Marzipan's blog

 
In all my time that I’ve spent in Florence, I still don’t know where Beppe Severgnini is coming to these introductory conclusions: “Italians are fascinated by the bella figura… they are obsessed with beauty.” I’ve lived here in Florence for nearly 4 months, and I haven’t met any Italian that is “obsessed” with the beauty of the human figure. Reading Severgnini’s “La Bella Figura,” I see a lot of stereotypical descriptions of Italians that would normally come from somebody who hasn’t lived in Italy. The mentions of women getting pinched by Italians? I haven’t heard of one person getting ‘pinched,’ that’s just some romantic dream ushered in by the swarm of trash British literature about sexually-suppressed English women fantasizing about sensual escapades in Italy. Lots of adjectives in that sentence. Microsoft Word loves to give me green squigglies.
 
I enjoyed Severgnini’s analysis of the typical Italian lifestyle, especially when it clashes with Americanization. With the Italians adapting the American idea of the shopping mall, they confuse its individualized shopping experience with the loud, confusing, bustling social network of open-air markets and piazzas. Yet most of “La Bella Figura” seems to be deprecating towards Italians—yet, interestingly, I share a similar negative attitude towards most Florentines, who seem to be closed-minded, hostile, and passively aggressive. It’s like nobody has ever showed these people what it’s like to really work for a living—they just all seem to be angry that they’re living in a country that barely functions, and does so with almost no efficiency.
 
I wonder if Beppe Severgnini has any insight into the Italian political situation of today. Ashley and I have had several discussions with Italians about politics, and I have not heard one person in support of Berlusconi’s governance. Everything I’ve heard is negative. It makes me so upset that such a beautiful country is so backwards and neglected.
 
When Goethe spoke of Italy in “Italian Journey,” he did so with a wholesome reverence that touted its rustic authenticity. Goethe called Italy a “cradle of Man, a mother of civilization.” Interestingly, the people that Goethe encounters seem to be very much like the same ones Severgnini describes—peasant-like, loud, and volatile, although not so boisterous and aggressive as the latter describes (I attribute that to modern influences).
 
When one goes deeper into the Italian countryside, far removed from the political turmoil caused by this joke of a government, I would hope that one would find that wholesomeness and rusticity mentioned by Goethe, back when Italy was still largely referred to by its once-powerful city states. By far, Venice was the only city most removed from any negative political feel--it still seemed that it was its own state, the Republic of Venice, and it's this city that gives me the closest feeling of the rustic Italian reknown so frequently mentioned in literature.

I’ve historically had a strange relationship with videogames—like a druggie who hates his dealer, yet needs him to survive. I swallow videogames like crackers. Except I like to eat cheese with crackers. And I don’t like to eat videogames with cheese.
 
One would normally assume that by venturing abroad, you would shed all your normal habits and binding hobbies that plagued you back home, and you would become a free man in a new land. Unfortunately this is not the case with me, as it seems that my penchant for wasting my nightly hours with my fingers around a controller have not left my being, even here in Florence.
 
I recently introduced my girlfriend to a popular computer game called Civilization. At first, things were normal—she was hesitant to play because she had better things to do, like plan for the next day, do her homework, craft a budget so she wouldn’t run out of money abroad, etc etc. Yet I managed to convince her that this game was such a good use of her time that now, nearly every day for the past 2 weeks, we play this game for several hours everyday. It’s fun, we have great times, and it passes time like nothing else save for taking bubble baths with colored bubbles . That’s a lot of fun. And playing with legos. That’s fun too. As a matter of fact, I even brought a bag of legos with me to Florence so I could play with them if I ever wanted to. How’s that for acting like a grown up, eh? I’m going to be thirty-five and have little lego pieces strewn all over my office desk. My clients will be sitting across the table waiting for me to come in, looking at the little pieces just sitting there, like a baby came in and knocked them all over the room and stuck them in its mouth. Wow.
 
Everybody plays videogames. A friend of mine remarked once that he thought videogames went out with middle school. Ooph. That one hurt me right in the gut. I draw most of my inspiration and creative googley-wallapaloo from images, sounds, music, and themes that I’ve experienced while playing video games. They’ve been my books. Hope that doesn’t sound too much like bullshit.
 
The negative side to playing videogames abroad is completely a mental one—the shame I feel for sapping time away from being in a foreign land. But how much of that is worth feel shame over, and how much of it is just a cultural stigma? I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody in the videogame industry with pizzazz, with wit, intelligence, and charisma. Then again, I’ve never met anybody from the videogame industry. Goes to show you how much I know about the world after studying abroad—virtually nothing.

 
It must be said that Botton writes with seemingly unnecessarily verbose language. It’s incredibly easy to determine why most people find foreign places exotic, and Botton doesn’t really hit the point. I’ve spoken of this before—the “allure of the unknown.” What we do not know, what we do not understand, we are attracted to, because our minds fill in all the blank spaces with imaginative wonders that we become compelled to find out for ourselves what the reality of it all is. It’s very simple. Egypt? Exotic? Perhaps—but what does exotic mean to a human? I’m as intelligent as anyone, and I don’t know a concrete definition for ‘exotic.’ Let’s find something else. Mysterious? Indeed. That’s something I can put my finger on.
 
Egypt is mysterious because it is touted as being mysterious. We know very little of its ancient civilizations, and it is proclaimed as being one of the greatest civilizations of its age, incredibly advanced and superior in the region. The Pyramids are as enigmatic as anything on the planet, having a relatively unknown function and being mere remnants of their past, glorious selves. These are just a few of the reasons why anyone in our civilized society would perceive Egypt as being mysterious, and that reason, attractive, and for that reason, desirable, and for that reason, imaginative, and for that reason, exotic.
 
