Understanding

So here’s this, then. Is the desire to write a curse? Also, tangential notes from my Lit Travels class:

Do we ever really enjoy the external world? Or is what we love the self, the results it produces? How much of an affect may the external world have on the memory-limited self, especially given our penchant for living the present within the frame, through the lenses of the past, experience, memory, names, places? How much of a product of circumstance of memory / past influenced by mindset as ordained by natural, scientific occurrences, synapsing nerves? Even given the memory, past guided present, we still experience, and in an infinitely intimate way.

There is so little choice involved for me in writing. Only now aware of it do I try to escape it but somehow that only pulls it closer, creates a more complicated dependent relationship. What is the point? Is it the need to be remembered, to leave something behind? To mark our temporal places? Make maps of our minds, what is it? How does it function for others? I suppose when I read truly beautiful pieces, they are awakening; the world becomes grand, possible, whole. I am reminded that I do not know, how little any of us truly know. That creates a dependence, too, on that writer, a thankfulness. Poetry is awakening in its way; it is an attempt to communicate the self, the world in such a way that it is understandable, the greatness or tragedy, any characteristic of it is wholly understandable. Because that is what we are scrambling for in the first place, isn’t it? To be understood? To know enough to understand?

Written on the Body

Sometimes I feel as though there is a hierarchy of ideals, beginning with spirituality, and followed by English or art, maybe mathematics… but always spirituality first. I think I am losing some of the drive to realize the highest truth. I have been slipping back for a long time: first back into the sweet solstice of writing, now to the joy of temporal things, temporal relationships. To the point it even feels silly to be spending time writing this, spending time doing any of the things I’ve done in the past six months. The only thing which still seems right is the yoga. I have stopped reading the Bhagavad Gita at breakfast, and I have taken this as a sign of my decline.
I am making better and faster friends than before. Going out, not being ridiculous, having some sort of faithfulness to self or ego, not compromising more than necessary: this has been beneficial.
I wonder if some things stay with you, written in you, which no matter how long they are absent, are bound to return.

I had pancakes for dinner at an American diner tucked away behind the Duomo somewhere – probably couldn’t get back by myself if I tried. But I almost cired looking at the menu, all the English, the American things: pancakes, French toast, classic egg breakfasts. A fluent English speaking waiter who didn’t give us bad looks for ordering in English. How I miss using English effectively, for more than just communicating with friends. I had no idea I felt that way, but what a relief I felt there, surrounded by my home, my language, my things. How strangely safe.

Cinque Terre was of course wonderful. We found so many people from Syracuse there, or people from California studying in Milan – as the guys behind me at the bar said, there were more American girls there than there were in America. But Monterosso was beautiful, and there is no one I would have rather spent that time with than Kristen, Tina and Amanda.

Immediately after arriving we found and rented a rather large apartment for $30 euro each, which we still can’t believe was so easy. Kristen Tina and I hiked the 2-3 mile trail between Monterosso and Vernazza in flip flops (enduring many rather condescending comments from passing English or English-speaking travelers) in good time, taking some delirious pictures along the way. In Vernazza we ate some much needed gelato before continuing on to Corniglia, a small middle town only accessible by long flights of stairs or by a bus which runs back and forth from the train station every half hour.
After returning back to our apartment and freshening up we headed out to the pier to drink a bottle of Cinque Terre white wine while watching the last of the sun retreat behind the cliffs to the west. Dinner was delicious; we all ordered things accented with pesto (a sauce originally created in the region) and we were certainly not disappointed.
We called a friend we knew to be staying at the island and met up with him and his friends at a bar. There we found (along with hundreds of other people we knew) Maggie Nick and Craig, to whom we spoke to for most of the remainder of the night. Around 2, deserted by everyone else and waiting for Nick and Craig to return from their room, Kristen and I sat on a door stoop as the bar closed down, pretending we spoke Chinese to deter the drunken advances of the emerging Italians: it worked brilliantly.
Today was spent mostly hung over, wandering all over Monterosso, sitting down in different places for forty five minute intervals. Not altogether regrettable, but I’m beginning to realize that, as much as I enjoy it, it is simply impossible to drink only wine all night and not suffer any consequences the next day. Che brutta!
Of course there is always more to say but I’m deliriously exhausted; there will be more later.

