One

I submitted my first fellowship application yesterday, for the Rome Prize!  I'm actually pretty happy with the state of my project proposal right now, which owes a lot to the continuing criticism of my professors.  Dr. West had asked to take a look, and she got back to me Thursday evening with some of the most perceptive criticism in terms of organization and really getting my point across.  It does help to have an outside pair of eyes.  Likewise helpful has been my Philadelphia pen pal, Stuart, this charming British retiree from the UPenn museum I met while doing the Spotlights at the PMA. Just this week he suggested a quote from Pietro Bembo about Titian being in Rome that starts my proposal off with a nice flourish that it was lacking before.  Stuart and his wife are renting a villa in Tivoli in August, and they're determined that I need to be in Rome by then to join them, haha.  (I think they have me in mind as a free tour guide, which for all the help he's given me, I'd be happy to do!)

So, one down, and six or seven more to go.  Rome was one of the "big three", with CASVA and Kress--both of those are due, or need to be shipped out, on the 15th, so I've got two weeks.  After that, I have a month until RSA and Delmas applications (with, hopefully, a final chance to get in touch with Rosand where he would be most useful), and then CAORC in January and the Cini Foundation (again) in February.  E' basta!  Then I can wait around for a few months to be rejected.  Lol.  I've told Sean that if I don't win any fellowships, which is always a good possibility considering the level of competition, I'm getting a new car, and new I mean a used-but-newer-than-1998 car.  That will be my consolation prize to myself!

Anniversary

Today is the seventh anniversary of my mom's death, and despite having discussed this with Sean at least twice in the past week or so, and despite my sister having mentioned it on the phone last night, naturally, today it completely slipped my mind until a few minutes ago in the shower, when I said "Oh!" out loud.  It's surprising, and maybe a little sad in and of itself, to realize that the remembrance of my mom's death no longer directly linked to feelings of sadness or loss.  This isn't new or anything; I've been able to think about it objectively for a long time.  It just still feels a tiny bit like a wrong done to her, that it wasn't uppermost in my mind this morning.  (Let's not even mention my poor grandpa, whose death date I had to put in my Google calendar because I'm so incapable of remembering it).

So here I'll raise the proverbial glass in my mom's memory.  (Well, a cup of tea, like the one I enjoyed outside in the sun before my shower, would be most fitting.  I think she'd have made fun of me for finally having come around to drinking massive amounts of tea like her, even though I still find the prospect of adding milk to be gross).  A metaphorical cup of Lipton, then, in honor of Joan DiMarzo: tiny spitfire, baker of breads, giver of insanely tight hugs. Not the sweetest mom in the world, nor the most outgoing, but mine, and very much missed.

Viva La Chocolate

My poor LG Chocolate phone has been battered and beaten over its years of service.  The screen was so scratched it was often difficult to read in sunlight, and the name no longer read "Verizon" but "Veri on".  Charging it had turned into a sort of Olympics of frustration, since the charging port no longer read the charger unless positioned in the exact correct spot.  Walking too heavily near the phone could then upset the gentle balance.

It was getting pretty ridiculous, so I decided it was time for a new phone, my first since oh, 2007.  Except for one problem: I don't like smartphones.  They're overpriced, the data packages are ridiculous, and seeing people everywhere--particularly in social situations--with their faces glued to these little screens turns me off of them even more.  Yes, I'm perfectly aware, as each iPhone or Android devotee seems to feel necessary to inform me, of how useful they can be, and all the wonderful apps you can have, and how you just don't know how you got along without one before! Bully for you.  I spend enough time already on the internet and on Facebook--I really don't need to be carrying a computer in my pocket, too.

So a smartphone was kind of out of the question, which leaves "basic phones."  The options Verizon could offer not only were badly reviewed for quality, but would actually cost me money--and given that I haven't used their 'free upgrades' in the five years I've been eligible, I found it ridiculous to have to pay $60 for a crappy phone, when I could theoretically obtain a smartphone from them for free.

Happily, I found a solution, and am now the proud owner of a new....LG Chocolate!  Well, when I say 'new', I mean 'refurbished from a cell phone store online'. At any rate, $30 later, I have the phone I like, restored to near-pristine condition--it charges like a dream.  Even if I will one day have to upgrade to a smartphone, I bet I've pushed that date off by, oh, another five years or so.  See you in 2018, Verizon.

Omnia Mutantur

A few hours ago I pointed out to Sean with a laugh how absurd the sentence I'd just said would have sounded to us just a few months ago. "Want to go hit some tennis balls before I go to meditation practice?" Add in the fact that Sean went with me to yoga this morning and whoa.  Who are these people?  We were just talking the other day about the year during which I worked for Paul and he taught at Xavier, how we were always bored on the weekends but could never agree on joint activities.  Times have changed!

I've been going to meditation for about a month now on Monday nights.  We meet in Dwight Chapel on Yale's old campus; it's no longer in service as a chapel, but it's still kind of incongruous practicing Buddhist meditation, and listening to the dharma talk afterward, under the gaze of a giant stained-glass Christ in the altar wall's windows.  It's definitely challenging to sit for 30 minutes, but I'm enjoying it--and surprisingly enough, enjoying the dharma talks too. Last week there was a guest, a monk from Laos who was very nice but unfortunately spoke terrible English.  Still, one thing he said impressed me.  He said that unlike other religions, Buddhism doesn't expect blind faith to precede wisdom; in effect, the Buddha encouraged people to try his product and see if it worked (ie, reduced suffering) before believing.  It certainly makes one feel more comfortable dipping a toe in.

I've also been going to yoga for the same amount of time; it's likewise really challenging, but I like it!  Today we went because there was a $5 community flow, and I figured it was better to try Sean on yoga on a day when it didn't cost us $17.  I can smugly say that I am way more flexible than him (which feels good considering how much more in shape he is in pretty much every other way). However, I definitely preferred the woman who teaches the Friday class, Christina.  It's a lot tougher, not to mention hotter--apparently that studio can be cool as long as someone gets there far enough in advance to prop open both doors.  Christina only walks in five minutes before our class, so I guess I'll be dripping for the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately, she only does the one class in New Haven, and otherwise only teaches up in Southington, which is way too far for me.  I might go to another class this week, since I'll miss her class on Friday because we're off to Cape Cod for McTague's wedding.

Finally, Sean and I took our first tennis lesson together last week!  That was my birthday gift to him, but he enjoyed it so much that he decided we should use the money Linda gave him for a golf lesson to have two more.  Sean has played before; he and his friends were all basically self-taught players in high school, whereas I had only picked up a racket once before.  I didn't suck as much as I'd thought, which was nice.  I mean, we pretty much learned the proper stance and practiced serving (which reminds me, he gave me an exercise to do involving tossing a washcloth which I haven't done...hmmm).  That's what we were practicing tonight for a quick half-hour before I headed downtown and Sean jogged home.  As it happens, the instructor graduated Notre Dame a year ahead of Sean, and knew his dad--we really do live in a small town!

I suppose to cap off this recent trend of healthy living I should take up trying to jog again.  The gym is closed for renovation this week, and it's not that hot out, so I don't really have many excuses.  Blargh.

Ah, Filth

It's fun to be reminded that people in the past were just as dirty-minded and sex-crazed as we are today.  They had fewer ways of publicizing and sharing their fascination, of course, but every technological advancement just made it easier. The dawn of printing (followed quickly by the invention of the woodcut, engaving, etc) in the West in the 15th century, like the invention of the photograph and then the videotape in centuries to come, offered totally new ways to create, duplicate, and circulate pornography.  One of the best Renaissance examples of this is I Modi, a 1520s erotic book that featured explicit engravings showing sexual positions (modi, or 'ways').

I Modi has a fantastic pedigree all around.  The designer of the engravings was Giulio Romano, Raphael's most successful pupil; the publisher (who was jailed for publishing the book in papal Rome) was Marcantonio Raimondi, who not only collaborated with Raphael but who is also famous for having been involved in the world first art-copyright lawsuit, brought against him in Venice by Albrecht Durer, whose prints Raimondi had been knocking off; and the second edition featured filthy sonnets penned by Pietro Aretino, "scourge of princes" and friend to Titian. 

I've encountered I Modi before in Bette Talvacchia's excellent book, but I'd never really sat down and read through some of the poems like I did yesterday.  They are so fucking filthy it's hilarious.  I can't believe that Aretino wrote works on theology, too, when he has one male character refusing to engage in anal sex with his demanding female partner because "I don't do that, that's just for priests."  In another sonnet, though, these lines appear: "e s'in potta ti spiace, muta loco/ c'uomo non e' chi non e' bugerone" which translates to "and if you don't like it in your pussy, change places; there's not a man alive who isn't a buggerer."  Haha. 