The exoticism of camels? What the hell is this? Camels are not exotic to their native human cohabitants. The only reason Flaubert speaks of them reverently is for his own perception. Flaubert is no authority to anyone, his opionion on camels is just as good as my half-brained lackey, Wajeeb. It’s just an opinion of perception, it has no objective weight.
 
Travel-talk is usually crammed with this self-indulgent descriptiveness that really does not benefit the reader. As a reader, I will never be able to experience what the writer has experienced, so he might as well not try to give me a surge of sensuality based on nothing but indifferent writing. From my experience reading travel writing, I am compelled when a writer is telling me about how his world-view has been changed upon learning or seeing something new, about how he is having trouble assimilating new aspects of the world with the old. That compels me the most because it relates to me as a human being—I may go through the same conflict of perception. Writing is good when it deserves to be read.
 

 
NYU got off to the right start by having such a beautiful campus here in Florence; it was truly a treat getting to see such a stunning villa every weekday.
 
The most rewarding aspect of this trip? Seeing more of the world, maybe? I’ve never been to any other country but Mexico (Tijuana, doesn’t really count), and it was such a strange assimilation, putting together everything I had imagined with the reality of it all. I always had an image of Italy in my mind, and finally putting it together with the real thing was definitely jarring. I don’t think literally seeing Italy was actually my most rewarding aspect, but it definitely was one of the most educational experiences of my life so far. I’ve seen and experienced more of the world than I mentally can comprehend, and that’s a very important thing.
 
Spending time with my girlfriend was probably the most important part of this trip to me. Italy was my time to experience something completely new, and share that experience with another. This trip has been the independence of a free man, coupled with the responsibility of one tasked to take care of another. It’s been quite a ride.
 
One thing I lacked this trip was my ability to really organize and plan my days in any efficient manner whatsoever—even days that were slated to be “free days” were sometimes squandered or poorly planned because of my incompetence for taking action. My habit for procrastination got worse as  I lived abroad because I believe that, since I’m leaving soon, I can leave a path of unhandled, unorganized, unfinished shit in my wake that will all be wiped away once I return to my cozy home in America. I wonder if that’s the way mot people feel? Are they as disorganized as me?
 
What was one really big thing I learned? Ah yes, a lesson I learned while watching The Matrix one Sunday morning in Rome (we decided to watch movies instead of go and see the Pope give Mass). I discovered the potential for the question “Why?” Probably the best question you can ask yourself, as it pierces the very heart of your existence as a human being. You commit actions, with or without thinking, and then you question your own behavior. “Why? Why did my being do this action?”  Not really related to Italy, but it did happen while abroad. Guess that counts for something. Right?

If I had actually grown this semester, as I proclaimed I would in my first blog post, then this situation would not have happened. These posts woud have been done earlier, my writing would be more informative, my words more wise. I accomplished nothing I set out to do. I didn't solidify what I wanted to do, I didn't lead a tour group, I didn't become more responsible. I became more dependent on money. I became incredibly lazy and procrastinating. I've become hopeless. I've been waiting for oblivion, for travelling abroad to end, I've been waiting to return to my home, my womb, my cave, my temple of brooding. Maybe not so dramatic, but you get the point.

If I had to keep a journal of my time abroad again, I would do it in a way that it was always worth reading. I would chronicle my changes, my constant questioning "Why?" of myself. I did not do that this time around. Maybe next time. Always maybe next time.

It's been beautiful staying here in Florence. From the first morning I woke here with my girlfriend, it's been the greatest vacation I have ever had in my life. We've lived lives in this 4 month period. We've fought in the streets, drank too much wine, ran down cobblestone streets at night, eaten keilbasa at international markets, toasted under the moonlight, toured exotic islands, swam in crystal blue oceans, visited ancient ruins, and been exposed to more types of people from different walks of life than I've ever encountered. It's been a mosaic of the modern world, all here for the same purpose--to vacation, to have fun, to enjoy what we've been given (or rather, what we've taken). To hell with change. I've had a fantastic time and I will never forget any of it. Change? I've changed more than I even know. And that's when you know that you've really got something going on. At least, I'd like to think so.

Ah, here I am again. Putting myself up on the world wide web. Biggest mistake I'll regret 15 years from now. Can't believe my girlfriend let's me look like this. Can't believe she's attracted to me. Wow, look ATTHOSE GLASSESWOW THEYRELIKE GOGGLES

This November, my girlfriend and I were basically left to leaf through old newspapers in hopes of finding a Thanksgiving dinner “American” enough to satisfy our home-sickness.
 
It was interesting to see how the very spirit of Thanksgiving was virtually absent in our dorm. Everyone was basically having their own private dinners, their own little escapades. Some people decked out the kitchen to make it look like a hotel, some people went big and dined at the Four Seasons, and some people were left alone. There wasn’t a very big communal or family bond between anyone, you could basically feel the tension seeping out of everybody’s unspoken rivalries.
 
My girlfriend was pretty bent on having a homey, traditional, Thanksgiving dinner with big families and loud relatives. Given the circumstances, this manifested itself in a heated desire for cranberry sauce. Had to have the cranberry sauce. She just had to have cranberry sauce. Ergo, we ended up going to this quaint, delightful restaurant that had printed on its newspaper advertisement: “Cranberry Sauce.” Go figure.
 
The restaurant was surprisingly a hotspot for other Americans seeking the traditional seasonal feast. Ashley and I got the last table available. Aside from having an above-average meal (great stuffing, no idea Italy would devise such a classic recipe), the house bread was spectacular. Never had such thick, damp bread in my life. Seriously good bread. Seriously. Gd brd.
 
