Pilgrimage!

seattle, WA

2008-07-28T00:13:00.000-04:00

it's a beautiful overcast evening here in seattle, and tom and i are staying with our friend keith in the capitol hill district. we just got home from a barbeque where we ate many turkey burgers and displayed our wicked tan lines to the delight and disgust of the other attendees.

the trip is over. we arrived in at the western edge of anacortes, WA one day early, around 6:00 pm local time on friday, and spent a half hour silently considering the sound before us, nursing a bottle of champagne produced in the columbia river region of eastern washington. we buy local when we can.

keith came up from seattle and the three of us caught the last ferry to san juan island, where we had a celebration fish fry and several pitchers of beer, played pool and gradually became best pals with a gregarious local named jimmy. jimmy is in a wheelchair; he rolled right up to our table and introduced himself as a wanted man. he said we could made a cool $100,000 if we brought him to the right people. he also said we were welcome to stay with him as long as we were comfortable with coke, hookers, and his "small arsenal."

after carefully weighing our options, we made for the county fairgrounds and slept in a tent that apparently was to serve as a makeshift barn for an upcoming 4-H convention. we just laid our sleeping bags out on the hay and, well, hit it.

after a leisurely breakfast in friday harbor, we rode about 10 miles to lime kiln state park, where we clambered over the rocks, whacked each other with big pieces of a pipe-like plant called bull kelp, and waited in vain for orcas to appear. but late in the afternoon, as we were riding out of the park and heading for the ferry, word went out that a pod was rounding the southern tip of the island. we pulled off about a mile up the road, stashed our bikes, and scrambled down to the water's edge. with no sign of the whales, we stripped down to the buff and jumped in the freezing surf. as a kayak tour suddenly came around the bend, we redressed and sought higher ground, eventually catching sight of dorsal fins slowly crowning above the waves and a curtain of spray thrown up by a blow.

i am having a hard time describing the feeling of arrival, even to myself. i don't feel triumph or relief. nor am i disappointed: i don't wish that the journey here were different than it was, nor do i wish my reaction now were somehow more extreme. in "travels with charley," john steinbeck wrote this:

"Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperment, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you can control it."

i'm not there; i haven't relinquished control yet, not by a long shot. but i hold this end to "policing and coercion" as my goal, and i am certainly aware of the myriad ways in which this trip "took us." at the barbeque earlier tonight, i found myself confiding in a total stranger that, while tom and i were probably in peak physical condition by the time we hit chicago, the mental and emotional work of life on the bike continued right up until i tasted the sour and vital water of puget sound. and that work sure as hell isn't done. i still have to wake up and figure out how to approach tomorrow: how to cultivate gratitude for the unexpected, how to keep up hope that i'll be better, how to treat other people, how to really taste. and what words to use. yes, i am proud that we rode our bikes here. but i am also aware that our arrival at the pacific solves nothing; these questions come back just as surely as the wind and the next climb: they can't be resolved by some grand symbolic act.

i will post more in the next day or two, perhaps addenda to previous posts that were constrained by time, and hopefully some pictures. until then.

day 49: omak, WA

2008-07-23T18:56:00.001-04:00

i only have three minutes, so i will say only that, to my right, a bilingual storyteller is singing, signing, and making animal sounds. only half-listening, i am drawn in by such declarations as "YO QUIERO QUEEEEESSSSSSSOOOOOOO. I WANT SOME CHEESE," or "GERTRUDE IS A VERY STRANGE COW. COWS DON'T RIDE BICYCLES!"

on the other hand, we do. and we have about 250 miles to ride them to the pacific ocean. in other words, we'll be in anacortes on saturday. i am accepting your recommendations on champagne.

day 46: sandpoint, ID

2008-07-21T14:07:00.000-04:00

early this morning we waved goodbye to montana. more accurately, i waved goodbye to a sign that said "leaving montana," and the back and forth motion of my hand was a simple gesture of my mixed feelings about the passage. on the one hand, montana is host to many of our trip's most arresting sights and memorable characters; i grieved a little for our passing on. on the other hand, the dead-flat middle is a desert of spiritual angst and ennui, and the westerly "breezes" are proof that my family and friends don't love me and that God regrets ever knitting together in my mother's womb. good riddance! at 667 miles across, montana's breadth exceeds that of all preceding (multi-state) stages and totals nearly one fifth of the tour's total mileage. as i was invited by another sign 50 yards down the road, i feel welcomed by idaho, but unsure how to conceptualize my relationship to a state whose panhandle we will cross in a half-day's ride.

yesterday's ride took two detours: we stopped about 12 miles north of libby to hike down to the kootenai falls and the swinging bridge that spans the rapids. after another hour or so on the bike, we climbed three switchbacking miles above the banks of bull lake to the ross creek giant cedars national park. after pb and j, we dawdled under the canopy of cedar and hemlock, playing in burned out trunks, posing for pictures and frequently exclaiming the awesomeness of the place. the persistence of nature's cycles was everywhere in view: the lightning-struck, termite-eaten trunk lay on the forest floor like a capsized mast, overgrown with mosses, fungi. a sign alerted us that even the rocks are being broken down by the conspiracy of lichen and dividing ice. life so intimate with death, and death in its own time. i thought of the first stanza of elizabeth bishop's poem "the shampoo."

