thoughts on italy, etc.

You can’t help smiling every minute when you are in Italy, even when you are asleep.

Mon, 27 May 11:30:27 +0200

This place is it. The deal. This is the source for everything, the origination of a lot of our culture in CA,

but it's so incredibly beautiful here. I thought that when I came here,

what I'd seen in the movies would not pan out. 

That the movies and photos would have just shown some beautifully framed vista,

located next to something ugly left out of frame.

But viewed in real life, I would see the ugly next to the beautiful.  But in fact it's all like what
you see in the movies, in photos, and it's what people describe.

Absolutely gorgeous!  Bella bella.  I could live here so easily.

Florence is amazing, but yesterday we went to the coast first, swam in the
Mediterranean while looking at the little alps, then went to Santapietra
(holy rock) for coffee. Walking through the three blocks of town (two blocks west
 of the two cathedrals and one block to the east), there were about
twenty very nice underwear shops displaying embroidered,

very elegant women’s undergarments. Many other shops too, but it makes you
wonder how much La Perla underwear people buy here, and what this means
in relation to the church. This town was like every Italian fantasy you've
ever had, the architecture and colors were so iconic. The smells,
the tastes, the people, the weather, the air, the textiles, the buildings,
the terra cotta, the water, the over-the-top garden urns that would be ridiculous
anywhere else, but it’s all fits here.

It feels like this is where you are always supposed to be; this is living. This is where everything makes sense.

Cedric and Jill's apartment in Florence is amazing, huge, and they have the most unbelievable
life. They are so incredibly lucky. Life here is rich and full and sumptuous
and voluptuous and still under control and beautiful and very very human.

Wed, 29 May 11:50:28 +0200

Buon giorno! I'm rearranging my trip to stay an extra week here instead of London. Who needs
the dour, the cold, when you can have it all here.   Tomorrow, we are going to Venice on the train for a day trip.

 The textiles here are outstanding. I don't like shopping on trips, usually. But I've spent
a small fortune.  I may need a new dresser.  But it's so fun, everything here is so adult, so gorgeous,
yet all with a playful sense of humor, light, airy. I love it.  And such a great deal, you just can’t up what’s here.

Really, such cool cool stuff. Last night we went
to this restaurant south of the Arno called Enoteca Bonatti, and I had the most incredible glazed
duck, in balsamic, with bitter greens. The best mozzarella buffaletta I've ever had.

The most delicious fizzy white wine, prosecco.

Okay, I'm totally hooked. Tom thinks I should just cash in all my investments and stay
here, dreaming on the Arno, and never return. I think I should get the
be practical, get the masters and come here in 18 months, with masters and job in hand, and then do it....

Don't really know, but next summer, when I have a several weeks of vacation and sabbatical,

I should check out our offices in Barcelona, Rome and Milan, to see about working there.
I could go on and on.   Been speaking Italian, too, but I feel like a faker,

because my accent is not good and it’s just what I’ve picked up here.

Fri, 31 May 00:57:45 +0200

Yesterday, we did a quick 7 hours in Venice. It's sultry there, once you get
away from the vendors and get into the little squares where kids are yelling
and playing stick ball, and people are talking and laughing and little old
men are sitting very elegantly in suits, stirring sugar into espresso, and then sipping in two gulps.

It's just like in the movies, but I still like Florence and the surrounding areas better.
Maybe I just didn't have enough time to breath in the atmosphere of Venice, but I did manage
to walk through 5 of the 7 districts, and get lost and found and lost again,
and still make the 6:33pm train back to Florence. And eat gelato, twice.
 They have such little ones!

Went into the Grand Canal though the back way, through the shipping yards.  It felt like it was a real port city,

not some overly precious façade held in place with frosting.  Real life was taking place in the middle of the historic

place, and for me it made the historic place much more interesting and beautiful, but tangible.

They do orange really well in this country. The buildings, the
shoes, the scarves and roof and wall tiles, marble....

When you gaze at the oranges, in all directions, with slightly moist warm air,

the late afternoon sun peering between buildings three stories tall and just a few

feet apart, it feels all like the embodiment of desire.

Sat, 1 Jun 20:02:55 +0200
So I had the most interesting day, yesterday.  By myself, for the first time in
two weeks. I went to the Uffuzi, where the Bottecelli paintings are.

5 hours, exhausting, but very cool.  Lunch on their upstairs terrace, outside,

with two towers and the Duomo right there, and the terracotta roof

tops of the city.  Then I walked around Florence for a couple
of hours. Then came back here to get a friend to the train station.

