necessary for me to sign in the big green ledger she is holding before she can give me my permit of stay, which i eventually do with shaky hands and questionable legibility.

closing the massive and frayed old book, she hands me my coveted prize and politely i thank her for both her kindness and for working on the famous "ponte" to give me my much anticipated document (well i couldn't very well thank her for contributing to my ulcer now could I?????).

she smiles and tells me "Niente" and helps me gather my accumulated mound of dead trees, walks me down the corridor, tells me good day and then shuts the door quietly behind me.

in the lobby again, i look straight into the eyes of all the hopeful faces, many of whom, have only just started the gauntlet i have been travelling on these long months. i nod my head that yep, they gave it to me and see smiles light up on some, as well as a few "wish it was mine" on one or two others. i understanding their waiting plight all too well, and trying not to gloat, i don't even look down to read what is written until i am a discreet thirty meters away from the station.

Scanning the page it is all i can do to not let out a big whoop and do cartwheels down the sidewalk!

My permesso is dated effective through October 31, 2007.

Like Martin Luther King once said.........."Free at last, free at last, thank god almighty I am free at last.

.......

Maybe......just maybe.

2005-10-26T18:39:00.000+02:00

as part of my monthly self-flagellation ritual, i decided to stop by the Prati questura this morning.

why this seemingly strange and painful rendezvous with local law enforcement precincts you ask?

well, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure (or displeasure) of hearing me whinge, up-close and personal, about this subject, my bizarre fixation with men in blue uniforms is part and parcel to my ever elusive quest for the Italian equivalent of the holy grail:

the renewal of my Permesso di Soggiorno for Lavoro Autonomo.

walking from the apartment along Viale Mazzini, i found myself acting-out every good luck superstition i know. wearing my lucky socks and armed with crossed fingers, toes, arms and eyes, i walk gingerly to avoid sidewalk cracks, throw salt with my right hand over my left shoulder and do my best not to draw strange looks from passing Romans who all thankfully have been spared the perils of bureaucratic insanity so often heaped upon stranieri.

but in spite of all my amulets to ward off pending evil, i am resigned even before i get there. resigned because i am almost certain that my name will not be on the coveted completion list.

reason for pessimism you ask?

an almost unalterable belief that my names continued absence must be directly related to the need for me to perform years of twisted penance for what must surely be multiple lifetimes of severe disrespect for government civil servants in general and men in blue uniforms in particular.

as a result, and like so many émigrés in Rome, it seems that i will be perpetually trapped upon the time-to-torture-myself-yet-again-with-ridiculously-futile-activity merry-go-round and so i have no false illusions that today will be any different.

that said, i’m not surprised when i scan down the list of lucky names on the "Nanny, Nanny, Boo Boo We have New Permessos and You Don’t” list taped to the glass booth at the entrance and fail to find my name. but as i look again for a second time just to make sure, rolling my pointer finger over the few names located under my alpha letter, (there are six) i am still disappointed that the fates have, once again, failed to give me the goods.

letting out a disgusted sigh, i check the list a third time, this time to see if my friend Eowyn’s name might be there, as she too is another hopeful "I wanna live in Italy even if it kills me" schmuck, but guess what....hers isn’t either, and as the injustice of it all overwhelms me, i start to become unglued.

this is my THIRD, yes, count it ......THIRD Permesso di Soggiorno.

not my FIRST,

not my SECOND,

but my @&%$£7&!!!! THIRD
such wonderful, obscene little, nasty, and all too necessary pieces of paper, and i want to shout this to every police official in the building!

i have lived in Italy for almost three years. i have one of the rare, but golden, work visas that desperate wanna-be Italy expats the world over would sell their sister into slavery for. i am gainfully employed, don’t jaywalk, and to date, have not killed anyone, (though the idea is crossing my mind more and more often lately in direct proportion to this never-ending immigration paper shuffling).

almost in tears, i begin to wonder if throwing myself on the ground in front of the station entrance and grabbing the ankles of the officer smoking his cigarette there will expedite my missing document. but thinking more rashly, and realizing my idea posed a substantial likelihood of having ashes thumped on my head, i suck up my frustration, put on my best unconcerned academy award winning smile and ask the officer politely if it is normal for a one year renewal to take eight and a half months.

“certo! Anche un anno!” comes the officer’s unconcerned reply

and so i push a bit farther, using my best damsel in distress mode..... sweetly manipulating, like Scarlett O’Hara wooing Rhett.

i explain to him in bold drama, why this itsy bitsy slip of paper is very important to me.....that i need my permesso for my residency

and that i need my residency, for my patenta
and that i need my patenta, to drive
and that i need to drive, to get to work,
and that i need to work, to....to....to....

to pay taxes!

“taxes?” yes taxes!

and bemused he suggests i speak with the paperwork nazi in the back office.

once there i knock timidly, remembering the last time they growled at me for entering their reserved castle without being summoned, but this time they seemed to be in a good mood.

one of the two officers looked up my information on their computer, then turned around, reached about midway up the bookcase behind him to a very small stack of folders marked “Nuovo Permessi”. from this stack of five or six files, he thumbed along and removed the one he was apparently searching for, with my name written on it.

holding my breath, almost faint, i begin to have hope, begin to think that maybe, just maybe, i was being to pessimistic early, maybe, just maybe, this might be my lucky day,.

opening the folder, he reads something and then snaps the folder closed.

“almeno un altro mese” he replies.

sometimes the gods of immigration have a sick sense of humor.

An umbrella for every occasion

2005-10-24T08:41:00.000+02:00

Listening to INCUBUS - Under My Umbrella

When I close my eyes... I can see for miles. When I close my eyes... I remember why I smile. Under my umbrella...

Some people collect normal things....like paperweights!

Others venture into slightly more predictable acquisitions, dependant upon their regional location or recreational tendencies.

Travelers in the American southwest collect little spoons etched with the names of various tumbleweed cities. Italian tourists are hell bent in satisfying their ever growing need for micro-sized versions of Pisa’s leaning tower or Florence’s favorite phallic symbol.

I, on the other hand, (a stand in the elements, public transport brat) collect umbrellas. And while I refuse to label my brelly stash as obsessional, (Insert image of Imelda Marcos’shoe closet here) my ever-growing collection could be construed my some analysts as a bit of a problem.