Italiano

Paola would have made a very good mother. She has the right face for it – does that make sense? Mothers need to have faces appropriate to child-rearing!

Italian is beginning to sound like a make-believe language, silly. I think it’s somehow the way I am translating the language, or maybe that I hear it all the time… I’m just beginning to think grammatical phrases like penso che and mi amo, things like that, sound childishly constructed, sound very elementary. I wonder which is traditionally more difficult to learn, English or Italian and other romance languages. Learning languages is certainly a fascinating practice; I wish I were more adept.

Every time I leave Florence, I am always amazed that “going home” for the time being means returning to Florence. I am vacationing, “getting away” from Florence. Who would want to do such a thing! But even now, I have that sort of vague sense of escape and wonder at the outside world; my homestay with Paola is truly becoming comfortable, a home, something normal to desire a breach from. At the same time, however, it has become a place I now desire to return when I am overwhelmed by people, my environment, the discomfort after a night wrangling with a poor mattress or pillow. It is certainly a home.

A Lot of Fucking Poetry

Okay, so upon further examination: I have written a lot of fucking poetry! I had no idea I had so massive a collection – sure some is really seriously not so good, but I had no idea I had ever written that much. I guess it does kinda pile up on you; I’ve saved even the bad ones in case there is something salvageable. A poetry packrat.

Still, what can you say? I was very young, or at least in hindsight I seem that way. Even last year, even six months. I remember sitting in that class and somehow, somewhere, feeling like I was onto something, feeling as though my work mattered collectively; as though that idea wasn’t only my own. How did I manifest that self-importance? I still like that I used to go to that class, that spring afternoon class, on left over Vicodin from a bad bout of strep throat. Now that I think about it, I think it was that which gave me that first sensation of peace, of the freedom from the anxiety. Strange to realize that now.

What was my intent when beginning that class? I remember walking into that room, seeing that tiny blonde woman sitting at the head of the table with a smoothie, and thinking I was really in for it, a whole semester with this total dimwit I was sure wrote some ridiculous poetry about silly Los Angeles type things. I don’t remember how I finally accepted her; she was funny, smart. I suppose that’s what surprised me more than anything.

I remember getting into the Advanced class thinking it was normal, that was what you did, the same with language, math, everything. Then hearing in class only three had been admitted out of the fifteen who applied, because the Professor had said, “only three were good enough.” Who knows the reason for that now. More likely than not the choice had little to do with us and our work and more with the English department, bureaucracy, and the Professor’s ever-present desire to cause a stir. I searched for the ever elusive, mysterious Professor everywhere, the bold hero whose values overrode the demands of collegiate bureaucracy (of which I had no intent or reason to oppose until I was drawn into the mystery). Then the anxiety which followed that summer, unable to write and damning myself for my lack of practice; by the time I returned to school I was a wreck, I was miserable. And walking to that class, dear God, catching two hopeful adds on the way, how that did little to abate my horror. And the room, that grandiose, English, dark wood room, the preposterous round table with the broad light fixture; too large, too serious, too perfect, and when he entered the room and gave us that first piercing glare over the bridge of his glasses clutching the Cantos and a small notebook, how perfectly, frightfully, everything I could have ever hoped for or imagined.

So much of this thing has been spent dwelling in the past, fishing it out and making sense of it and putting it back in again. I suppose it has to happen sometime, why not on idle Florentine afternoons and nights?

My English professor (who makes me wish with all my might that I had realized earlier how full English is) today said fall was here, that it was too bad it had come so early. How is it we know these things? I knew too that without a doubt we had begun the descent, that these most recent were no longer the simple summer thunderstorms. Something about them changed. And we knew.

I am beginning to understand what Matt has always said about headphones: they are a far more intimate way of experiencing sound. It swims in your head rather than around the room and filtering in. Very nice.

Colleeeege!!!!!!

When left to my own devices, what do I do? Where do I go? Poetry. I seem to always return to poetry, to writing. That is what I should do, then. I imagine that is all I can do.

Tonight was disappointing, perhaps the most disappointing night I’ve had yet in Florence (the fact, though, that even the most disappointing night in Florence does not even come close in magnitude to the disappointing nights I’ve had in Los Angeles and San Francisco is heartening). The college drinking scene doesn’t do it for me, not that I don’t like to drink... but under such different circumstances. I had no idea. I thought this semester would be the growing past for everyone. So few people here know so little about me, and have no real curiosity to inquire further.