This morning we went for an appointment with Rose, this tiny Sicilian woman who does tailoring, to have my dresses and Sean's suit altered for wedding season.  She had an old black Singer that reminded me a lot of my grandmother's machine, which she bought from the sweatshop where she and all her sisters worked when it was closing down.  It was so powerful, she could whip up a dress for my doll in about five seconds flat--and she also had the scars on her fingers from where the needle had gone right through.  My grandfather designed this super-cool desk--the sewing machine could actually be folded down underneath so it would just look like a regular desk.  I don't know what happened to that, after she died. She made lots of dresses for us when we were children, beautiful ones with sashes, even though she was overly fond of puffed sleeves.

 I'm always really impressed with people who can make things with their hands.  I was in Brooklyn this past weekend and was reminded of my awe of Sara's abilities in this vein--I remember going to her house one day in high school and her showing me this blue skirt (with a swoop of some other, shiny fabric on one side) that she had sewn, and being so impressed that she had just made it, with no pattern or anything.  Once upon a time I was decently capable of using my mom's sewing machine--Jen and I were actually forced to take lessons on Saturdays from a woman in Pocquonock, back when we were in 4-H.  When I was 10ish I sewed a skirt and top for myself (though my mom had to do the buttonhole, which was beyond me) in which I participated in a 4-H "fashion show"--God, the fabric was rainbow tie-dye.  After that period, though, I mostly shunned the sewing machine, and I definitely remember disdaining the clothes my mom sometimes made for us, since 'cool kids' did not have homemade clothes.  Today I wouldn't know the first thing about how to operate one.

Seeing Heather's place, where she has dozens upon dozens of plants arranged in storage-tub planters along her driveway and in the backyard (all kinds of plants, her Meyer lemon, passionfruit, mint, bamboo), also reminded me of another kind of hands-on knowledge that I don't have.  She was showing me how some plants grow best in straw, and these ones are forest-floor plants so she has a covering of dry leaves in their bins, and  I'm thinking that the most research I did for our little garden patch was an Amazon search for "organic bug spray" once something started nibbling our basil!

That said, I am proud that I've been making more of my own stuff household-wise.  Some of it is super-basic, like Sean making his own peanut butter, but my hummus delights me because a) I can add super amounts of fresh garlic and b) it is crazily cheaper than what they sell in the store.  I think they want 5.99 for a small container of Sabra at Stop-and-Shop.  The most expensive ingredient is the tahini, which is $8 a jar but which I can use for 6 batches; lemon juice lasts forever, and chickpeas are cheap.  I bet each batch costs me maybe $2, takes a whole 10 minutes to make, and produces twice as much as a store container.

I was inspired by some delicious blackberry peach ice pops we had at the Brooklyn Flea on Saturday to make my own--I had picked up a Jelly-Belly branded popsicle set a few months ago.  I liked the result (Sean would have preferred a bit of added sugar) but it wasn't quite as "meaty" as the one in New York--I suspect they didn't puree the peaches as much as I did.  Yesterday I also experimented with making a chia seed pudding--we've had the chia seeds sitting on the fridge for months, courtesy of Sean's aunt, and his cousin mentioned that they'll turn pudding-y if you soak them, so I soaked them in milk, threw in some berries and Truvia, and this morning it was indeed like tapioca!  Sean wants to give up yogurt as part of his regular lunch, since the basic kind is pumped up with sugar, the low-cal with aspartame, and he hates Greek.  I'm hoping this can be an alternative.  I even have a small jam jar saved that he could use to take it to school for lunch!

Sean also made our first homemade loaf in bread in months the other day.  We stopped buying bread altogether when he was on the dysglycemic diet, but we'd stopped making our own before that because it was just too tempting, for carb-lovers like us, to have delicious homemade bread sitting around all the time, mocking you from inside the breadbox.  Now that he's doing Weight Watchers, he can have sandwich bread again, but we're back to the same problem--do we make our own bread, which is healthier, since it doesn't have all the crap Arnold's has in it (I read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food last week, in which he suggested avoided foods that have more than five ingredients, or any that are unpronounceable; I think it's a good sign that we have so few processed foods left in our regular diets, but bread definitely falls in this category.  So too, sadly, do things like veggie burgers, which are full of all sorts of weird stuff) but possibly then eat more of it?  Ironically, this loaf turned out misshapen and dense--which was another problem we were having with the machine--so it hasn't been that tempting, after all, but not that successful as sandwich bread, either.

Cleaning products are another area where I've been using a lot of homemade stuff (I even have my own brand name, "Puff's Own"! Haha. Carla for some reason used to call me 'Muff' in college, and told Sean he wasn't allowed to use it, so he adopted 'Puff' instead).  It definitely saves money, though it's been hit or miss in the effectiveness department.  I read a book called Green Clean which had some truly frightening things to say about what's in our regular cleaners, plus lots of useful recipes for homemade versions.  The all-purpose cleaner works pretty well, though I think the vinegar-based one would work better--Sean hated the smell, unfortunately.  Laundry soap has been OK, though we both wish there was a way to make it scented--it's hard to adjust to having no smell at all, when we've been taught to associate certain smells with "clean".  Same goes for the floor cleaner--I fucking love the smell of Pine Sol, chemical though it may be, and adding a few drops of lemon essence to the homemade version does not do the trick.  Making detergent for the dishwasher was a total bust, though I liked the suggestion of running an empty wash once a month with vinegar to clean it out.  Another fail was air freshener, the recipe for which was water, a bit of vodka, and essence--it smelled great, but it didn't actually last or, you know, freshen anything!

One place where it seems chemical cleaners are a must?  Our brand new bathtub, which gets alarmingly gross and dirty but can't be scrubbed with anything abrasive because of what it's made of.  I was using my all-purpose cleaner, but it was definitely not doing the trick, especially on the caulk, which was already getting a sort of pinkish mold.  Luckily, we had to have the window recaulked, and the guy who came recaulked the whole tub and told me a) we need to not let water sit on it, so now one of us just quickly wipes it down after we're done showering, and b) we need to use Clorox Cleaner with Bleach.  What do you know, it cut through the tub grime like nobody's business--and I only realized how dirty it had been once I used that.  I would never really recommend Bathfitters for this reason--no bathtub of mine has ever accumulated muck quite like this, and being bright white doesn't help. On the plus side, it looks super nice, and it is a damned sight better than the peeling, pink monstrosity that was in there before.

Making things, even in my limited way, makes me feel good--even though I feel like a ridiculous failure in other areas of my life, hey, I can make my own hummus, right? Right? Mm.

Follow-up

The Rome trip has definitely taken the laurels for least successful of our trips, but at least it happened--Dr. Cooper's husband broke his arm and required surgery the night before her flight to Venice, so she had to cancel her entire trip. Skipping our trip definitely would have been less stressful, but I'd have missed out on the chance to see Carla, not to mention the good times Sean and I did have at the end.

  Like climbing the dome of Saint Peter's--that was incredible!  Sean wanted to climb the whole way, but luckily for me, by the time we arrived the elevator was the only option. I say lucky because the elevator only takes you to the roof, from which it's an utterly exhausting climb up the interior of the dome itself.  You're in a tiny, cramped spiral staircase, with dozens in front and behind of you, and everyone charging up madly, heaving and panting--eventually you've reached such a point in the curvature of the dome that the space of the stairwell itself sharply slants to one side, and it becomes a really tight squeeze. The woman in front of me actually gave up just shy of reaching the top--she couldn't handle the close quarters.  Once you emerge onto the balcony, on the lantern above the dome, it's worth every butt-burning step, though. All of Rome is spread out in front of you like a blanket: the wedding-cake Vittoriano, the low, inconspicuous dome of the Pantheon, the wide acreage of the Borghese and Doria Pamphilij gardens.

We spent our last afternoon in the latter, the largest green space inside the city.  It's not as atmospheric as the Borghese with its little lake and Asklepeion, and not one really visited by tourists.  In fact, the tourist maps cut off just shy of that area.  So while I knew, generally, from having glanced at a broader map in a book plus having seen the vista from Saint Peter's, where the park was, I didn't actually know where the entrances were!  We left our B&B that morning, picked up some nibbles at the Trionfale market (cherries, fresh rolls, pecorino, and smoked mozzarella) walked past Saint Peter's, and kept on going uphill for 20-30 minutes in the hot sun. Just when I was worrying that I'd added even more unnecessary stress to our trip by getting us lost in some exurb, we found an entrance.  We parked ourselves on a bench to eat our little picnic, and then Sean napped in the sun while I finished up Innocents Abroad (I've been  on a Twain kick since I got back; I read a short biography, a collection of short stories, and I'm working on the Annotated Huck Finn now).  There was a mom with a little boy near us; he must have had an accident, because later he was running around butt naked with a sweater tied around his waist, and I heard his little playmate asking, "where are your pants?"  They were drying on a bush.  It was cute.