I don’t collect umbrellas intentionally mind you, and certainly not of my own volition…..but taking a gander into my closet and viewing the ever growing stack, more than one casual observer has been lead to believe that I may have an uncontrollable fetish for the damned things.

The reality though, is that I am absent minded, more so, than usual these days and I keep leaving mine at home, when halfway through the day, the bottom lets out and it begins to rain, cats, dogs, baby elephants, small refrigerators, etc. And although I thought I moved to Rome, the land of fine weather and warm café’s, for the last six weeks, it seems as if I have been mysteriously teleported all the way to Merry Olde London.

Last headcount, the result of being a bear with little brain, I had purchased 13 of the little €4, buy-m-as-you-exit-the-metro-stop buggers since moving to Rome and to anyone who doesn’t travel via ATAC bus, tram, metro etc., this could appear to be a smidge on the obsessive side. I, on the other hand, have decided to consider them my new found and inexpensive fashion accessory. Now….if I can only remember to carry one (instead of just collecting them), have one suitable for almost every social occasion or mood swing.

There is my rainbow colored peace demonstration umbrella_- perfect for whacking George Bush with or perhaps Silvio Berlusconi if I ever get the chance.

There is my basic black “I am a poet, not Mary Poppins” umbrella which is, of course black and very small, not large with a talking beak and which goes remarkable well with my black boots, black skirt, black blouse and black purse (do you detect a theme here????)

There is my “I AM A TOURIST AND I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT IT” umbrella, which is a replica of Filippo Brunelleschi’s fabulous Duomo and one that I use when I am feeling whimsical about Firenze and also lend to unsuspecting friends when they forget their own (because I know I will alwaaaaaaaays get it back).

Then there is the Burberry plaid (or at least that is what everyone tells me) designer jobbies that an ex-boyfriend bought for me that I try and avoid at all costs, which, despite all my efforts, never seems to break or get stolen, no matter where I leave it.

There is the plain forest green jumbo umbrella that is great for kissing under or walking hand and hand with your favorite girlfriend window-shopping long after the shops close.

There is my bright neon yellow, “please don’t run over me in the cross walk” umbrella and my equally shocking I-bought-this-at-porta-portese-for-2€ model which even I agree is too cheap and too ugly for more than the most desperate.

Also for those raining sideways days, I often choose my “This is an Emergency!” orange colored, quick folding, ever-dripping metrobus model, designed to let bus drivers see me shivering at the fermata at more than forty paces.

Then there is my discreet, yet professional business umbrella collection, guaranteed to go well with all my work related attire and ranging in color and dimension from discreet gray, to wow! shocking burgundy.

Yesterday we had our first full workday of sunshine in quite some time……….

just hoping the good fortune continues before I succumb to my urge to have a commando green umbrella of the hardened metro warrior variety.

my schizophrenic kitchen

2005-10-23T16:37:00.000+02:00

listening to miles davis while making soup today, the sound of his lips blowing gentle like the humid breeze outside my, for once, rain free Rome apartment.

onions made naked,
sliced provocatively into half moon slivers
molding to my pan as they succumb to the influence of a pleasant sardo Vermentino
a touch of antilles scotch bonnets and a long lingering kiss from a bottle of sabina olive oil
left to simmer jauntily atop my stove.

now all they need is a saucy french hat (of gruyere of course)
to be worn atop a steaming crock.

sometimes cooking is a lot like sex.

~sparrow

A time to remember....

2005-10-19T22:23:00.000+02:00

cried unshed monsoons this afternoon,

remembering her,

as i silently pulled large hanks of hair

out of my dying mothers head.

she'd asked me to do this for her,

no way of knowing its price on my soul

or the even now too fresh images

of the night before

when she stood naked

after her shower

frantic, that the tub wouldnt drain

for the tresses she had lost.

perhaps i was selfish, not wanting to see her go

three strands remaining

to every fifty or so

that slipped like silken feathers

to float into the wind.

the birds can line their nests with it

and I, gulping, yea, sure, it will be soft, warm

like the gentle hugs I was soon to miss.

as i watched handful after handful turn loose in my hands

i wished i was one of those birds.

~sparrow~

You Know You Live in Rome when…

2005-10-18T18:47:00.000+02:00

you tell your relatives “I live in Rome, next to the Vatican” but you tell your friends “I live in Prati, just down from Piazzale Claudio-around the corner from Giacomelli’s.

you don't consider vespas driving on the sidewalk or seventy year old men checking out twenty year old girls unusual occurrences.

it takes you 55 minutes to ride 8 miles by bus from centro to EUR on a work day and you tell yourself “Che culo!”.

there are at least fifteen ways to get everywhere and you know which mode of public transportation to take based upon: the weather, time of day, current political climate or terrorism drill closures, (and whether you are coming or going).

filling out forms at the post office no longer scares the hell outta you.

you know that traffic lights are only opinions and that it is best to walk quickly in cross walks, even if you are elderly, despite the fact that they seem to indicate that you have the right of way.

"I couldn’t get to work because there was a sciopero " is a common and real excuse for being late."

finding a parking space" actually becomes an appointment on your daily calendar. (E.g.. 7:00-8:00 PM Gym, 8:30-9:00 PM - find a parking space, 9:00-10:30 PM - Dinner reservations with Paolo and Lorenzo.)

you don’t have a Walmart, Kmart or Target and don’t miss them.

you know exactly how much time it takes till your number comes up for your turn at the Post Office sportello and leave to do your shopping until immediately ten seconds before (cleverly pulling an extra two tickets for the nice old ladies seated next to you).

when you say “lets eat early” and you mean "lets have dinner at 8:00 PM".

you elbow tourists out of the way on the Metro escalators to "gently" remind them to WALK LEFT, STAND RIGHT.

going to work early means being there by 9:00AM.

you don't bat an eye at 500 UN workers and businessmen in suits running like their lives depended on it to catch an overpacked Metro car that will be followed by an almost empty one in 120 seconds.