The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.

in closing, perhaps it is appropriate to note that -- precious wonder -- our passage into idaho was also a successful journey back in time, exactly one hour into the past. we are now on pacific standard time. time can only move forward for us now, until we reach the coast.

day 44: whitefish, MT

2008-07-18T18:31:00.000-04:00

i don't know exactly what to report: we've been up on the mountain. yesterday, tom and i have crossed the continental divide at logan's pass in glacier national park. in all, we spent 3 spectacular days in glacier: we have looked out over the crystal surface of st. mary's lake and seen rocks thrown up and worn down by time staring back. we have seen the clear teal tint of glacial silt in the cold rush of the melt, and we have dipped our hands in it, washed our faces in its purifying spray. we have seen a baby mountain goat not bigger than a toy poodle lunching on a shrub.

when the pioneers arrived, this must have seemed the promised land. and only 200 years after lewis and clark trod by, that promise is almost wasted: consequent to our global climate catastrophe, scientists predict that the slow, majestic, stone-crushing glaciers we saw yesterday will be gone by 2030, spilled out into the slush of memory.

day 40: chester, MT

2008-07-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

after many trials and tribulations, we have again gained access to the miraculous interwebs. i imagine i will spend some of the afternoon's ride reflecting on my gmail inbox as a kind of "home in motion," which is to say, accessible anywhere. as we keep pedaling and the scenery keeps changing, i am feeling more and more connected to my bike as some sort of silent companion, and i'm surprised to find a similar sense of security in the digital world.

in an earlier post, i mentioned that the wind was at our backs through the entire state of south dakota, and i'm tempted to believe that thanks are due to the brothers of the blue cloud abbey and their prayers. with gratitude, i must however report that their spiritual jurisdiction does not extend into the northern territory. we have been facing a headwind since crossing the border.

in montana, the locals refer to this meteorological phenomenon as "the breezes" or, more impersonally, "it's supposed to blow all week." the latter is charming for its multiple levels of meaning, the former for its understatement. one local, after informing us that we were riding the wrong way, conspiratorially intoned that some weeks prior, the breezes had thrown 4 rail cars off the track. this was a valuable reorientation of perspective for us: riding 8 mph over 70 miles suddenly seemed less like an emotional thrashing and more like a tentative victory over the elements. it was also terrifying. three days ago i was riding too closely behind tom when the wind blew him into my front wheel; i went down and now have some nice scrapes on my left knee: the wind's wounds. lately i have been trying to deal with the wind's power by imagining its indifference towards us. it helps in develop my own indifference towards it. the wind doesn't care which way we're going, so we might as well go.

day 34: williston, ND

2008-07-08T20:54:00.000-04:00

this will be extremely brief, as this library closes in 3 minutes. a few highlights since we last spoke:

1. having the wind at our backs throughout south dakota. thanks for your prayers, blue cloud brothers!

2. the 4th of july in mobridge, SD. we went to a RODEO.

3. riding through the "little missouri national grasslands" and the "theodore roosevelt national park" today. beautiful buttes and canyons, striped with every color. geology in motion.

day 29: groton, SD

2008-07-03T16:42:00.000-04:00

this is another tiny public library: the bookshelves give way to the town offices. there are two friendly women--civil servants both--sitting at the semi-circular children's table stuffing envelopes. on the shelf above the computer here are the last two decades' legion baseball trophies, groton t-shirts and caps for sale, and a special shelf for the entire harry potter series.

tom and i have spent the last day and half at the Blue Cloud Abbey, a wonderful Benedictine community hidden in the rolling hills of eastern south dakota. the hospitality these men showed to us is hard to describe: all were very concerned that we had enough to eat, generously answered our questions, and even blessed our bikes and our journey. the much-needed day of rest was everything i had hoped for; we had ample time for quiet reflection, a swim in the lake with fr. michael the organist, and A NAP. br. sebastian, the guestmaster, took tom and i on a hike to the small camp that the abbey owns. 66 years old and approaching the 50th anniversary of his vows, sebastian led us across the prairie pointing out cowflops and local vegetation: buckbrush, creeping jenny. then he showed us how to hop a fence with grace.

it was difficult to leave after breakfast this morning. today is the abbot's feast day, so there was a celebratory atmosphere in the abbey: br. paul made special eggs over-easy and conversation was permitted; the refectory was quickly filled with good-natured barbs and bursts of laughter. these men are seeking God's peace, and they are doing a wonderful job of sharing that peace with their guests. talking with br. benet about his writing, watching br. paul close his eyes, incline his ear to something i couldn't hear and sing the psalms from memory, having more and more food pressed into our hands for today's lunch: i feel blessed to have had this opportunity to put our very very short journey in perspective. rolando, a brother at a guatemalan monastery visiting blue cloud for the year, sent us off by gently grasping our hands and stressing each syllable of beautifully broken english: "God.........with....you. God....with you." i almost cried. no verb was needed to complete that phrase: for these brothers, God is a verb.

