Things that come to mind when I think about the United States.

Pancakes, peanut butter, target, ethnic food, marshalls, cars/car rides, english, friends from wellesley, novato, middlebury, mit, and berklee, us money, music that I can readily understand, huge supermarkets with everything you could possibly want, california avocados, "hella", unlimited text messaging, finally being 21 in the states, multicultural-ness, dressing casually, SANDWICHES made right, bakeries, cupcakes, store bought box cakes, frosting, variety of fruit, heaters and airconditioners, frat parties, house parties, bbq, suburbs, american slang, hip hop, jazz, and r&b, american breakfast, TEA, american coffee, college life, soup, MEXICAN FOOD, kick ass shoes, american humor, informed people, good conversation that happens with informed people, solidarity, understanding, awareness, movies, water parks, theme parks, california beaches, alternative people things and places, extreme socio-economic class divisions, obsession with productivity, summer jobs, papers, finals, reading, activities, extra-curriculars, graduating, life after wellesley, keeping in touch, road trips, dorm food, fast food, obesity, bad habits, boston winters, california summers, real fruit juice, hiking, american style dorms, rambutan, inside jokes, things that are required of me like financial aid, taxes, official correspondences, requisite courses, studying, being a wendy wellesley etc...Arizona's immigration law, New Orleans oil disaster,the future of high school and middle school textbooks as publishing companies switch from California to Texas, relation of the € to the $, literature I can readily understand, people i can readily understand (one hopes-its been a long time), re-realizing my own americanness.

Barcelona

Just got back on wednesday night. I know it's saturday and I should probably be recovered by now, but I'm destroyed. I'm having trouble taking back up with quotidian life.

At any rate, Barcelona was off the hook. It's a very european city, not as much spanish, and there's a boatload of art. I was with my two italian housemates Miriam and Annalisa, and we stayed with Enza, my roommate from last semester who is doing erasmus in Spain. The trip reminded me a lot of london--a sort of fateful reunion of a group of very international girls in a large metropolitan european city for about a week. I'm lucky that I've gotten a chance to meet up with so many different kinds of people in so many different places.

Highlights of Barcelona included:

1) Casa Batllò of the genius architect Gaudì:







2) Park Guell also by Gaudì (these are my travel companions from left to right: Enza, Ali, Miriam, Annalisa)






3) La Pedrera, another house by Gaudì (this is just the rooftop, not to mention the inside of the house or the facade)




4) Fontana Magica and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (where we saw an exhibit on photography from the early 1900's from paris, prague, and barcelona-awesssooommme!!!)




5) Tapas!



6) La Sagrada Famiglia also by Guadì




7)La Champignieria (an amazing restaurant with .80 cent cups of frizzy wine and bomb ass authentic sandwiches/burgers for 2.50€)




8) A day on the beach




There were endless laughs, great conversation, lots of metro rides, and tons of walking. My shoulders got burned one day, but I was sure to use sun tan lotion at the beach. I think I might have caught something there, because I've got this killer sore throat now, but its all gravy, cuz I don't have much to do these days, beside get ready for the states.

My next expedition is meeting my brother in portugal. A good friend angela, a serbian girl whose lived in Italy for most of her life, is coming with me to Portugal, where we're going to stay with Maria, my portuguese roommate from this semester. I miss having her around so much. She was such a light in the house, and even though I have a single now, I think I'd rather have her here.

Saw a lot of jazz in barcelona 2, on 2 different nights, 3 different groups. Also, randomly when we were walking back from a bar one night, we heard music coming out of the door of a little cantina, and one of my friends poked her head in to see what it was. There was a blond 45 year old spanish man playing piano, and enza shoved me in and told the people in spanish that I knew how to sing. The piano guy asks me to jam, and I'm like, no no no no no no ezna YOU sing (because she does, really well) and she wouldn't, and in the end I sang with this guy for like 5 to 10 minutes and miriam video recorded it. It was sort of fun and really nerve wracking and unexpected!!! Spain is crazy like that though, people are warm and barcelona's super alternative and the weather is amazing, everyone's in shorts.

