In Which She Doesn't Speak for Hours

9 December 2008

Yesterday Italy enjoyed a big holiday - Monday the 8th of December, a bank holiday, I think - and throughout the long, lazy day I wrote three letters. One was written in the morning, in a slim brown moleskin notebook, as I perched on a park bench in Parco Valentino. The River Po glistened through tall, naked trees. The sun shines yellow and weak upon the famillies who've braved the cold to bring their bundled children out to stroll and play, I wrote to my friend in Washington D.C., upon the runners and bikers who are always here; on me, in a down jacket and black beret, slightly disappointed that the exhibit I came to see is closed but grateful for the quiet, pretty stillness of this morning. It's like another Sunday, this holiday day. Cold and sunny just like Colorado. I miss it like crazy - am trying not to waste time looking back, but can't help it sometimes. You know.

Then, at the end of the afternoon or start of the evening (take your pick), I sat in a café with a Viennese coffee to write a postcard to someone in Albany, California. It was gorgeous today, sunny and cold. Everything sharp around the edges. Spent most of the day wandering Torino in my beret and wool scarf, just looking at everyone, soaking in the wintry atmosphere... The kids are growing, wild, frustrating, and rarely but sometimes cute. I oscillate between moments of euphoria and week-long periods of deep existential crisis. I draw and write and try to introduce good music, interesting idioms and American traditions to this family. I think "scaglie" means "sprinkles" in Italian.

The day before this day off I had been out for a jog in the isola pedonale, the nearby neighborhood closed to traffic, when I heard someone playing Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" on a grand piano before an open balcony window. I stopped my run to peer through his iron fence toward the piano. I knew that this crisp musical voyeuristic moment could easily slip into nonexistence if I didn't tell anyone about it... and then I lost myself in wondering how many moments just like this, profound slices of strangers' lives as they cross and recross, get lost each day? How many things do we not remember, each day? It was sunny and cold then, too, and magic. At that moment of listening I knew what I was doing here in Italy: soaking up a number of lovely moments, because I've earned the time, the luxury, to do so. There were and there will be times in my life during which I wish for the time to look about me with curiosity and without pressing worry (bills, rent, job), so I'm trying to embrace this year abroad as a gift to myself, twelve whole months of whimsy and leisure. It's hard not to look back in sentiment or forward in apprehension, and lose sight entirely of this, my original aim.

I'm currently plodding through a short volume in Italian called "Il cammino dell'uomo." The walk of man. Very existential meditation on the questions "Where are you? Who are you?" Makes for restless dreams. Why do I do this to myself!

Recommendations to everyone:
Listen to Cat Power's "The Greatest"
Watch "My Blueberry Nights"
Read Miranda July's short story "Roy Spivey"