day 26: the songs in our heads

2008-06-30T17:11:00.000-04:00

we are making our luncheon in kerkhoven, MN. according to the sign, there are 555 people in this town. the public library is one room in the corner of the civic center, plus a closet for periodicals, files, and cleaning supplies. the video/dvd collection is hanging from the closet door. the book return is a big metal washbasin. there are 4 computers, and the 10-year old next to me is researching TRANSFORMERS.

the minnesota skyline has opened up for us today: after navigating some pretty sweet bike trails out of minneapolis yesterday, we are facing another beautiful day with only flutter of headwind. we are going to depart from our dilapidated but cheerful friend rt. 12 and venture due west on county 6 until we get to appleton. there we hope to find a churchyard or high school baseball infield where we might make our couscous.

these are some of the songs that have been stuck in my head over the last few days:

"america" from west side story
the 'hostia' tenor recitative from verdi's requiem.
'rise above' by the dirty projectors (n.b. i have never heard this song. tom was just singing the chorus all day yesterday, and now i know it)
most of the first weezer album
'i believe,' stevie wonder
as we gather at the table
'the thong song,' sisqo's modern masterwork

if anyone has suggestions for BETTER songs to have stuck in my head, i welcome them. if anything, one needs a diverse soundtrack; these roads are pretty straight, pretty flat.

day 25: olfactory awareness

2008-06-29T11:36:00.000-04:00

i'm sorry these posts are so few and far between. internet access is hard to come by; time off the bike is precious for reading, or stretching, or staring off blankly into space, or procuring and consuming peanut butter and jelly. i am also finding my reflections on the bike resistant to the blog format. having just graduated from university, my thoughts on the bike often settle into existential ruts of anxiety and doubt: i often feel that i'm not 'very good' at this trip; it's difficult for me to stay focused on the immediate scenery, the immediate moment, the immediate aches and unexpected encounters with people whose encouragement keeps us going into the next day. not feeling very 'good' at the trip makes me doubt my ability to make fulfilling things happen for myself post-school: without a concrete destination or predetermined route, this trip can seem like a metaphor for my whole future; the anxiety i feel when we haven't yet found a place to camp and the sky darkens is writ large. where am i going to pitch my tent? it's hard for me to find words for the ins and outs of this that don't seem like navel-gazing in the blogosphere.

these are some things we have been smelling over the past few hundred miles:

hay
fresh cut wood
wood burning
tires burning
cinnamon (unexplained, very strong)
the foul smell of high water that will not be accepted into the earth
cowshit (manure)
pigs and their shit
horseshit (golden stones that blaze up in the shoulder and become a little slalom course for us)
truck exhaust
lake michigan
butterscotch (outside a 'baby animal nutrition center.' disturbing.)
mint
banana bread
minty banana bread (at this point in northern illinois, i smelled mint, tom smelled banana bread. we compromised.)
fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies (we actually tried to follow this smell. we would have followed it into the depths of the earth, but we lost the trail.)
the musty interior of our tents
dust from dirt roads
elderflower
the dew burning off

we are leaving minneapolis this morning and heading west for the blue cloud abbey in marvin, SD. from there, up to bismark, ND. from there, glacier national park. we are well.

day 19: rest days in chicago!

2008-06-23T10:01:00.000-04:00

good morning (central time):

tom and i had a beautiful ride into chicago on saturday, following route 12 from southwest michigan. we rode through the corpse of U.S. Steel in gary, indiana (a significant blemish on the day's ride), but on to the magnificent lakefront bike path that runs parallel to lakeshore boulevard 17 miles. early showers gave way to sun, and the bikinied rollerbladers were out in force. we rode straight up to tom's brother sam's place near loyola university, where we participated in a barbeque, with gusto.

after a solid night's sleep, we spent the day in chicago: i caught up with some of my clan in the morning, and tom and i met at the art institute in the afternoon to investigate.

my body definitely was and is ready for a day off the bike, but it seems to be responding strangely to its novel tasks of walking, sitting, standing. not hunched over the handlebars, my back is suddenly very tired. i have a hard time standing for a long time. not cranking on the pedals, my legs cramped up twice for no good reason. i guess we'll just keep on stretching it out.

more to come; tom and i are going to roll out of sam's place this morning and take a short jaunt to batavia, IL, to stay with my grandparents for a night. i'll post more tonight when we get there; if not, in a few days when we get to the twin cities.

day 14: bloomfield hills, MI

2008-06-18T14:36:00.000-04:00

tom and i are at the library. this one is particularly beautiful, and apparently designed with the weary traveler in mind: we made our noontime PBJs in the little cafe area just inside the door, then walked across the expansive fiction and magazine section to the circular computer kiosks where we now have come to rest in office chairs with lumbar support.

since leaving rochester 5 days ago, we have ridden to tom's cousin katie's in buffalo, where we consumed untold and regrettable amounts of pizza, wings, and labatt blue light. the allentown arts fest was less than 50 paces away, and in the party atmosphere our bodies found that which they desired: more or less organic material to consume, in quantity. we left the next morning and rode up to niagara falls, and into ontario, CANADA. the toll was 50 cents per bike, and the canadian customs officer was much more excited about the idea of a bike trip than he was about searching our panniers, so it was smooth sailing across international borders.