A Chilly Roman Holiday

I think it will come as no surprise to Sean or anyone else that I have officially voted this our least successful vacation ever.  I mean, we've had a run of luck with fantastic trips in the past, but this time there were just too many things weighing against us--the stress of Sean's conference, his health issues, my existential career crisis, the thoroughly uninspiring weather conditions, etc. etc.  The first three days of our trip were incredibly unpleasant.  Happily, Sean's paper went well yesterday, and we'll be reunited tomorrow; it's been really weird being in the same European city but not together.  Being with Carla, I can definitely say, has been the high point--we haven't spent this long a stretch of time just the two of us since college! Tonight we're going to the Vatican for a night tour, the first time I've been back inside since 2009.  I'm excited!

A Slow Start to Summer

It seems that monthly posting has become the norm for me, hasn't it?

The past month or so has been rough, as we've worked through the aftermath of Sean's decision to stop taking the anti-depressants.  One of the results has been our new eating plan, based on the Dysglycemia Diet for those with unregulated blood sugar (recommended by Linda's homeopathic doctor).  It's been surprisingly easy to transition away from eating so many grains and into more fruits and vegetables (legumes have been a bit harder to incorporate on a daily basis, unless it's in hummus).  If I went back in time and told myself a couple of years ago or even a few months ago that I'd have given up Cheerios, granola bars, sandwich bread, and pasta...I'm not sure I'd have believed myself.

There was a high note on the exercise front a couple of weekends ago, when Sean and I went to Sleeping Giant and I bravely agreed to take the blue trail, the most difficult and dangerous, all the way up the quarry.
It wasn't like anything I'd ever climbed before; not only was it really fucking steep, on the highest points you're not even on a trail, per se, but rather you're hauling yourself up exposed rock faces at 45 degrees or so.  This isn't my picture (I fear breaking my camera took much to ever bring it), but it gives the idea:

Believe it or not, I actually preferred this kind of climbing to the a steep dirt trail where little rocks are flying out from under your feet; at least you know the cliff face isn't going anywhere!  Real rock climbers would undoubtedly roll their eyes, but for the complete novice it's really exciting to find handholds and footholds and pull/push yourself up!  It showed me how much stronger I've gotten in the past couple of years.  Mind you, I could barely bring myself to look out at the incredible view once we'd made it to the summit.  Or rather, I could look out, but not down.  Jesus Christ.  We passed some people who were headed down that way, and I couldn't figure out how you'd possibly shimmy down those rocks.  I sure as hell couldn't.  That I did the blue trail in spite of my enduring fear of heights made me prouder of myself, but don't they say that exposure to your fear should lessen them?? Because that has not been my experience.

The lower note in exercise terms has been my continued struggle to do the Couch to 5k program.  As I've learned, you can't skip even two days of jogging without seeing your stamina plunge, which is so ridiculous!  Sean told me this like it was obvious, and I'm like, wait, you mean even if I do make it to being able to run 30 minutes, I'll have to keep doing it every other day for the rest of my LIFE to keep it up?  Ugh.  I'm still doing it, though I have yet to complete the last run of week 6, which is a full 25 minutes. This morning I set my alarm, got up and ran at 7am (not the nicest weather; the combination of humidity and low temp, plus the dark clouds over the water, reminded me unpleasantly of my Venice runs).  I'm going to try this and see if I have more energy running in the morning than in the evening--even though jogging through Lighthouse Park and looking at the sun set over Long Island Sound is so beautiful.

When I started the program I had the rough idea that I'd be in shape enough to go running with Carla when we got to Rome, at least a little bit...I'm not so sure anymore, though I plan to go jogging on my own.  It's not every day you can jog across the Tiber and through St. Peter's Square!

Hamlet

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Hamlet at Yale Rep courtesy of Sean's friend Shane, who works there and gave us the tickets. The title role was played by Paul Giamatti, and I (like many other people, including apparently actors originally approached to co-star) had initially been dismissive of the idea that a jowly, paunchy, middle-aged man was appropriate to play a character who is still in university when we meet him.  I was delighted to be wrong, because Giamatti was excellent in the role.  I was still leery during his first appearance in Act I, but I think that's because you meet Hamlet as such an emo whiner, sniffling about his mom's remarriage, that he's not instantly a winning character--you don't care about his angst just yet.  The angst is to come, of course, but what really surprised me was how much humor lies within the play, not only in Hamlet himself, but also, for example, in Polonius (the second-best performance, by the guy who played Uncle Fred in Home Alone), who I have always found pendantic and boring both on the page and the screen. During intermission I ran into Richard Regan, my Shakespeare professor from Fairfield, who did not remember me. He did give me a stern look when I admitted surprise at the amount of humor, and say "Well, it is a very funny play.  You just have to know how to mine it."  Eep.

This was my first time seeing the play on stage, though I've seen various film versions.  Sean had never even read it, so it was all new to him.  He pointed out that although we all know that we owe so many of our turns of phrase to Shakespeare's invention, it's still really incredible to realize just how many are packed into a soliloquy like "To be or not to be", which seems to contain at least one well-used phrase per line, if not more.  For my part, I was surprised during that speech to hear the phrase "to sleep, perchance to dream" spoken not in the gentle lull we often hear it in modern usage, but with a clear note of dread, the fear of the unknown waiting beyond this life.  It was another impressive reminder of how different the act of reading a play is from the experience of watching others interpret those lines before your eyes.

Sean told me just this morning that the NYTimes gave a pretty lukewarm review to the whole production, with the exception of Polonius.  Apparently they couldn't get past the clear lack of age gap between Hamlet and his parents. I would have agreed with them last month, but now I just think, where's the suspension of disbelief? Plus, if Hamlet was first enacted in 1602 (they're really not sure, apparently), the star, Richard Burbage, would have been 35 years old.  Not quite Giammati's age, but no spring chicken, either.

Philadelphia, Revisited (Frequently)

This academic year I've been doing monthly Gallery Spotlights at the PMA.  Each month's spotlight focuses on a single object in the collection.  So far I've done a 15th-century terra cotta portrait head, a Florentine relief plaque of the Madonna and Child, a Resurrection of Lazarus Panel by Palma Vecchio, and a mysterious portrait by Titian. The Spotlights are envisioned as 'conversations' rather than lectures, and it's fascinating how the conversation is never the same from one day to another (since I do Spotlights on the same object three days in a row each month).  Part of this is due to the composition of the groups; Thursdays sees a lot of people who are themselves museum guides, while Friday has a big group of retirees who have all been attending together for years. Saturday doesn't have its own standard following (unless you count Phyllis and her friend Luanna!), so it's something of a grab bag.

I've been pleasantly surprised at the level of enthusiasm and the response to the individual objects.  For example, I've always been impressed by the physiognomic accuracy of the terra cotta head and its sense of psychological presence, so I was taken aback to hear from many people, including Phyllis, that they'd never given it a second glance before. Gratifyingly, they were telling me this to frame their new-found appreciation after the Spotlight!  I was especially pleased that a number of the guides reported later that they had added the piece to their tours with great success.  In the case of the Palma Vecchio, I was surprised in a different way, by the audience's interest in something that I had found pretty unimpressive.  I'd been worried that there wouldn't be a vibrant conversation at all, and yet one day we got caught up talking about techniques of Venetian oil painting, and another about Christian liturgical practices. The people who attend are there because they're really interested in talking about art, even if they have little background in it.  That level of attention plus the mature age of most of the participants, which adds a greater element of life experiences to the mix, provides a nice change from the classroom experience.  The people are all really friendly and interesting to talk to, as well.  Actually, yesterday I received a really nice compliment from one of the women; she told me she wished I had a clone, since she'd been hoping to set me up with her son but had realized I was married!

The Spotlights have also given me a good link to Philadelphia this past year.  Last semester Amy awesomely let me use her apartment in Center City, but this semester I'm shacking up in Chez Phyllis. I don't ever miss Philadelphia when I'm in New Haven (I've noticed that I always think I'm going to be really mournful about these kinds of changes--leaving Shelton, leaving Philly--and then I adjust really quickly), but being here has been really wonderful.  It's just all so comfortable and familiar--I did spend four years here, after all. I love Phyllis' house, its space, its profusion of exotic stuff, all of it with interesting tales attached, like the frieze-like fragment of a Hindu painting framed in her office, which she rescued from the trash at her almost-fiance Ravi's family home in India.  New things have appeared in my absence, including an upright piano in the dining room (I don't think she plays, so I need to ask her about this tonight), and a new kitty, Echo, who is a black Abyssinian.