I had a great time, in the end. TONS of laughing, these girls are so amazing... i dont know what i'm gonna do when i have to leave... :(

Dangerous

I think pride is dangerous. On some level, I've never been able to completely let go of mine, because I guess as much as we'd like not to be, all humans are egotistical by nature. Normally I don't believe most of the compliments people give me, and I definitely have just stopped considering my 'ability' and 'talent' and 'capacities' in anything--style, music, conversation, intelligence, logic--because I'd drive myself crazy considering the competition and trying to figure out exactly what those things mean anyway. and yet, i'm rather self indulgent in expressing myself, in finding something therapeutic about venting my inner workings through words, music, my body. I don't know how directly that's related to pride, but I guess I wouldn't do it if I didn't think I had something worthwhile to say, or if I didn't want people to hear me. There's something inherently egotistical about art, about sharing either something highly personal or at least being a sensitive/sensible interpreter of things outside of oneself.

But pride can get in the way of the integrity of art, or thinking, or creating. The only reason I've been thinking about this is that whenever things go really well for me as a result of hard work, I'm very tentative to believe that it has anything to do with my capacities and that it has much more to do with people being kind to me or easy judges, or just trying to inflate my ego and be nice. Basically, I'm not quick to believe in much of a good thing, especially if its a grade, a compliment, or a 'deep' feeling related to me, because I don't think a big head would look very good on me.

In any case, I've been considering this entirely too much for a few reasons. I just took my only university exam from this semester which was philosophy (my last post was quotes from the readings I did) and it was one of the strangest and intriguing experiences I've ever had.

Here's a little background about the unversity exam system in Italy. All exams are oral--meaning they are conducted by either a professor or one of his or her assistants, in a large lecture hall (can be a small class room, but to give the impression of large impersonal public university with intimidating professors and students, i'm using large lecture hall, just like the one where I took this class) during one single exam session usually from 9am till 5 or 6 pm. For each class, there are usually 5 to 8 exam sessions a year, and you have to sign up online for which one you will present yourself at. Because students can frequent a course one semester and sign up to take the exam whenever they want, sometimes at an exam session years later, the appelli (exam sessions) can be really full. Also, i forgot to mention, there is no other work during the semester, which is to say, that the final oral exam is your entire grade. Want to talk about pressure?....sheesh.

When I went to this theoretical philosophy class, I'll admit that while my brain was more than thoroughly jogged by what the professor lectured about, I was really worried about comprehension issues. As if philosophy weren't hard enough to comprehend in a mother tongue, I was fighting against vocabulary issues like the difference between being and being as it pertains to location/physicality (essere=the verb to be esserci= the verb to be in a place or location specific even if its figurative... its difficult to explain but it is our equivalent of 'there are this many books' or 'there is a chance'. At any rate, you can only imagine that with my less than 2 years of italian under my belt, i had little faith in the fact that i was understanding things. Not to mention that all of the 4 books we had to read for the course were either translations from greek or german, and had all been translated ROUGHLY so as to maintain as much of the original grammar structure and 'idea' of the original text, even though for me, i thought it clearly rendered the idea less comprehensible when the grammar constructions were that of ancient greek (right-this makes sense?)

The course was from february to the 2nd week in march. It was very short because it was 3 times a week for 2 hours (also typical of italy-their system is SO different!) So from the time I got back from sicily to the 2nd week in may (2 months) my chief concern was 'how the fuck am i going to 1) understand this content and 2) pass this exam?' I'd never studied philosophy a day in my life before so I was worried, and also this course credit I really really needed for an epistemology and cognition credit at wellesley, because if i didn't pass, I would have yet another REQUIRED class to take during my senior year, and my schedule is already really packed.

So around late april I went to my study abroad program office with all these concerns about the comprehension, the needing to pass, the not knowing anything about philosophy, the extreme inadequacy of my language skills for the difficult of the course. 2 things happened--first, they scolded me for not having started studying earlier which would have allowed me to understand these issues earlier and then I might have had time to choose a different course. second, they told me to talk with my writing workshop professor (who i've already worked with for a year now--she's single-handedly responsible for any of the advanced italian that I can speak and write and read--because she graduated from University of Bologna in Philosophy back in the day, and she might be able to meet with me and tutor me a little bit. They also told me to contact the professor of the course and explain to him my situation and ask to meet with him during office hours. I arranged meetings with both, and never got to meet with the professor of the course because he wasn't there when I went to his office hours. In the meantime I read the texts for the course in both english and italian at the recommendation of my writing workshop teacher just for comprehension purposes, but god CHE PALLE (which means what a fuckin BORE) reading the same thing twice in 2 languages. I don't know if I'll ever be able to be a literature translator--only in real life (which i really enjoy doing, btw).