The restaurant served enough food for us to be sick of ourselves and our appetites, but the girlfriend didn’t have enough cranberry sauce. That was probably her biggest disappointment. The crowds in the restaurant seemed to satiate Ashley’s desire for that homey feeling, but it didn’t last once we left the restaurant. Upon leaving the warm coziness into the blistering Florentine cold, she wasn’t able to hold back her upset and homesickness. Just couldn’t handle it. Not enough of home. Thanksgiving for us became just another night out, a night of a missed holiday.
 
I wonder if most people have become sick of life abroad? Not enough provisions, not enough of the convenience and leeway that being in such as modernized country as America provides us. I’m not sick of travelling for those reasons. I’m sick of travelling because it’s the biggest money trap since I was 8 years old and only got $20 a week to spend on everything I wanted. It was never enough. Never enough.

The dumbass in the picture above is yours truly. Obviously, I haven't shed my penchant for doing up photographs to look a certian way. I don't like that jacket, I only wear it to make me look like I'm some 1940's writer trying to break in to the film business. Yet I brought it with me. Seems like some things will never change, no matter where I go.

There eventually comes a point when you begin to fall back into the habits that prompted you to study abroad in the first place. And then, before you ever understand that it's happening, home becomes wherever you have travelled to.
 
You fucked up relationships with people you thought were going to be friends, and now you want to escape them. You haven’t been taking care of your domicile, and now you want to leave the mess behind. You’ve seen everything your city has to offer, and now you want someplace new. You want to experience something else. The rollercoaster has lost its vigor. Let me off. I want something else now. I don’t want to continue. I’m hungry. I have to use the bathroom. “It’s December, and I want to go back to New York. But only because I want to start over, because I didn’t do things right here. But I never do things right anywhere. Would it ever be any different?” Sound familiar? Incidentally, I don’t want to go back to New York because I know I only want to go back to escape myself. Kind of a conundrum, eh?
 
I think most people end up forgetting that the experience of visiting a new place is, in large part, a mental one. You open yourself up to the experience of learning and understanding new sights and sounds in the same way that a small child does when he travels to the mountains to visit his grandparents. But is there really any reason that we can’t feel the same way when we go down the block to get groceries, or when we take a subway to go to the museum, or when we find a new restaurant to get lunch? Can’t we view home the same way we view foreign places?
 
“Home, by contrast, finds us more settled in our expectations. We feel assured that we have discovered everything interesting about our neigborhood, primarly by virtue of our having living there for a long time.” Well said.
 
Let’s put it this way: hypothetically, one could eventually visit every single place on the Earth, and at that point, there would be no more “travel” to foreign lands. You would see everything the world has to offer. You would know every mountain, every village, every cheap bar that has a great happy hour. What would travel be to us then? So long as we keep travel as some ambiguous entity that can only be achieved while visiting a foreign place, it will be alien to us, it will always be outside us. To travel, we will have to traverse grand mountains and sail across oceans. De Maitre seems to have discovered the secret—to unlock the mental beauty of traveling in his very own bedroom, which I think is a great goal for all of us.

I know. Studying abroad in college sounds like a good opportunity to drink freely and hook up with foreigners. But in reality, the people you’ll be spending time with are no different than people back in New York, or Dallas, or Topeka, or Virginia Beach. The prospect of getting down with exotic hotties will quickly lose its luster once you discover that people abroad are just as normal-looking while naked as everybody else on the planet—they just don’t happen to speak your language, an interesting barrier which loses its novelty REAL fast. Everyone's the same when you wake up in the morning knowing last night was ultimately unimportant to your life.
 
You can be told where to go, what bar to hit, what drinks to down, what food to inhale, but then it’s just going to be the same as back in your home, people telling you what to eat and what to taste and why it’s good. You can be told what roads to take and what sights to se, but all of this is really contradictory to the reason you probably are going abroad in the first place—to experience a place free from all the assumptions and preconceptions that you’ve created for the place you call home.
 
It’s more important to view your home with that same childlike perception. Anyone can buy a ticket on a plane and fly someplace new. And if you had a life long enough to live in every single town, village, city, and hamlet on the face of the Earth, don’t you really think that thrill of seeing new places would disappear? It would, because there would be no place new.
 
Thus, the beauty in traveling is that it opens your mind to a sensibility that you can wield whenever, wherever. The physical act of traveling merely shows us that it’s possible. It’s like a drug. You can achieve on your own the mental states induced by drugs; taking them is just the sure-fire way of making them happen. You can experience the thrill of travelling anyday you want—you just have to actually want to. While Sir Francis Drake is fighting Indians in South America and sailing around the continent, De Maistre’s is exploring his own home in Expedition Around My Bedroom. Traveling need not begin on distant shores. It begins in your heart.

What is the caveat with traveling? What’s the allure? You’re alone, you’re single, you’re a free agent that is capable of responding to anything and everything and not have any binds or chains to hold back your opinions. "You can be yourself when you go abroad." You can't be yourself at home? You can't change yourself where you live? You know you can, but I bet there are things like family, friends, and expectations of you that are getting in your way.
 
The reason people travel? Generally, I think most crowds travel to escape themselves. I think true travelers are the ones who venture their hearts, not only their minds, and are not afraid to return changed. Returning to your home a changed man takes merely courage; changing yourself at home requires courage and strength, yet wil reward you both.

To speak of it literally, there are a definite amount of places that you can travel in any given lifetime, because the world is numbered. But there is an infinite number of changes, emotions, and discoveries that you can make anywhere. Before traveling abroad, find out the true reason why you're leaving, and ask yourself if the reason you're getting out and about is not a reason that can be addressed personally, at home--because I guarantee you, if you're hjoping the world will change you from the outside in, it won't happen to you in a millenium. Traveling abroad will be the same experience as seeing a 3-month long  3D movie.
 