Really, I’m lucky to have found the friends I have here. I’m lucky to have found such openness. Perhaps this is only the beginning and there are characteristics I’m lacking that will soon be soused out and I will be slowly expelled. In a way, that is fine. I am tired of making believe.

Seeing people tonight I’m glad I chose the college I did, glad I chose the friends I did. We are far more ourselves than these girls. Has every generation had them? I suppose they must.

Last Semester

Sometimes I feel very ready for age, almost excited. Looking into the faces of the newly familiar, watching the ways they have made sense and made peace with their bodies, there is such intense, unique and sad, temporally sad beauty. We are only here so long, we might as well make ourselves comfortable for the time we are here. Some people wear their bodies so gracefully, inhabit them so fully, every part: their hands and fingers, the sadness around their eyes, the way the skin begins to lose its fullness around the cheekbones. The steady line of the shoulders, how the body grows thicker. The gentle confrontation of the physical body with time, how carefully carved, how painstaking. How each moment, every memory is tied to the very space we inhabit.
I used to believe that that was the gift, that time was a gift, that the memory and the body were those places which we could hold that gift divorced of is linear state. That concept fell by the wayside, but forcefully so. I feel as if dwelling in memory, living in that gift is in part a sin, not in the western sense but in the sense of contributing to your own downfall or stunting your own progression. Does living in the past, even from time to time, limit ones ability to choose to live fully in the present?
Will I ever learn to write without that crutch, without fishing the past? Is it even possible to let lie alone, to leave? That action leaves a scar in itself.
It is interesting the thought that there is nothing so remarkable about oneself, nothing which is unpredictable given the past, given conditions. X behaves as such when encountering conditions Y. Each and every one of us is a very beautiful proof of some divine formula, every object.
Last night my mother claimed I was one of the best poets of my age. She also claimed I told her a professor present at my reading last semester told me he had heard about me and my writing before, and had wanted to see me, and that he enjoyed my work. This I now very vaguely remember, but when she told me I believed I had fabricated it. Why do I not write these things down, these specific details, to return to later? I’d like to remember that. How kind.
I have so many questions about my place in things at the end of that semester. Where did I stand? It is so hard to see oneself. I had many drawn in close around me, but outside of that I had little idea of much of anything. That is a semester I wish could be lived again, in all its ugliness and spacious beauty. So much lost, so much so wholly gained. At the end it was so present. Those I think are the memories which call us back the fastest, again and again. Those moments. How new, how whole things seemed, how ready.

Cavo, Elba

Elba.

Cavo is a town where one from the outside would love to live: old, small, and sunken into the crevice between the mountain and the shoreline. The residents keep food set out for the large pack of feral cats that inhabit the island, and ask for donations for them at all the restaurants. The hillside streets give way to small vineyards and delirious ocean views. Old men sit in the piazza next to the shore arguing and nudging each other when beautiful women pass by. It is timeless, almost frighteningly so, and impenetrably foreign.

We took a few trains to reach Campiglia (moving quickly through the A_ station, whose sole inhabitants seemed to be the bombed out, roofless factories and houses, stoic and crumbling reminders of harder times), then a bus to reach Piombino Marittimo. Campiglia was full of people with hard unfriendly looks, and I hope never to have to return. Once we reached the harbor, we took ferry to Elba; then once in Elba, realizing Cavo was on the other side of the (small, we thought, but actually quite massive, larger than most of the Hawaiian islands) island, we hopped on a bus to get there. Seventy minutes and a few poor judgment calls later, we reached our destination intact.

We spent the night trying to avoid our new French friend, a 70 year old year old retired professor / secret agent named Josef who stalked us during our dinner and asked us out for drinks (after we’d given him the benefit of the doubt by dubbing him a lonely old man instead of a pervy one, a mistake we realized later when he flashed his hairy chest at us and laughed that really undeniably pervy laugh), and sitting out a bench at the end of the pier with a bottle of Elba 2004 white wine and some plastic cups. Che bello.

Our second day was cloudy, so we left early and found upon returning to Piombino that a direct train to Florence would be leaving within minutes. So great timing, no buses and no transfers, but an epic, epic ride.