sunday night (15 june, day 11) will surely be one of the highlights of the trip. looking for a place to camp along the road, we were directed by a kind dutchman to the house next door. "they're nice. it's two guys, but that's fine." fine indeed. we knocked on the door and jay, a burly bearded dude in jeans and a harley cap said "what can i for you?!" we asked if we might pitch a tent on his land. he said sure, he used to be a cyclist himself, clasped our hands, and shut the door. we were pumped. 10 minutes later, jay comes out, asks if we need to fill up our water bottles. he takes the empties into the house while we set up camp. comes back out after 5 minutes with water and 3 bottles of coors light. cheers to you, jay. we talked for a while about what we were doing, jay's cycling career in college, his farm, and the harley-davidson rallies that he goes to every friday the 13th in port dover, year round.

so then tony comes out, wearing birkenstocks and a golf shirt, clasping a big glass of merlot in his ringed fingers. he's british, a golfer, a doctor, a cancer specialist in hamilton. tom and i talked with him about the london theatre scene while jay hustled back to the house for a map and more beers. all in all we chatted with this amiable and generous fellows for about an hour before they went inside and we made some couscous.

about 45 minutes later, jay brings out some bug spray and two MORE bottles of the silver bullet and says if any weather comes in, just knock and there's a spare bedroom just inside the front door. and then 10 minutes later he comes out and says he doesn't like the look of the clouds to the east, why don't we come in and sleep in a bed. we did, and missed a killer T-storm that shook the trees.

the next morning we left a note of profuse thanks, which still fell short of the mark. given how psyched we were simply to have a place to pitch a tent, how could we express our gratitude for beer, good fellowship, and a four-poster bed?

day 12: cayuga, OT - port stanley, OT
day 13: port stanley, OT - ferry at sombra, OT/marine city, MI - algonac state park, MI.

we're heading for chicago, and hope to be there this weekend.

stage 1 complete: pit stop in fairport

2008-06-11T21:06:00.000-04:00

leaving valley falls sunday evening, we rode a nicely rolling 30 miles down to the banks of the mohawk river in scotia, just west of schenectady, where we pitched a tent and cooked up some couscous. those two cups of granulated pasta have become our golden nuggets of nutrition. two middle-aged brothers spied us and rode over on their mountain bikes, all amped up to talk about gear. bruce and jay told us all about their routes up the mountain in the background and admired our racks. all they were carrying, bruce noted, was a rather large silver flask; from the smell of bruce's breath at 5 feet away, i was willing to bet there were only a few drops of canadian club left in the bottom.

we broke camp the next morning and met up with my good friend rebecca in amsterdam; she rode with us as far as antionette's cafe and pastries, where we ate ambrosia and drank the nectar of whatever gods dwell along the mohawk. later in the day, we took respite from the scorcher in the "grand hotel," the st. johnsville house of hospitality and hops. 2 pints of labatt were less than 3 dollars.

then we sprawled out in front of the local church and ate our cous. gutting out the rest of the day, we camped just east of utica at lock 19.

tuesday, we made our approach into syracuse and into the outstretched arms of ted limpert. ted, tom and i spent new years 2006 together in london on an english department theatre program and this was the joyous reunion of "room 14," some of whose exploits are chronicled in the earliest posts of this blog. we also met up with my francophile pal sasha at 'the blue tusk,' whose customers and beers on draft were both approximately 10-15 times that of the 'grand hotel,' where there were 2 liquid lunchers and 3 taps. we were moving up in the world. the ride into syracuse was essentially uneventful, excepting the massive thunderstorm and tornado watch that we neatly avoided by ducking into 'the knotty pine,' a delightful dive diner that sheltered us and poured cup after cup of lukewarm coffee.

we reluctantly left ted wednesday morning and rolled along rt. 31 toward my hometown of fairport, ny. there was a consistent headwind, but i am trying to accept a headwind as a fact of life, indeed, to affirm headwinds as nature's way of helping me breathe in. more importantly, the temperature was much more amenable to inhalation: after 3 days of 90+ temperatures (tuesday midday we passed a bank whose digital thermometer read 101 F), the breeze was like a balm to my sandpaper lungs.

we stopped at a roadside stand to chat with a friendly girl and eat strawberries picked that morning. she was kind to us: "surely, yous can stand here and eat 'em!" she spoke a melodious dutch into a cell phone. i thought that was weird, but whatever: the strawberries were delicious and we downed a quart without trying.

we depart tomorrow morning for buffalo, where tom has a cousin. we understand that there is an arts festival happening literally out her front door, so we are excited to explore that.

days 2 and 3 - needham, MA to valley falls, NY

2008-06-08T14:54:00.001-04:00

Needham, MA - Valley Falls, NY
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day 4: half-day off in valley falls, ny

2008-06-08T13:06:00.000-04:00

well, we've just had some delicious tuna sandwiches here at tom's uncle rich's house just north east of albany, and we're going to take a swim at the neighbor's before taking a jaunt down to the schenectady area, so i will say only this for now: we made it from boston to valley falls in 2 days, and that feels like a victory. as you can see on the map below (you can move it around with the cursor), friday we rode on through the rain to swanzey lake, NH and yesterday we beat the heat from swanzey, across vermont, to valley falls. there were hills - big ones - along route 9, also known as the molly stark trail. we feel we have made molly's intimate acquaintance. we ate lunch at the "100 mile view;" we shoveled couscous into our maws while surveying 4 states.