So from late april to early may I was basically pretending to study, often distracted, seriously debating all the half-hearted add diagnoses I've been given over the years. Could not concentrate, legit, and it was pathetic because it was the only thing I had to do. it's not like the conservatory is challenging, and my exams for that weren't going to be for another 2 months anyway. Basically, just a huge lack of motivation, and a huge amount of defeatedness in general because I didn't feel capable to take this exam as it was.

So exam day. I had emailed the professor the week before to ask him in what depth I shoudl try to know the texts because I was worried about comprehension and he said, "well even though the exam is friday (today) why don't you come to my office hours on wednesday and we'll do the exam then, and if you're unhappy with your grade, you can retake it on friday. Does that seem like a good philosophical method to you?" Already, I had the impression he was sort of a special professor, because going out of the way for a student like that in a university of 75,000 is incredibly rare, especially considering the horror stories I've heard about exams and how indifferent and just ball-breakers the professors can be/usually are. In any case, the day of I was feeling alright about it, in the sense that I thought I would pass but wasn't expecting or hoping for any grade higher than a D or C- since my grades from abroad on my Wellesley transcript will all appear as pass/fail anyway. I get to his office and had to wait for 25 minutes because there were other students waiting in line just to talk to him.

While i was outside waiting, I saw some young guys who looked like doctorate students freely entering and leaving his study while he was meeting with students. Sometimes one would go in and sit for 20 minutes, than come out with a stack of papers only to quickly go back in. I couldn't see inside the office, but it made me nervous to watch because all I could imagine was doing this exam with 4 or 5 philosophy doctorate students as well as one of the most highly regarded italian philosophy professors listening to my nonsense answers.

So i go in around 5:25 after racking my brain for 25 minutes for every last thing I could remember from all the readings I'd done. I sort of thought of it as like an intellectual performance, interrogation, like a thesis defense. I introduced myself as the american student who had written him several times and he very genuinely shook my hand and looked into my eyes before starting the exam. Right from the beginning, I could tell he was seeing me, sort of in a way that very few people ever look at you. Before I even started speaking, he seemed to already know so much about me. It was one of the most bizarre feelings ever. Before the exam started, he deduced that I wasn't a philosophy student, and I told him i studied music at the conservatory. He then asked me to start with which ever argument I thought was the most intriguing in the course. Having no idea how to respond, I just started from the beginning, talking about the 2 oldest greek philosophers we read. I reviewed their arguments and moved onto plato's myth of the cave, and explained that. Right as I was about to comment on its symbolism, he stopped me and asked "if you had to explain the myth of the cave to a highschool boy, what would you say?" i didn't really respond because i was a little dumbfounded. then he asked "what would you say to the boy if he said that he didn't see the necessity in understanding the world outside of the cave and was contented with the tangibile visible world around him (that of the darkness inside the cave). why should he want to know the truth(or the real world outside)?" I fumbled at first, and than started to explain that what he perceives as his concrete tangible world is really an illusion (the images projected on the wall) and that if he is not fascinated by the fact that an entire universe unknown to him exists so nearby (i guess u have to know this myth to get what the F i'm talking about) then he shall always be contented, enchained and stationery, transfixed by what he sees before him and not asking for anything else or anything more.

Right after this question, he asked me, "where does music from? how do composers write music?" If you know me at all, you can probably imagine how strange, interesting, and difficult this question was for me. I tried to respond, but could only say at the beginning "That's a really difficult question" and he said "well should it be easy? should any question be easy?" In the meantime, mind you, this 75 year old man with the most incredibly awake eyes I have ever seen is sort of tapping his fingers from the other side of his wide dark oak desk in his many-booked study and staring into my (for lack of a better word-forgive the clichè) soul. It was like he knew exactly what music is for me in a way that no one else has really ever understood or tried to understand. I hadn't told him that I write too, I mean at that point, he could have assumed if he wanted that I just studied music and played like the majority of classical students, not that actually writing it is my biggest thrill.