You call it EE-KAY-AH and not EYE-KEY-AH, and are well aware that the two in Roma are just a "tad different".

when Fiumicino and Ciampino Airports are and always will be "Fiumicino" and “Ciampino, not "Leonardo da Vinci di Fiumicino” and”Battista Pastine di Ciampino”.

you never refer to the 'Metropolitana' as the 'subway'.

you can tell by the size of people's cars (or motorinos) where they live and maybe even what neighborhood.

you've claimed that there's nothing to do this weekend even when you have the entire country’s capitol to explore.

you have the Metro map and all bus routes completely memorized, yet act like you aren't from around here when someone asks you “which way to Trevi Fountain?”

you meet someone else who says they're from Rome and you realize they live an hour and a half away from you.

you notice that there's been construction on the same section of the Lepanto metro station for the past 2 years and yet you've never see anyone working on it.

you know exactly when you're approaching the city on a Sunday evening, without ever seeing a sign, only because your speedometer goes from 100km to 0.

you know that China is no longer in the South Pacific, but has now been relocated near Termini.

the few times you have gotten lost in Roma you have somehow ALWAYS ended up in Sette Bagni and every road out somehow leads back to Sette Bagni.

you realize that the Via Aurelia is Roma’s very own version of NASCAR.

you have learned that there is no such thing as North, South, East, or West on the GRA, just “towards this” or “towards that”.

you go anywhere along Tuscany’s Argentario for the weekend and everyone you meet is from Roma-bene.

you understand that all this rain temporarily means no more dog c”*p on the street.

ice on the roads just means that you pay more attention to other cars, but still go 75 mph on the highways.

you know at least 2 politicians.

it is more common to see cars the size of erasers than ones the size of Sherman tanks.

you know how to pronounce Julius Caesar’s name and know it doesn’t begin with a “J”.

you consider Northern Lazio to be in no way similar to southern Lazio.

you know which bridges to cross over the Tiber depending on if you are coming into, or exiting centro.

you can successfully harmonize with the alert for the name of the next metro stop on the B Line.

you have been known to steal figs and persimmon from city trees, but know to avoid the pretty oranges.

what i should be doing

2005-10-15T10:23:00.000+02:00

Listening to 3 Doors Down “If I could be like that”

OK…..What I should be doing.....

Getting off my lazy culo and riding my bike with these guys around Terminillo.
Talking with J about organizing a Women in Black vigil for Rome this year.
Reading up on how to set up a list-serv in Yahoo for a new, yet unnamed, literary group in Rome.
Running by Il Goccetto to pick up my cashmere scarf that I left two weeks back.

In reality…..What I am doing….

Sitting in front of my computer still in my Jalaba, drinking my third espresso in three hours..
Writing a syllabus for a 2 day workshop on cross cultural communication in English.
My laundry.
Downloading an insane number of MP3 songs and wishing I had an MP3 player for the 11,000 hours I spend in the metro each week.
Getting ready to go to a business meeting ON MY DAY OFF!!!!!!!!!

Instead…..What I would like to be doing….

Going to a bookstore to drool over wine books that I need (did I just say need???????) but cannot afford to buy.
Listening to Al DiMiola playing Piazzolla but he always makes me think of old flames, chances missed and cold rainy evenings that left tears in my eyes as well as smiles.

3 – Knowing what I should be doing and where I should be headed.

And the word of the day is.....

2005-10-02T09:46:00.000+02:00

Torschlusspanik.

(German term meaning "the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older")

sigh........

To everything turn, turn, turn....

2005-06-16T17:42:00.000+02:00

Also for blogs...(really this was the only thing I could think to mention other than I changed the look of things. Ahh and did I mention I am cowriting a novel?

Motorino Virgin no more!

2005-05-31T20:29:00.000+02:00

OK all......I have lost my cherry. Rode my first 50 CC scooter tonight and didn't kill anyone.....not even a scrape. Woo Hoo....so long to the stinky sardine can that is commuter life on the metro during high tourist season..

(And a friend gets three gold stars for not passing out while he looked on in horror)

OK, just when I thought Italy was really getting on my last nerve.

2005-05-27T12:42:00.000+02:00

As usual, when I am about to blow my proverbial emotional gasket, I turn to a member of the cavatappi support group Nightingaleshiraz for verve venting and vino.

Both of us are at, or approaching, our two year living-in-Italy mark, and for a variety of reasons, have had quite a few battle scars in the visa/employment sector to show for it. However, me being somewhat of an old fart, I begin to take it a bit more personally as I feel my wrinkles ratio as an employment deficit than as a vanity driven figurative one. Add to that, my employment value ratio dropping with every birthday I have over 40. (Shut up I am not telling you how many!) I begin to look at my future Italian job contracts with more than a little trepidation.

Anyway, after two glasses of good Elba wine, a sip (or two or three) of a new Cortonese Shiraz, and half plate of fantastic cheese and truffled salami, things begin to appear slightly less dire in the face of poor wages, horribly unrewarding work, and no end in site to the Italian bureaucracy.

After bidding a friendly buona notte, to our increasingly well loved enoteca owner, we wander out into the cool night air leaving the Campo di Fiori area to head along the river, making our way towards our ever faithful steed, the number 23 bus for Prati.

Scene Two: ENTER NEEDY TOURISTS ON VACATION WITH QUESTIONS::::::

Walking along, talking randomly about life in general, the secret lives of suspicious cats, and our fascination with things equally only humorous to womenfolk, we are stopped by a willowy iris in pretty heels and flowery dress and her equally well coiffed beau who ask Andi in halting Italian fresh out of a Berlitz course, "mi scuzeeee maaaaaaa dough veh pren day la bus ticket??????"

To which Andi yawningly answers....."you can speak to me in English if it is easier for you"

And being cute and helpless in the face of no near-by bars in which to buy tickets, we tell them we are all heading for the same bus and we will try and persuade the driver to sell them a ticket on the bus or perhaps turn a blind eye to their empty hands.

Relief flooding her face, the ragazza proceeds to do what all needy tourists do in this situation......gush.

Giving us their life story in 30 seconds we discover that these two walking ads for a Vacationing-in-Italy photo shoot are here from the US on (what else) their honeymoon! And as they are template caricatures of hip West Coast Americana, we-want-to-see-and-do-it-all types, they are staying in the country for what maybe ten days???? And besides Roma, have plans to visit Florence, the Tuscan countryside and of course, the terribly chic Amalfitan coast.

