My Verona

So I had another post here, but I had to switch computers because I was once again stuck between two morons who needed to talk around me, so that is now gone. However, our weekend in Verona/Padua was really good! The Scrovegni Chapel was amazing. It was built in Padua by a man whose father had appeared in Dante's Inferno as a Usurer suffering eternal damnation, in order to expiate his family's sins. He had it decorated, on all four walls, floor to ceiling, by Giotto, one of the most famous artists of the Early Renaissance. Usually when you think of the Early Ren period, you think of a slightly inferior style of art that preceded the greats like Raphael--the colors and figures weren't highly naturalistic, there was still a great deal of stiffness and stylization from the medieval period, etc etc. I have never been that fond of Early Ren myself for these reasons. I had heard that the frescoes in the Arena Chapel, which is also what this place is called, because it was built on the ruins of the Paduan Arena, marked a turning point in Western Art, that Giotto became the leading force of the Early Renaissance because of this work, etc etc, but I didn't understand what that meant until I got in there.

First of all, Giotto rocks in what they call pure "painterly-ness". He decorated this entire chapel with a fictive architectural structure that makes it seem as though all the walls are covered with colored marble around the paintings and along the floor--but none of the marble is real. I never would have suspected it actually, had they not mentioned it in the introduction--unless, like Carla, I noticed places where the fresco was wearing off, taking the "marble" with it. More important, though, is the amazing level of expressivity that Giotto was able to give to his figures and to the narratives---there were several, including the lives of Mary and Jesus. Example: one of the paintings shows the moment where Judas betrays Jesus, kissing him in front of the soldiers to mark him as the condemned one. It was an extraordinary work because, despite the number of figures involved, it really appears to the viewer like time has stopped, that Jesus and Judas are, for lack of a better word, "having a moment". Judas is leaning in to kiss him and Jesus is not flinching away but his eyes are open, watching Judas calmly, understanding exactly what's going on. Another painting showed the deposition and burial, and here the most interesting figures were the cherubim in the sky, their features contorted into varying expressions of grief and pain, some scratching their cheeks, some howling. Best of all ,Giotto painted them in motion, their wings fluttering hummingbirds, as if he had captured them on a superfast camera. All in all I was hugely impressed, because never before had I seen these familiar scenes recreated in such a fascinating way, a way that really interested the viewer in the actions and motivations of the figures. Kudos to Giotto.

After this, we went down to the Basilica of St. Anthony, he of the "please find me this" prayers, because Anna had a strong yearning to see the mummified tongue and vocal cords of this particular saint. Don't ask. The church itself was massive, had four or five domes in it, and was breathtaking. The most amazing part of it, though, was the tomb of the saint, which has been turned into basically a shrine of thanksgiving by grateful believers. It was covered with ex-votos, pictures, notes, and photographs, all of them expressing thanks to St. Anthony for blessings given and graces received. Some of the most affecting were those people who left a photo of their cars, destroyed in accidents from which they miraculously escaped, and people who left photos of children, some who died young, others who survived childhood disease. There were gifts of needlepoint and embroidery, and notes from children, including one from a little boy who thanked St. Anthony for saving his mother's life. The notes were in many languages, including English and German and several written in Cyrillic. Walking around the tomb, many people stopped and pressed their hands and foreheads to the marble, while others left candles to be offered to St. Anthony. The tomb was incredibly affecting because it was such a proof of faith on the part of those who came to offer thanks. To think of all those individuals, many of whom must have traveled a distance to be able to make their offering, truly believing that somewhere up there they have a divine intercessor, is a powerful thought indeed. I felt somewhat the poorer for having no such belief myself.

My mother, however, has always been a believer in St. Anthony and his power of finding lost objects. Many a time I have lost things, my keys, my license, my glasses, and been unable to find them for days, but after my mom says a prayer to St. Anthony they turn up in a random spot soon afterward. This could be coincidence, of course, but it's happened too many times to be coincidence. I felt I should offer St. Anthony something on my mother's behalf, but lacking anything extraordinary, I left some money in the collection box instead.

After this we headed back to Verona, where we checked into our first hostel. It was a really nice place, in a converted mansion, with its own gardens, etc except it was dark and we were tired, so we just dropped our stuff and went out for dinner. When we returned, there were two other girls asleep in the six person room, so we went to bed early, and got up around 7:30. "Breakfast" was included in our 14 euro stay, but this turned out to be rolls and coffee lol. But off we went, four intrepid travelers, to explore the city of Verona. The first place we went was the Roman theater, which was massive and well preserved, although the climb to the hilltop museum was pretty tough. From there we visited several churches, but it being Sunday mass was in session. In one church we stayed for about ten minutes, while the mass was sung partially in Latin. That was pretty cool, it sounded very elegant. We also visited a Roman-Etruscan house museum, meaning the personal collection of someone dead.

Then it was time for the most touristy thing to do in Verona--visit Juliet's house. The museum, if it can be called that, was pretty ridiculous, there was nothing really of value or interest. However, they did have red boxes where you could leave a letter for Juliet, which are actually answered by a club which the museum runs. They even had some computers where you could email her, so naturally, Carla and Anna and I sent some ridiculous emails. The balcony itself was tiny, but the amusing part is that an older Asian guy, who I had waved ahead of us with his wife, asked me and Meredith to pose for a photo on the balcony. So now our photo is in some Asian guy's scrapbook! The final piece of ridiculousness was the statue of Juliet in the courtyard, where you're supposed to rub her breast for luck in love, so I made the other girls do it, but refrained myself, since I have already been so lucky as to find it, muahaha.

Verona itself, by the way, was quite lovely. Like all Italian cities, a river winds its way through the center and is crossed by a number of picturesque bridges. From the very top of the Roman theater's mini mountain, we had a great panoramic view. So after all this we hopped on the train home, and spent a good hour of the travel time in a theological debate on the nature of faith, which religion is the right one, etc etc. My position is of course a rather free floating one, as I don't subscribe to any particular religion. Carla is of course a Protestant, and Anna I would describe as a very liberal Catholic. Meredith didn't really join in the debate, but is nominally Catholic, I think. It was interesting, and certainly occupied our time. When we got home, Carla and I embarked on what would turn out to be a 1.5 hr walk around the city in order to locate a Blockbuster--because our other big news is that we spent 40 euro on a DVD player because we were dying without any American media to occupy our downtime--where we finally, successfully got Bridget Jones Diary. If we couldnt watch the new Pride and Prejudice, this was as close as we could get, and it was a damned good time.

Different Strokes

Reading Sara's journal entry about her weekend in Rome, I was surprised by the different impressions we each had from our time there. Sara said that she could "fall in love in Rome, and live in Florence", while I don't think I could ever find much to love about it beyond a few day's visit. It was too much of a city for me, a fact not even a plethora of Roman ruins could overcome, but hey, different strokes.