It's only a little bit strange to be here as guest, rather than resident.  It's great not to have to wonder where the spoons or extra towels are, but I've been really thrown off by being in the spare bedroom on the second floor, it all just sounds different somehow, to the extent that I can't distinguish someone coming up the stairs vs someone coming down from the 3rd floor.  That someone would be Laura, of course, my youthful replacement, who is very nice, but definitely quiet, and not always certain of how to interact with Phyllis, I think.  We all went out to dinner together last night to Bacio, a perennial favorite, and as we were leaving Phyllis, true to form, wound up getting into a 15-minute conversation with the chef as Laura and I stood by the door.  I told her how on my first visit to that restaurant with Phyllis, she (politely, but opinionated-ly) schooled the chef on how they might improve their meatballs by following her mother's approach of soaking the bread in milk, while I just stood there semi-awkwardly. Hopefully Laura realizes how awesome Phyllis is, though.  She had left yet another present for me on the spare room bed when I arrived, and I had to laugh, because while most of Phyllis' gifts to me have been great (several of the nicest shirts I own, and which I typically wear on Spotlights, came from her), she also often tries to give me her clothes, which are a little too mature in style for me just yet.  This gift was a chocolate turtleneck sweater from Lord and Taylor, and it was lovely--but she'd also added a little silk scarf of the same kind she often wears, which made me laugh. Not yet, Phyllis!

Holiday Cheer

I started writing "It's been more than two months since my last post" before I went and checked my last entry, which turned out to start with the exact same line!  Yes, it's been quite a dry semester for blog posts, for the same reasons mentioned before--anxiety over my proposal.  However, "Titian and the Culture of Mid-century Rome: A Venetian Among the Ruins" is currently in the hands of Dr. Cooper, who says she likes what she's read so far, though she hasn't actually returned it yet.

The holidays are in full swing in our house!  Behold our lovely tree, which I ferried home from the tree lot atop the noble Corolla:

Sean's childhood stocking is MIA, so yesterday I made him one.  You know what love is?  Love is standing in line at Walmart during holiday shopping season to purchase a $2.97 set of variously colored glitters and nothing else.

Last night I tried my hand at making anginettes for the first time, with good results!  Hubbard declared them better than her own (granted, she hasn't made them in years and also is of unreliable memory), and Sean generously said they were almost as good as his but excellent for a first effort.  *eye roll*  Speaking of first effort, I just pulled my test-batch of homemade dog treats out of the oven.  It seems I left them in a shade too long, they've begun to darken on the underside, but luckily dog treats are supposed to be crunchy.  Now I'll let them cool and then slip some to Lulu on the sly to see if she likes them.  Hopefully it's a good recipe, because it's super easy and I'm planning to give these to everyone we know who has a dog: Linda, Michelle, Daniel, Danny G, Dana's daughter Morgan.

...Seriously I am becoming such a housewife.  I actually googled "how to make your own all-purpose cleaner" a little while ago. I regret nothing.

Lacuna

Wow, nearly two months since my last post.  That's quite a long time, though I'm not sure if it's the longest gap in the decade I've kept this blog.  Hm, that's a project for a rainy day...

For much of the past two months there hasn't been a great deal to tell.  I came back from Venice without a dissertation proposal to hand, which was really disappointing, and my early enthusiasm about doing research in Yale's art library waned quickly.  I hate working there; it's cold, ugly, and the chairs are uncomfortable and too low relative to the tables. My affiliate ID won't get me in the door, so I have to have a guard call in for a librarian to come walk me in like a toddler--which I have to repeat if I want to leave for lunch or to get a tea refill.  There's not really much of an alternative to working there, though, since you can take out only ONE book at a time, for ONE day, no renewals. Lovely.

Unhappiness with my surroundings bled into my general discouragement over not being able to develop any kind of promising topic. Titian has been so thoroughly treated by passels of art historians that I kept coming back to the dreary thought of "what is there to say that hasn't been said a thousand times already, and probably in at least three languages?"  That led into equally discouraging thoughts of "why am I even doing this?  Do I actually want to spend my life with this?" which led to further harrowing thoughts of "but what else would I want to do?" And it went from there, until I gave up even bothering to go the library, until I developed a Pavlovian-style negative response to the mere mention of the words "Titian" or "dissertation." (Sean had quite a bit of fun springing those words on me until I had to ask him to stop).  There was a period of a few weeks in late August where my spirits were at the lowest they've probably ever been in my life.  My first brush with depression. Whoo.

Then a very good thing happened!  At the end of August, I was contacted by Marice Rose from Fairfield, who needed a last-minute sub for an intro art history course. That was exactly the kind of invigoration I needed. I hadn't been in front of a class for a year, and I really did miss it.  I like teaching, I really do--it's the research, which is the Holy Grail to people like Dr. Cooper, that I care less about.  So within a whirlwind span of time I found myself with a Faculty Stagcard to add to my collection of IDs.  My class is small, just 25 students, and we're in the brand-new museum classroom, not the old rooms of Canisius where Eliasoph provided me with my first introduction to art history nine years ago.  In general, my students are of a higher caliber than those I've taught at Temple, but really not by as much as I might have expected (there is a disturbingly widespread lack of understanding of the function of an apostrophe, for example).  Our museum trip is this weekend, actually, and since Fairfield doesn't let you require the trip the way Temple does, I'll be taking just half the class (side benefit: only having to give one tour).

Teaching didn't help my progress proposal-wise, of course, so much as it gave me a good excuse to do other things.  So too with practicing French and German, and teaching myself Latin at a pace that could be bested by a glacier.  I also started jogging--at last, something I could trump a glacier in, even if not by much.   Then there's the housewifery; Sean has a very full schedule with school, and I do not, so it makes sense for that to be my responsibility, but it definitely takes more time and energy than I was expecting. I really don't mind it, and indeed, it frequently offered a perfect excuse.  "Oh, I could work on my proposal, but you know, no one's ever gone around and wiped down all the cabinets and door frames in here. Yeah, better take care of that."

This is not to say that there wasn't plenty of guilt and shame involved in this avoidance.  I've invested no small part of my self-identity in the role of "graduate student, future PhD and professor," and the thought that maybe I couldn't make it, that maybe I'm not cut out for academia after all and it's just taken up until this last great hurdle to reveal it, was really frightening.  But for the first time, I'm facing something that I can't just buck up and make myself DO, like I did with the once-terrifying specter of exams.  You can't just make a list and start hammering away at it, when the only item on your list is "figure out awesome dissertation topic that will win you grants." And it doesn't help, of course, that so many of my friends have proved amazing in this regard--Jasmine and Erin with their Kress grants, my friend Laura who's on a fellowship at the Smithsonian this year, Amy off in Rome. I felt like I was falling behind, failing expectations, and that was really miserable.

It didn't help that Dr. Cooper and I have been virtually incommunicado.  There was a period of like a month in which she didn't really respond to my emails and shrugged off my request for a Skype date with a question about when I'd be in Princeton next.  (Sometimes I think she really doesn't get that there's 200 miles between CT and Philadelphia; she even tried to get me to sit in on her class every Wednesday!)  I decided that this lack of radio contact clearly meant she hated me now for not immediately having a great topic (yes, so dramatic).  I wasn't able to meet with her until this past week, when I was in Philly to shadow the education director at the PMA on one of the talks I'll be doing next week.  And you know what?  She wasn't upset at all.  We had an amazing, nearly three-hour conversation about all manner of things, not just art history, that reminded me why I enjoy her company as both a person and as a professor.  We also talked about the germ of an idea that might have more promise than what I was thinking about before; at the very least it definitely piqued my interest much more than anything has recently.  I left campus somehow relaxed and energized, which was a wonderful contradiction. Things are looking up a tiny bit, at any rate, and that's certainly something to be thankful for.

Reading

Between the Cape trip and just generally avoiding what I should be doing since I got back, I've done a lot of reading.  I finished up Anna Karenina shortly after I got home, and afterward decided to go all the way with Tolstoy and read War and Peace. (Never fear, to counter this level of erudition I also re-read the vulgar and hilarious Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove).  Anna Karenina was a re-read, too; I couldn't remember when, but thanks to the helpful search function on this blog, it turns out I've had a number of past associations with it that I've mostly forgotten.

To start with, in July of 2002 I mentioned it in an entry about re-organizing my books; it and Dostoyevsky fell into the category of  books that "I started and gave up on because the foreign names got annoying."  Clearly I didn't have much of an idea of the book's plot, since I made this brief entry in June of 2003: "Did anyone else know that Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a train at end end? I didn't, but today alone I have seen no less than three references to that, in the newspaper, in The Hours, which I am currently reading, and in Maxim of all places. I have two copies of that book and I've never made it past page one hundred. Someday." (I was reading The Hours?  I must either have not finished it or forgotten it.)  I did have two copies of the book until recently.  One I acquired, like so many of my books, at some tag sale, and the other from the bookshelf of odds and ends that was in the little landing on the basement steps in my grandfather's house.  At some point I forced myself to shed one copy (other doubles included Voltaire's Candide, who had to go; Pride and Prejudice, both of which got to stay; and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, of which I bought a softcover copy in the Shelton library booksale as a reserve, to lend out to friends, and of which I also now own an Italian-language version), and kept the one from Norwood because the cover art was prettier.  When I got home from Venice (where I'd been reading on my computer) and unearthed the paper version from the basement bookshelf here, where it had been relegated as not deserving of sufficient interest to go in the hallway bookcase upstairs that I commandeered for my books, I discovered that the copy had belonged to my aunt Janice.  I think I meant to mention it to her at the Cape and forgot; I wonder if she'd remember it all all?  She's not the literary type. 