So i said "well I actually write myself, so..." and he said "i had already understood that, yes." I don't even know how I responded to this question. i said that a study of the language of music is necessary in order to have the tools necessary to form ideas into comprehensible sound, then I said that being creative probably helps, and he pushed further still, but where does creative come from and what exactly is it? Where do the notes come from? At this point, I quoted heraclitus who said that all of his research into the understanding of being he conducted in his own soul because it was 'without limits'. When I said that, this professors face lit up, and he sort of pushed me to keep talking about my process and how music and notes are an expression of our souls and that humans and their brains and all their faculties are just interpreters, messengers really, for an expression of the utmost beauty and being that we can sense only with our souls and not just with our intellect, eyes, mouth, nose, fingers and ears.

After I finished responding to that question, he sort of took over in talking about how everything around us is a result of this interpreter function that humans serve to the earth--architecture, philosophy, art, music, food, fashion, ideas.

By the time he was done talking, it was 5:45 and 20 minutes had flown. I had no idea how it had gone, I only knew that how I felt the entire time during the exam was so strange and new--i don't think I've ever had someone so clearly see me and sort of pull ideas and thoughts out of me like that. He was incredible professional and it didn't make me feel uncomfortable at all, it was just his way of navigating conversation, pinpointing the perfect point of entry to my mind. Hermeneutics, right?

I didn't know when the exam had finished because when he finished talking, he just intertwined his hands on his desk top and said "alright". After 2 minutes I said "so...how do we do for the grading?" he sort of snapped back into reality and quickly got up and bustled around to find a pen. I handed him my grade sheet, and he went to his computer to enter the grade into the unviersity system immediately. i still had no idea what he was going to give me, and I just waited for him to finish. The doctorate students who had been sitting on couches, staring at the floor, being silent and just listening to my exam started barely whispering to each other and after a minute the professor turned to me and said, "how's a 28?" the grading system is out of 30, so that's an A-. Of course I responded, that's great.

When I was about to go, I thanked him for the course because it had sort of turned me onto something I'd never studied before. He said that it pleased him to hear it, shook my hand again, this time for twice as long, and said, "very good, and congratulations for your music. good bye"

I left and I was ecstatic and confused and my heart was pounding cuz that exam style is the most nerve-wracking one that there is. I still don't know why he decided on such a high grade. I felt like I didn't deserve it, which started the whole thought about pride. I don't feel like I should be proud because I didn't really study as much as I should have, and I didn't know the books nearly well enough to merit a 28. But it was almost as if he was judging my character or my connection to my being, which was so strange and yet rewarding.

I'm sorry for writing so much about this, just academically its been one of the only and the most interesting experiences I've had here and I don't want to forget. jeez! what the heck, i still don't believe it.

In other news, with the end of that exam, I think my summer has technically started which is awesome because normally when exams finish I'm in the middle of packing 4 bags and trying to catch a flight to california instead of relaxing in an awesome apartment for another month before starting my masters in Italian (fuck. my. life) I feel like I'm on a warpath for something...but I don't even know what it is.

Anyhow, i hope the weather is better where all of you are than where I am-it's been raining chronically here for the last 2.5 weeks and I would like it to be warm while I'm in barcellona this weekend. SHWEEET!!!!!!!!!!! ENZA ARRIVIAMO!!!!!


ciao a tutti

Theoretical Philosophy. 5pm. Today.

What you are is reachable and understandable only by removing everything that fills you.

A noble man is he who has removed all unnecessary things.

Each one of us is a prism. Light hits us and a ton of colors come out that open and tell the story of what it is that it hits. We are all white inside.

Our names aren't the things that express us, that say what our very essence is. Our names don't express our particular destinies.

In what ways is animal different than man? Is it the banal reason of instincts? Consider, however, that animals follow their instincts incredibly functionally. But in animals there are never irrational breaks with their environment, their past. In man, instead, there are radical breaks because man looks for the understanding of things--for the truth.

No one has ever leapt out over themselves from and at the place where they presently stand. And what happens when we do not learn to understand this, everyone knows.

Will there ever be the perfect form to express what you want to say?

Liberation does not come only from being freed from your chains, but when one authentically takes advantage of such liberty to look at and considers the state of things around him(her) after being liberated of the chains.

Like a change in direction, a step back, a zoom out.

Beauty is turned to a silhouette. If our eyes in darkness perceive a different size, different length of shadow, our world would appear in a different way, but we all search the precision of "what is being-what is it" the essence itself of things around us.