(For some practical advice though, if anyone wants to go to NYU Florence, live off campus. It’ll be the better life experience. You’ll be seeing enough of La Pietra on schooldays)

MacCannell’s ideas immediately sound attractive and agreeable, but I don’t know how much of that is because I feel his ideas are original and intriguing vs. how my misanthropic inner demon enjoys hearing the word “ritual” used to describe contemporary human behavior. All the talk of modern desires for authenticity being tied to primitive sacredness is quite compelling.  It seems logical to assume that primitive cultures viewed any action or ritual as authentic, considering they helped contribute to their survival—thus, considering that the role of the individual in providing for his own survival has diminished in modern times, it seems natural that humans would begin to question the authenticity and meaning of actions and rituals in their daily lives. Big ‘ol governments do the job for us nowadays. Why live when someone can do it for you?
 
Institutionalized concerns for authenticity and purpose manifest themselves in the tourism industry… Seems right, I guess. And the extended metaphor of the relationship between the stage, the audience, and the outsiders is interesting, but I wonder if it begins to serve itself when MacCannell starts talking about anthropologists and invaders. Yes, the logic of this thesis works out fine—but I’m just not sure that it’s all truth, that it all exists. I am very skeptical of classifying human sociological behavior by trying to determine mental perceptions and desires solely through the use of good metaphors. I can pull metaphors out of my ass like a magician can…pull rabbits out of hats? Wrong metaphor.
 
Intimacy and closeness—what MacCannell argues are fundamental tenets of social society, reflect on the desire to find the “authentic” aspects of everyday life. Those “back regions” that MacCannell mentions are the objective of tourists searching  for this authenticity. Whether or not that authenticity is accidentally stumbled upon or synthetically propped up for discovery, it’s what we generally strive to find. I like to associate MacCannell’s talk of “back regions” with a more accessible notion—the “luster of the unknown.” We crave for that risk of something unexplained, something alien, encountering us, while we paradoxically fear such an encounter.
 
The notions of authenticity coming from a “real” or “honest” depiction of life reminds me of Goethe in his Italian Journey. I feel like tourists strive to experience what Goethe did—earnest, sincere interactions with “real” life as exhibited by natives. And yet, Goethe’s journey was very much like that of a modern-day tourist, yearning to understand and see rustic life “as it really is [was]” (whatever). One of the bigger differences between Goethe and the modern day tourist, however, is that Goethe is not really being given any form of binding expectation as to a culture, a people, or a place. He makes the logical connections then and there, without the outside influence of a tour guide or a Wikipedia article.
 
 “…important commercial establishments of the industrial West ‘went hippie,’ a decade before hippies went hippie. Approached from this standpoint, the hippie movement is not, technically, a movement, but a basic expression of the present stage of evolution of our industrial society.” Woah! Huge implications to what this guy is implying here. I’d like to hear more about this, about entire social actions that are actually just statistically-predictable anthropological behavior.
 
I believe that touristy activities essentially end up marring the individual—they give an illusory experience that is a complete lie. The “false back” is dangerous because it pretends to be real, thereby giving incorrect impressions as to whatever it is they are trying to portray. Similarly, but les dangerous, is the “false front,” which makes no pretensions as to what is real; they knowingly do it for show. We all know those, because we love those restaurants. When it is commonly accepted that a performance or display is false, there is no anxiety--yet when there is a presupposed reality being thrown in our face that is actually a farce, then danger arises, because there arises the potential for manipulation and deception of the masses.

It's the difference between a real haunted house, a house that's dressed up to look haunted for show, and a house that's dressed up to look haunted to be passed off as real. Which witch is which?

First and foremost, I should mention that Lauro speaks no English. The first time we met, we spoke in Italian and three hours and the only English word he said was “business.” Go figure. The biggest contribution from the anglo-saxon civilization. “Business.”
 
Lauro is a woodworker that I’m currently apprenticing, based on Florence. In his busy workshop in the Oltrarno he keeps the artisan’s craft alive through restoration, antiquing, and carpentry. Much of his work is related to frames—restoring old ones to look new, antiquing new ones to look old, and constructing others from scratch. Most of his business comes from frames because that’s where the majority of the demand is for woodworkers in Florence these days—which makes sense considering the amount of art dealing that goes on in this city. Yet Lauro’s knowledge extends beyond frames: within his workshop he has a set of 16th century wooden doors from church in Arezzo (the clergy gave them to Lauro as a gift for his restoration of their wooden figure of the Madonna). He antiques paintings, makes a wide variety of assorted wooden objects (such as candlesticks, bowls, figurines, chairs), and gold-leafs mirror frames. When I asked him once why he does the work he does, he responded contently (more or less to some extent in English): “I’ve been doing this my whole life. It’s all I know.”
 
His domain is the workshop I recently wrote about. He shuffles his feet through the corridors slowly but surely, always knowing what he does before he does it.

Lauro is one of the more interesting people I’ve met in my life. He tells me he only drinks wine on weekends—he won’t drink during the week because he focuses on the work. He goes hunting every weekend with his dogs for rabbit and small game. While he works, he likes to listen to music, from opera to Ray Charles. “I like all kinds of music,” he says. “I don’t like anything in particular. It’s just good.”
 
Lauro is unlike most of the Italians you’ll find while shoving your way through crowds in Florence. He’s quiet unless engaged, and when you speak with him he gets excited like a young kid. He has a little bit of that Italian hard-edged flair, however, as I can tell when he frequently tells me to calm down, or when he reminds me that I have a responsibility to remember the measurements he dictates in regards to specific frames. And like any good traditional Italian, he’ll make comical exclamations when wood comes crashing down from some random place. One evening, he had set a frame next to the furnace so the heat would dry off the paint; the piping that runs from the furnace to the ceiling, however, disjointed from the main line and began to fall. Thinking that the piping would be scalding hot from the fire, I saw no other course of action than to just stand there like a fat guy eating a hot dog at a baseball game. “Watch?! Don’t watch!” Lauro exclaimed, “Go! Geez!”
 