at that point, i was pretty sure we weren't going to make it: i was feeling pretty beat, and vermont's famous green mountains lay ahead. thankfully, we had already made most of the day's elevation gains, and the ascent into the state park was roughly half the distance of our earlier climb, and was followed by a 4 mile descent. even with our unaerodynamic panniers and fat touring tires, according to tom's cyclometer, we hit 40 mph.

i will post some photos when we get to rochester on wednesday, but the other highlight of the day was an unexpected parade in brattleboro, VT. it's their take on pamplona's "running of the bulls:" this 3 day celebration of maple products, recycling and dairy is called the "strolling of the heifers." we followed the compost float and 40 bekilted bagpipers past the "green expo" straight to the "dairy fest," where we sampled delicious cheeses and saw a performance by the new england school of circus arts. trapeze. the young woman was very accomplished.

finally, i swallowed 3 bugs yesterday. i spent a lot of the time in between meditating on different kinds of knowledge: the first had a rigid exoskeleton - i could feel it struggling against me, and i was struggling against it. the second was tender. the third was a lakefly, i'm sure.

day 1: unexpected rain, unexpected rice

2008-06-05T19:07:00.000-04:00

as you can see from the map below, today tom and i rode to hull beach to ritualistically dip our tires in the atlantic ocean. driving winds near the surf and a light rain provided a second baptism. round trip, we covered about 57 miles, including a few wrong turns. as much as i love the new england geography, local governments in massachusetts seem to take pleasure in making thier towns difficult to navigate. we came to a few intersections completely unmarked by street signs and many more giving us only the name of the cross street. in massachusetts it is very easy to see every way one might go, only very difficult to determine where one is.

we ate a delicious brunch at this little diner across the street from the beach. i couldn't stop shivering, so i drank 4 cups of coffee to try and warm up. in hindsight, perhaps i passed seamlessly into the jitters. by the time we finished our hash browns (mixed with rice - interesting!), we were the only people in the place, so we had the pleasure of listening to the waitresses talk amongst themselves as they cleaned up. in time, they turned to us, telling us about their kids and pouring still more coffee. "here you are, sweeties." "there you go, my loves." we are loved.

tomorrow we head west towards tom's uncle's in valley falls, new york - just north of albany. we'll be there saturday or sunday afternoon; we haven't decided our pace right out of the gate. let's see how the legs feel tomorrow.

of the few i took today, this is the picture that tom selected for himself: this is what tom looks like contemplating infinite water and infinite fog.

this is the picture that i have selected for myself.

day 1: prologue

2008-06-05T19:06:00.000-04:00

21 Dell - Hull (Actual)
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bike trip 2008

2008-06-01T11:56:00.000-04:00

hi!

the blog is back: i am posting in response to rumors that my good friend tom cole and i will be taking a bike trip during june and july. these rumors are true. tom and i are meeting up in boston tomorrow to get organized, and we anticipate departure on thursday or friday for points west. first stage: boston to rochester, with stops at tom's uncle's north of albany and our friend ted's in syracuse.

i'll be posting again in the next few days to give a more complete picture of our immediate situation and our developing plans. tom will be blogging also, and his address is under the 'links' section to your right, so you can follow our progress from MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES. stay tuned.

wild animals

2007-08-28T16:58:00.000-04:00

my walk home from the u-bahn takes a shortcut along a playground. in the morning, the root-broken path is shaded by a canopy of spiky pines. in the evenings, the light of the steetlamps filters down white through long needles. being especially tired tonight, i was especially zoned out on the home stretch. i was preparing a few phrases to describe my day to my host mother and sister, who would probably still be up. i wanted to ask about antonia´s first day of the 6th grade.

i looked up before the noise had really registered: a snort. a snort? there, along my side of the low fence, a family of boar froze, streaked with the shadows. the small ones were about 5 meters away, herding together. i felt a shock over my skin; the largest one was still trotting towards me. the mother, at four meters, three.

i clapped, loud. one of the piglets lunged sideways and shook the fence. the mother stopped and snorted again. the other large boar was still approaching from my left. i clapped again. hey! i couldn´t see any tusks, but the closer beast came up to my thigh. it would knock me down on the charge like any other animal. i was thinking about my friend emanuele´s garden in montegemoli, how boar had rooted it up and broken his tomato trellises. last year a 6-year-old boy was killed. i clapped again and we all held still.

i backed away, and the two adults watched me, scraping their hooves onto the broken asphalt. putting a little distance between myself and the young, everyone breathed easier, and i quickly counted their ridged backs. nine, tramping into the suburbs for the choice grass. rules of the wild still apply.

i fly back to the US on friday.