After seeing the highly Baroque adornments of St. Peter's, and then just the all-out crazy fest of St. Mark's this weekend, I still have to say that the most astonishing works of art that I've seen so far have been the mosaics of Ravenna. I have never seen their equal for sheer color and magnificence, undimmed by centuries. And Florence is still my favorite kind of place, small without being limited, relatively tranquil without being boring, and elegantly historic without being overwhelming or pedantic. I feel at home here, like I actually belong, while in Rome I felt like I was a mere spectactor in a grand drama that had been in the making for two millenia.

I remarked to Anna the other day that I had been thinking of people I knew back in America who take such overzealous pride in one part of their ethnicity that they really think it makes them better, and somehow distinct, from the people around them. Specifically, the people who are so proud of being Italian American that they wear things like those awful FBI (full blooded italian) shirts. Those people would be a laughingstock here, and would probably find themselves at an absolute loss, because the Italian identity they have constructed in America is quite unlike what you actually find in Italy. Actually living in another country, where people don't need to ask what ethnicity you are, because they already know, makes it so apparent how little that matters. What does it matter if I have Italian blood, or not? Here I'm just another ignorant American. They don't give a damn.

People put so much emphasis on this kind of identity in the states, but it is so often divergent from the actual culture from which it originated as to be almost unrecognizable. In the US there's always a lot of interest in your family's "heritage", but really, until you go to those places, you have no idea what you're inheriting. None of us are that special, if we're more than second-generation immigrants, we're just Americans, like everyone else, with no special claim to being "of" one country or another, especially one that doesn't want us anyway. For all my jokes about being Syrian, do I consider myself to be one whit like the people of that country? Nope. I have no idea what they're like, or their lives, or their culture. I could never understand what it's like to be them unless I lived among them, so why bother laying claim to a patrimony that I neither understand nor value?

I think ethnicities now are simply a method of supporting a shared pride and egotism at being more "this" than someone else, and preserving idiocies like how great it is to be Irish American, or Italian American, or what have you, because your "people" have so much culture. You're not Irish. You're not Italian. Those peoples don't recognize your claim to be one of them, nor do you really probably want to be, because then, once again, you would not be special in the way you can claim to be now. I'm not saying that we should do away with inherited traditions or knowledge and interest in our forefathers, but simply recognize that you are only constructing your own little dreamworld when you boast about how cool it is to be this or that. Accept being an American; we all have to do it someday.

Venice and Carnival

This weekend was nothing short of amazing. We left here at 7am for the lengthy bus trip to Venice. Naturally, everyone knows that Venice is on little islands with the canals, gondolas, etc etc, but I was definitely not aware that the lagoon in which the various islands of the city are located is enormous! It took us about half an hour to cross between some of them. The main island is where the stuff everything thinks of as Venice is located, but there were lots of other smaller ones: an island inhabited only by Franciscan monks, a cemetery island, Murano, island of the glass factories, Burano, ie the most picturesque place ever, among others. We went first for a tour of St. Mark's square, where the massive cathedral of St. Mark is located. I have never seen anything so highly decorated in my life. Every inch of the interior and exterior of this place was covered in multi colored marble, mosaics, or gilded. Gold mosaic tiles covered huge expanses of space in between the actual mosaic images inside the building--and not just up on the ceiling, either; the tiles went right down to the floor, so you could actually touch them.

The church was consecrated back in 700 AD and is the burial place of St Mark...the second burial place, because the Venetians went to Alexandria and dug up and stole his corpse in order to fulfill the prophecy of an old legend. Apparently, St. Mark was once shipwrecked in the Venetian lagoon when an angel appeared to him and the following: "Peace unto you, Mark, my evangelist. Here one day your body will find rest". So the Venetians apparently saw nothing wrong with divinely-sanctioned graverobbing. Part of the angel's phrase, in Latin, appears in almost every image of the icon of Venice--the Lion of St. Mark, who is usually depicted with wings and with one paw on an open book, which says Pax Tibi Marce, Evangelista Meus.

This lion is an awesome symbol. They have a huge gold lion perched on a column by the harbor in St. Mark's Square, next to an older statue of Theodoric, a Byzantine soldier saint who slew a dragon. This young man was once the patron saint of Venice, till the city decided it would not do to have a Byzantine as their patron, since that would suggest that they owed something to the eastern Empire. So they picked Mark as a sign of their independence, because really, who ever cared what Mark had to say anyway? People were more interested in Peter and Paul, but other locations had already bogarted those two as symbols. Venetian independence was extremely important to its people. It had the honor of being probably the longest running independent city-state in Europe, as it was never conquered until Napoleon invaded in the 18th century. It its prime, though, Venice was one of the most powerful forces on the Continent, since they owned the seas with their navy. In fact, a line from a really good historical novel, the title of which I cannot now remember, went "When the lion of St. Mark roared, the whole world trembled".

After our tour of the square, we got back on the boat and went to Murano, where they make the famous blown-glass items which are usually ridiculously expensive. We got to watch a demonstration in one of the factories, where the masters--who are trained for more than ten years--made the art of glass-blowing look amazingly easy. The glass, once hot, is as pliable as taffy, and we watched them make parts of chandeliers, vases, and even a little statue of a horse, in just seconds. They can blow the glass to such thinness that it's like plastic. We know this because one of the masters did exactly that: basically, he picks up a piece of molten glass on the end of a hollow metal tube about 8 feet long, then blows into one end to make the glass swell up like a balloon. After it had reached unbelievably large proportions, the glass exploded in a shower of plasticky fragments all over us, the audience. The shards, of which I naturally saved several, couldn't really cut you, but it was still freaky. After this we visited their shop, where we were delighted to learn that because of our tour we were being granted half off everything in the store. Delicious! I bought gifts for my mom and Hubbard for a much more reasonable price than I had expected.

Next it was over to Burano, a charming little village-island still populated by fisherman, which is reknowned only for the picturesque atmosphere of its houses, each one painted a different brilliant shade, like rows upon rows of jewels. This was apparently a local fisherman tradition dating back centuries, and only in Burano has it been preserved. I've never seen anything like it, not even in California where all the houses are pastel colors. Here they were every color and shade, from olive green to teal blue to lavender to crimson. It was gorgeous!

That night we were to go to a famous Venetian restaurant for a Carnival feast. This feast, which was quite literally seven or eight courses long, had several shady elements for me, including some nasty proscuitto, a polenta dish, gnocchi with radicchio aka bitter lettuce, etc. The final main course was a roast chicken, which I gave in an ate, despite all fears of bird flu, and it was freaking delicious. Now, the only problem with this feast was that they provided free and unlimited wine to every table. My table sampled the wine and declared it disgusting, as it was only a year old. Other tables, however, went through about ten bottles per group--that's more than a bottle per person, since only 8 people sat at a table. So you can imagine the hellish return bus ride to our hotel, with a group full of drunks who are idiots and asses even while sober. Naturally, one guy who had chugged his wine was puking in the stairwell of the bus shortly after we left, and I had to listen to the rest of the moron crowd shrieking, blowing their noisemakers, and calling and texting each other from different parts of the SAME BUS. Anna, Meredith and Carla, damn them, managed to sleep through this cacophony, but I was full of bitter rage by the time we reached the hotel (which was really nice, btw, and the four of us had our own separate bungalow apartment) and spent some time ranting about the cuntiness of the "swine" with the insanity born of being awake far, far too long for one day, which Carla found absolutely hysterical. I've never seen her laugh that hard.