While not quite old, Lauro is old enough to be the grandfather of some girl who lives in middle America and comes from a family where the parents marry at 18 and have children by 22. You know what I mean. That girl.
 
He works alone, and yet with great vigor and strength. He cuts wood with the belt saw without protection after years and years of practice, pushing planks through saw against the grain. I made a mistake once while trying to put a bracket on a frame (cornice in Italian) and we started talking (in Italian) about seriousness in our work. He said that you should have seriousness in regards to your passion, but that one shouldn’t get angry or upset when things aren’t working out the way you intend. Did I mention this was all in Italian? I have off days and on days—sometimes I’ll be able to talk with Lauro for several hours in Italian, flailing my arms and using gestures and cognates whenever possible. The other times, I’ll maybe talk for 20-30 minutes total, responding when spoken to and saying “Non capisco” so many times that it sounds like a running joke.
 
The beauty of communicating with a language barrier is that for effective communication, you must be earnest. Insincerity is incredibly obvious to people who don’t speak each other’s language, but are attempting to communicate—you can just “tell” that something is wrong with the other person, or they’re “not telling the whole story.” I see myself and notice how animated I am when I’m being honest with Lauro, as opposed to how quiet and distant I am when I’ve arrived to the shop late and don’t mention why. There are moments when we both understand each other perfectly and not so much because of words, as much as action. It’s the same feeling of kids when both of you’re in your own fantasy world, but you’re playing the same game—things make perfect sense for the both of you, and it feels great, like you’ve found a new friend.
 
Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten a picture of Lauro as of yet—which adds to the allure and mystique of the woodworking master. I’ll be sure to upload more photographs of work that we do in the near future.

Goethe? Goathe? Grrtah? I remember when I got made fun of in 11th grade for not knowing this guy. I've never been the same man since.

I don’t know much about Goethe aside from the common parts of his literary fame. Faust, Werther, some poetry,  etc. I know he was as interested as any scholar about science and had an inquisitive mind, enough to collect rocks and plant samples from the many places he traveled. But really,  I don’t know more about Goethe than I do about Hitler. Which is to say I’ve seen a movie and heard some tales, but other than that, I don’t really know much. Actually, I take that back. I don’t think I’ve seen any movies about Goethe. Forget that whole analogy ever happened.
 
“Italian Journey” is a compilation of what seem to be letters and diary entries from Goethe during his travels in Italy.  Goethe writes with a vivid descriptiveness that is fairly enjoyable to read, and I usually take his Italian Journey ith me whenever my girlfriend and I take excursions around Italy. Above is a picture of Greve-in-Chianti, a small wine town in Tuscany that is known for it's chianti wines. I brought Goethe with me that day. And no, I did not read him then. I drank. A lot.
 
My enjoyment from reading “Italian Journey” comes from visualizing a world before our time. The relationships that Goethe forges with the Italians is one based on this almost primal interactivity, where people speak to one another without the influence of technology or assumed foreknowledge. Some of Goethe's first encounters with Italians, for example, are met with an almost scientific scrutiny--he observes them and describes them like an anthropologist stumbling upon a hidden tribe of humans. Yet without capturing them as his subjects or submitting them to slavery, he interacts with them as if they were another people, another culture (of equal stature to the Germans).
 
Goethe’s examination of the world is tribute to how knowledge was not so prevalent during his time. When he sees Italians from Lake Garda, he remarks on their skin color and “how healthy” they seem to appear: “their complexion is probably due to the constant exposure to the rays of the sun, which beats so fiercely at the feet of their mountains.” Goethe’s perception of the world is scientific and scrutinizing, his assumptions and conclusions are all based on logic and its very refreshing reading how this man takes reality and puts the puzzle pieces together. It’s a departure from today’s world, where knowledge is acquired from thin air and is not necessarily derived from experience. It's really refreshing to read how a man is literally taking in reality, understanding it, and then operating from that understanding. It's very primal--despite Goethe's scientific understanding, there isn't alot of intellectual/mental exercising going on. Goethe is reacting to the world from the gut. When he describes the meteorological status of the clouds, he does so because it helps him understand the beauty of weather; when he describes the multiple types of rocks in the soil, it's because he wishes to describe a deeper, richer picture. Goethe speaks poetically, unintentionally.

In titling this post, I just remembered that I endeavored earlier to lead a tour sometime during my stay here in Italy. Just goes to show you how much dedication I can muster in anything not related to video games.

The entry foyer of Lauro’s woodworking workshop is fairly normal: a small desk with a fax machine, lots of dusty frames leaning against the walls, and piles of assorted wooden objects waiting to be worked on. Nothing in the foyer really jumps out at you except the obvious treasures: three masterpiece Velasquez reproductions. I assume they are probably some of Lauro’s most prized possessions, and they're the first things I look at whenever I visit the workshop every week.