It turns out that I only managed to read the book all the way through in my freshman year--February 2004 to be exact.  Although I was on the whole impressed with the book, I got hung up on my distaste for the title character: "it's an awful thing to say, but by the end of the book i really hated anna. i knew beforehand what her fate was to be and by the last fifty pages i was just thinking "oh my god, stop being a tearful whiny bitch and throw yourself under the train already!"     You know what else is awful?  Seven and a half years later and my opinion didn't change at all--I was still ready for her to commit suicide way before she actually does.  I also found myself bored, once again, by Tolstoy's philosophizing about the nature of workers to the land, the function of religion, etc. etc., but I think what I did recognize on this second reading is that despite the title, Anna and her tormented relationships with Karenin and Vronsky only make up 1/3 of the book's narrative, and arguably not even the most central part; that distinction goes, I think, to Kitty and Levin, while the other third is filled in by Anna's brother, the philandering Oblonsky, and his silly wife Dolly.  (I'm not sure why Tolstoy give Anna's name as the title, when it seems obvious that the thrust of his effort, and his approbation, lies behind Kitty and Levin).  Oblonsky and Dolly appear as a sort of mirror to Anna/Karenin/Vronsky--brother and sister are both adulterers, he repeatedly and shallowly, she once and out of passion, but where undeservedly good things come to Oblonsky at the end, there's only suffering for Anna. 

War and Peace had nothing so concrete a narrative structure. Lumpy is an adjective I would apply to it.  There's a vast array of interconnected characters, and the point-of-view jumps around between them.  I was impressed by his ability, particularly in the beginning, to portray how  Russian society worked in the drawing-room and--more surprisingly--how women behave when there aren't any men around, as when two lovely women help their dumpy but rich friend pretty herself up after the arrival of a suitor: "Both women exerted themselves with perfect sincerity to make her look well. She was so plain that the idea of rivalry with her could never have entered their heads. Consequently it was with perfect sincerity, in the naïve and unhesitating conviction women have that dress can make a face handsome, that they set to work to attire her."  When I read that, I understood and recognized that sense of girl-on-girl competition instinctively, I could imagine it happening today as long as you substituted "crush" for the idea of a suitor.

Unfortunately not all of the novel is so interesting.  Huge, dull portions of the book depict life at the front during the Napoleonic wars, and toward the end of the book I just started skipping those entirely. There was one perceptive description of group psychology, the adoration that the officers feel for the figure of the Emperor, particularly young Rostov, who has only glimpsed him: "And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of what happiness it would be to die- not in saving the Emperor's life (he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms."  Sean just told me the other day that when the US first went to war in Afghanistan, for a brief moment he did think of war in glorious terms, and even hoped that this would prove to be "our" World War II.  It was amazing to me because that never occurred to me even though I supported the invasion, and he pointed out that, duh, it's probably because I'm a girl and less conditioned to think in those terms. 

Overall, the problem I had with War and Peace is the same one I had with Anna Karenina, but even more pronounced.  For me the best kind of novel is one in which you feel the author has created real people--even if it's not set in your own time and place, and you need a lot of contextualizing to understand the constraints under which the characters operate (for example, the rules of propriety in Jane Austen's England), you should still be able to understand them, recognize them, as people, instead of two-dimensional mouths into which unconnected and unfelt words are placed by the author. Sometimes this can be the fault of the 'telling, not showing' fallacy. Anna, for example, is constantly referred to, by both men and women, as beautiful, entrancing, amazing, (insert more superlatives), and yet I never really understand why others are so drawn to her. She only becomes real to me, in her motivations, her actions, her speech, at the end, when she's terribly jealous of Vronsky's imagined lover--she acts out these passive-aggressive scenes that you could see in a contemporary novel or film. And is it a Russian thing, how everyone in his books is either ecstatically happy or terribly depressed? People are always bursting into tears, or running off in a fury, or being thrown into despair on account of a look intercepted across a busy drawing room.

I have a similar issue with Virginia Woolf, whose To the Lighthouse I attempted to re-read today. Her stream-of-consciousness writing aside, I couldn't handle the merry-go-round of super-intense emotions that her characters enter and exit so rapidly--one minute, Mrs. Ramsay is looking at her husband and thinking ecstatically (and for no reason) that she's not even fit to tie his sandal (my high-school self put indignant exclamation points next to this statement), and then a few pages later is thinking, again for basically no reason, that she absolutely can't stand him at all. Adoration and irritation, good humor and bad, the characters flip flop with shocking speed. It drove me nuts. That re-read did not end well.

Cape Cod

Last week, for the first time, the women of the DiMarzo family assembled at my aunt’s house in Cape Cod for a few days of family bonding, an adventure that was a lot of fun despite my sister being, well, my sister.  To start things off, she had taken offense to my suggestion, a few days prior to the trip, that we bring some books on tape to listen to--and I mean serious offense, snarling at me about how fucking rude that was even to suggest when I picked her up at her apartment.  I was just trying to engineer a situation in which we stayed in a car together for four hours without fighting, but hey, apparently, I’m really rude.  *eye roll*  

To be fair, we did make it up to the Cape in good spirits (it was the ride home that was the killer).  When we got there on Sunday afternoon, my uncle Dana and cousin Tyler had just enough time to say hi before they headed back to Westwood to leave the womenfolks alone.  This was my first time seeing my Aunt Janice since she moved to Phoenix last year.  Janice has always been a yo-yoer, but in recent years had managed to stay in good shape by an absolutely stringent diet that included no wheat or sugar and measured portions.  She’d told me over the phone that she hadn’t been able to maintain it with the stress of the move, but I didn’t guess that she’d gained thirty or so pounds, which was quite a surprise. She’s always loved dressing stylishly, too, and has been an Anthropologie groupie for the last few years, so to see her in really basic Old Navy clothes was a surprise too.

My sister and Janice have long had a slightly tempestuous relationship.  They don’t really openly snark at each other, but my sister says that Janice is constantly making needling, judging, or mildly mocking comments--most of which I haven’t heard or don’t think anything of--which either leads to Jen exploding in a fit of nastiness or a lot of complaining and brooding about it.  Jen is a natural grudge-carrier, and things that seem relatively innocuous to me, and which wouldn’t bother Jen if Donna said them instead of her sister, turn her into the Hulk of bitchiness. I knew it was bound to happen at some point, since this would be the longest we’d all spent in each other’s company, especially without the guys like Dana and Sean to take the heat off by making jokes.  The surprising thing, I guess, is that there was only one blow-up; Jen started talking about her OCD, Janice started giving her know-it-all advice, then Jen fired back with a nasty joke about Janice having learned that in her psychiatry degree, which in turn infuriated Janice due to Jen’s lack of respect (and also, as Jen told me later, it might have been a raw nerve since Janice apparently never finished her undergrad, with only four credits left).  We were saved from a full meltdown by a judicious separation of the parties, followed by me smoothing Janice’s feathers and Donna talking Jen down in the kitchen, followed by a quiet reconciliation.  Whew.

Donna is the one to whom I feel most analogous to in my family; our personalities are relatively similar, and we often seem to play the same role of eye-rolling peacekeepers.  I appreciate the way she never wants anyone to stand on ceremony.  Every year when she emails us about family get-togethers, she always reminds us there is absolutely no guilt-tripping involved in whether we can make it, and at the Cape we were there five minutes before she informed us that everything in the house was get-it-yourself, and showed us where the snacks and soda were. She just has a good way of setting people at their ease.  Her relationship with her mother-in-law was also similar to mine with Linda; she credits her with basically all the social graces-stuff that her own mother, who had a 9th-grade education as well as anxiety-OCD problems, couldn’t teach her. I often say the same about Linda--not that I’ve learned enough to entertain successfully on my own or anything, but I’d know I could call her for advice on that kind of thing, where my mom would have been no help at all.

The first couple of hours after our arrival was, as I call, The Jen Show, when my sister has the floor and makes everyone laugh with her non-stop stories and crass jokes. Then we went to the beach briefly, where she pursued horseshoe crabs and looked for sea-shells in the sole company of toddlers and small children while we watched her with a mix of amusement (family) and embarassment (me).  I realize that I tend to be super-sarcastic when Jen is around, and while it’s partially my sense of humor, it’s also partially to set myself apart from her, to indicate, even to family, that I am not like her please don’t judge me by her behavior.  A familiar feeling for most of my life. At dinner that night (my aunt makes a mean steak, and she made hushwei, which she makes way better than I ever have), however, I noticed that since The Jen Show had run out of material, she had become taciturn, barely participating in the conversation.  Jen is either the star of the show, or watching it sullenly. She recovered in time to play Scrabble, which we did in teams--her and Janice, me and Lisa, and Donna and her daughter Sara.  My sister is a class-A trash talker in any kind of game or sport (something that would be repeated in Apples to Apples, Uno, and mini-golf), and she crowed endlessly about winning what proved to be a close game.  I was proud that I managed to convince Donna that “toady” was really spelled “toadie,” which is what I’d put down.  Her outraged cry of “I trusted you!!” after the next round was pretty hysterical.