What is it about train rides which evokes such nostalgia? The cinematic landscape, always panning away? How easy it is to get lost in the past. When the train makes stops I am pushed back into the present, back into myself, and my only instinct is to look away. The train pushing through a Tuscan thunderstorm, rain collecting between the cars and running down the windows in thick fluid ribbons, what better environment exists in which to lose oneself? I am looking forward very much to traveling alone through the Spanish, French and Swiss country sides.

Big Trip to Europe

Florence is freezing today, by far the coldest it’s been since I arrived. The skies are gloomy, the winds blustering, and my mood has reacted accordingly. On days like this, what else can you do but listen to the wind and wintery classical songs (those songs which you thought you’d grown far from, permanently, but as winter returns so does your favor) while writing or finishing assignments? I never realized before these past few years how strongly my personality is affected by weather; I write much more clearly, (and much more in general) in the winter. What else is there to do but sit inside and think about the past?

I’m finding it increasingly impossible to visit Ashley in Salamanca; prices have now leapt from 20 Euro to 50 for the flight, a leap which, considering the former price was barely affordable, is severely debilitating to my travel efforts. Happily though, the rest of my Big Trip to Europe still appears plausible and entertaining.

I believe Ashley and I will have to take a train to Amsterdam, seeing as those flight costs are also rather prohibitive. My train would be an overnight, leaving at 6 and arriving at 10 in the morning – not so bad. For Ashley, I believe, it is 24, but I know she really wants to go.
I ordered some books for traveling today, sent them to home so Mom can bring them over when she comes. Only $19 for 3, what a relief: where are the discount bookstores in Italy! I ordered two books of travel literature, and a Hagen’s book on Buddhism. I had hoped to order one pertaining to energy medicine and healing, but it was quite long and heavy, and I didn’t want Mom to have to pack four giant books… so hopefully this will be enough, and I will be able to find something at the English bookstore near S. Croce – or trade in one / some of my books at the Paperback Exchange and order a new one. We’ll see.

Giubbe Rosse

My life here is exactly as I’d wanted: time spent alone and thinking and writing interspersed with good friends, good food, good coffee and good wine. Now that summer is giving way to fall which will quickly give way to a solid winter, I feel as if this pattern will continue on pleasurably. I do hope to visit the Giubbe Rosse if only to visit its history, of which even the people it regards I know next to nothing; only that Gertrude Stein lends me some credibility, and that Pound has been lent great power posthumously by PM.. which makes me love him by extension though I have read none of his work.

To study again with PM... I feel guilty as though perhaps I was a part of the reason he quit desiring to teach workshops; then I wouldn’t really have a decision to make so much as a rejection to face! It is very possible he would turn me down for many reasons other and in addition to that, in which case… That’s that. Still not sure that working with PM is something I really want to do again; as good as it has continually been for me, it was heartbreaking while it was happening!

Waking Up

Maybe it’s something to do with the thought that right now, at this moment, no matter which moment, Los Angeles is alive. How can I so frequently miss such a desert place? How has it weaseled its way into me? And what have I left there behind? It is so alive, so swarming with wakefulness. In every moment. And everything is something, everything which occurs in L.A., anything which one does, is something: driving home alone we are forced to encounter the past again and again; thinking of the future in such a predicament is only infuriating, impotent, helpless. What allowances to we make, what sacrifices, to make such a place truly livable?
It’s interesting the way two clashing cultures find reconciliation within a person, two different environs. Within a single person. Maybe that is how they live inside you, continually live, not because of the place, but because of the war and reconciliation your mind, your past, your ideas have had with it. Only once the major conflict has been resolved.

Adjusting to Italy has been surprisingly simple. Living in a home with less ease of distraction has made me increasingly mindful and appreciative of life. The culture here, its emphasis on tempered freedom, not by any laws or politics, but sheer respect, self respect and worldly respect. Not utopian, but it’s interesting to see a culture dealing so much better with the troubles which arise in communities of diverse thought, lifestyle and opinion.

I’m P/NCing the requisite Italian class. I think it has more to do with my GPA than anything else, since the class itself won’t be all that challenging; it’s more a safeguard to keep my usual mathematical systematical issues from nipping me in the bud again.

Also growing more excited about being on my own for an entire week. Looking at the hostels in Paris suddenly made the whole jaunt seem manageable, as though other people in the world actually do things like this.