Off to the side of the foyer a long hallway connects to the workshop in the back. Gazing down the hall, you understand that you are entering into the realm of an artistry that completely blows over your head: there’s so much wood piled onto the walls that it seems enough to build a modest house. Wooden beams are piled everywhere, there are too many frames hanging around to count—there’s literally too much wood for everything to be categorized and remembered. Yet all the wooden objects in the shop, however numerous and seemingly forgotten, seem to have some sort of specialty or function, like each wooden beam and every dusty frame is going to be put to use at one time or another.   The center workspace (the primary photograph) is where all the action happens—there’s an old fashioned steel furnace used for disposing of spare wood and generating heat to dry newly-painted frames; a large metal table in the center is usually cluttered with paint-stained tools, varnish and glue canisters; and there’s a weathered leather chair just sitting off to the side that I’m too afraid to sit in because I don’t want to seem detached from what’s going on. The cutting of wood takes place in the back room where all the machines are located—as a result, it's littered with sawdust and blocks of unused wooden scraps. I generally don’t go back there unless I’m following Lauro to watch him work.

Paint, varnish, and other globs of unidentifiable substances are strewn all over the floor, and the steely feel of the walls seem to reek of a chemical-like yet rustic smell that is ubiquitous and strangely attractive. Combined with the smell of sawdust, there’s a strange homey-quality that is reminiscent of my father’s garage. That, and a used car workshop.

The shop is technically in a different building than the foyer—the hallway that connects the two basically stretches between them beneath the open sky. As a result, the cold, crisp air of the Tuscan night wraps its fingers around the walls of the workshop, giving it an empty, wintery chill. When rain comes, the heavy drops ring out on the metal rooftop, and you can hear the drops falling outside where the outhouse is located.

In the back of the farthest room there is a dark iron staircase that winds upward to a second floor--I've yet to discover where it leads or what is up there, but I can imagine that it's another storehouse for unfinished projects. At the foot of the spiral staircase is Lauro's office--a modest little room that has a comfortable-looking chair and desk, with a personal cupboard that holds an antique shotgun and other memorabilia. In all the time I've known Lauro, I've never seen him work in that office--whenever he's at work, he's working in the midst of all the action, right in the center of the workshop. This place is here for him; it is at his service.

An interesting continuation of my interview with my girlfriend on the topics of travel, and how individuals perceive new places, and their significance.

What’s your favorite place you’ve been so far?
Paris.
What would you have missed in terms of growth—
If I hadn’t gone?
Yeah.
Hmm.
Aside from all the literal physical things.
I mean its all that I’ve been talking about actually. That sense of experiencing a culture.
I thought you didn’t care about culture—you could read about it in a book?
No no no, that’s history. A country’s culture—in fact its usually wrong, if you read it in a book. You have to experience it on a personal level, because its gonna be different for every person, how the world interacts with them. For instance, I fit in being myself, because now that I’m being myself, people are gonna interact with me, and they’re gonna react off the way I am, and its gonna show who they are as a people, and the similarities mixed with the history and the culture that I’ve studied is going to create atmosphere—the world of Paris, instead of like, you know, what Florence is to me. It’s completely different than Paris.
So depending on how you view yourself, and what you perceive as who you are, your opinions on cultures can change.
Yeah, people are going to view Italy different than I do. Based on money and, you know, if they can speak the language, how educated they are about the people, how they are if they come across American. You know I can't experience it as a fluent Italian speaker, I’m sure they get along much better than the natives. Unless they speak English, then we’re best buddies.
So then your opinion of foreign worlds, and cultures, are not factual.
Right. But nobody’s view on—that’s what art is for. How could it be factual, what’s interesting about that? Every painting of Paris would be the same color. You know, every world created in a film, or in a medium, would be the same if it existed on fact. That’s what history is for. That’s what school is for, to learn the facts. And that’s what traveling is for, an artistic sort of journey. Unless of course you’re with my parents, in which case it is another form of high school.
And how is traveling a [subjective experience]?
Because you are creating that world as you see it. You’re taking pictures and making memories and thinking things that nobody else things. Because you’re a unique person, and how that world interacts with you is going to create your vision of that place. And it might change the next time I visit Paris, because I'll be in a different place in my life, I'll be a different person.
Do you feel that you ever project your perception of places onto others?
Of course.
What do you feel about that?
That’s what artists do. This is Paris. You know, in reference to their painting. But somebody else is gonna have Paris, you know a modern, cubist view, and they’re gonna say “no no no—“
But forget about everyone else, its just you. You’re giving the view of Paris. Are you saying “This is Paris, this is my painting,” or are you saying, “This is what I think of Paris. This is my painting.”
I mean… I think this is a hard question because obviously its what I think of Paris, obviously I can’t tell people what they think Paris is…
But…
But me being myself I usually—Its like I’m trying to experience for somebody and tell them what they would experience, but in reality they would experience something else. I mean, for example, for Florence. I’m not gonna be all peaches and cream about it, um, but I will say people aren’t very nice to Americans because I know that from myself, but I also know that from everyone else who tells me about it, so it’s not just me. I’m gonna go to the bathroom real quick.
Do you see any difficulties in traveling while in a relationship?
Well, no it makes it all the better. There’s a little—yeah—there’s a little anxiety hoping that the memories we create are gonna be looked upon fondly by both of us, or, because we’re experiencing the same things, or actually twice the amount of things we would be experiencing, I hope that the world created when we travel is, I mean, not necessarily the same, but both positive, because it kind of reflects on me.
As in, if the memories and the world you create aren’t attractive—
Like if we fight, I don’t want that to be the way you see the world of Paris.
But don’t those emotions, don’t those fights—
No because that’s from home.
Ah, caught my question. So you think its different while traveling?
What?
Fighting at home versus fighting abroad?
Yeah. I mean you shouldn’t do either, but the world at home is already created by your daily norm, although…
But cant you break out of that norm? Especially as a student, by changing your lifestyle, or visiting a new part of your home city, for example, that you haven't seen before?
Yeah but you have to set up home base somewhere. Responsibility of the norm of life never disappears. And it shouldn’t disappear. There should be a separation between responsibility and pleasure. Because it’s like I said before, it can’t be who you are.
How do you deal with the differences in experience that two people may have while traveling together?
How do I what?
How do you reconcile the differences in the perception of the world that is created by two people?
Reconcile, why would I want to reconcile? I mean, I try to be on my best behavior…
Basically if you want to do something, and the other doesn’t. What do you do?
Compromise.
Then are you really traveling? Aren’t you still home, just taking home with you.
No no. No. It’s completely separate from home. I mean, when you are in a relationship you have to compromise. You’re not gonna want to do the same things but in the end you’re in the same place, and its worth doing anything.
So would you say, that having a negative experiencing traveling, is better than no experience at all?
Yeah, of course.
Better to be King for a night—
Than a Shmuck for a lifetime.