Thinking is Existing. Non-thinking is Non-existence.

The true nature of things loves to hide itself. -Heraclitus

All consciousness is intentional, thus all experience is grounded in care.

Dasein=care, meaning the condition of the possibility for anything like 'philosophical anthropology.'

Philosophy can not be separated from it's language, questions of meaning, questions of its own history.

The majority of people think only of satiating themselves like beats.

Our world that is the same for everyone, was not created by any of the gods or men, but it has always been, is, and will be an eternal burning fire that with regularity ignites and dies. The universe is a unity of alternating phases of destruction and production.

It is impossible for the masses to philosophically reflect. - Plato

Human love sets itself up not as an ambition to the unlimited pleasures of the senses, but involves the totality of ones being.-Plato

Penultimateness

I'm stuck in a permanent state of "just before the end" feelings and thoughts. It's so daunting and terrible, but its also so wonderful. I'm starting to get more homesick the closer I get to being back in the states. so weird... i guess i should just call it excitement for going back?

So I think I'm starting to understand myself better. I think i really like writing more than I want to admit I do for fear of having yet another love in my life that I'll never have enough time to give to. For the research project that I'm doing in the month of June, I'll be transcribing interviews and taking notes at concerts and at the conservatory. Today, I spent the morning pouring over notes and notes and notes I've taken over the course of this year from concerts, just different sort of rambling thoughts, scraps of paper, straggling word documents. I started finally assembling it into one larger organization of ideas and didn't break concentration for quite a while...which is usually when I know i like something. if i can sit down and work on the same thing for a few hours, its only because I'm in love with it. same goes for people that i hang out with.

I have a friend who wants to read these things I'm collecting so I'm being extra conscious to make sense not just to myself but also for an audience, which sometimes when I write i don't really feel the need to do since I don't have any intent to share. But I reread what I wrote and...i duno. It's strangely rewarding more so than anything else I've written in a long time, maybe because for once I'm able to unite an academic activity like research/writing a paper with something i love like jazz. Although, ideologically, i'm not even sure how i feel about that either--music is to be played, not written about.

Here's one of my favorite kinds of pasta to make these days. My housemate annalisa made it and it smelled like heaven and now I make it all the time and she makes fun of me because to her its as simple as a bowl of cereal (it is easy to make).



It's sauteed onions, red bell peppers and tomatoes with olive oil over orrechiette. really, as i said, nothing difficult, but just soooo damn good. I'm smiling in the picture cuz annalisa is busy making fun of me on the other side of my computer haha.

I leave for barcellona with miriam and annalisa on saturday next weekend. I'm soo excited because I can't believe I'm even getting the chance to travel with them, and because I miss enza, my x roommate who lives there right now, soo much its absurd. On wednesday I have my philosophy exam, and I'm really nervous but have been corresponding with the professor and I don't think he's going to fail me. Even if I don't know what I'm talking about at all.. i think he'll at least give me a C and since grades don't transfer onto our transcripts at wellesley from abroad, i'm golden.

The conservatory on the other hand is really a mess. They told me last week that I wouldn't be able to take my exmas because I have to go back to the US june 26 and the exams start there july 12th. Unfortunately, I cant move my flight back because i have to be on middlebury's campus by june 29th to start the summer term. I absolutely can't miss over 14 days of Midd because it only lasts 6 weeks as it is. That's about a 3rd of the semester. So i was sort of freaking out abotu it last week, quietly/calmly, but still worried. If i go back to the states without those credits.... i dont know. It can't happen. I need them. I'm afraid wellesley will either make me pay them back for having spent a term abroad with out doing anything, or that I wont be able to graduate on time.

Otherwise, everything else here has been so lovely lately. I'm feeling so comfortable at home and in bologna, and i guess generally happy. i found out that the oldest man to have ever lived lived in San Rafael (right near my hometown) and died in 1998! that was such a strange thing to have stumbled upon online. hahahaha I wikipedia'd san rafael for some reason and BAM-guiness world record holder was mentioned in the notable residents section.

After I go to barcellona, I'm in bologna for 2 days before heading to Hamburg for a concert - ROBERT GLASPER YEEEEAAAAA!!! I'm excited because hamburg looks awesome as a city, not to mention that I'm doing it all only for a concert. After hamburg, I have 10 days in bologna before portugal, johnny meets me there, we come back to italy for 8 days and then the US!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!??!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!



jesus. fucking. christ. I've been abroad for a long time.