Several minutes pass, as we walk along the jasmined Lungotevere towards our fermata (bus stop), and Andi with the diplomacy of the finest UN protégé (or the most patient of expats) points out to the starry-eyed couple that although pocket romance novel inspiring, cruising along Amalfi's hairpin coastline on a motorino when you are not used to the roads or the Italian driving mentality, could in fact make them newly-deads, instead of newlyweds. And sheepishly, while waiting for the bus to pull up, they concede that perhaps renting a car, might be a bit more prudent game plan.

Scene Three: ARRIVES THE EVER FAITHFUL STEED::::::BUS NUMBER 23 - TO PIAZZALE CLAUDIO

Hopping on the bus, Andi, who is way younger, and way cuter than me, asks the driver politely if he can help the couple out but remarkably gets absolutely nowhere. ATAC is stepping up their control of riders he remarks and while making every effort to say sorry (more than we expected...usually you get abject indifference in these situations) he cannot say that they won't get fined if they hop on without benefit of tickets.

Beginning to get concerned that the four of us are holding traffic and his route, we quickly advise the honeymooners that cab fair should be about 10 bucks and they agree that this is worth the splurge so they hop off and let us mass transporters get on our way.

Since Mr. Autobus was so nice, Andi continues to chat with him as our bus meanders its way along the riverfront while I merely nod in agreement every now and then. (The result of too much wine being that my Italian becomes all but unintelligible except for the occasional si, si, and certos interjected occasionally).

So as we jiggle our way towards Citta di Vaticano the two discuss how it is possible in Firenze to buy tickets directly from the bus driver after a certain hour and about the philosophy of bus rules and regulations as they relate to Romes ATAC system for those of us forced to ride on a system heavily overburdened, but often times fairly useful.

About midway through this conversation is where all my frustration about living and working in this perplexing country begin to evaporate.

And all for the simplicity of one enamoured bus driver.

Since Andi is adorable, olive skinned and doe eyed, and speaks a fine Italian, it is no small wonder that our driver is instantly captivated. When she tells him that, no, she is not Italian, but rather, was born in Pakistan, he forgets to stop when one of his passengers rings the bell and has to pull over one street farther up.

Smiling , and thinking to myself that ...yep...she has done it again, I listen intently as he smiles and gestures and proceeds to ask lame question after exceedingly lame question about what countries border her home country solely in an effort to keep the conversation rolling. Then at a particularly animated point in their conversation he begins talking with both hands.....

NEITHER OF WHICH ARE NOW ON THE STEERING WHEEL

as we bend and curve and sway our way through the evening streets of Rome.

Now for most people accustomed to mechanized transport that might be extremely fear provoking but you know you are becoming a native when it doesnt even phase you, but instead makes you think...."Man, I could do that with my old Saturn but with a long Mercedes bus.....wow!"

Conversation continues to flow like fine wine for another 7 or 8 minutes and at the next requested passenger stop, our besotted driver remembers to stop, but forgets to open the door, all the while happily oblivious to the fact that his few remaining passengers are being inconvenienced (though none complain, just politely yell out "Hey!!!!!! Apri la porta per favore!".)

But by now Andi and I realize that not only are we just about home, but we probably should get off before someone on the route gets seriously upset and decides to complain that our love struck driver is more than a bit inattentive.

We tell him this is our stop and he opens the front door, (letting us exit through the entrance) and we say our "nottes before walking towards home.

Laughing conspiratorially, I am as amazed as I always am at the little things that make me love living here. How it isnt the grand piazzas or the marbled steps, that make me want to stay here, or the fine museums, or La Dolce Vita , but the life and colour that breaths its way into even the dirty soles of my feet after a long day teaching, book bag still slung over my shoulder 12 hours later, on a simple spring night even when I least expect it.

~me

Sunday.....

2005-05-15T17:20:00.000+02:00

OK, so I am not in Cortona, but lost in translation in Roma and truly lame about blogging. Hoping to get my act together soon and post what happened in the last year......for now its just way too complicated. Two years in Italy and counting,

..... think I like it here.

2004-01-18T17:34:00.000+01:00

ok…the decision has finally been made.

After much teeth gnashing and an almost rabid desire to stay in Florence, I have decided to bite the bullet and live the quintessential Tuscan cliché. Effective mid February, (enough time to no-so-hectically pack up my things and beg every car driving Florentine I know to serve as pack-mule and courier), Passerotto’s new nest will be situated up on an Etruscan hillside, underneath the slightly over-photographed, much scribbled about Tuscan sun.

I have been thinking about this hard since November….hemming and hawing betwixt my love for Firenze: its character (not to mention openness to flakes like myself) and my dwindling bank account; worrying if by leaving, I am selling out on my dreams of living here successfully or if in staying, I am allowing myself to give in to some overly stubborn, self-indulgent prideful “I said I wanted to stay…now dang it, I’m staying!” mentality.

Firenze is a lovely courtesan, and as these lovely ladies are prone to do…. she has charmed me with her “furba” ways. As my first real “home” in Italy she seduced me completely. Like some sea weary sailor half starved for loving, she intoxicated me with her warmth, pulling back her colourful silken sheets exposing long naked legs beneath.

By welcoming me, letting me tweeze aside those carefully placed (and ever so touristy) renaissance gowns, I fell in love with all that is her vulnerability; plunging into her silky spoken Florentine-ness, her less than perfect sense of rhythm, her openly boastful, ever so indulgent sense of pride and self importance. So enamored, that even when she overcharges me……like some starry eyed John….I smile and accept her kisses gratefully. For it is here in this Florence, not the venue most tourists stop on for a few days to admire, that I have always imagined myself being. And it has been here, where I have, in fact, felt at home, itchy feet and all. So in choosing to leave, I wonder if there will ever be another place where I can feel so warm, both inside (in my soul) and out.