Was thinking today about Ram Dass, and how he says those in the process of waking up look around and sometimes see others who have that sort of familiar look, fresh and open, and you know they are cutting through differently, upright. It’s strange to be and act for the most part as though I do not know or am not interested or curious about waking. Every day I must come home and sort of heal from the process, revert, which helps me to know I will not make much progress here… but I shouldn’t be completely stunted, either – getting Paola as a host mother, getting a single, those were definite gifts whose depth and importance I am only now beginning to understand.

Traveling and Old Habits

Things are diassociating themselves without constant reinforcement.

I am really enjoying my time here, my friends, everything. I feel as though everything I have asked for has been fulfilled, every thing I have been looking for, everywhere I have been interested in traveling: south of France, Switzerland, Cinque Terre, finding a pair of cheap, dressier shoes after telling a friend I was looking for some. Finding a sturdy backpack in the sports store.

Traveling alone will be heartbreaking and useful. Maybe not while it is occurring, but later. I’m glad I’m doing so much additional traveling with friends… I’ve just wanted to spend time alone, to do things on my own, and that has definitely fallen into place.

I’ve felt very reassured that after this period of reorientation my same instincts and desires are coming back: the desire to be a vegetarian, to return to my yoga practice, to continue studying various spiritual scriptures. I’m glad those weren’t just a phase as I had feared. I hope the Iyengar Center emails me back soon with details about their classes.

What more to say? Thinking about it, Italy was the best possible choice I could ever have made regarding my plans to study abroad. I had many choices. How did Italy come about? I believe it was sometime following being forced to see I’m Not Scared at the Embarcadero Theater after Coffee & Cigarettes was sold out. The movie made me realize how important my choice to study abroad was; in a way, it woke me up what I really wanted, and then, quite simply, I followed. It reminded me of how long I’d been enamored with the Italian people, culture and language. It kept me from defaulting into studying in Brazil (because it had a small language requirement and I would just have to continue with some elementary level of Spanish). Not that studying in Brazil wouldn’t have been rewarding, just that it wasn’t my specific desire. I’m very proud that I took the classes I needed to to be able to study here; moving into a brand new language, taking the harder route, just as I plan to do with becoming a Religious Studies minor. Hopefully, hopefully, I can carry it through.

Home

Today I missed San Francisco for I think the very first time since I’ve been here. Specifically, I missed North Beach; we were talking about the Beats in my Literary Travels class (during which I realized that the philosophies behind the Beat movement match very similarly to my own, a very heartening reminder of, well, the heart of literature and what it is to be a writer) and I thought of City Lights, then of all the good times I’ve had in North Beach. It must be some sort of sign, you know, little Italy, my favorite restaurant, that poetry room and its historical significance… It would be nice to think so.

I practiced a little bit today for the first time in over a week. There is something about it, you can’t leave yoga completely, or how can you? The way it gives you spaces, pause in general. And after you stop there is only you, your heart, your breath, all together. I’ve gone back to the “Corpo & Mente” section of the Firenze Spettacolo I picked up for a cool 1.60 euros (money for the most part wasted as most of the thing is in Italian and I get too tired trying to translate) and looked up places offering yoga. The Iyengar Institute in Florence is a little ways away, but the number 17 bus stops right by it. Hopefully I’ll get it together and call and ask them what their prices are / if I can borrow a mat or something (though that is obviously highly unlikely; also unlikely is the possibility that I might be ask all of those questions in a comprehensible manner).
I’ve been thinking a lot about my travel plans for break. Right now I think I plan to go to Salamanca to visit Ashley (a visit which involves a 7am airplane ride, departing from an airport in a city which lies an hour and a half away by train; following my arrival in Barcelona, I will have to ride a 10 hour train to Salamanca – the things I do for that girl!), and then after that first weekend… Who knows! I would like to visit Paris, and lately I’ve wanted to go to Amsterdam more than I perhaps have before. But it is rather far north… I’m very excited about visiting Switzerland in November. I don’t know what I’ll do this weekend…
I thought a bit today about home, and Pasadena came to mind. It’s strange how many places I’m beginning to develop a sort of strange nostalgia for. It seems so unbelievable to me that Matt and I may visit Colorado Blvd. again, see a movie at the same theatre at which we saw the Brown Bunny. Or go to Sushi Roku, or drag Matt into Urban Outfitters. That infinite warmth, the only place in LA it is easy to park, and far enough away to make it feel like a trek.
I guess more than anything I can’t believe I’m ever going to be back in and around LA. I understand I’ll be back at Claremont, back at school, but I haven’t quite gotten a grasp on the whole being back in LA concept, going to movies and out to dinner.