The next day we played our epic game of mini-golf at Pirates Cove.  Donna, Sara and I all managed holes-in-one, and I actually won (my golf-playing Uncle Chuck registered his shock at me beating his wife and daughter over the phone later)!  But you would not know, from the way Jen acted, that she came out 6 out of 6.  She plays mini-golf like it’s hockey, shouts insults, and does disturbing, hip-jiggling victory dances. As with all things Jen it’s a mix of hilarious and ridiculous, and as with all things Jen, you get tired of it waaay before it’s over.  Afterward we browsed some Cape-y shops on the main drag, where Jen was insistent on finding appropriate gifts for Vinny and his parents, which I thought was ridiculous--we were there for three days, plus they have their own house on the Cape, plus...I don’t do vacation gifts.  Sean’s dad is in perfect accord: “you’re telling me, I go on vacation, and I gotta bring YOU back something? The hell with this!” On our way back to the house one of the two-car convoy had to stop at a pool-float store so that my cousin Lisa, who has a ridiculous obsession with penguins, could inquire about a penguin pool float.  Thankfully, I was riding with Sara in her (way too tiny) Mini-Cooper, so we were spared, but my thoughts were expressed perfectly by Donna, who murmured to me in the souvenir shop “can you believe we have to stop so a 24-year-old woman can buy a freaking inflatable penguin?” Lisa is weirdly immature for her age, really.  She spent more time than I can say on her iphone texting either her brother or father for updates, photos, and videos of every little thing about their dog, Franklin, a little Pekingese-like thing, and squealing at high pitch every time she was informed that Franklin had bitten a rug, or was in his crate doing “humpies” to his blanket.  The morning she left there were so many shrieks and cries coming up from the living room I had to ask her if she was trying to establish sonic communication with an animal in Phoenix.  It was ridiculous.

I don’t really know either of my cousins all that well, really, and I’d always rather chat with my aunts than with them.  Sara and I can usually fall back on some topic related to Italy (she studied abroad in Florence, too), at least.  She’s moved in with her boyfriend, Steve, who is the son of a developer and involved in some kind of real estate work himself. They live in Boston in some expensive place right on the water that has a concierge, and she pays $150 a month to garage the mini-cooper. It’s always interesting when you get a new perspective on the life of someone that you’ve always known, even if not intimately, and realize how different it is from your own.  I mean, I always knew my aunt and uncle were well-off, but I never really got it until I saw this immaculate and roomy three-bedroom place--the size of the house Sean and I hope to one day own--and realized it was just their weekend getaway. Other revelations included the identity of Mitt Romney as one of my uncle’s big clients, and my uncle as a financial supporter. Oh, Dana. Sigh.           

Another interesting subject that came up was family history, about which I know relatively little.  It turns out that Sara joined Ancestry.com, and thus I learned that my great-grandmother’s full name was Josephine Marinaro, who married Andrea DiMarzo and gave her name to two generations of Joes.  On my grandmother’s side, her father Toufik/Thomas Matook married Elizabeth/Skiye Samra.  It was funny to watch my aunts trying to name off all the 12 siblings, and stalling at 11 until “wait! There were two Georges! One died and they had another!”  My great-grandparents must have been trying for solid American names (hence Janet, Mary, Louise) but they went a little off-course a couple of times (Olga, Leon).  I asked about Olga, who my father had once mentioned as having died of MS--my aunts too had heard the story, but I can’t imagine it was even diagnosed back then.  Janice sent us copies of research that ‘Cousin John Matook’ (as he signed himself) had sent around, including a photograph of the Samra family, showing my great-grandmother, Skiye (and what a cool name is that?), as a young woman with her siblings and my great-great grandparents, all dressed in fancy Victorian garb (a shock to Donna, who confessed she always imagined them all running around Damascus in potato sacks).  Apparently they emigrated via Bosnia to Boston in 1907. One of Skiye’s sisters looked at lot like my cousin Sara, I thought.  For the Matook side, the story remains that Toufik’s family dressed him up as a girl, long hair and all, to cross the border without being conscripted into the Turkish army.  No one quite seemed to know how all these Syrians wound up in Pawtucket, RI, though, which is where the Matooks are all buried (and where my dad’s gazillion first cousins mostly live).   

I also just got a lot of interesting tidbits about the personalities of family members from stories my aunts told. Donna told us about her wedding day, which was incredibly hot and in an un-air-conditioned church, so she spent the morning of her wedding renting two industrial fans with my grandfather and lugging them to the church, only to have the priest force them to remove them because he was afraid he wouldn’t be heard.  Janice made mention of how strict my grandparents were with them (though I bet my father got treated a bit differently), and confirmed that my dad and grandma fought a lot but pointed out that he was the most broken-up when she died.  Donna mentioned my grandma’s indignation over being advised to seek therapy by her cardiologist because of stress, and how her mother-in-law advised her, sanguinely, to consider it merely another doctor, this one for the head. Unsurprising that my dad retained the sense of stigma surrounding mental health.  Unsurprising, too, that it’s in the family--my cousin Lisa has trichillotomania, like my grandma, and Jen has OCD issues and is a ‘picker’, resulting in unpleasant scars on her skin. I discovered, too, that my cousin Tyler wasn’t born a diabetic as I always thought, but became one as a small child after an illness. Donna told me he is very close-lipped about the disease, and only his good friends are aware.  It’s hard to imagine concealing something like that in a college setting, especially as a guy who might be expected to drink beer.  I didn’t ask, but I wondered, what is he drinking?  Bringing his own O’Doul’s everywhere?  He also just got diagnosed with the genetic kind of high cholesterol, poor guy.       

It was a lot of fun and a lot of interesting info packed into just a few days, in other words.  Jen suggested we do it every year, and I countered it could be like the Olympics, every four!  Honestly, if Jen hadn’t been there, I could have stayed a week, but I couldn’t put up with her, and also I wouldn’t want to have to have my family put up with her that long either.  That’s a sad thing to say, isn’t it?  And they didn’t even have to live through that car ride home.  It started badly, since Jen had thrown out my directions, and her stupid GPS wanted to take us on the Pike, which I didn’t want.  Then the side of Jen’s personality that I hate the most, her completely irrational bitch-child side emerged.  First she wouldn’t let me turn on the radio.  Then she insisted on picking the station.  Then she forced me to listen to Mexican pop music for twenty minutes and cursed me out when I asked her repeatedly to change it.  It may have been her car, but I was driving, and generally driver gets privileges, but nope, not if you’re with my sister.  Once she’s past the time when she’s making a serious effort to be accomodating, she’s in total “my way is the only way” mode. Never a middle ground with her.

Still, things didn’t come to a head still we started having Serious Talk about our family, and I started pressing her on why she always starts shit with Janice.  She wound up screaming at me about how I always take Janice’s side, because I was a) asking for examples of the comments that she claims Janice always makes (to be fair, I now recognize that Janice does do that sometimes) and b) pointing out that Jen isn’t innocent, and has in the past been randomly insulting to her.  Jen is really incapable of arguing like a normal person, which in turn makes me angry, but again, things were not yet a head.  That happened when we started talking about my dad and why Jen considers him to have been an awful father.  She says he always made her feel bad about herself, always.   I remember my father constantly criticizing her, I do; her clothes, her hygiene, the way she walked, her grades, all of it. I was never the target of it, and I acknowledge that it’s possible that merely having been the object of his anger problems and his tantrums, which we all were, may have been easier for me to shake off in favor of good memories than having also been the victim of his criticism and negativity.  I can acknowledge that, even if I’m not going to stop believing that my dad was a good dad, who had his problems and made mistakes, but truly loved us both.  Still, when I pointed out that again Jen had constantly provoked him into fights, she got angry and claimed that it was his responsibility to be the adult, she was a child, she was a product of her circumstances, blah blah blah it wasn’t her fault that sometimes she chose to be a monstrous bitch for no reason.  That annoyed me.  I’m not sure at exactly what poin this happened, but at some point she did her patented announcement of “we’re not talking about this anymore. move on,” which she ALWAYS does, and which drives me up a fucking wall, because it’s like she’s the master of the universe, and everything has to happen only in the way that makes her comfortable, fuck everyone else.  And if you attempt to keep on the subject, in a rational voice, she’ll start screaming at you “WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT IT! WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT IT! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”  I kid you not, 30 years old, lawyer, covering her ears and shrieking at me.  I have rolled my eyes and changed topic when she has done this many, many times, but this time I finally found the one thing I could say to get through that skull of hers: “you know why we’ll never be friends the way you want us to be? THIS IS FUCKING WHY. Because you act like a fucking spoiled child.”  Shockingly, that worked, and we wound up talking about it, she apologized, and we managed a friendly rest of the ride back to CT.  