The next morning, sadly, all of the idiots were still alive, although the one who is now officially known to all as the Chugger looked slightly under the weather. The morning was bitterly cold and foggy, to the extent that we couldnt see a thing on the crossing to the main island. We also had to stand in the cold waiting for the boat for half an hour because these same swine delayed our exit from the hotel, and therefore other groups got ahead of us. I'm pretty sure our poor guide, Stefano, wanted to kill them all, especially the girl who came up and started whining about when were we getting on a boat, because she was sooo cold, and she was getting sick, even though she was perfectly healthy in Florence. He looked at her in disbelief and said that at the meeting he had said it would be cold because--shocker--Venice is in the NORTH, to which she replied that she wasn't at said meeting because she had gone to the Olympics. Boo fucking hoo, although I loved Anna's response " If you're cold, zip up your coat, you dumb bitch".

Due to this delay, we were late for our guided tours of the Peggy Guggenheim museum. Ok, no big deal, you might think, but alas, the opening ceremony of Carnival was to be held in St. Mark's square at 12, and our 1 hr tour finally commened at the museum at 11:10. There was no way we'd make it, and we had heard that part of the ceremony was a person dressed as an angel jumping off the giant belltower, which was not to be missed. So naturally the four of us snuck out of the tour after seeing just a single Picasso (yes, it was that horror of horrors, the modern art museum) and raced back to the square. I've never been in the middle of such a press of people before, and now I understand how riots and stampedes can kill people. It's pretty tight in there. We couldn't see all that much in the middle of the crowd, especially not poor Anna, but there were knights jousting, a juggler, and two full courts of knights, ladies, lords, doges and a pope, along with a sort of fashion show of amazing Carnival costumes on this big stage (Carnival costumes are, btw, indescribably amazing. Some of them look cheaper and rented, but a great many are made of real lace, silk, etc, and these people go entire all out. Plus, unlike the crappy guys in Rome who dress up as gladiators, these people don't charge any money to take a picture with them; they love it! Look up some google pics if you want an idea).

Finally at noon the drumbeats came to a pulsing head and the "angel" began her descent from the massive belltower. It was not, however, as stunning as we'd thought. Her outfit was rather silly, no wings, even, and she didn't dive off, just came very, very slowly down a zip line. Oh well--it was Carnival! I have never in my life seen anything to compare to Carnival, except maybe partially a Ren fair on crack ,but that only accounts for the historical costumes, not the insane masked Carnival revelers. I didn't buy a mask, though they were beautiful, because they were also quite expensive.

We were some of the few who opted to visit the Doge's palace that afternoon instead of just wandering the streets. I'm glad I did, because it was really impressive, everything done in dark wood and gilding, and every ceiling covered with massive paintings and frescoes by Tintoretto and Veronese. We saw the armory, which had amazing pieces of armor, and some weird things like a combination gun-sword, and a real, live, chastity belt, with TEETH. We also crossed the famous Bridge of Sighs, which is so named not because of any romantic associations, but because it connected the palace to the prison, and if you crossed that bridge you were probably never coming back. The prisons were dark, completely without heat, and frightening. I can't imagine that prisoners lasted long there in the damp.

Our return trip was exceedingly long due to traffic and delays--we left Venice at 5:30 and reached home at 10:30. I slept for about 11 hours and last, and it was gooood. The weekend, I must say, was very much worth the $250 I paid for it, but I am so glad I'm not signed u p for any more of the group trips. I hate the people who go to this program, I really do! Swine. All swine.

The Pitti Palace Experience

Not even the idle blather of the surrounding idiots can really affect my peace of mind right now. I have had one of the most invigorating days yet of my stay in Florence! This morning I had to meet my Museology class at the Palazzo Pitti, a huge museum/palace/garden complex on the Oltrarno, aka the other side of the river. My professor is a charming woman, but there was simply no way I was going to be able to listen to anything she was saying about "orientation paneling" and "didactic devices" when I was plunged into that most haphazard arrangement of wonders, the Palatine Gallery (several museums actually occupy the vast Pitti Palace, among them the Palatine or picure gallery, the Modern Art Museum, the Ducal Treasures Museum, the Costume Museum, and the Museum of the Boboli Gardens). This museum has basically been preserved in its original "form", meaning, once it had been vacated by generations of Medici dukes, and then by the Hapsburg Savoys, and turned into a collection, nothing was really ever changed. This means that there is no organization, really, to the galleries, aside from one room full of devotional tondos, or round paintings. Nor are there detailed labels--the semi original lablels ae afffixed to the massive frames, but they offer only artist and title, no date of the work, which was MOST frustrating later when I came across several Titian portraits and was trying to determine, since I spent last semester writing papers on his portraiture for Jesus, which period the pieces were from. I thought one was definitely late period due to the brushwork but there was no way to confirm it. Curses.

Anyway, the galleries are also absolutely stuffed with paintings, basically floor to ceiling, and then the ceilings themselves have intense Baroque ornamentation, along with frescoes depicting how awesome the Medici thought they were, plus statues and the most amazing tables, inlaid with semi precious stone in a process called commesso, to produce the most fabulous designs, as though they'd been painted on. As we learned, commesso differs from mosaic because mosaics are created from hundreds of identical square tessori, or tiles, while commess involves actually cutting the many multi colored stones into the exact shape required to form a hummingbird's beak from yellow amber, for example, or a tiny grape from amethyst.

All this naturally conspired to make me ignore the poor professor, who was there not to show us the art, but to explain the many ways museum function with respect to their clientele, visitor programs, collections, etc. I think she likes me, though, since I always answer her questions in class, and also stayed close enough by to answer random questions she asked us about heraldry and mythology. Plus, from the giant grin on my face as I wandered from one masterpiece to another, I think she could tell that I was simply overjoyed to be there, and that it wasn't out of disrespect that I kept walking away. Unlike, for example, the Three Morons, whom I may have mentioned previously--three really rich stupid asshole guys from Syracuse, who wander off every tour, ignore everyone, and think only of drinking and spending money. How they wound up in this class I don't know. They didn't bother walking to the Palazzo, which is, unbelievably, a completely straight walk from my front door through Florence, across the Ponte Vecchio and up the hill--they arrived in a taxi. Nor did they stay the whole time, abruptly deciding to leave before we had the talk by the museum's educational coordinator. No, these guys weren't lacking in attention out of some kind of reverence to the art, they were more interested in finding more chairs to slump in. The only time I saw any of them show interest in a single work was a really gross martyrdom, where a naked, buxom saint was actually having her nipples wrenched off by two guys with pliers. Number one, OW, number two, wtf is wrong with you if that's the only thing that induces you to be interested in a painting?