It’s strange when the world gets larger, and suddenly you are allowed to love several places at once.

Today, in my writing class, reading my two page essay out loud, I realized my voice was not myself, that even that thing which I use to make vibrations of a sort is not me. It is temporal just like the rest, sensual just like the rest, and on deeper examination, I realized with great sadness that it is not mine. Reading something about Italy and my initial feelings of disorientation and grasping, I found myself beginning to tear up. In a way, the voice is very much one’s own; it will never be replicated, just like the exact physical makeup of ones body. One considers the end of the body, but never the end of the voice. Speaking aloud for those seven minutes, my voice began creaking and lowering, began feeling uncomfortable. And that was not me.

It’s strange to, in a way, begin to reenter a world I had so happily escaped. The reentering is heavy. It involves the whole body. And it makes you wonder just how complete your exit ever really was, or how illusory, what role it might have played. Not real. You become what you are taught to desire, regardless of whether the teacher is you or your peers. It is true that your company manifests your environment; this should seem simple but I suppose I hadn’t really grasped just how much influence infiltrated.

Shopping

Went out and spent some money today for really no reason. Bought two shirts from Zara, one for 19 euro, the other for 8. Which translates to, you know, 23.50 and almost 10. Which isn’t so bad. Then I bought presents for people, soap from that ancient profumeria, for 7.50 each (9.30). Then eye cream, which I conveniently forgot to convert before purchasing (making it $43). Whatever. It’ll last me five years. I also bought slippers and an umbrella, both of which were definitely necessary purchases.

I took a few pictures too – first time I’ve taken pictures in Florence. It was beautiful out, very clear after the rain. You could see everything, the hills were crystalline.

For once, I don’t have much to say. My knowledge of the city is growing – sometimes the smaller side streets still trip me up, but I’m proud of my burgeoning awareness and sense of direction. Tonight I’m going to dinner at one of the restaurants I’d been hoping to get to during my time here, which sort of makes me realize that I will probably get to all the restaurants I want to get to while I’m here, which sort of makes me realize just how long I really am going to be here.

Assisi

It seems strange to me that so many beautiful things should be seen from roadways or railways, as though aesthetics played a part in mapping out a journey.

Assisi is beautiful, the church is beautiful, so much more so when you are able to appreciate the whole of the thing in its grandiosity and mystery than when one is having the entire entity, the place, picked apart and argued over: whose fresco is this? Is it an original? Some say it is because this guy was in town.

Who cares? Is that what they wanted us arguing about, talking about? How can you appreciate a thing when you are so overly concerned with knowing everything, all the parts which make it up? You do not allow it to be itself, you do not allow that object to be whole. It is fear, a sickness, the fear of not knowing everything. Why do people cling to facts? I have no way of knowing but I think perhaps it lies in our general true knowledge about anything else; so instead of sitting with that discomfort and looking at it and finding our origins, one enters churches and takes control of that unknown and that uneasiness by learning and spouting the facts, holding them around them like a shield.

Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre was of course wonderful. We found so many people from Syracuse there, or people from California studying in Milan – as the guys behind me at the bar said, there were more American girls there than there were in America. But Monterosso was beautiful, and there is no one I would have rather spent that time with than Kristen, Tina and Amanda.

Immediately after arriving we found and rented a rather large apartment for $30 euro each, which we still can’t believe was so easy. Kristen Tina and I hiked the 2-3 mile trail between Monterosso and Vernazza in flip flops (enduring many rather condescending comments from passing English or English-speaking travelers) in good time, taking some delirious pictures along the way. In Vernazza we ate some much needed gelato before continuing on to Corniglia, a small middle town only accessible by long flights of stairs or by a bus which runs back and forth from the train station every half hour.