global observations about germany part 4

2007-08-22T16:26:00.000-04:00

4. yesterday while on the last leg of my run around the grünwaldsee, i passed two girls, each about 10 years old. they were chattering loudly from either side of the street, seated gingerly on unicycles. they got quiet as i approached. the one with the long blonde ponytail hopped to the ground. after i passed, i looked over my shoulder; she had again fitted the long seat under her wildly striped skirt, and was wobbling over the wet cobblestones toward her friend. she was also wearing a pair of outrageous tights. behind that whirl of color, i noticed that the unicycle was outfitted with a small fender that pointed back, straight and stiff like a shark´s fin. i love germany. it is a land where children ride unicyces, secure in the knowledge that no spray from the street will kick up onto their skirts.

weimar

2007-08-19T16:54:00.000-04:00

as part of the program i´m on, this weekend was a scheduled trip to weimar, an idyllic town southwest of berlin and the birthplace of ´the german classical period.´ goethe lived there for 50 years, and was later joined by schiller. there is a beautiful park that stretches along the ilm river, complete with ruins purposefully constructed as such - to add to the atmosphere. the town is full of perfect 16th century renaissance villas with their tastefully daring color schemes. my favorite had a smooth stucco exterior, grey with a hint of violet, set off perfectly by orange window frames, outlined in black.

we spent this morning at what remains of buchenwald, a nazi concentration camp 6km from weimar. we spent 3 hours milling around, listening to an audio tour on ipods hung around our necks. i walked along the railroad tracks until they mossed over in the encroaching forest. there, i found a series of simple aluminum poles planted in the ground at regular intervals. at the bottom of one i read ´unbekannt 893.´ unbekannt means unknown, nameless.

after walking around for an hour inside the camp proper, i chose at random one of the paths leading down the hill into the trees. signs pointed towards ´the little camp,´ where conditions were worst: many prisoners lived barely a few weeks. but i chose wrong at the fork, and arrived at a dead end. from there i could see the path i should have taken, and cut across a small orchard towards it.

but i had to turn around. looking down, i saw enormous plums, oozing out of their overripe skins, scattered everywhere. i felt them under my feet. one looked stretched out like a pear, as though while still on the branch its flesh had liquified and weighed down in the peel, like pennies in a sack. turned with my toe, its underside was all rotten, clinging to the grass.

i was very angry: no one had picked these plums when they were ripe on the branches, no one had put them in a basket to sit on their kitchen counter or to be made into preserves. why hadn´t someone gotten some sweet out of these plums? i picked one up and it went to mush in my hand. it was so heavy. i put it down carefully, afraid it would splatter if dropped, and watched my step along the way i had come.

überwältigt

2007-08-11T07:38:00.000-04:00

i. general

there is a lot going on in berlin. every site has a past. to your right, you´ll see a fragment of the wall. and here, this is where karl liebknecht was killed. behind me and to my left, one can see the brick foundation of the SS-headquarters, the ´topography of terror.´

i don´t know very much about architecture, but i have been thinking about it a lot here. space has a memory, a past that must be somehow confronted, dealt with, integrated into the present. what do we want to remember? what do we want to forget? are we going to put a sign up that says ´under this parking lot is the bunker where hitler committed suicide and where his body was burned´? are we going to put a sign on the side of the finance ministry that says ´this was the air force headquarters, where hermann göring had his office´? there is a monument for the murdered jews of europe. should there be one for the gays and lesbians that the third reich massacred with equally malicious intent?

in an anthology i brought along on this trip, the editor j.d. mcclatchy introduces the poet may swenson saying that ´she was aware that description is itself a moral commentary.´ so this is about the past, but specifically, it seems, about how to reprsent the past - how should a community describe its own memory - to visitors and to itself. architectural choices seem to be one of the ´practical´ facets of dealing with a past that speaks to us whether or not we want to hear.

ii. specific

»The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate ... Our memorial attempts to present a new idea of memory as distinct from nostalgia ... We can only know the past today through a manifestation in the present.« (Peter Eisenman, 1998)

in may 2005, berlin´s holocaust memorial was opened to the public. constructed according to peter eisenman´s design, the denkmal für die ermordeten juden europas is comprised of a visitor´s center underneath the 19.000 square meter ´field of stelae´ - 2711 concrete slabs of varying height, arranged in a grid. because of their different heights (from a few inches up to 4 or 5 meters) and because the are placed on an intentionally uneven surface, together the slabs create a the impression of a wave or ripples on a liquid surface. i learned on my walking tour wednesday that peter eisenman was inspired by wheat blowing in the wind. take it or leave it.

http://www.holocaust-mahnmal.de/en

the monument is open day and night. one can walk along the axes of the grid, seeing the blocks rise up around, some leaning slightly away. one can sit on the low blocks around the edges. i went back thursday evening and jotted down a few notes about what i saw. this is what i wrote:

iii. this is history

yuuuu-lee! yuuu-leee! juuuu-leee!

a young couple murmuring in french emerge from the stone, then fade again into a valley. walking side by side is a tight fit between the slabs.