But on a practical side, one year after my arrival to Italy, reality sometimes glaringly intrudes and more often than not, bites me on the ass. And on the rainy January, I find that instead of enjoying the life I have tried so hard to scratch out for myself here, I am juggling three jobs whilst trying to justify why I pay rent three times the average of any other Italian city. And even as other tired expatriates in this city say “yeah but others don’t have the Duomo to look at every day” I realize that at my age, I really don’t feel the overwhelming need to prove myself to anyone anymore and like may suburban fleeing Italians before me, I am coming to realize that “Il Centro” just isn’t practical. I want to set aside enough money to hold my head high and not forever be ducking for cover, something I am only dreaming about in the here and now.

When I came to Italy last February, I came with the conviction to write more, to get these three books running around inside my head and on thousands of sheets of paper into something finely tuned (and hopefully published) and to learn the language (that I love so much!) so that it isn’t always glaringly obvious that I hale from America’s heartland. I left DC because I craved body and soul, what the Italian mentality had to offer. I was tired of my plane crashing, sniper shooting existence in Washington and I needed to improve my health and slow down to a more realistic, European speed. I chose Florence because I have always felt loved here and despite all, that has not changed.

It just seems that in this transition year, my life has instead taken on an existence remarkably similar to some really bad B movie of living life ala Ellis Island in reverse.

“Italy, the land of writer’s opportunity!”

And while my own émigré scenario hasn’t been replete with sweathouse sewing factories, I definitely haven’t had much time to enjoy what it is I came here searching for. And while I haven’t yet been reduced to my friend Maria’s biggest fear of selling rubber ducks in Duomo square, I have in fact, gratefully taken on jobs, that just two yeas ago I wouldn’t have given a second thought to.

Staying in Italy, even with the proper documents is hard. One doesn’t shoot for jobs where one feels self-actualized, complete with signing bonuses and stock options. Work is harder, yet simpler here and infinitely more humbly, I have gratefully accepted just about anything where added together with everything else, one is able to put the bread with the onions.

So, despite my former six figured saleswoman salary, like Jim Joyce teaching English for a mezzo liter of house wine, I have become comfortable selling apples at the central market, writing the occasional short snippet for this or that and cooking up any and all schemes possible that will allow me to continue to live in this country I love, where even in this constantly tired state, I feel myself more alive than I ever did on my hamster wheel in Washington.

And while this philosophy has its charm at twenty, at forty it takes on a less practical look, five years into my aging future. I cannot work at this pace when I am 60, so I better figure out something now, whilst I still have the time and where-with-all to make something of all these fanciful dreams. I want a life here that has some permanence, not a moment to moment feel, and maybe to accomplish that means taking a step into an area a little more remote and a lot more outside my comfort zone.

So almost one year to the day of my arrival in Florence, I will face this realigned view of life in Italy without the stars in my eyes naiveté of someone just off the plane. I won’t pretend at staying, but continue with knuckled down determination, no matter how far a field it takes me, armed with the knowledge determination to make a go of it for a lifetime in this country. Staying not just when its new and sweetly romantic, not just when its easy, but even when it’s the hardest damned thing I have ever done (save giving birth to two children) And knowing that in doing so, despite the change of locale, I have the rest of my lifetime to learn and love and live in this country that I adore so much.

Cortona is a little over an hour from Firenze…….and I am not leaving my dreams behind, just merely looking at living them through more pragmatic (and maybe for the first time, economically realistic) Italian eyes. With batteries recharged, perhaps I can get begin to enjoy Tuscany, the way I did in those first excited days of being here.

And for those reading this……come and see me sometime…..I will always have a warm plate of pasta and stories to tell.

Open D Tuning and Poetry

2003-12-22T00:12:00.000+01:00

sitting here listening to some wonderful guitar playing by Michael Hedges who's open D tuning and fusion chords have always served as my own personal acoustic Prozac. while i am doing this i am smiling to myself because one of the things i missed about life in America is access to fairly inexpensive CD's and here in Italy they often cost as much as your first born male child and now that i am sure that the RIAA isn't going to have me arrested for file sharing i can get some of the things i missed via the internet.

at least so sayeth Judge Ginsburg who writes......

"It is not the province of the courts, however, to rewrite the DMCA in order to make it fit a new and unforeseen internet architecture, no matter how damaging that development has been to the music industry or threatens . . . the motion picture and software industries."

i feel a little less leery about swapping files and so i have spent the wet and rainy afternoon jumping from link to link exploring some new things and becoming entranced yet again by this artist and cursing the fates that he died before i really had a chance to get to know his music. why is it so much of the music i like comes from performers or singer-speakers who are dead? i mean really, if i just tick off a few of my favorites, Hedges, Bob Marley, Eva Cassidy, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Jimmi Hendrix...... their are all dead and gone. which brings me to that melancholy....... what will i be remembered for mood......and so i start tinkering around with this poem a friend and I are writing that i just cannot seem to stop tweaking and pretty soon it is going to be unrecognizable......

As a child
I measured my calamities with rolled up pant legs.
often picking,
absentmindedly
at some freshly-made gash.

“I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours!”
I challenged Hector at recess.
And with nervy arrogance
I’d smile at each criss-crossed scrape,
tracing the red raised road maps of blackberry briars,
or the grey green bruise that spread upon my knee.

Back then
My tumbles and spills were only written on the surface of my skin.
I still remember the feel of his moist breath on my breasts,
listening to my chest as we played doctor.
Like those childish kisses momma’s magic lips gave,
I was so sure she could mend the world and all its ills.

and somehow
his gentle ministrations made me feel better,
perhaps even loved.

Maybe it is for that reason, I turn to you now?
the denial of my illnesses embedded deep in my psyche.
And so I joke with you in your paneled office
and plan my next trip to the Isle of Capri.
Suggesting that perhaps we could suture my frayed vessels
with fine laughter instead of silk.
rather than accept your bleak prognosis of my possible pending demise.

I wonder,
as a practiced surgeon ready to wield a scalpel,
what first you saw, as you dispassionately peered at the map of my world.
And if I let you open me from neck to navel,
would you actually be able to save me?

What would you interpret of the trauma within?
Would you shake your head with knitted brow
and concentrate like a master mechanic,
tinkering under the hood of a favorite roadster?

I can almost see you
kneading my soft purplish heart.
Accurately noting,
each crack, healed
each fissure, closed
each time, failed
that I allowed her to be broken
or failed to perform preventive maintenance.