Unsurprisingly, I’m good with seeing my sister for a while.  Unfortunately, I forgot my sunglasses at her apartment.  Dammit!!   

Aimless Torcello Day

It’s a sign of how ready I am to return home that this morning I actually stayed in bed bed surfing the internet rather than immediately getting up.  Never before has that tiny, lumpy mess enticed me to stay in it after I’ve woken up properly!  Then I puttered around, cleaned my room, and organized all my postcards, brochures, notes, and other paper what-have-yous. I restrained myself from packing just yet, only because I don’t have that much space and it’ll just make everything (more) chaotic.  Seriously, Sean would have  some kind of attack if he saw how I’ve been living these past two months.  Crap everywhere…

Once I finally left home, at around 1pm, I decided to go to Torcello, one of the outlying islands in the lagoon that was the original center of Venice in the early medieval period.  Less than a few dozen people actually live on it now, though there are two small, expensive hotels.  Getting there, especially from the Lido, takes quite a bit of time: maybe 20 minutes to Fondamente Nuova, then switching to another boat to take you 45 minutes out to the cute fisherman’s island of Burano, where you switch to another boat to take you the ten-minute ride to Torcello proper.  This route is made even longer if you stupidly forget that you need to switch at Burano, and have to ride another 20 minutes to the next stop, get off, and take the next boat (which happily came in three minutes) another 20 minutes back to Burano. *facepalm*  For all this effort, I can’t say I was over-impressed by the payoff. The only sights on the island, which is tiny, is the cathedral with its belltower and the adjacent central-plan church of Santa Fosca.  Usually you can climb the belltower, which would have been something, even if Venice is pretty far distant, but it’s under construction.  The cathedral is known for its 11^th century mosaic decoration, a Madonna and Christ with apostles in the apse and a whole bunch of scenes, including a last judgment with blue devils and some creative depictions of hell, on the counter-façade. But honestly, if you’re looking for mosaics in Venice, you’ve got the far superior example of Saint Mark’s, and in general once you’ve been to Ravenna, other mosaics have a hard time cutting the mustard. I did enjoy a tasty strawberry push-up popsicle on the hot walk back to the boat stop, though, so not a total loss.

Going home, I asked one of the sailors if I should go back around to Fondamente Nuova or continue going around in a circle through Punta Sabbioni; he told me the latter would be a little faster, so off I went to complete a full circumnavigation of the lagoon!  It was a beautiful day for It, really, maybe 82 degrees, and of course when the boat is moving at a good clip, like it can out in the lagoon (vs the crawl up the Grand Canal), the wind for anyone standing on deck is pretty strong.  All around the vaporetto raced the speedboats and small yachts of Italians enjoying a fine Saturday afternoon; nearly every boat had a pot-bellied, speedo-clad man at the wheel, while two or three bikini-clad women splayed themselves out fore and aft.  One group had the stroke of inspiration to put a full-size air mattress on the prow of the boat on which two women (always in bikinis; no one, and I mean no one, no matter age or shape, wears one-pieces here) were reclining and chatting animatedly.  I can’t really imagine a life where that’s your weekend, and I mean that in an “I’m jealous” kind of way.  Sigh. 

On the larger ferry from Punta Sabbioni back to the Lido, a trip that took maybe 30, 40 minutes, some American girls, high school age, sat down next to me on the boat.  It quickly transpired that one of them realized she’d left her bag on another boat, and went tearing off to the officers.  (For all the agitation they were in I assumed this involved the girl’s purse, but no, it was her bag of Murano glass *eyeroll*  The sailors radioed the other boat, which sent the bag to central lost and found; all would be well).  The girl who lost her bag was quite lovely, red-headed, willowy, and in the most incredible dark blue full-length summer dress with a back that was almost entirely ivory lace, all the way down her back.  The other two, who stayed sitting near me, were plainer, and they discussed whether the sailors would have been so eager to help an unattractive girl who’d lost her bag.  They ultimately decided that anyone freaked out enough would elicit a positive response, but they both acknowledged the power of attractiveness—a sadly astute observation for girls their age.  In fact, I had just observed a small instance of this phenomenon when I went to ask one of the sailors for advice on my route.  He was in the cabin of the boat with his back to me when I asked if I could ask him a question; he sort of grumpily turned around to see what this person wanted, and then very obviously broke into a charming smile when he saw I was young and attractive.  I’m sure he would have given the same response to an unattractive person, of course, but in this case it was the attitude that changed markedly.

I felt kind of disposed to like these girls, because for once they actually reminded me of our group of friends in high school.  They seemed normal, for lack of a better word; not blatantly rich, like so many tourist kids you see in Europe, for one thing, and also relatively intelligent.  Then another girl in their group, even a little bit plainer than they were, came over and was updating them about the Affair of the Bag.  They pointed out the empty seat next to me and urged her to sit down, which was nice, but they then proceeded to ignore her completely, which I didn’t like.  It was clear that these two girls were close friends, and the third was maybe just an acquaintance or a classmate, so the ignoring took the form of them giggling to each other about their own in-jokes, and then sharing headphones to rock out to dance music and loudly compare notes on the music.  I mean, I know this is how teenage girls are, I have no doubt that I engaged in that behavior once myself, and I’m sure there’s a sociological model that explains the cementing of a bond between two individuals by subtly but firmly excluding a third, but from an adult perspective one recognizes that the polite thing to do, the kinder thing to do, would have been to include the third girl in the conversation, even if only peripherally, instead of leaving her staring at her hands the rest of the way. It made me sad for her, and I wanted to talk to her, but it felt weird to have been sitting with them for 30 minutes without making it clear I spoke English (I might not fool Europeans but I feel like American teenagers would have no idea) only to suddenly initiate conversation. I know the process of becoming mature adults will probably cure those girls of what they were doing (they seemed perfectly decent otherwise), but as for the girl they were leaving out, well, I hope she’s not someone that happens to often. God, I’m happy to be an adult now, even if it means occasionally having to make conversation with people I don’t like or don’t have any interest in.  There really is something in politeness, I think.  The English aren’t always wrong.  

The Dolomites and Verona

On Thursday morning I set off for the Dolomites, the mountain range between Venice and the Swiss Alps (and which, as I learned, are sometimes called the Venetian Alps).  It was a fairly long train ride on the oldest and slowest regional train, which was unairconditioned, or so I thought--ten minutes before we rolled into Calalzo, the last stop on the Belluno train line, an old man started closing the windows in the train car.  I thought he was just another Italian being crazy about the infamous colpo d'aria until he pointed to the ceiling and told me the AC had come on.  Oh, this country.

The Dolomites are, in a worth, breathtaking.  Although they're enormous mountains, they're still not quite high enough to have snow on them in the summertime, but the tops are pure gray rock (the mineral dolomite that gives them their name), and that provides a similar kind of color contrast to the trees blanketing the slopes.  The sight of pine trees and evergreen gave me the first sensation of the region being quite different from the parts of Italy I've been familiar with. Then as we neared Calalzo, from the train you could glimpse the green hillsides racing downward to a peaceful blue lake, which was really spectacular.  Walking up the hill from the train station, I was pretty awestruck by the scenery, by the sheer size of the mountains, which surround Calalzo on every side.  The feeling was only heightened when I got into our hotel room and opened the door to the balcony, which gave a lovely vista of the hills.

The hotel room was lovely, but when I first arrived, tired and sweaty from the train ride and then from hauling my suitcase uphill, I was pissed to discover the lack of air conditioning.  However, I quickly discovered that the reason the otherwise-nice hotel didn't have it is because you really just don't need it in the mountains, even in July.  The temperature was easily ten degrees lower than Venice, and there was zero humidity.  In fact, the following morning the weather was completely opposed to what I've been used to recently--an ominous storm front swept in, bringing with it not only a chilled rain, but even sleet!  And yet a couple of hours later it was brilliantly sunny and 75 degrees.  I can hardly imagine what it's like there in the winter, though.