<3 ali

An entire lifetime has passed

since my last post. which is weird since it's been like 6 days. in those 6 days i think i've slept less than a total of 16 hours. Since Last wednesday, I've been pretty socially active and academically dysfunctional, but you know, it's worth it, especially since my last 7 weeks in Italy are clicking down like a time bomb.

What a whirlwind of events! It's probably not worth trying to recount every detail and thing I did because, in 128 hours of being awake in only a 6 day period, there's a lot of space for a lot of action. However, some really great pictures from 2 different nights out on the town, one trip to florence, and a big group dinner with great friends and awesome conversation are the evidence I have from this insanely busy period I've just had.

The best, most random, and AWESOMEly weird thing that happened during all of this was during a train ride I was taking last night. I went to Vicenza to see Josh Redman and Brad Mehldau in concert, which, might i add, was fucking awesome, and on the late 10:56 train ride back, I couldn't really find a good isolated seat (i hate sitting next to people and will search many cars for a seat by itself. on this train I coudl tell that wasnt gonna happen though) So i sit halfway through one of the cars in an aisle seat. Right before the stop I have to get off at to change trains, the ticket controller came by to check tickets. Mine went with no probelms. then this young looking guy in the seats across the aisle from me goes "do you speak any english?" to the controller, and so i take my cue and i'm like 'i do, i can help you out' So i hear from this kid that his wallet had been stolen from him in nice france and he had a flight from venice the next morning, so he needed to get there but he didnt have any money and he was sorry he didnt have a ticket but he didn't have another choice. So the controller tells me thats fine if he has a 'denuncia' from the police, which he didnt, so the ticket guy said, sorry but you have to get off the train at the next stop then. So thankfully, I was getting off there too, so I talk to this kid and I'm like, where are you from, whats the deal, what were you going to do in venice tonight, because keep in mind, it was already 11:30 pm, and he's like "well actually my wallet was stolen on tuesday (6 days before!!!) and my flight to venice is on friday (5 days later!!!!) so i traveled down from nice all day today on trains without tickets" The ironic thing was is that Padova, the stop we got off at, is one stop before Venice. He was almost there. But 5 nights in venice without money or a place to stay! I was like WTF, i can't knowingly allow this fellow europe-roaming american do that. So I offered to host him at my place on the floor in my room (had a sleeping bag-he was def prepared) and give him some food in the meantime before he figured out the money situation. So we get back to my apartment at like... 2:30 am. neither of us had eaten all day (i was just too busy) so we made pasta, talked, and made a game plan for the next day.

In the meantime, I have to add, this was the last thing to happen in a string of REALLY CRAZY coincidences, awesome moments, and trips that I had done in 5 days. And it was entirely too strange and too much to have this awesome 26 year old colorado-an guy just pop up out of nowhere and be like... i'm temporarily homeless??? the next day he was able to get some money out of his bank account without the card, and then he came to my house for the final dinner of my beloved roommate Maria who is portuguese and moving back to portugal. We made awesome cous-cous, drank wine, smoked cigarettes. It's a very bohemian existence that I'm living here. There's always music, art, laughter, and smoke in the air wherever I am in italy. Not even necessarily in my house, but just everywhere I go.

So, my spirits have been lifted a little. I guess as anyone could tell from the last few posts, I'd been entirely too pensive, reading too much heavy philosophy crap, and spending a lot of time on the internet. I guess with the abundance of socializing, I just...feel like i'm moving forward here, linguistically, making friends, making plans, even though I'm about to leave. it really really really will be the most bitter-sweet thing ever. The only thing comparable I think would be when I left california for wellesley the first time, or when I left wellesley for Italy for a year.

I'm doing really well though. So well I can't really explain. Which is a feeling I never want to embrace too muchbecause i'm afraid it means i'm soon to fall of the other end into something less...Have any of you ever read outliers? Its a book by malcolm gladwell best seller new york times....(whatever the heck that means) that talks about our conceptions of success. So interesting. I'm almost done with it. I read it this weekend on a train. ha!

I MISS EVERYONE AND I WISH I COULD CARRY ALL MY FAVORITE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD IN MY POCKET. love and thanks for reading

ali

55 days and counting...