It was a great day otherwise. And frankly the
one thing that went wrong, for me, turned out to be really interesting and
I liked it. Even though it wasn't what was planned. It's all pretty great.

Back to the interesting part of the day: so after I left the train station,
I wandered through town, got a prosecco at the square and this guy was playing
a clarinet in the most dreamy way, as the sun set, people were wandering
around or riding through slowly on their bikes while dressed in suits,

kids were playing, shops were packing up (shops are open here 9
am to 1 pm, then 3:30pm to 7:30pm), and it was warm, and beautiful, even
the traffic off to the side a block away was poetic (they don't let cars
into the center). I realized something watching the Americans,
verses the rest of the crowd (you can spot us a mile away).

Most of the Americans dress like they are still kids and everyone else dresses like an adult.

American women wear little girl clothes, including pink, and men wear shorts with their underwear
elastic showing, and baseball caps, etc. It's like we don't want to grow up.

But Europeans grow up. They make a big distinction between
kids and adults. There's different food, different clothes, different activities.
 The adults are sexual, sexy, directed, and they laugh, but they are adults
in the sense that they don't try to be kids.

It might go with my other theory about the churches and underwear: before
Christianity, when people worshiped the gods, the goddesses wore the sexy
underwear.  After Christ, the underwear went, the Virgin Mary is depicted
with many robes, and nothing on her body is revealed but the hands and face
(again at the Uffuzi in the paintings, but also at the Academia too), and
so the underwear is put away, and in our current times, displayed in the
shops nearby. So the female icon, which in Italy, is big, and they love
women and mothers in a way that doesn't exist in the US, is split.

The goddess can't really exist in sync with the church.

Without even realizing it, I have been responding to
this element here. That men are really men, and women are really women,
not boys and girls, in a way I have never felt before in the US or anywhere else.

It is very powerful, and I realize how stupid it
is to try to continue childhood so that the search for eternal youth in the US can
continue.  We keep ourselves in the role of children because we don't
want to be responsible adults.

What I have held back is really being an adult, because people might criticize
me, or my actions, and being a woman in our culture is ripe for criticism.
 You're supposed to be a little girl. So when I have something to say,
or want something or want to do something, that falls into that really adult
sensibility, I have held back. And why?

This is not to say that there is not a lot of sexism or other contradictions
in Italy that the US may have worked out better, but really being able to
be a complete adult is very cool. Obviously there are many contradictions,
for example, there are no women in positions of power here, in companies or in politics,

and the Catholic Church controls a lot of the experience,

even for people not practicing.  

But complete freedom is the ultimate goal, yes? To really be who you are.
 Without holding back. I feel freer now than I have ever felt.

Anyway, I am back here, taking care of my feet (blisters, again!) before
meeting some of Jill and Ced's friends to go out for a late supper.

Thu, 6 Jun 07:45:17 +0200

The thoughts are coming here and there,
although the past couple of days have been so tiring, taking trips out of
town, that my understandings are coming in a totally different way now.
Life is paradoxical. I'm off to Siena for two days today. Back to Florence
Saturday am. Then I fly to London very late Sat.

Then do the cold clammy England thing for a few days. Sorry to sound so
negative. But this place is it, and frankly, I feel like just going straight
to Italy from now on.

Last night I had dinner at a historical restaurant in Florence, and had
the most outstanding boar with kind of a mole sauce, a 500 year old recipe.
 But it was so much more interesting than mole.

here is the website of the restaurant:
http://www.terraditoscana.com/cucina/alessi/

Sat, 8 Jun 18:16:43 +0200

Well, next summer after school ends, I will check out Roma and Milano,

where we have offices, as well as Barcelona.  I was in Florence mostly,

but also Siena, Cortona, Greve, the Chianti region in general.  Also,

a day trip to Venezia.  Loved it all.  In love with it all.  Wanted to

move there about a half hour into the stay in Italy.  It's really it in every way!

Living simply, but more importantly, much more humanely, I was enchanted.

Somehow, in the US, we are less cynical politically (read, naive by the

Europeans) and far less humane.  In Europe, they are far more

cynical (read realistic by the Europeans) but far more humane.  This is of

course my own reading, and therefore, skewed.  But for now, this is how

I see it.  It may not be realistic to stay long-term, but maybe a year

will do it.  Maybe more.  Don't know.  But I want to give it a try.