When it rains, sometimes it seems to do more than just pour. The clouds gather, the sky darkens, the winds whip everything into a frenzy. The earth trembles beneath your very feet. And elsewhere in the world you know that things, events, cataclysmic happenings are taking place. Hurricanes are swirling, fires blazing, volcanoes erupting. Hail pummels the earth and waves beat on the shores. Avalanches and mudslides and rockfalls smother everything in their path. And just when you think, logically, statistically that not another disaster could possibly occur, it begins to rain over the wreckage.
Sometimes it is you standing in the downpour, (the seeming apocalypse), and sometimes, you're standing protected by an umbrella, watching the debris fall around you onto someone else.
What a downpour it has been. I have an umbrella and my goulashes and I wait for the next cloud burst to wash away tentative progress. I wade through the waist high water to a friend stranded on a dry patch in the deluge. I sit on this isolated roof top and hold my umbrella over their head, too. It doesn't change the fact that their feet are wet, or that their house is underwater, but at least we're together. Their pieces are shattered in a million billion directions, but I'll look for every last one on every corner of the earth until we've got them all again. It is no trouble. I do it gladly, hoping to alleviate even a little tiny bit of their burden.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Laser Pointer
The very first class I went to at the University of Bologna was Art History of China. Well, I suppose it was the second, but the first lecture I attended for Art History of Buddhism in India was also my last. The professor humiliated me by calling me out as a "straniera," a foreigner in front of the entire class. Necks craned, everyone got a look at me, the foreigner. Sure, there couldn't have been more than eight people total in the room, including myself and the professor, but humiliation is one thing I cannot tolerate. So I stayed for the remainder of the class, palms sweating, cheeks red, and left, never to return.
Let's begin again. In the context of classes-I-actually-took, Art History of China was the first. Besides the first, it is also the longest running class I am in. I began attending on Tuesday January 9th, a virtual lifetime ago. For the record it ends May 20th. Another small class, on the days when all students are present, there are 7 of us. Everyone sits in the front three rows of the classroom which could easily seat 125 students. Sometimes in the fourth row back, I feel like some sort of rebel, ostracized for my bad-ass reputation, which is completely erroneous: I totally made that up. Actually I sit alone and don't speak to anyone because I'm foreign. I'm just plain ostracized. People stare like I'm some sort of blasphemous offense in my shorts and sandals while everyone else still wears light outerwear. I don't even own a leather jacket. I'm some degree of loser.
That's ok. I'd rather be me, the loser, than the girl who clearly dies her own red hair (and her scalp too) or the girl with MC Hammer pants down to her ankles– the crotch that is. In fact, I have the confidence to strut in there two days a week, and sit for two hours, pretending not to notice all the looks Harem Pants and Reba McIntyre are stealing. While I can commiserate with their inability to focus on Professor Celli for two full hours, I do feel somewhat objectified. I used to overlook it, but now I return their stares until they become uncomfortable. Sometimes I smile at them, sometimes I frown, sometimes I open my eyes too wide without blinking till they look away. I'm clearly an eccentric curiosity so why not take liberties with my behavior? Exactly. After all, didn't their mothers ever tell them it's impolite to stare?
This usually all occurs at the beginning of class. That is to say, they examine me and my sartorial preference for that day, and then settle in to listen. After the initial interest of the staring contest, I settle in as well, watching the supplemental images projected before us. Not to say that I don't find this class fulfilling, but it is downright boring. And worst of all is the laser pointer.
Professor Celli has this laser pointer that, like my attention starts out strong. She turns it on, red pin prick visible. Celli points it at some detail on the slide, and slowly but surely, every lecture, it fades until it isn't visible within ten seconds. The laser pointer is on, and she swings it, I'm guessing, over the area she wishes to demonstrate. Except the tiny red dot has been completely extinguished. This however does not affect her zeal in using it. She holds it, gestures with it, she points. Repeatedly in each lecture, that evil little illusion appears to highlight a concept that I only vaguely grasp to begin with, to show a detail that the laser pointer never clarifies for me.
This tiny useless devise never fails to infuriate me. I see its impotence as a reflection of all things in Italy: ceremonial, customary, designed with some intended purpose, and yet, completely useless.
Let's begin again. In the context of classes-I-actually-took, Art History of China was the first. Besides the first, it is also the longest running class I am in. I began attending on Tuesday January 9th, a virtual lifetime ago. For the record it ends May 20th. Another small class, on the days when all students are present, there are 7 of us. Everyone sits in the front three rows of the classroom which could easily seat 125 students. Sometimes in the fourth row back, I feel like some sort of rebel, ostracized for my bad-ass reputation, which is completely erroneous: I totally made that up. Actually I sit alone and don't speak to anyone because I'm foreign. I'm just plain ostracized. People stare like I'm some sort of blasphemous offense in my shorts and sandals while everyone else still wears light outerwear. I don't even own a leather jacket. I'm some degree of loser.