And if I let you probe deeper,
examining my psyche (to save a soul),
Would you thoughtfully untangle the wire;
remove the staples and blue;
of my sincere yet botched attempts
to mend and gird

And would you knowingly understand
that I had done the best I could,

under the circumstances?

Just so that I could slip and fall and love

Again,

and again
and once more,
just this once more, again.

Maybe you could make me famous.
"patient, female," the subject of an important medical treatise:
having understood the mechanism of why the brain shuts off conveniently
when the body needs to find its own solace
or why what faculty and reason one seems to possess
conveniently escapes
like butterflies distracted to a flower garden
each time I stared into the eyes of love.

If you do, I will send you long letters of thanks
and smile when you are published in the Annals.

So trustingly I let you trace this line,
thoughtful fingers tenderly remembering
the paths of your own injuries,
And as your tears splash among my bowels
I am not surprised that you let the bloody scalpel clang to the floor.

Knowing, as you examine me,
knowing, as you try to save me..
knowing, like the good doctor Luke
that a physician must first heal himself.

Losing my Position

2003-12-20T01:46:00.000+01:00

ok found out round about midnight last night (that is 6 pm USA time for the rest of the hamsters on the hamster wheel.....that my position with the great and all powerful OZ e finito! subito. just like that. i am ,as the Brits say, redundant!, insert colorful metaphor here!

spent last night having a pity part for myself and feeling like a total loser only to have about 15 phone calls today and a contingency of supportive friends show up at my house carrying supper fixin's (don't think there is an Italian equivalent for that phrase) and doing their best to cheer me up.

i know i don't have riches, or even a bank account to handle this shortfall but some things are worth more than euros in my pocket. in less than one years time i have managed to make a solid group of friends here that even in the middle of the trappings of Christmas, have taken the time to make sure i don't slit both my wrists. i am 41 years old, living in a strange land and will be jobless in less than one month. some people would be terrified, but these people have made me feel solid enough to face tomorrow. like my grandma always said. when life deals you lemons.....make lemonade. here's hoping she knew what the hell she was talking about.

ps...Jaap Stijl.....don't push my buttons....if i can write after a day like yesterday (even if just whining about the state of my own personal union) don't bust my chops about not keeping this blog active.

2003-12-18T20:55:00.000+01:00

ok so I am functioning on three hours of sleep and 7, count them, s-e-v-e-n espressos as a major act of compensation so as my eyelids keep telling me “sleep is good” we interrupt tonight's regularly scheduled programming for, you guessed it RERUNS!!!!!!! (Just like on TV!)

read this Henry Miller piece while waiting waiting waiting for a ride on Gus – the wonder bus this morning. (you wonder if the heat will be working, you wonder if it will show up or if there is a sciopero, you wonder if the guy who invented mortadella got the idea from being sandwiched inside one of these big orange suppositories) . it made me think….still making me think…but reading stuff this good just makes me want to take everything i have ever written and pile it in one big pile (ala bonfire of the vanities) and strike a match.

i will never, not even if i live to be a hundred, be able to express myself this well…..

~sparrow

Today it is the third or fourth day of spring and I am sitting at the Place Clichy in full sunshine. Today, sitting here in the sun, I tell you it doesn't matter a damn whether the world is going to the dogs or not; it doesn't matter whether the world is right or wrong, good or bad. It is - and that suffices. The world is what it is and I am what I am. I say it not like a squatting Buddha with legs crossed, but out of a gay, hard wisdom, out of an inner security. This out there and this in me, all this, everything, the resultant of inexplicable forces. A chaos whose order is beyond comprehension. Beyond human comprehension.

As a human being walking around at twilight, at dawn, at strange hours, unearthly hours, the sense of being alone and unique fortifies me to such a degree that when I walk with the multitude and seem no longer to be a human being but a mere speck, a gob of spit, I begin to think of myself alone in space, a single being surrounded by the most magnificent empty streets, a human biped walking between the skyscrapers when all the inhabitants have fled and I am alone walking, singing, commanding the earth. I do not have to look in my vest pocket to find my soul; it is there all the time, bumping against

my ribs, swelling, inflated with song. If I just left a gathering where it was agreed that all is dead, now as I walk the streets, alone and identical with God, I know that this is a lie. The evidence of death is before my eyes constantly; but this death of the world, a death constantly going on, does not move from the periphery in, to engulf me, this death is at my very feet, moving from me outward, my own death a step in advance of me always. The world is the mirror of myself dying, the world not dying any more than I die, I more alive a thousand years from now than this moment and this world in which I am now dying also more alive then than now though dead a thousand years. When each

thing is lived through to the end there is no death and no regrets, neither is there a false springtime; each moment lived pushes open a greater, wider horizon from which there is no escape save living.

- Henry Miller, Black Spring

ok i admit it.....i suck at blogging

2003-12-17T23:11:00.000+01:00

ok i admit it.....i suck at blogging. i started and then i stopped. just couldn't bring myself to write about the wonders of living my dream in Italy when so many people were (are) living some pretty hellish moments in many corners of the world. i mean really.....i felt guilty......i kept telling myself i cannot write about how pretty the olive trees are or that i think i have found my home away from home enoteca, Le Volpi e l'Uva (where the sommelier Ciro knows what i want even before i do) when everyone else is struggling so hard just to survive. i mean hell, the people of Baghdad wait in line 12 hours for a liter of gas dodging suicide bombers, itchy finger soldiers, and rebuilding their country from the ground up.....who is going to be interested in one woman's journey towards self discovery...especially when Francis Mayes and Hollywood seems to have beat me to the point.

but then today I got an e-mail from Raed......the missing half of Salam Pax's "Where is Raed". i mean if he has the time to answer e-mails from strays like me... then what sorry excuse can i give for not having enough time to at least try abd make an effort? i mean really, he gets how much access to the internet and at what cost?

ok Raed....i'll make you a deal, i will keep writing about the crazy, sweet world of living a life in Italy if you keep Salam in check and help him remember that being salty is ok and that just because the Brits love him...he needs to not forget his Iraqi roots.