But enough of my anger and back to the artwork. This place was absolutely littered with works that I've seen, over and over again in books. Paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi, Caravaggio (including his Sleeping Cupid and Toothpuller, which we looked at in Baroque class this week), Titian, who if anything I grew even more amazed by after seeing one of his Phillip II portraits along with an anonymous one called The Englishman, who was HOT...del Sarto, Bronzino, Rubens, even that famous anonymous portrait of Elizabeth I in that insane outfit was there. There were Botticellis and Raphaels, and even, hidden in the darkness of one of the shrouded rooms of the royal apartments, a portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud of Louis XV as a kid. Perhaps the most beautiful and affecting work of art I saw was Raphel's Madonna of the Chair. Look it up on Google--even in reproductions it's absolutely charming, but in person, well, I actually started laughing out loud--quietly--because I couldn't believe I was standing in front of it. And it was just so damned amazing. In the great divide of Michelangelo and Raphael, I've always felt drawn more to Michelangelo's character, to his monumentality, to the force and passion of his work, but standing before this painting it was impossible not to adore this Madonna, immediately, as one of the most perfect beings ever depicted. I don't know what it is or how he did it, but she is breathtaking. Oh yes, and Jesus and John the Baptist are in there too, but who cares?

The royal apartments, which were connected to this gallery, also elicited an extraordinary response from me. These were some of the rooms of Italy's first king, Vittorio Emmanuele II, when Florence was briefly the capital of the united Italy for five years. They are preserved, immaculately, with their original furnishings, down to the tapestries on the walls, but this also means that the drapes must be kept closed to prevent all the colors from fading. Although it was chilly and dark when I walked through the apartments, I was much less impressed with the bright, almost tacky-looking postcards of these same rooms available in the gift store. There was a mystery and a grandeur in the gloom of those chambers, especially the throne room, which was entirely done in red, and marvelous to behold. Now, when I came into the throne room in Versailles, I was immediately disappointed. So much had I heard of the wonders of the Sun King that I was expecting much more than a fairly plain chair on a single dais, without even a canopy. This, by contrast, the throne of a king I had never heard of three weeks ago, was just what I thought a throne should be--surmounted by a vast canopy of crimson velvet, with the arms of Italy and Savoy on a crest at the top, the back of the throne itself adorned with a fierce golden eagle, and the whole of it set a few steps up on a red dais. I had the most fanciful desire to bow to that throne, though I restrained myself from doing it because there were other people in the room.

Perhaps it was the absence of harsher museum lighting in those long galleries that made me so susceptible to fantasy and daydream, or maybe it was just the rush of pleasure of being around so many beautiful objects, like my soul itself were drinking in huge draughts of the freshest air. At first all I could imagine was being there a few hundred years ago, in a courtier's array, moving through those careful orbits of ritual and courtesy; then on my way out, passing again through the muted grandeur of the throne room, I imagined that I was no mere courtier, but the absolute ruler of those magnificent chambers and everything that lay beyond. Italy has never known a queen in her own right, and I don't even think I was thinking about the office in terms of gender, just that I was the monarch, that all this was mine, forever. It was a giddy and wonderful daydream, and I left the royal apartments half-hoping the visitors outside would, upon seeing me, sink into the kind of elaborate court bow I've only read about, but alas, I had no such luck, and remained only a modern woman.

This was not, however, the end of the wonders that the Pitti Palace had to offer. The scheduled tour over, we were free to leave if we wished, but since I have the wonderful Uffizi card that means I don't have to pay for entrance to state museums, I decided to check out the others. The Argenti Museum, or the Ducal Treasures, were very satisfying, as I had just had about as many paintings as I could take (and I just realized that neglected to mention the sculpture corridor! They had a gallery of ancient sculpture, including several of Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius, a rather unattractive, massive Augustus, and one glowering bust that I immediately recognized from Roman Art as my darling Caracalla, who ordered a damnatio memorae on his own brother, Geta, and massacred a thousand of his supporters. I still absolutely love his statues, all of which are intended to be gruff and menacing). The one room which overjoyed me the most was the Room of Jewels--now, sadly, there were no rubies the size of chicken's eggs to be had, nor a casket overflowing with diamonds and emeralds, but it did feature huge cases of marvelously whimsical concoctions from gemstones--miniature bouquets, each flower's petals formed by tiny pieces of different colored gems; animals and figurines out of gold, silver and jewels, many of which's bodies were formed by large pieces of mother-of-pearl, in addition to exquisite miniature cups, vases, inlaid jewel boxes, etc etc. All the lovely things I would so love to have!

You think that my adventure, and this scandalously long post, is over, but no no no, my friend, not so. After the Museo Argenti, I explored the massive garden complex behind the palace, the famous Boboli gardens. Now, when you look at a map of Florence, and you see the sprawling green section that appears so invitingly behind the palace, don't be fooled into thinking that that large expanse of territory is in any way flat; rather, expect to ascend many weird terrace-style sorts of ramp/stairs that include at about 35-40 degrees. However, you may expect to be duly rewarded for your efforts by the glory of the natural splendor around you. Well ,I shouldn't really say natural since it's all man-made; there are several ponds with large statues in them, as well as three terraces levels with their own paths, plus yet another museum at the far end, the Porcelain Museum, housed at the top of a tower-like edifice that affords some of the most amazing 360 degree views and Florence and its countryside that I've yet seen. This is one of the highest points around; the Campanile of the Duomo might be higher, but it doesn't provide the view into the land on the other side of the Arno the way this place did. I was also blessed by today's being an exquisite day of weather after yesterday's rain. Droplets did begin to fall while I was up on this tower thing, and I was less than excited about walking all the way home--which I could pretty much see the direction of, from where I stood, in the rain. However, God smile on me and brought out the sun again. Flowers were blooming too, daisies, pink and purple flowers. Ducks were swimming around a statue of Neptune in a pond; in another little clearing stood a colossal head, fragmented--not the famous one of Constantine, and there was no label, but spectacular, nonetheless.

Finally, I found my way out via this a strange little side path, which led into some back roads of the houses which are so incredibly fortunate as to border on this garden. I had no real idea of how high up I had gone until it took me 15 minutes of walking down a sharply inclined road to ead anything approaching level ground, by which time my knees were not appreciating me. However, I must say that I absolutely, whole-heartedly consider this one of the best days I've spent in Florence so far...and now I must get some food before I die, because my fuel for the entire morning was a bag of M&Ms because museum food is so expensive, and then a little pizzette, which is a fashionably Italian snack but let's be honest, they're not that good tasting. Mangiamo!

Michelle's Good Luck Suspiciously Continues...

So I almost died today, while making lunch in the apartment. ...ok, maybe I didn't almost die, but I probably would have been quite injured, since the red pashmina scarf I was wearing, which I bought from a wonderful street vendor in Rome, went up in flames from the gas range. The front burner is rather whack, ie, tends toward uncontrallable bouts of fire, but as the largest burner it's best for pasta, so I was trying to boil pasta there while making my sauce in a pan on another burner. Apparently I leaned in to far, because hey, something smelled like burning...and then I looked down and I was ON FIRE. I believe there was screaming, and then Anna directed me to the sink, where we doused the fire, albeit not in time to save the scarf. Requiescat in pacem.