3 guys my age jump from block to block toward the center of the field. they have gotten the attention of some official, who holds his arms out and pushes his palms toward the ground. Down! the one wearing a visor and camoflage shorts is embarassed. that´s nice.

to my right, another group has climbed up. leaping to the next block, they look through the LCD screens on the back of their pocket cameras. a boy sprints by, chased by his older sister. the french couple reappears at the edge. beyond the crest of the wave i can see the umbrellas outside the café.

yuuu-leeee! juuuu-leeee!

a young woman in a tanktop and playfully short bangs is pacing along the edge of the monument, peering down the rows. her 7 year old son jogs ahead, helping. she whistles between her fingers and anxious calls out juuuu-leeee! juuuuu-leee! she has lost her julie in there.

there are trees in this city

2007-08-04T13:04:00.000-04:00

guten abend, i#m in berlin, adjusting to zet another kezboard configuration. i've been here 24 hours, and i need to take care of some basic 'get settled' tasks before dinner, but i just wanted to say that i am safely arrived in northern europe, at a very welcoming homestay in the southwest neighborhood of zehlendorf. this morning i went to the market with my host mother daniela and her daughter antonia, and this afternoon we went on a boat tour of berlin. that was very nice. here are the differences i have noticed thus far between germany (here) and italy (there):

1. here you eat all your food on one plate. fork and knife are both placed to the right of the plate, and the spoon across the top. i was delighted to learn this.

2. here, wheat bread exists. it is almost black, and after eating it i feel capable of unifying a nation.

3. germans love trees, and like to have them around for company. even in the center of berlin, i am amazed by how green the landscape is, and i don't think a month will be nearly long enough to see all the branches hanging over a dark oak trellis or all the ivy climbing up a black lampost.

4. there are many more buildings here that have been built in the last 50 years, and a particular wealth of public buildings designed by the most prominent architects in the last 15.

i am here in berlin to pound grammar and vocabulary into my skull, and, departing from this last point, to be a part of a culture that has witnessed two moments of profound destruction. the allies bombed the city. a wall was built, then they tore it down.

il macellaio

2007-07-30T15:46:00.000-04:00

tearing it up, endlessly analyzing the infinite possible interpretations in your mind, that's a waste of time, he said. the melody, the harmony of poetry is something you feel in your gut.

dario cecchini had very large hands and a collection of appropriately large knives. the wall of his shop read 'chi mangia la fiorentina unnà paura di nulla.' he who eats a steak alla fiorentina fears nothing. this is also written on his business card, which encourages prospective clients to make an appointment. dario cecchini is a butcher.

the shop was decorated with an incredible diversity of elegant art. restored antique furniture was balanced against wild modern sculpture. next to some of these latter pieces were silly sketches by the sculptors, made on the shop's own butcher paper. in the corner, a heavy door with a window looked into the stainless steel cooler: there were six sides of beef hanging on enormous hooks, and more chains hung down, waiting. already wrapped, cuts of pork, veal, and boar peeked out of the drawers in a plastic chest. in the corner chilled a stained white bucket, half full of unidentifiable innards.

behind the elegant curve of the glass display case, there was a small scale, piles of butcher paper, and an old machine that seemed capable of vacuum sealing a vespa. we were there after hours; the case was empty and spotless except for a few sheets of paper set parallel on the steel display platters - orders phoned and faxed in, notes to the two apprentices. next to the case, right out on the floor of the shop, was a wooden table about waist high. the legs were 4x4s, and the surface was 18 inches thick, curving slightly on the bottom. three feet long and two feet wide, it was half a tree: the surface was a hundred dark dents and in the center, a shallow worn into the wood by the rocking of a heavy blade. the block shone, greased with the fat of bones. i couldn't stop staring at it, and cecchini said simply, 'i made that.'

in addition to having this exclusive and impeccably decorated butcher shop, signore cecchini owns and runs a restaurant across the street that is open 3 nights a week and has no menu. you eat what he brings you. and until recently, if you caught him at the right time and in the right mood, he would recite sonnets of 13th and 14th century vulgar tuscan poets and hundreds of lines from dante's inferno before going back into his locker to hang hundreds of pounds of top-quality beef on stainless steel hooks.

but signore cecchini doesn't do dante anymore. he feels that roberto benigni and other italian actors have made dante a commodity. it's fashionable to recite dante now in soccer stadiums. or, benigni recites a canto on television and the next day every italian bookstore is sold out of the comedy, only so those books can gather dust on another set of shelves. signore cecchini is also a showman, no doubt: even while we were being introduced he threw out a wide variety of tuscan cuss words, trying to shock and alienate the theorists from the university, the people who want to take what is sacred to him and show it the self-indulgent saw of literary theory.

i asked signore cecchini if there was a connection in his mind between his love of poetry and the work that he does with his hands, tearing up animal bodies with his huge hands and his huge knives. he said, 'listen, i'm not a dante scholar, a dantista. i'm a butcher. i think that poetry is something that the soul needs to be healthy, and the only way i know how to approach poetry is to learn it by memory, to feel the words in my gut and then, from there, to speak them out loud.'

dario cecchini is relatively famous in italy and even abroad for his odd combination of callings. he has appeared on 'the today show.' this notoriety allows him to request his clients to make appointments, to serve whatever he wants at his restaurant, and to make a sack of money doing it. it could be argued that, to some extent he too has sold out, using poetry as a way to compliment and enrich himself. he doesn't seem to mind the attention it brings him.