Makes sense.

Photo of my girlfriend in Pompeii.

I thought it would be interesting to ask my girlfriend (no, she's not a lesbian--my name might be Marzipan, but I'm not a woman) about her experiences with life abroad, to better flesh out my understanding of how we're operating overseas. After all, life is no good without perspective. And that's what this is all about.

Why do you think you travel?
I feel like the actress side of me kind of just wants to experience everything I can and just let it soak in—not necessarily ponder about it and you know, discuss it, or even muse—well maybe muse to myself but nothing extraordinary, just letting something seep into my conciousness makes me grow as a person
Shit, wait, forgot how to spell conciousness—
--without even knowing it.
Do you feel like there’s something inside you that you’re looking for when you’re traveling?
Yeah theres a romantic part of me that feels like I need to be able to sit at a café and just enjoy an experience. I want to travel specifically with you—im trying to—channel that, and almost work on it, but really its very hard for me to do in my regular day. But every time I travel I do get closer and closer to that, just being able to experience, not necessarily do, something, at all times, and not have a to-do list, but just be a part of life.
What disappoints you about travel?
Um…I mean, practical things. You know. Traveling with my family is always bad, always disappointing, because I don’t get to experience what I want to experience.
Which is what?
Which is you know, the social scene. With my parents I don’t get to experience, like the real Italians, I just get to experience the culture and stuff, which isn’t really interesting to me because anybody can just read about that. But being at the Berlin Wall and just seeing it doesn’t really do it for me, as it would hearing about an experience about what happened in ’89. I dunno.
What’s the difference between travelling and going somewhere, you think?
What do you mean, going somewhere? Like to the store?
Well yeah, aren’t you technically going to the store when you go to the Duomo? You just perceive it differently. What do you think of those mental labels? The word “travel,” as opposed to other things.
What? I didn’t hear you.
The word “travel.”
Right, what about it?
It has its own labels on it, [the word "travel" having some romantic or adventurous connotations].
Right, time to do what you wouldn’t do in normal life. Something now part of the norm.
Why cant you do what you would do traveling but at home?
Because if we lived like how we do in Florence, you’d go broke, and you’d almost dilute the experience of—I think, maybe, might not be true—dilute the experience of exploring a new culture, because then you are just acquiring business cards,  when you want to be focusing on real life and being happy and responsible. Because being just a traveler, that would become your identity. It’s kind of like your job, What you do is not who you are, you know, and when you travel you get to have a little education for yourself. Or when you read a book its like traveling, or going to a museum its like traveling. You have this time to yourself where you learning about the world in a way that normality doesn’t offer. The tags of traveling I think, we romanticize it, but when you expand that definition it does include, you know, museums, books, films, you know, things that are hobbies. To me. I know that’s not true, but to me, personally. Probably because I’ve traveled so much in my life, it didn’t used to mean anything to me. You know, "I can’t go over to my friends house this weekend, I’ve got to go over to Dads or Moms, [and such and such]."
So you do like traveling then?
I love traveling.
So if you like traveling, and reading books is like traveling…
Oh my god.
Why don’t you read more books.
Hmm. Because reading books and going to museums and stuff liekt hat doesn’t have a time set aside for itself. You have to integrate it into your normal daily life. And when you do that, you start to priortize, and make alist of “Oh this is what Ill do on my vacation.” And of course, when youre traveling, you don’t want to read a book.
I thought you meant that by reading books, it’s a subsititue for traveling.
It is a little bit, but its hard to do that in real life. You know you get home from work, you unwind a little bit by doing something you love, like a video game or watching TV or a film, you know, something to unwind. Then its dinnertime, which after dinner, you probably could read a book but if you do, you'll probably fall asleep because you’re so tired you gotta ake up early, its just the mundane daily life, you kinda have to—well nevermind, that’s a different subject—but you have to set aside weekend time: read a book. And that’s like travelling, that’s like going to a museum. In the end, it will make you grow, for sure. It will change you a little bit.
Cool.
That’s good, made me think. You writing that down?
Yeah.
That’s cute.

photo courtesy of Adam Leotta; Ashley Skidmore a Capri

While shopping at one of Florence's monthly antique markets, I happened upon an old, intriguing-looking book that caught my attention. The cover was black and chipped with no title, and turning the crumbling pages I found the title page printed in an old, Latin text, in the style of pre-18th century books. A little Latin translation indicated that it was a Benedictine prayer book used for priests and monks, printed in Venice in 1715. Good thing this awesome little artifact was only 30 euro, because I bargained the dealer down to 25 and sealed the deal. This little book has traveled for hundreds of years. Probably used, stored, forgotten amongst stacks, it has ultimately found its way to me. The same book from that time period is now mine.

I think about what that means. By holding this centuries-old book, I am the ending point of a tunnel that stretches back almost three hundred years. Lives, words, prayers, thoughts, feelings, and people are all connected, somehow related to the existence of this book. Rather, this book shared its existence with people and things that are no longer in existence. It existed in a world that was different from the one I live in. And it's sitting in my hands. This book, which may have touched the hands of people who discovered a totally different world upon their birth, carries with it the story of its age.