In other news, Monday night we all went to see Pride and Prejudice at the English theater, along with Sara, her amusing friends, and about 100 other females, plus the odd unlucky male. I definitely didn't expect the movie to be as entertaining as it was, but I absolutely loved it! Carla said that it was one of the best movies she'd seen lately and I quite agree. It was funny, and had a lot more fun with sly jokes than the six hour series could manage. Mr Darcy was smoking, and even Keira Knightley I didn't hate quite as much as usual. There's something extremely enjoyable about watching such a film with your close friends and having the entire audience oooh and ahhh at the same favorite parts. Except for the end, where they apparently cut the kissing scene. So yes, I felt cheated that after a two hour romantic comedy it ends with a kiss ON THE HAND. Come on. Europeans love sex! What's the deal?

Tuesday was of course Valentine's Day, except it didn't really feel much like it here. There are very few stores that put up any merchandise, Europeans apparently being above such a holiday, plus it was very warm and sunny, unlike the cold drudgery I tend to associate with the holiday. And, of course, there was the added detractor of being about 3,000 miles away from my valentine. But guess who still got roses, on another continent, from the best boyfriend ever? Yes, you are correct, me!!!

Ravenna and the Weekend

Saturday morning we arose early to walk to Campo Di Marte, a little train station on the other side of town. From there we took a train to Bologna and thence to Ravenna, our destination. Meredith paid for both the train tickets and a delicious lunch from her grant money, which was sweet! We did encounter a snafu on our first train, which apparently required a reservation in order to obtain an actual seat in the compartments, in addition to the regular tickets. We found this out after being ejected from our first seats by the German ticket holders who had gotten reservations. However, we made the rest of the trip without any problems.

Ravenna itself is a very small town with literally six attractions, five of which you gain access to with a combined ticket for six euro. That's a hell of a bargain, especially because of the quality of the places we visited. We saw several basilicas with absolutely incredible mosaic decorations dating from the Byzantine/Romanesque era. The thing about mosaics is that unlike paint, they never lose their luster, so we were seeing the colors in all their original splendor. Mosaics also include a lot of gold, which makes it all the more awe-inspiring. Mosaics also decorated a Byzantine tomb, Gallia Placida.

Best Emails

Can I just say, that I opened my email account this morning to find two really awesome emails that made me smile--one drunken email from Sean of undescribable sweetness, and one long-awaited communique from Rae, headed thus:

To:Ms. Heather Alyssa Flanagan, Ms. Sara Marijuana Lugo, and Ms. MichelleMari DiMarzo,
My Most Esteemed ComradesCurrently Abroad in France and Italy,
RespectivelyWhile I Continue to Suffer the Misdoings of Our Government


and ended thus:

Dr. Rachel Mari Buglione-Corbett, MD PhD Esq.,
In Chemistry Lab,
Probably on the Floor,
Under the Table,
Eating Chocolate.

heehee.

Explorations

This morning I got up and went to the Museum of the Opificio del Pietre Dure, or the museum for this workshop of precious and semi precious stones that was established in the time of the Medicis. It was incredible workmanship, and yes there were many shinies. However, since this is not an uber popular place the placards were all in Italian. I muddled through as best I could...I now know, for example, that "porfiro" is the Italian for porphryr, or however you spell it. I spent only a short time there, and then I went to the Museum of San Marco, where I get in free because I have this handy dandy membership card they gave us for state museums. I wasn't really even thinking when I went in there what exactly was IN san Marco...so I get inside, where once again, there are no English explanations of anything, and I start realizing there's a lot of stuff by Fra Angelico. Ah, very nice, lovely, lovely. Including one piece, Sacred Conversation, we just looked at in our Renaissance Art of the Courts. But I'm still somehow not putting two and two together from my Art History survey classes, not even after I see on the map "Fra Angelico's Cells Upstairs". I think ooh, those frescoed cells! Awesome! But I still don't even realize, until I reach the top of a flight of stairs, exactly what the important artwork it that resides in San Marco--Fra Angelico's Annunciation, one of the most famous of all the works by that name, adorns the wall directly opposite the stairwell. My jaw, quite literally, dropped, partly from seeing this iconic painting and partly from my own stupidity at not remembering the connection.

The frescoes themselves were great, and the cells weren't small and dank--they had pretty windows onto the courtyard and ample space. However, they were freezing even with the benefit of space heaters. There were no fireplaces in the rooms. These poor monks were probably too busy freezing their balls off half the time to care about sinning. Interestingly, not all the frescoes were unique...there were two images that he repeated, identically, over and over. They were both Crucifixion scenes, very gory ones, with blood spurting dramatically all over the place. One had a black background, one had a white background and was differently shaped. I counted 5 of the black ones and no less than 7 of the whites. It interested me to think how they divvied up the room selection--I mean, did you have to have a certain level of seniority to get a cell with a nice fresco like Noli Me Tangere? Did the newbies get stuck with the Crucifixions? Or was there some sort of merit system, like if they catch you eyeing the nuns you get a bloody Christ...maybe if they catch you eyeing the choir boys you got a Virgin Enthroned in Heaven, or something. All very interesting. I bought a print of the Annunciation, and then I went back to this shop I was in yesterday and bought a seal in the shape of a D, and some wax, so I can make seals on my letters. Heehee. I feel deliciously medieval.

Random Musings

I realized, while watching Meredith pen the great american novel last night, that I really need to include more information in my blog. Because, you know, this is going to be my basic memory of the entire trip, having, as I do, a terrible memory of my own. I got up early today to do some homework and check out a vintage shop meredith had mentioned to me near the school. It wasnt so much vintage as your basic secondhand, BUT I found a gorgeous rabbit fur coat for 70 euro. Thats $85 for you gringos. Luckily or unluckily, I had decided not to take my money belt with me today, so I had no credit card and not enough cash. Im going to ask Meredith to go back with me after our Baroque class to see if I actually want to buy it or not. My worry is getting it back to the States, together with my cream colored coat. Thats a lot of coat to fit in my suitcases. I stopped in at a Mailboxes Etc, we have not one but two of them on our street alone, and found out that to ship merely 1 kg to th east coast it costs 35 euro. 10 kilos costs 100 euro. Jesus! Oh yes and my other worry is being stoned by my anti fur mother. See, but the rabbits are already long dead, and its so pretty, and I wants it, I wants it!

So, random things about the city in which I live....Im having the hardest time trying to find something to get drunk on. I dislike wine immensely, beer is out of the question, and Ive asked several liquor dispensing individuals about the possibility of an Amaretto sour with no sucess. Sara reported having had one but that it was terrible. Now, if I can just find out where one purchases sour mix, being unable to find it at the tiny supermarket where we shop, I can pick up the lovely economy size bottle of Disarrono and have myself a wonderful time. As it stands, this Friday we intend to purchase either the $4 vodka or $6 rum and get drunk in our apartment before we go out.