After returning back to our apartment and freshening up we headed out to the pier to drink a bottle of Cinque Terre white wine while watching the last of the sun retreat behind the cliffs to the west. Dinner was delicious; we all ordered things accented with pesto (a sauce originally created in the region) and we were certainly not disappointed.

We called a friend we knew to be staying at the island and met up with him and his friends at a bar. There we found (along with hundreds of other people we knew) Maggie Nick and Craig, to whom we spoke to for most of the remainder of the night. Around 2, deserted by everyone else and waiting for Nick and Craig to return from their room, Kristen and I sat on a door stoop as the bar closed down, pretending we spoke Chinese to deter the drunken advances of the emerging Italians: it worked brilliantly.

Today was spent mostly hung over, wandering all over Monterosso, sitting down in different places for forty five minute intervals. Not altogether regrettable, but I’m beginning to realize that, as much as I enjoy it, it is simply impossible to drink only wine all night and not suffer any consequences the next day. Che brutta!

Of course there is always more to say but I’m deliriously exhausted; there will be more later.

Practice

Apparently I’ve got a lot to say tonight.

I keep thinking about, not doing yoga exactly, but doing a long session of stretching, a sort of catch up session, just to get some life back into my muscles and tendons and ligaments. Then I think of how badly I am treating my body: alcohol almost every night; coffee every morning, multiple times a day; and consuming food of less than optimal worth. I don’t want these things inhabiting the new spaces I might create in my body, and I certainly don’t want my body closing up over them if I cold turkey stop my practice.

Lately, whenever I have attempted a session, I have been distracted by menial things, so embarrassingly miniscule, which have caused me not only to end practice early, but to pause in the middle and come back a few minutes later. Why? Have I forgotten its grave importance? Yoga is simply a moving meditation, to bring you to the space where moving the body, even so little, every step is the whole of the miracle. I have forgotten even that. It isn’t easy to occupy the moment when that memory is possible.

Next semester to include poetry and writing, I may be enrolled in six to seven courses a semester. This will certainly take some time, leaving less for the outside practice (academic, physical, spiritual) that these courses will demand.

I wonder if the teaching in prisons course qualifies for Media Studies; I can’t imagine that that’s possible.

Church Bells

It’s strange how hunger sometimes seems familiar, like a friend.

I eat less here than I do at home, enough, but I don’t walk away from meals feeling full. I wonder if that is the quantity of food I’m eating (it seems less but there isn’t really any way to quantify). Or it may be the sheer unavailability of food in between meals, or that I so look forward to meals that I don’t want to spoil them.

I understand and at the same time somewhat ignore everything I’ve learned in the pat six months. About the body and about health, holistically. It’s so easy to fall back into old patterns; they are seductive.

Easier to hear the church bells when it rains. Easier in the rain to hear the church bells.
How strange we that we don’t keep the people we love, that we must let them go or end ourselves. True, there is never an end, only beginning, and the true Self does not clench, only witnesses, and it is all the same as everything else. But poor small self, the child, who cannot understand or reconcile the idea of absence, permanence, for one of the first times.

It is strange, will be strange then, to be the only daughter. To be the sole remaining carrier. At least with parents we are able to continue them in that respect. With all those with whom we share blood alliances. Without that we can cling only to the thread of humanity, the object of inhabiting the body, or of having inhabited the body before. I suppose that may be a lot to have in common.

This afternoon, looking for an earring which still has not shown up, I found underneath my mattress a hair clip, a rough lead pencil, and a rosary, somewhat delicate, with red beads. Right on time the church bells started ringing as I realized today is the Virgin Mary’s birthday. Sometimes small things strike you, even if you are convinced you do not believe.

Empty nights are both a gift and a curse, the gift of them lying in the solitude. Not that particularly after such lonely days as this I require still the same, but that I am not lost in being alone. There was a method in my initial selection of solitude which I was too blinded by fear of it to see.

I chose solitude so that in the case of emptiness I might use it constructively instead of frowning about a roommate or the weather or my current condition. So there is some blessing in that.
I can’t stop thinking about the Profumeria behind S.M. Novella. My time there was the first really in which I was struck by the age of a place, by the miracle of its continuous existence, almost its ability to be in many moments at once. It is cavernous, pure and dark, marble and figures everywhere. The things made therein are still made according to the recipes created by the monks who developed it in the 13th century. Many a Christmas gift will be found therein.
The humidity here is high, but I enjoy it far more than I’d imagined. I think it’s marginally lower than Hawaii. It keeps air warm even in the darkest of days.