Reality Intrudes

2003-03-21T02:52:00.000+01:00

Early this morning, my roommate's phone bleeped out an SMS ( short message system) "we are at war", the message read shortly, And it was then that the world shifted a bit in my eyes, made all the more frightening by this chess game of men. And so hours later, as the last winter's night closed on this beautiful city, I am struck by both man's greatest steps towards Godhood and also his continued decline into devilry.

The message was sent by Jon, another US expat working down in Catania who, like the rest of us insomniacs, had been keeping his eye on the news and had promised to give a ring should things go burnt umber. My apartment hasn't any television reception, probably due to the ancient wiring and as a result, what news we get, comes via print publications or surfing Le Figaro, Al Hayat, La Repubblica, or The Washington Post.

Feeling defeated, even if I knew in advance, that my president hadn't gathered 250,000 American boys and girls into the desert for a day of sunbathing, I had, up until that point, still held on to one remaining shred of naiveté, hoping somehow, that Europe's lack of consensus for this war, could help keep the snarling dogs at bay until some sort of reasonable toy bone could be thrown to one or the other.

Not crying, (what good are tears at this point?) but stunned none-the-less, I began my day. I logged on, reading message after message from friends around the globe. And as I looked at the harsh red ball, repeated in image after image of Baghdad, I couldn't help but be reminded of a similar morning on September 11th that even in its utter difference, gave me that same "this can not be happening" feeling only to be followed by the cold shiver of "oh but it is".

And just like the day the twin towers fell, and the pentagon exploded into smoke and another plane ploughed its nose into the Pennsylvania pastureland, I searched the news like some morbid census taker, weighing out the damage done, like some triage medic trying to see if he can saw off a leg to salvage a soul.

I wanted to see words of our righteousness, how my country was a champion for the downtrodden and if not that then at least the afflicted. And instead, as I scanned line after line of the news bureaus, I could find only man's arrogance, long since bolstered by political rhetoric. The stories I read appeared sanitized and anticipatory. As if mankind isn't capable of understanding right from wrong, unless it is cleaned up a bit and made to smell of roses.

I found more reality speaking by phone to friends and family or reading hastily written e-mails as throughout the day and on into the night, people checked in with me just to say hi or to reach out because at least in speaking we didn't seem to be going it alone.

There were words of concern and sadness from Tina in the backwaters of my Tennessee, and angry apathy from Mohamed in Cairo. My former colleagues in DC spoke with frustrated irony (having long since soured on Washington's spin doctors) and my roommate gnashed her teeth and said a curse or two as each of us voiced the pain we felt. Lastly there was fear and concern from my family, wanting gentle assurances that being an expat in Italy, I wouldn't somehow be targeted simply for being an American.

But here in Florence I find that the tourists still flock and take pictures of our churches. And the bus drivers strike, although now in war protest. My ex and I continue to have bitter disagreements that even an ocean apart cannot quiet and I still hear "Ciao, come stai ?????" every morning at my favorite cafe where they give no importance to my being an American or the fact that my Italian sucks.

Yes, things remain the same here in my little piece of Tuscany, like the constant of waves. But like I said earlier, my naiveté is gone. As much as this place is my sanctuary, I can't outrun my past in Italy. And as beautiful and constant as she is, reality intrudes.

Throwing Grosetto to the Lions

2003-03-11T01:27:00.000+01:00

Attended my very first Florentine soccer match yesterday. Along with 3000 of my closest friends, I merged into the steady throng of afternoon revelers, after downing a quick post-pranzo coffee at the little gelateria in the piazza near my house. I think I am becoming addicted to Sicilian Pistachio….but that is another story.

Resembling salmon, on our way to spawn, we all wriggle our way up Viale de Mille towards the same common goal, the slightly worn, “D shaped cement bowl which is the gem of Tuscany’s sporting extravaganza……Il Stadio!!!!!!! The people around me, men and boys mostly, with an occasional dedicated girlfriend or spouse, are jovial and good spirited. And even if this young Florentine team is ranked in a lower division than her bankrupt older sister, Viola seems to be holding her own with respect to suitors and admirers

Without a ticket, I am not even sure I will get in, but the sky is blue and the sun bakes nicely warm upon my cheeks, so warm that by the time I walk the twenty minutes it takes to get there, I am already shedding my coat and scarf. Spring has arrived to Florence a bit early, and the city is still awash in yellow flowers picked by everyone the day before for woman’s day.

All around me there are purple flags and scarves, all gladly proclaiming that despite the mistakes of the previous team financiers, the Florentine fans are loyally proud of their place in Italian soccer history. So much so, in fact, that after standing in the tightest queue every seen, I just barely manage to purchase one of the few remaining nosebleed tickets before the box office closes, sold out.

As I wind my way up the circular stairs to the top of the stadium, I am reminded of the sounds a bee colony makes. That constant hum one hears just outside the woods that tells you that somewhere just ahead, you will come up upon a hive. Following the buzz, I round the top of the stairs just in time to see Grosetto’s players, Florence’s competitor in this match, come out on the field.

Almost immediately the atmosphere changes and I begin to understand, even if 2000 years late, just what the gladiators must have felt, walking out into the coliseum sunlight to the roar of its bloodthirsty onlookers. And while there isn’t any true malevolence here, the mood is definitely set. This isn’t just fun and games, this is Italian soccer and every match played, means a step up or down in the hotly contested rankings where a player’s fast and agile feet can bring him the smiles of pretty young girls, sportive endorsements, and a pocketful of euros.

As the game begins on the field, so too, does the show in Fiesole curve, the cheap seat season ticket section, where Florence’s most loyal (if not wealthy) supporters put on a show surely rival to even the opening of the Olympic Games. With timed precision, their banners spell out both words of encouragement and crude innuendo. And smiling with new awareness I begin to understand what friends meant when they say “if you want to learn the Italian language, the stadium is a place to get the basics!”

And so I sit and listen and add new polish to my list of curses outlining the male anatomy and what someone’s mother can do for a side business when not selling bread.