Everyone and their mother here wears boots. I don't know how they manage it with the insane cobblestones that are far too easy to trip over. In Rome, I actually saw a woman at the Colosseum--which had some of the worst cobblestones, plus slanting, uneven stairs inside--in stilettos. The insanity! So basically you're easily pegged as a foreigner or just a poor dresser for not wearing your jeans tucked into some kind of boot. Ah well. I have been spoken to in Italian several times, so maybe I just look like some kind of Italian country mouse to them. Oh and I helped an Asian lady find the Duomo yesterday! Except I think I sent her the wrong way, and I lost my wonderful Rae-given Berlitz map shortly thereafter. So it wasn't really a good thing.

I must admit that I'm suffering from the lack of reading material. I was very excited by the idea of the Paperback Exchange, but sadly it was not at all as whimsical and cheap as I had hoped. It was depressingly upscale and used English novels were priced about 6 euro. There was a bargain section, but the selection was so meager I almost considered buying "Middlemarch" because it was fifty cents. Except then I realized it would probably make me want to kill myself. I've finished reading Lamb twice, and read Carla's pride and prejudice, but I need more books. Stay tuned for news of Michelle's Booksearch.

I started classes yesterday. Italian looks like its going to be fun, if I could just stop calling it Spanish class. Museology looks to be hard but interesting; we go to six museums during class hours, and have to visit another six on our own and write reports on them. I didn't really know what museology entailed, but I started reading the textbook today and spent half an hour learning about market research and viability assessments. It's eerily utilitarian, something I never expected from any art history class.

Meredith and I have Baroque in about an hour, but I think I need a panini to hold me over until then. Yes, I have consented to like these meatless sandwiches--and I like the ones at the bar across from the school best because they're 1.80.

Note

Also, I bought Italian sneakers because my darling pink ones are dead. These ones are basically the colors of the german flag--red in front, black in the back, and yellow in the center. I feel so European.

We're going to Venice for Carnival on the 18th!!!

Back in Firenze

Home, sweet home, or at least close to it. It's wonderful to be off that damned tour, since most of the kids we were with were more interested in getting shitfaced every night and stumbling around hung over the next day than with actually enjoying what we were seeing. After a large group of these moronic girls stayed out till 630 am our last night in Rome, wake up call being 7am, they were all complaining when we stopped in the gorgeous hilltop town of Assisi for a tour of St Francis' birthplace on the way back to Florence. We're off the bus for five minutes and one of them is whining, "ugh, i've already seen enough of this place. let's go". Five of the guys didn't even bother with a tour, they just slunk off to a bar and came racing to catch the bus when we left. It annoys me, so much, that they're wasting this opportunity, when so many people who would have a far greater level of appreciation can't be here. Anyway, we don't have to associate with them anymore. Thank god.

I don't have any classes today, so it's mostly errands. It got colder...apparently we were just being treated nice the first week! Oh well. Ps, my webshots page is up, I put the link up top. If it doesnt work, just search webshots home for my username, which is infinitchaos.

Roma

So here we are in Rome on the orientation tour. I'll be honest--I already miss Florence. Florence is an adorable mini city, everything is reachable on foot, everything is clean and mostly quiet besides the hum of Vespas; Rome is a real city, complete with filth, homeless people, noise, scary people, etc etc. Florence already feels like home compared to this. However, Rome does have amazing sights, many of which we saw today--MANY, I say, because we walked all over the freaking city. And this is not a walking city entirely. We walked from the Vatican to Castel St. Angelo, across the river, took a bus to the Coliseum, and then walked back to our hotel which was not exactly nearby. Its been a long day and I have earned the booze I hope to shortly be imbibing. The Vatican was maginificent, although we didnt get a full chance to see its treasures; it was mostly St Peters and the Sistene Chapel. Ive taken a ton of great photos, so exciting, plus surreptitious video inside the Sistene Chapel. Carla has been taking short, humorous videos of all of us at various points of interest, which we will soon compile into a wondrous cd of hilarity and friendship.

First Post From Florence

Where to begin, where to begin...well, the apartment that I share with Meredith, Carla and Anna is utterly gorgeous. I was expecting somewhat of a slum or at least cramped accomodations, but we have more space than we know what to do with! This place, 33 Via San Gallo, was built mid 17th century by a Florentine musician. It was passed around from hand to hand before being purchased, 100 years ago, by my landlords great grandmother. In short, I live in a former Renaissance palazzo! Our ceilings are like 20 feet high, we have a closet complex thats like the size of my room at home, antique furniture, a washing machine in the kitchen, and a window that opens onto an interior courtyard. At night, delicious smells of cooking from someone elses apartment float up.

The past two days have been orientation, as well as exploration. Unlike many of our fellow compatriots, we've been doing our best to explore the city, which is small and quite safe. The men are just as appreciative as the stories claim, though I haven't been physically molested yet haha. More like they whistle and say things to us in the street, or in one slightly pathetic case, run up to us from inside a store window waving madly. We haven't gone out and partied yet--it's incredibly exhausting after we walk for hours and hours, especially to come home to a building that requires about 60 feet of staircases to get to the second floor! Old, vastly elegant stone staircases, with marble statues in the walls, but it's still a goddamned hike to get up there. Sara lives about a 20 minute walk from us. It's so surreal to be with her in the same city! The food is ok, we haven't really gone out to a fancy restaurant yet, though, just little bars and cafes for food. Pasta is not available here as snack food, which is disappointing, though I did get some nice penne at the Mercado Central, the giant fresh food market, yesterday. Tonight we're making dinner at our apartment for the first time, just spaghetti and risotto, plus we bought a dessert wine to go with it--this will be my official first wine. God knows if I'll like it or not, but I intend to try. Last night was our welcome dinner at Palazzo Borghese: this is a picture of where we ate . http://www.dimorestoriche.com/immagini/dimore/539_01.gif Now, it would have been a lot nicer had we actually sat down, since we'd been walking all day, but they had us do it buffet style at these little standing tables, which was kinda weird.

I really can't say enough about Florence. The city itself is gorgeous, everywhere you look the most exotic sights are attracting your eye. The architecture, the art, the landscapes, even the people are fascinating. It's rather embarassing that I can't communicate with them, so I look forward to my Italian class.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Rome, Orvieto and Assisi, where I can finally be a tourist and take a million pictures! I haven't been bringing my camera anywhere because I don't want to be looked at as a tourist lol. They advised us that if you frequent the same bars and cafes a lot, eventually they will warm up to you and start talking. PS, bars here serve soda, snacks, and pizza as well as alcohol. Coke is dispensed from a tap next to Heineken. All the bottles are slimmer because the fridges are smaller. The people all smoke, and there are no fat people--none. There is a bidet in our bathroom which no one will use. Our shower is the equivalent of a gentle rain, and the heat is only permitted to be on 10 hrs of the day, by national law. The insanity! I love it. I love every minute of it.

Tonight we went up to Fiesole, a little hill town above Florence, to watch the sunset. It cost a whole 2 euro and it was perfect. Most of the kids on this trip have been preoccupied with seeing how many bars they can hit in one night and how many bottles of wine they can swill down---at the 2nd day of orientation people were already hung over. I don't need the alcohol nor do I need the clubbing, but there was something in the air up in Fiesole, something incredibly tranquil, exactly what I was hoping to find.