Today it's raining, for the first time in a long time. one of those perfect spring rains where every thing's already green and bloomed, and so the rain sounds and looks better because its hitting leaves and flowers instead of winter barren trees and already soaked ground.

It's sunday, so everyone's lazy and beat from the labor day celebrations that took place all over italy yesterday (huge concerts in rome, bologna, milan, parades, barbecues, drunkeness, general confusion and chaos and tons of people out and about--see photos below of my activities for the day) and me and my roommates all have tons of studying to do, but its one of those days that calls for a mug of tea, a good book, and chill conversation. Especially since the last week has been so crazy (at least for me)


the awesome clearing where the barbecue happened



the crowd that ensued around 1pm after a 10:30 am arrival time



the awesome entertainment including many traditional italian songs that i love



the incredible company with which i went to the festivities



my only contribution to the roastery caught on camera-cooking bell peppers, probably my favorite vegetable on earth.


Life in italy for me is rapidly changing. The imminence of the end of my stay here is really daunting, and I'm terrified for it personally, only because my prime method of dealing with this sort of things, that is to say, talking a confidantes ear off about it incessantly, hasn't been an option for a few months now, and now i'm feeling scattered enough to sort of just surrender to the realization that this move is going to suck/probably be one of the hardest ones of my life because i've found myself so well and comfortably here, and yet the magnetism the United States has for me is unimaginably stronger than I ever thought it could be considering I've really disagreed with so much about how the country works and how I find some of the people, but in that respect, I'm not sure Italy's really any better.

I've had a burst of creative energy, this past week, which was also great, because I bought a ZOOM recording device (THANK YOU WELLESLEY) and have been able to get much better quality recordings of my ideas than I ever was able to before. Poetry and music sort of nonstop flowing, but it sucks, because I feel like my technical faculties for both things are so out of order that everything isnt coming out as clearly as it should....life long mission. sigh.

This past Tuesday, i went to this fabulous restaurant with my 3 roommates and 2 of their boyfriends, and had one of the most incredible (and cheapest!) dinners I've had in italy. Huge peices of warm romangola bread with jam, soft spreadable cheeses, mortadella, prosciutto, salame piccante and normale beer and scone type things. Here's the dinner:







Otherwise, my main missions in the organizational/academic part of my life now are to find out when the HECK my conservatory exams will be and to study for my theoretical philosophy exam. I'm really starting to feel the pressure of having taken to many mental health days this semester (so much so that my academic health has probably greatly suffered) and I'm lacking (as always) the motivation to tackle the huge mountain of work that seems to be ahead of me. I can't really wait to go to barcellona and see johnny (my brother) in portugal in june, and in the meantime, I just have to take care of all this other practical stuff that I really don't feel like dealing with.

I hate writing blog posts that seem like downers. I'm not sure if this is one of them. In general, I've been having fun and going out and actually doing lots of new things, but I feel very very very very very, can't really express how much, strange lately and I would really like for something normal and stabilizing to randomly cross my way since the last 3 months have been filled with changes, random visits from friends, and unexpected surprises (cough volcano cough). I'm ready to be still for a bit.

I found this passage in some old archival research through the masses of documents on my computer today, and I really like it.

We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

T.S. Eliot

I enjoy this idea a lot, specifically because i identify with it so much. I'm not one who deals well with change, even though I bring a lot of it upon myself because to me, it's the only way people can grow. And this sort perfectly captures how weird it is to be away from some one or some place for any period of time. either you see the place in a new light as if it had change, or you actually experience it differently because it really has changed. Like, even times when I would go to san francisco for a day during high school, I would come back to novato and sort of think about it differently, as if my perspective of my home town had been changed by being in a metropolitan setting. and sometimes that meant only 12 hours of being away from the place, not to mention the months I would be on the east coast, or in the current case, the years in Europe. Sometimes I wonder how much change is an illusion, especially when I'm flying. At the beginning of a day I could be in Italy, and some hours later I could be on the east coast. Its an incredibly strange sensation, especially since each location on either side of a trip, in the meantime, will always be a fluidly changing entity, meaning the next time I see it, it could be completely different. not to mention how this all applies to humans.. Consistency, maybe is the real illusion...i suppose.

signing off with love for everyone who takes the time read these meaningless rambles,

ali