If I do follow up with my intended Religious Studies minor, I will have no room for any additional writing classes without enrolling in a 5th class. I will also be unable to Pass/No Credit any of the Religious Studies or Media Studies classes, so when things begin to pile up, I will be able only to address them fully, no escape. Not that I might attempt escape from the Religious Studies courses; more at risk I think are my Media Studies courses, a major I wish I could change altogether, but… The first semester of my junior year of a major mostly completed is certainly not the time to begin. Besides, I think a Religious Studies major would overwhelm me; there is just reason for everything, including my realizing my interest in Religious Studies this late in the game.

A Letter

Dear Syracuse University in Florence,

Next time you are selecting students to attend your Syracuse University in Florence program, try not to select so many vapid, utterly unbelievably stupid girls.


Thanksabunch!

Yours truly,Ashley

Classes

So I am here, happy, and finally the proud owner of some free time here in Florence. What a trip this has been.

Classes at the Villa Rossa have started, and they seem pretty simple. I don't know if this will translate constructively into more freedom on my part, or more boredom doing mindless tasks. We'll see.

I am living with a young woman three blocks away from school in an elegant apartment building, with my own room at the foot of the stairs -- che bello! First not having a roommate felt like a curse and now, while everyone else is complaining about theirs, Paola and I are happily eating our pastas and peaches-drenched-in-white-wine together then retreating into our respective spaces. It's a terrific situation.

I'll be on later I promise to post things from earlier, I just haven't gotten around to putting the journal on a keycard thing. But more will come soon.

Immersion Day

What a beautiful day in Italy. It was a bit cloudy this morning I guess, so my host mother decided today was a bad day for the beach, a decision I was excited about as I’d been apprehensive about it (who gets apprehensive about the beach? That is unnatural). Instead, we met for lunch at her friends house, where we ate some sort of potato pie, paninos, and red wine poured over peaches which tasted like sangria & jungle juice mixed together (red wine was not my first choice for a morning after, but what can you do – the peaches were great!). After, we drove up to Campeggio, the locals Fiesole. It. Was. Amazing. The clouds here are so defined, weather systems watchable. That shouldn’t seem so strange to me. Clouds roll in, and then rain commences. It’s that simple. The hills overlooked all of Florence, the Duomo, everything. To the left, I felt more of that uneasy feeling I had on the plane ride over of the panic of just being lost, of not knowing north from south, up from down, how large of a land mass one is standing on. Also frightening to me, which I find very surprising, is the idea of being unimportant, or of my location being completely inconsequential. Most of my life I have been “somewhere”, cities connectable to large urban centers, connected by familiar freeways, locations deemed important simply given their national affiliation (America). Looking out of the plane window over what were to me nameless small villages dotting the Tuscan countryside, I can’t explain it, a sort of stunting disorientation. Hello, ego.

Fifteen minutes down the road we stepped over a divider onto the hillside, tall green grass dotted with olive trees, put down our things and laid back.

Sometimes, like a dream, the world curls itself around you and paints a perfect afternoon. Sometimes you are a foreigner, lying on your back on a Tuscan hillside laughing at jokes you don’t understand with near strangers. Some things like these are translatable: a full belly, the sense of limitless time, thick clouds rolling in to cool the valley. On our walk back the rain came, gentle and cool, following us down the street and all the way home.

Tomorrow. I’m excited now for classes to start (and not just so I have a reason to get out of the house). I miss California and my friends there. Or who used to be there. Its hard to grasp that their absence isn’t something which can be resolved by my own return. Much easier to believe my presence will bring things back together again.
I have been listening a lot to the Broken Social Scene album and I do think it’s as good as the last. It makes me miss Los Angeles, the bustle, the people, the great big something. What is it? The pervasive self-importance that lends the insignificance required to live quietly, location doing all the busy work. You don’t need to do anything in Los Angeles to be interesting. But it isn’t that; there is a buoyancy there in the hope that is carried, the collective desire to unfold. You come to Los Angeles to “make it”, you don’t come because you believe that failure is possible. You stay through the traffic, through the smog, through the sprawl and you focus. You attain. But, of course, that isn’t it either. It’s just Los Angeles.