Sonnet for Sean

The Road to Florence

I read the maps, the guide books until my
head fairly swims with the unfamiliar:
the names of streets, plazas, the proper way
to greet a man or a woman, tips for
hiding the fact that I’m just an ugly
American at heart. Hard enough to
absorb it all, more so since I can see,
so neatly drawn out, the distance that you
will be from where I am—even the stars
will differ in our two hemispheres.
And yet, there is a piece of what is ours
that in me scoffs at such immature fears,
that, knowing what challenges lie ahead,
rises to meet them, arms calmly outspread.

The problem with having other people read your sonnets is that if they're not trained to recognize what makes a sonnet a good sonnet, it just looks to them like fourteen lines that rhyme here and there. It's not all about the iamb, people--give the spondee and the trochee their due! Ah, English jokes....speaking of English, yesterday when Sean and I visited Northwest, I introduced him to Mrs. Juda, our beloved fierce little AP English teacher, and was shocked when she started telling him what a wonderful girlfriend he had. Such a display of sentiment from her is rather surprising as she's generally a very sarcastic and blunt lady. Fitz, true to form, merely pointed out "whip marks" on Sean's back and asked if I'd fitted him for a collar yet. Unfortunately, I neglected to ask him if that "Dating for Dummies" book we gave him junior year has paid off yet.

The best of all was seeing Mr. Tressler. Sean kindly refrained from telling him, as he previously threatened, that he looked just like the tiger that is his namesake...I don't think he needs to know that Heather transformed a stuffed animal into a likeness by sewing on a mustache. I discovered that the HILL class is going to France this year--bitches! I hate them all! Last year they went to England, the year before that to Italy, and where did we go? THE SOUTHWEST!! Bah. The sting of that loss has not been forgotten, I tell you. Ok, our trip didn't suck as much as the class before us--the 9/11 bunch--they had to go to Canada. But you know I think both trips probably wound up being the same temperature. Now, the HILL class going to France means two things--number one, that when they hit Paris, a certain H. Flan had better be ready to swoop down and attack with witty comments and scathing criticism of Mr Tressler's organizational deficiencies, and perhaps the tale of Tumbly just for good measure. Number two, it means that I am now, more than ever, committed to making it to Portugal! Just for spite! Sara and I will go and dance upon the soil and shout curses in the language, which we do not know, and perhaps hunt down that boat made entirely of wine corks, which was really the only part of our itinerary which we had even discussed before George Bush ruined my life by invading someplace. Rae suggested we make a point of the four of us journeying to Portugal one day, and I agree, I also feel we should return triumphantly to the Southwest, no earlier in the season than May, or perhaps June to be safe. Oh well--watch it snow on us anyway, just for the hell of it.

Time to Say Goodbye

After Sean had left last night to return to Fairfield, I was really confronted with the immediacy of my departure. Now I'm feeling more sad, and more nervous--not about the change, or the culture shock, I don't think I'll have a problem with that--about leaving my loved ones behind. As independent as I pride myself on being, I think I will in fact have a hard time learning to adjust to a Sean-less life. In one year, the longest time we've gone without seeing each other is two weeks. We'll have to wait three times that to see each other in March, and then even longer till I come home. As I said to him last night, if I were still dating some of the guys he so charmingly dubbed the "MacDonald's hamburgers" (to his top sirloin), I'd definitely have many more reservations about such a separation. Everything will turn out ok, I know, but I think homesickness is going to be more of a problem for me than originally anticipated.

Tapping My Fingers...

I noticed today how many more people are on my AOL screen name's buddy list than my AIM one. Then I remembered how I've steadily pruned people off my AIM list, not just people I rarely talk to, but also people whose sole purpose on the list was to be AIM-stalked, plus some people I do kinda talk to but don't want to anymore, and then a couple of people who I just want to forget exist--muahaha. The result is that I've got about 20 people on my AIM list, which is small but just fine. Why bother with people I don't care about?

Last night, with nothing else to do, I spent three-and-a-half hours watching Seven Samurai, which is supposed to be Kurosawa's masterpiece. It was really good, better than the Magnificent Seven, though I like that movie too. I should email Dr. Brill and tell her how much I enjoyed it; she had us watch "Ran" for tragedy class, and it was incredibly intense. She also recommended Rashomon as another of his best films, so I got that from the library too. I have to say, Japanese is not the prettiest language, especially as samurai-actors tend to yell their lines a LOT for no apparent reason. I laughed out loud when one character in Seven Samurai actually asked another "why do you yell so much?".

Four more days of work. I can make that. Wednesday our CEO, Jeff Fluhr, is visiting, so they're paying us overtime to attend a dinner in his honor. I'll just pretend it's a send-off bash for me. They shorted me on my paycheck this week, paying me for 1 week instead of 3, so my director was nice enough to have the accounting people Fedex me another check that came this morning; I now have $1300 sitting at my right hand and mmmmm does it feel good! Today while my mom and I were shopping I saw a white rabbit-fur throw for $125, the softest thing you have ever felt, and I was so incredibly tempted. Well, not really tempted, because that is a ludicrous purchase and my mom would rather put me in a neck hold than let me buy fur, her enemy, but oh god, it would have felt so damned good! Why must such a delicious pleasure require the sacrifice of several dozen small mammals? Why can't they ever make a fake fur that doesn't feel fake? Bah. I wish I were rich and conscience-less, then I could buy fur, fur, fur and never care where it came from...

Anniversary

Where to begin the story of the fabulosity that was our anniversary weekend? Well, Friday night I took the train down to the Havens to play poker with Sean's friends, which is always a fun time. About ten people wound up playing, the only women being me, Richardson's mom "Happy" Richardson, and Little Richardson's rather pissy girlfriend who didn't say anything the whole game. Naturally, Sean and I both lost, and I still don't even know who won, because when we left around 1am there were still three people playing. It was a long game.

Saturday we came back up North, and yes there is a division because the Havens have no snow and we have plenty, to go the the bed and breakfast. It's called the Mansion Inn, it's in Manchester, and I absolutely recommend it to anyone and everyone! To begin with, it's an absolutely gorgeous place. Today we ate breakfast in the formal dining room, just six people but spread out on this massive table, and I felt like I was eating at Norland Park. Yeah, that's a little Jane Austen reference for you literati, you love it, I know. The innkeeper, Marianne, is an interesting woman, full of quirky comments, a former librarian and also justice of the peace who has married couples at the inn---cuteness! Our room was the "Lilac Suite", so named because the wallpaper was dark blue dripping with lilacs. It was amazing. The preciousness cannot be described. I didn't bring a camera unfortunately and then I was going to buy a disposable but then I decided, no, for once I will not rely on pictures to capture a moment, I will force myself to remember it on my own! Ok, so this room had a massive bed in one corner, with five gazillion layers because Victorians didn't like fluffy things, just lots of thin things. It had a fireplace. It had a sofa. It had a wood-lined study with the little roll-top desk thing, and old-fashion closet space, and a gorgeous art-deco peach-colored bathroom. It had a portrait of the girl who used to live in it, there was fresco by Marianne on the bathroom wall, there were two giant bookcases and--love this--a little sign that told you to take any book you wanted home with you (I took "Day of the Jackal", Sean took "The Fat Boy's Book"--long story). And, best of all, there was a diary--the diary of the Lilac Suite itself, with entries from all the people who have stayed there. It was so awesome to read people who had spent their wedding nights --one couple wrote that they had been married by Marianne--or their anniversaries in the same room. This morning, as I sat in the adorable little study, I wrote that I really hoped that the inn would become our anniversary tradition. It was so incredibly special--not the least because, you know, it was my anniversary of one year of being with sean, which is just INSANITY because it feels like we've been together for so much longer!