That's ok. I'd rather be me, the loser, than the girl who clearly dies her own red hair (and her scalp too) or the girl with MC Hammer pants down to her ankles– the crotch that is. In fact, I have the confidence to strut in there two days a week, and sit for two hours, pretending not to notice all the looks Harem Pants and Reba McIntyre are stealing. While I can commiserate with their inability to focus on Professor Celli for two full hours, I do feel somewhat objectified. I used to overlook it, but now I return their stares until they become uncomfortable. Sometimes I smile at them, sometimes I frown, sometimes I open my eyes too wide without blinking till they look away. I'm clearly an eccentric curiosity so why not take liberties with my behavior? Exactly. After all, didn't their mothers ever tell them it's impolite to stare?
This usually all occurs at the beginning of class. That is to say, they examine me and my sartorial preference for that day, and then settle in to listen. After the initial interest of the staring contest, I settle in as well, watching the supplemental images projected before us. Not to say that I don't find this class fulfilling, but it is downright boring. And worst of all is the laser pointer.
Professor Celli has this laser pointer that, like my attention starts out strong. She turns it on, red pin prick visible. Celli points it at some detail on the slide, and slowly but surely, every lecture, it fades until it isn't visible within ten seconds. The laser pointer is on, and she swings it, I'm guessing, over the area she wishes to demonstrate. Except the tiny red dot has been completely extinguished. This however does not affect her zeal in using it. She holds it, gestures with it, she points. Repeatedly in each lecture, that evil little illusion appears to highlight a concept that I only vaguely grasp to begin with, to show a detail that the laser pointer never clarifies for me.
This tiny useless devise never fails to infuriate me. I see its impotence as a reflection of all things in Italy: ceremonial, customary, designed with some intended purpose, and yet, completely useless.
Retraction
Today I retract a portion of a former piece, as all published writers must eventually do. (Do you like how I just referred to myself indirectly as a published writer?) And this self-serving-hip-as-can-be little blog, though it only exists in cyberspace, is most certainly a publication.
I would like to retract Number 10, from my former article "The Things I Love About Italy in Order;" smoking is gross, it stinks, and is the opposite of cool. All things exotic have a way of capturing my imagination, and seeming ever so enchanting in the beginning. (Do you like how I just referred to smoking as "exotic"? I retract that too.) So Smoking, I see you for what you really are now, and I don't like you one bit.
I would like to retract Number 10, from my former article "The Things I Love About Italy in Order;" smoking is gross, it stinks, and is the opposite of cool. All things exotic have a way of capturing my imagination, and seeming ever so enchanting in the beginning. (Do you like how I just referred to smoking as "exotic"? I retract that too.) So Smoking, I see you for what you really are now, and I don't like you one bit.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Pavlov's Dog
When I was in the second grade, our teacher decided to do a little experiment. We all saw the round drum of Country Time Lemonade on the overhead projector that was perma-stationed in the front of the room. We hadn't had snack time yet and I can say with certainty that at least one mouth was watering.
Grace– yes, that's right, we called our second grade teacher by her first name– said something about "conditioned response," but who was listening? All eyes were trained on that vat of sugar and lemon extract placed so enticingly in front of us. What, we all wondered, is she going to do with that? She popped the top and handed out a stack of napkins. Next she distributed the sugary goodness, a little sandy pile on each napkin upon each student's desk.
Next, like some evil magician, she produced a bell. A little brass thing, she started saying something about a dog, and a Russian man. All this talk, with sweet, undiluted sucrose in front of our faces! Was she crazy? Nobody was listening. "When I ring the bell, everyone take a taste of their Country Time!" Now this we understood!
And that is precisely how it went: the bell rang, and like dogs, we all craned our necks down to our desks to take a lap of Country Time. Ring, lap, Ring, lap. My tongue was getting raw, but it was so delicious, and I was hungry! Ring, lap, ring lap. I was drooling from all the dry, sugary powder. On and on it went until she announced that this time when she rang the bell, we wouldn't take a taste. The bell rang. Nothing happened. We were supposed to be salivating, I suppose. I did not. Grace couldn't train me like Pavlov trained his dog. Not to salivate at least. Fourteen years after the exercise, I struggle to recall the lesson.
Grace– yes, that's right, we called our second grade teacher by her first name– said something about "conditioned response," but who was listening? All eyes were trained on that vat of sugar and lemon extract placed so enticingly in front of us. What, we all wondered, is she going to do with that? She popped the top and handed out a stack of napkins. Next she distributed the sugary goodness, a little sandy pile on each napkin upon each student's desk.
Next, like some evil magician, she produced a bell. A little brass thing, she started saying something about a dog, and a Russian man. All this talk, with sweet, undiluted sucrose in front of our faces! Was she crazy? Nobody was listening. "When I ring the bell, everyone take a taste of their Country Time!" Now this we understood!
And that is precisely how it went: the bell rang, and like dogs, we all craned our necks down to our desks to take a lap of Country Time. Ring, lap, Ring, lap. My tongue was getting raw, but it was so delicious, and I was hungry! Ring, lap, ring lap. I was drooling from all the dry, sugary powder. On and on it went until she announced that this time when she rang the bell, we wouldn't take a taste. The bell rang. Nothing happened. We were supposed to be salivating, I suppose. I did not. Grace couldn't train me like Pavlov trained his dog. Not to salivate at least. Fourteen years after the exercise, I struggle to recall the lesson.
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