The players are matched pretty evenly and Grosetto scores first, leaving the home team to play fast catch up if they are to save face. Not to disappoint, and in less than three minutes, Viola ties up the match one: one. Like sardines in a can, to my left are three misplaced Grosetto fans, trapped in a sea of screaming purple. They grunt in disgust while the rest of us hoot and make rude hand gestures, (me amongst them) happy to now be in a dead heat instead of lagging behind, a team most Florentine’s feel is the equivalent to a recreational church league.

And so the game progresses, with strategically placed epitaphs, purple smoke, loud rhythmic drumming and occasionally, the kick of a soccer ball. For the focal point of this big event isn’t just about the sport of soccer. Its about the coming together of a community, a way for differences and social classes and religious beliefs to be set aside and for one brief afternoon, everyone in the city remains united and in agreement.

Some say the folks in Florence will turn their backs on this small little upstart team. That as time progresses, the more jaded, hard core fans will form loyalties to the bigger fish, trading in their purple passion for jerseys from other big league cities. I say if you believe that, then you surely don’t know the mentality of the Italian in his native element and you certainly haven’t been to Florence on a Sunday afternoon, sat in her sunny stadium or been bitten by the purple flu……for once she’s in an Etruscan’s veins their blood flows no other color.

Permesso, Permesso

2003-02-21T22:49:00.000+01:00

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

2003-02-17T12:56:00.000+01:00

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

2003-02-16T12:58:00.000+01:00

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

2003-02-15T13:11:00.000+01:00

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

2003-02-12T13:27:00.000+01:00

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

2003-02-11T13:32:00.000+01:00

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

2003-02-10T13:43:00.000+01:00

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!

2003-02-06T20:35:00.000+01:00

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

2003-02-03T04:09:00.000+01:00

BLOGGER

T-Minus 15 Days Till Departure.

2003-02-03T04:07:00.000+01:00

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

My Life as a Visa Quota Spy

2003-01-05T03:54:00.000+01:00

By: Dee Sparate

January 5 - Turn to divine intervention. I have tried praying to Jehovah, Shiva, Allah, Vishnu and Buddha and still no word from any official Italian authority as to whether or not there still exists any quota for 2002 autonomous worker visas. The Gods remain silent. Maybe the Befana will bring me good news? So that I can finally turn in all my notarized, stamped, sealed, apostillized documents into the Consulate in Washington DC so that I can finally be on my way to Florence to start my new adventure.

January 6 - Nothing new in my Befana e-mail sock and my U.S. employer raises an skeptical eyebrow and wants to know “ Just when is it you are actually intending on resigning and moving 6,000 miles away?” As I embarrassingly slink back to my desk, it’s obvious I shouldn’t have shot so many spitballs at the nuns and priests during my parochial school days.

Later that same day - I send off frantic e-mails to friends talking all kinds of trash about how I’ll sell cigarette lighters in Duomo square if I don’t get this visa; one to my Italian immigration attorney; and one to The Informer each reflecting my slow decay into blithering hysterical female as the countdown to my apartment lease ticks down.

None can console my nervousness or tell me what the quota status truly is. By midnight I begin to hatch my plan.

January 7, 1-am. Chianti induced Gypsy behavior....

Dear Comrades at the Detroit Consulate. My name is Al Doanything,
Can you please tell be the status of the 2002 autonomous worker
visa quotas are there any left and if not, can you tell me when
the 2003 quotas will become available? I will be traveling by camel
to the consulate and don’t want to make the trip if there isn’t any available.

Using multiple fictitious names, and e-mails I quickly copy replicas of this letter and send them off to each Italian Consulate in every available US location that foolishly lists an e-mail address on their homepage.

Delayed Reply from Immigration Attorney with 15 years experience in this field.

"Have pazienze I will send another fax asking
for details as Ihave no news about the "quotas"
closing. I long to have the information too”.

Have pazienze, he says!!!!!!! I begin to pluck my eyebrows out, one by one.

Reply from Los Angeles.

Dear Mr. Don Makeuslaugh,
you will need to bring proof of this, and
documentation of that, between the hours of
this and that, on this day or that day to apply
for this visa or that visa.

No answer to my tired camel question, but I am told emphatically that I must pay the Visa Fee, amount ??????, in cash or money order and report to the questura within 8 days of my arrival once I get to Italy. I swallow a whole pack of Tums and begin to examine how big a greasy spot I’ll leave, if I hurl my body out the window.

No reply from Boston, but I am told on their web site that I must pay $35 for my visa with cash or money order and report to the questura in 7 days of my arrival in Italy. I begin to see the reason why so many prime ministers in Italy choose bribery as a business practice.

Detroit Consulate.....my hope fades as I read

FOR AUTONOMOUS WORK (all types,
including Artistic Work):At present, applications
for autonomous work visas will not be accepted
because all quotas have been filled. We will
update this page with new instructions as soon
as they are made available.

Then I find a slight glimmer of hope - the page shows that it was last updated October 2nd 2001.

Houston .....Nothing.....decide I don't like Texans, even Italian Texans.

Miami - Still no reply but they are running a special! Their visas are only $30.75!

New York City......ahh the city of jokesters. Their website says to call their office between 2 PM and 4 PM for information on Autonomous Worker Visas. Spend 2 solid hours and the phone just rings and rings. (I really begin to wonder what kind of sadistic fool must be sitting at the office listening to this line ring 137 times without answering. Finally after the 138 try, at 4:01 PM I get an answering machine saying I can email my questions to an AOL e-mail. I try the address listed and it bounces back “user unknown”. Here I am told visas cost $29.05 and I should report to the questura within 3 days of my arrival to Italy.

Newark......Refers me to New York City repeat previous steps of insanity, prepare to blow a gasket.

Philadelphia - says if I want detailed information I must send a request by US post.

( As I live in DC This isn't an option)

And just as I begin to think I know the reason for the fall of the Roman Empire.

Chicago:

Dear Cindy,

”We cannot confirm to you that by the time you
will be applying this office will be still accepting
independent work visas or not. Quotas for us
are still available but they could be saturated
tomorrow. We cannot guarantee you that by
the time you applyquotas will still be available.

Best Regards,

Holy Jesus!!!!!!! I don’t live in Chicago’s application zone!

But to those of you that do.....if I were you, I'd head up there quick!!!!!!! And if you beat me to Firenze, you owe me an espresso!