And yet, it's still just a book. Judging from its decrepit, crumbling cover, I would assume that there would be some added significance to the item. But it really isn't any heavier. It's just older, more easily torn. Right? As much as I would like to be sentimental and fluffy, I'm not sure I believe that history makes any particular thing any different unto itself. Rather, history grants items a legacy of tradition or a state of existence that flows into the present day. A unopened wine bottle that was purchased when your great-grandparents fell in love is just an old bottle of wine. But...it's the wine bottle that was purchased when your great-grandparents fell in love. There's alot to be said for that. Those ellipses deserve to be there. It's not much because it's still just a wine bottle, but at the same time it happens to not just be a wine bottle. Now that's some fuckin' Wittgensteinean shit. Talk about truth becoming truths only when the natural fabric of life disrupts truth causing us to seek it out and identifiy it as truth in the first place. Anyone notice that gummy bear in the picture?

What does history mean for us? Is it necessary? Does it really enrich our lives? Does counting sheep really help you go to sleep?

When I visited Pompeii a couple weeks ago, it was boggling to be immersed in that situation. Think about it, it's tough for a human being to be put in that situation. Left to contemplate the complete death and demise of an entire civilization? It's not even like you happen to be there or something--when you go to Pompeii, you go to see the ruins, you're not heading out to get milk. And similarly, living in Florence where I do have to see so much history whenever I go to get milk, I still don't feel like I do at Pompeii. The stuff there supercedes mere 'history.' That stuff is on another level, an existential level. "This is a human civilization that did not make it. Oops." Wow. At least the descendants of the Medici's are still around. At least Florentine culture still exists. Pompeii is heavy, but not really because of its history. It's because it strikes a chord in all of us, it reminds us of the potential for our extinction. It's really a sad place because of that. To see these people who really just... didn't make it. That hits you.

When things like that hit you, that's when you know you've found an interesting niche of history. That's when you know you've found something that interests you, that moves you, and that is worth studying and learning about. When you can actually bear a museum trip because you can experience what movies do for you emotionally but in individual works of art; when looking at a decrepit theatre makes you smile knowing all the fun and excitement that when on there when so-and-so was directing this-and-that and this actress walked in wearing a mink coat and gave everyone marmalade cake and so on and so on. That's the history that enriches your life, that literally charges the present with a greater voltage than it would normally have without.

I'm not sure I've completely assimilated what it means to have visited the Vatican. My class and I went there last week to draw from a couple sculptures, and my experience there was largely just one of complete admiration for the lives of effort that have gone into preserving and collecting such treasures, and sadness because of my inability to spend untold hours just meandering down its marbeled halls. I joke that the most attractive aspect of becoming Pope would be that you have the entire Vatican Museum to privately stroll through--but I'm sure there's some truth to the desire of being able to just sit in a comfy chair in the Belvedere Gardens and contemplate "the heavens". Except in my fantasy, "the heavens" include chicken soft-tacos and a gordita crunch. Damn.

After drawing in halls of the Vatican by the Sistine Chapel for three hours, I've noticed how the tour guides are all saying the same thing. They walk into the hallway of classical Roman busts and remark how the hairstyles of the women are used to determine the time period they're from. But they all say this the same way, with little variation, almost as if there was one tour guide all the other tour guides took, and they brought along notes to copy down phrases and factoids. Tours walk into this monumental hallway with more square footage probably that the apartment building in which they live, and they don't even talk about the other sculptures or what it meant to have a bust created of you, or where they were placed, or if they were painted. They mention the hair, and they move on. They hit the point, and they continue on. What girl ever liked a guy who just hit it and left? You can't just tell people a fact, show them a visual, and move on--you have to give these people their money's worth. To be a tour guide at the Vatican, you should have a responsibilty to the integrity that the Vatican tries to uphold. While drawing from the Apoxyomenos, a tour guide instructed her followers to feel the calf of the sculpture. Eventually I was standing in the chamber corner watching a huddled group of Bulgarians essentially masturbating this athlete's calf. So much for a millennia of museuology and preservation.

Not only are they materially incompetent, but tour guides at the Vatican are uninspired as anywhere else. They all look like bums, haggling and scrounging for business, carrying sheets of laminated paper designed with Microsoft WordArt. I have no doubts that I or anyone I know could pull off a really cool, exciting, and informative tour. So why don't we do it? It sounds like a ton of fun, it's basically like herding cattle except they want to follow you. "Don't have kids but desperately want them? Hey! Be a tour guide!" It seems that being a tour guide would be fun, and I can't really see any reason why I wouldn't want to do it. As a result, I will set forth the statement that before this semester is over, I will function as a tour guide. That should make for a fairly interesting blog post.

When I visited Pompeii two weeks ago, it was fairly obvious that the tour guides basically did this job for a living. They're all old Italian men with a knack for history and a sense of humor. They're all fairly well-informed and knowledgable, and can tell you small historical details to specific questions you might ask them. The guides at Pompeii are like the old local fisherman who all know the best places to catch fish; and if you're interested in coughing up a few euros, they'll oblige to take you out with them for a catch. The guides at the Vatican are like the immigrants who operate those shady, mobile carnival rides; they're just doing it for the money. Where's the love?

It seems that the Vatican attracts the masses for its aesthetic beauty, general allure, and its global reknown. Quite a shame, reall,y considering it's considered one of the holiest places of one of the world's largest religions. Overall, I'll be returning to Rome eventually so I can more deeply understand the power and intrigue that surrounds the Vatican City. It's just so fascinating that a place like this exists in our world and not some fantasy written by J.R.R Tolkein.