Oh, but the inn's fabulosity is not over. This morning we had breakfast with the two other couples who had been staying at the inn, both older couples, with such diammetrically opposed lives. One couple, Bill and Shelley Browne, were from Brandon VT, a town of 4,000, where Bill was the town pharmacist. The others, Richard and Thelma Boudreau, were from Baton Rouge. Richard, as it happens, is a foreign correspondent for the L.A. Times, and tomorrow he's leaving for Iraq for six weeks--he was already there last March. His wife travels the world working with developing nations on improving their water supplies--she mentioned Cambodia and West Africa as two places she's been. So it was very interesting, I really enjoyed the company if not the food, which was cinnamon french toast, blegh. I won't provide any graphic details about our private celebrations, but there was a fireplace with a couch in front of it, and that was awesome, enough said. Best anniversary ever, to go with the best boyfriend ever.

Muaha

So here I am, blogging sneakily from the Stub...muahaha. Luckily I do emails so quickly that I can basically chill out my last hour and I've still done more than anyone else. Thank you AIM for training my fingers to superhuman quickness.

I'm excited for the weekend, which is....drumroll.....my one year anniversary with Sean!!!! The only other guy I've had an anniversary with was Greg, and it was the day after we got back from the Southwest and I was so beat--we wound up going out for Chinese. Nice Chinese, my favorite chinese, but nothing spectacular. This time around--oh boy---we're doing it the old-fashioned way, a bed and breakfast in Manchester. So excited...fireplaces and antique books and all!

The time of departures has begun; Jen went back to Brooklyn and Rae to Wellesley, and I won't see either till May (guess which one saddens me more). On Monday Sara leaves, then Heather on Tuesday. People here at the office were talking about making plans for Friday the 13th and I was initially like ooooh but then ohhhhhhh, if that makes any sense...although the next day we will be making the trek to Norwood for Sean to meet the extended fam.

Only two weeks left at Stubhub. Yes. It's so hard to encompass the idea of actually leaving, and I haven't had the anticipated panic attack yet over leaving my mom behind alone....but neither have I attempted to teach her the internet, so we'll see how that goes.

Almost New Year's

Has it really only been a year? 365 days ago, I remember feeling so sad over Sean's departure from Fairfield, and all crazy-conflicted over what exactly my feelings were towards him. Could everything else that has happened since then really have happened? Relativity always seems to be in effect in relationships, so that small durations of time are expanded (see my upcoming four-month stint in Florence) while longer durations are compressed, with the result that, as it so often does, it alternately feels like forever and yesterday that Sean and I started dating. Strangely, this doesn't seem to apply to friends, really. I never get the feeling that it was "only yesterday" that Sara and I became friends, or when Carla and I got to know each other. I guess once you're close friends with someone, it just feels like they've always been there for you.

Last night was, although brief, one of those magical evenings that leave me convinced that someday, when we're all divorced or widowed or otherwise unentangled, the four of us are going to be the next generation of Golden Girls. Now, I'd probably wind up being Dorothy because she's the most sarcastic one; Heather would be Blanche, for obvious reasons; Sara would have to be Rose because I just can't see Rae being Rose, plus she's the perfect size to be Sofia. I'm not sure if we'd live in Florida, though Heather would undoubtedly love the fanny-pack-adorned crowds and have fun mullet-hunting. Maybe a nice brownstone outside of the city? Or maybe, if we all make boatloads of money, we can buy that castle house in West Hartford, and have our suites and our maids with our common areas in the turret rooms. Oh, dreams..... It'll probably never happen--I mean, god willing, our spouses will not all die on us or divorce us--but it's comforting, somehow, to think of us older and grayer but still together.

Since this will be my last post before the New Year, I suppose I should think of some sort of resolution, but of course I never really make resolutions and keep them, not impossible ones like "do not fight when jen", anyway. This is my resolution: to never lose the people who matter the most to me, no matter what kind of distance or differences of lifestyle separate us. That would be the greatest blessing I think I could ever give myself.

Winter

The semester's over, and here I am back in Windsor until the 29th of January. While it was an utter relief to leave that pigsty that Carla and I were forced to call home, it was still bittersweet to be leaving Fairfield and Sean behind. Alas. I'm back at Stubhub, and I'll be working 40 hour weeks again until I leave at the end of January. I was gratified to see how excited everyone one was to have me back, surprised at how easily I slipped into the old routine, and dismayed by how incredibly stressful the last two days have been. It's the week before Christmas and it seemed that every caller had made it his or her personal mission to be as rude as possible to me. It's not my fault that you didn't realize that tickets you just bought for a game in May won't arrive in time for Christmas, nor is it my fault that Fedex lost the gift for your husband/daughter/mother. The real kicker was the possibly retarded man with a severe speech impediment who was yelling at me for "not treating him like a human being" and, later, "not treating him like a VIP" because I informed him that he could not post tickets for a game that happens in two days. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men...right.

The good thing about so much work is that it will keep me occupied after the 10th, by which time Rae will have gone back to school and Sara and Heather will have already left to go abroad. After the 16th, the Fairfield kids go back to school. It's a depressing thought that I'll be alone with no one to hang out with after work, but then I suppose it's lucky that work leaves me so exhausted that I barely feel like hanging out. Tonight Sara and I were supposed to kibbutz over our Italy plans, make lists and our maps, but I was just too wiped to drive anywhere. My plans for the evening include taking apart my mom's latest crazy purchase, the Wovel---a gigantic shovel mounted on a wheel, which I was bribed into assembling last night--so she can take it back to the store, and watching SVU. Fascinating, I know.

I realized in moving out just how much CRAP I have. Where did I get all this stuff? Why do I keep it? I have no idea. I looked around my room last night and saw cat ears, a sword, not one but two crowns, a wand, a cone, a starfish, more stuffed animals than I know what to do with...and yet I can barely bring myself to part with any of it. Well, the stuffed animals will shortly be pared down. People need to stop giving me stuffed animals, I need to stop winning stuffed animals, because they serve no purpose, barely even a decorative function. Some, of course, are special--Racoony, Mr T the Tiger, Mr Bojangles, etc. But the raccoon I won myself at the Shad Derby? Nah. He may have sat on my desk all summer at Stubhub, but I think his time for donation has come.