Ostensibly I came to Calalzo because of its proximity to Pieve di Cadore, hometown of Titian and location of the Centro di Studi, housed in a building belonging to a related Tiziano, called L'Oratore.  My visit there, however, was less than successful.  I had scribbled down a handful of call numbers before going, only to discover that the library is split in two parts, with one part accessible only by appointment what was basically the regional president's office.  Thankfully, the very nice woman at the Centro, Letizia, called over and made sure that I could go without an appointment.  But this wasn't really a library, per se, just a collection of books donated by a deceased Titian scholar.  There was no reading room (I read at a table in the secretary's office, while she made phone calls behind me saying, rather loudly, "I'm spekaing quietly because there is a scholar here working!"), there was no catalog, so basically the few book I'd looked up that morning were the only ones I was going to get.  Also, Lionello Puppi was not at the Centro.  There too there was no reading room, and I sat at the desk next to Letizia to read the article she procured for me.  In other words, it really didn't seem like they were at all prepared to have people come and actually consult the books, which is a little ridiculous.

Pieve, like all the other little towns in Cadore, is adorable and really freaking small.  Ten minutes about suffices to get the lay of the land.  Friday afternoon Carla and I went to the Casa di Tiziano, notable for its small collection of drawings by the master; I also stopped in at Santa Maria Nascente, where Titian contributed an altarpiece for a family chapel in which his self portrait (and maybe his children's) appears (which, side note to myself, interesting that this of all altarpieces lacks any landscape references).  For some ungodly reason they'd put the damned thing behind what looked like Plexiglass, giving it a horrible glare. One of the real attractions of being in the north, beyond the natural scenery, is how different the man-made scenery is than the rest of Italy.  The houses are mostly made with wood from the plentiful forests, not plaster-covered brick, against the green hills it really felt like we were in Switzerland.  Even the church architecture was frequently different--we even saw what looked like an onion dome at one point.  (Also, the people are so much friendlier than in the rest of Italy--they say hi to you on the street!)


I really couldn't get enough of the scenery.  Carla, with her typically Protestant practicality, laughed at the way I kept having to stop and just say "wow, this amazing!!"  Friday afternoon we hiked around the lake, disappointed to discover there was no beach whatsoever, although the vistas were incredible.  Then on Saturday we rented mountain bikes and rode about 15 miles, which was incredible.  There's a piste ciclabili running from Calalzo (796m above sea level) to Cortina d'Ampezzo (1221m); a smooth asphalt bike path that follows, at least for the first few towns, the path of old train tracks.  That means you're winding around the mountains and going through the train tunnels (which were freezing) or over bridges.  At one point, you're sailing downhill so fast the wind is literally roaring in your ears; at the base of the hill a bridge carries you over a little waterfall.  All in the shadow of the mountains.  It was fucking awesome.  (However, as the sea levels indicate, we were effectively going uphill the whole way; the place where we stopped, San Vito, is 1103m above sea level.  Had we planned this better, we should have taken the bus to San Vito, rented bikes, and rode down to Calalzo, but, oh well.)


This represented the first time I've been on a bike since easily 15 years of age (and that was a three-speed road bike with a very comfy seat). When we got on the bikes at the rental place, I had a few moments of "oh shit, what if I DON'T remember how to do this?? I'm going to dieeeeee!"  Helmets were not available (and I was kind of leery once we got on the trail and realized that everybody else was definitely wearing them), which was not helping my fears of imminent doom.  Also, I was not used to the whole switching gears business (see three-speed bike, above); there was a different gearshift on each handle, and the two controls to move them up and down worked on opposite ways on each one, so I kept accidentally throwing myself into high gear right at the base of a hill, completely squandering any and all momentum. My lack of confidence also prevented me from doing the standing-up pedaling that I remember was once second nature when bike riding; I tried it, wobbled precipitously, and thought "oh hell no, I will walk this bike if I have to."  And I did have to walk it a couple of times, as Carla can attest.  Still, I made pretty good progress; in the morning I was scared to even take a hand off one handlebar to scratch my nose, and in the afternoon I was riding with one hand so I could sit up a little straighter (my back was killing me by then).  Still, I was nowhere near the level of comfort I remember having--I used to ride my back downhill on the street next to ours without hands.  Oh, those were the days.

I really kicked myself for forgetting two things in Venice, my sports bra and my light backpack, which would have allowed me to bring my camera on the ride.  Carla thus had to step in to record our journey on her cell phone, which she was carrying along with money and my credit card in the tiny pocket on her running shorts.  The scenery was so damned incredible.  Here too I kept stopping to marvel and demand she take pictures, which required her to fish her phone out of her shorts (she was a very good sport about this).  Finally she was hungry, so we stopped in what was basically a hamlet and asked a man if there was somewhere we could eat.  First he said "no," in a surprised tone (we were surprised too-really? no food?), then called to someone in his house, asking, in dialect, "Eh, Natalia fa mangi' ogg'?"  It turned out that yes, Natalie was cooking today, so we proceeded to her restaurant and had a quick, very basic lunch--bread, sliced prosciutto, a cheese plate, and some spinach.

Then we set out again--and discovered something horrible.  Giving your butt a break from the uncomfortable bike seat long enough to eat is apparently just enough time for your butt to decide "fuck no" when you try to get back on.  It hurt like a bitch!  We were hoping we'd sort of warm back up to it as we went, but not really--anytime we had to go over bumpy ground there was a lot of "owww oh shit owww" (mostly me, Carla toughed it out).  That, more than anything, began to spell the end of my original determination to make it all the way to Cortina (and who'd have thought that I'd be the one exhorting Carla that we could totally make it the whole way?).  Ultimately we found ourselves in San Vito, where there was a rental return point, and gave up the ghost, just 9km from Cortina.  I'm still pretty damned proud of myself for making it that far. Shockingly enough, my leg muscles barely protested that night, but oh dear god, my ass. Sitting down was a ginger business, to say the least.

Yesterday morning we headed to the train station to catch the 10am train to Venice, and thence onward to Verona, only to discover that there was a train strike. The 10am train was cancelled, the 12:30 might run, or it might not, no one could say.  Suddenly we realized the downsides of being in a remote part of Italy with limited transportation options.  We could take a bus to Cortina and try to catch a bus to Venice from there, but we had no idea about the schedule or anything (worse still, it was a Sunday).  A couple of non-Italian guys with whom we'd been discussing the situation offered us a ride to Mestre, where they were headed, and said they'd come back to the station shortly to pick us up.  I was feeling kind of panicky and almost ready to take them up on it, but we decided to first run our options by Joanne Maddox, Carla's old boss at the Fairfield program.  She told us, sagely, not to take the ride, even though it would probably be OK. Instead we hopped on a bus for the hour-long ride to Cortina, where we secured tickets on the 'Cortina Express' to Mestre.  Of course it didn't leave for three hours, and there was no left-luggage on Sunday, so we had to park it at a restaurant. I went down to the town briefly to look around, and bought some deliciously tart wild blueberries from a vendor.  In the end, we discovered that the express we'd gone all the way to Cortina to take would have picked us up two towns over from Calalzo anyway *facepalm*.  Oh well.  


Once we made it to Mestre, however, we faced another problem--were the trains to Verona actually running?  We'd been assured by Italians that the main routes, like Venice-Verona, had connections, and that it was just the out of the way places with only regional service, like Calalzo, that were totally SOL.  We spent a very hot, very stressful 45 minutes waiting for an incredibly crowded and un-air conditioned train, but  at least one came!  In the end we got to our hotel in Verona at 7--nine hours of travel!  Here we had a stroke of luck, though, since our hotel ran a free shuttle into and out of town for those attending the opera.  The shuttle left at 7:30, so we had just enough time to freshen up.  In Verona, we grabbed a quick bite to eat, bought a libretto and inflatable cushions, on the sage advice of someone who'd done this before, and went into the Arena to find seats.  


It was basically like being at a baseball game, sitting in the cheap seats, complete with wandering drink and souvenir vendors (with prices comparable to Yankee Stadium, too).  The opera itself was good (there was some pretty spectacular staging, including ballet scenes and four live horses onstage during a procession, plus a cast of at least a hundred) but despite the powerful acoustics of Roman engineering, it was difficult to make out some of the singers, particular the alto (who, according to Carla, wasn't projecting her voice in the right way).   Hearing an opera in an enclosed theater vs a 20k-person amphitheater is just going to be a different experience. Also, it was LONG.  Four hours long, in fact.  I would have been happy to follow the example of the German family next to us and hit the road after the second act, but of course Carla wanted to stay through the end (at 1am).  I was able to convince her to leave as soon as the last note sounded, however, so we could make it back to the hotel shuttle before it filled, so we woundn't have to wait another 45 minutes for the next one.


 I learned that in opera, you clap for the performers every five minutes.  Every aria, every scene, every act got applause.  The conductor was applauded when he walked in at the opening of each act.  The girl who rang the gong letting you know the pauses were about to be over got applauded, every time she came out!!  It was too much for me, this diva culture.  Yes, what they're doing takes intense training, but hey, that's why you applaud at the end.  As fitting my longstanding preference for male voices, I recognized that the lead soprano had a lovely voice, but I much preferred the guy singing Ramades, the male lead.  By the end, I was so tired I just wanted them all to shut up and stop singing the same two lines over and over, more and more slowly.  Die already, Aida.