but i want to let this butcher have his ego and his success. not because only very few butchers jump up on their counters to recite poetry for their customers and neighbors, but because all butchers know about bodies, about how much they weigh. and because all butchers cut themselves sooner or later. cecchini's reaction to this latest commodification of dante seemed almost physical, as if hearing dante torn up and sold for 50€ a seat gave him the same pain as seeing a choice cut ground up for goulash, or nicking a finger with one of his cleavers. swearing at us, refusing to recite in public, it was as if he was instinctively pressing this wound with his unmarked hand, or sticking the bleeding finger in his mouth.

why does it feel so right to do that, anyway? it makes us seem more animals than enlightened beings. and maybe that's the point. he may reject complex interpretations, he may cuss and stomp and make a little scene, and it may have all been part of the performance, the act - but i bought it: for cecchini, poetry has weight. he feels it in his bones, feels it running in his veins. to see it be made into a fad, sold on the auction block for cheap; that cuts him, and deep.

three

2007-07-27T19:12:00.000-04:00

1. buon harry potter

tonight i went with some friends to see harry potter 5 e l'ordine della fenice at the multiplex. on the ride there, i got a phone call. at the end of the conversation, my interlocutor signed off saying 'ci vediamo domani, buon harry potter.' now, the sense of this was totally clear and translates perfectly into english as 'see you tomorrow, enjoy harry potter.' but literally (i find literal translations so very much fun), the phrase renders as 'we'll see each other tomorrow, happy harry potter.' italians wish each other 'buon compleanno' and 'buon natale' - happy birthday and merry christmas, respectively, and that's familiar enough to a native english speaker - but they also feel so free to use 'buon' with almost any noun. the textbook example is 'buon divertimento,' which literally translates as 'happy [as in happy birthday] - happy fun time.' and so, tonight, we took it to the next level, and i'd like to send out those same wishes to the virtual community tonight: God bless us every one: merry harry potter.

2. the conditional past

to continue the grammar thread, while recently reading the end of an italian short story, it really jumped out to me that the whole paragraph was in the conditional past. and so it seems, despite my best efforts to the contrary, that i am becoming an adult. just making sure we're all on the same page, there are three types of hypothetical phrases in italian. the present: if x happens, then i do/will do y; the possible: if x were to happen, i would do y; and the impossible: if x had happened, i would have done y. and let me interject here that hypothetical phrases are my personal everest of the italian language, my personal standard of fluency. if i ever am irritated with someone, bring my hands together as if in prayer and rock them at the wrists and bust out a hypothetical phrase without effort, i will be celebrating at the summit baby.

in the 'impossible' variety above, 'i would have done y' is an example of the conditional past. if the conditions had been different, i would have made a different choice. but that's impossible. there's no turning back. the conditional past is grammar's recognition that our choices have consequences, that these choices matter, and that time travel doesn't exist: past choices can rarely be undone. with all this in my head, reading the last paragraph of that story, i surprised myself by saying, 'oh SHIT!'

3. jogging part II

although it's been very hot, i've been running more and more. this is partly because exercise helps me unwind and work out the stress of my projects, not knowing when it's appropriate to address someone formally or informally, and continually attempting and failing to construct correct hypothetical phrases. but it's also because i want to sort of stay in shape, and i don't want to eat less, so i have to run more.

weeks ago i was talking with one of the neighbors who is a runner and he asked me about my route. i told him i go down to the roundabout, over the bridge, and then loop back through a rather industrial area. he looked at me incredulous, his disgust completely unmasked. that part of town? it stinks! and he made a move as though to hold his nose. i run for an hour down at the park. why don't you run there? i shrugged. well, angelo, because...i don't like running in a small circle and i like to be surrounded by heavy machinery when i work out, ok? there, i thought it. i couldn't figure out why he was so up in arms about it.

so, it's taken me weeks, but i may have had an insight into this. and may be an insight into other italian mysteries such as 'why do people wear such nice clothes and sunglasses all the time?' and 'why do people always bring coffee to the table on a tray?' if i probe angelo a little more next time i see him, i bet he would translate his disdain for running on the wrong side of the tracks as 'you run there? that's 45 minutes of your life - you could be having an experience that would be so much more aesthetic than that!' it comes as no surprise that italians are sensitive to beauty. i mean, they have some of that here. but what impresses me is the tenacity of their commitment to it in the most quotidian arenas. you're going to the store? why not put on your new shoes? some jackass american kid is coming over? why not use the best china? every moment is an opportunity to experience something beautiful - why not take another five minutes of thought and planning to make the afternoon something to write home about?

il crudo sasso

2007-07-26T17:27:00.000-04:00

monday morning i left early from arezzo and took a train/bus north to stia, a small hamlet in the casentino valley. i walked from the station to the Castello di Porciano, of which only a single tower and a lone wall remain. but on the north side, the stone that remains was covered with a blanket of ivy that moved slowly from a green that was almost black in shadow through a fire orange into a deep blood red. i don't know what has caused this change in color: it's still july (even in italy), and why is the only west side so eager to get on with autumn?

i took some pictures for the dante project, then talked to an old man at the fountain. he was filling up a blue plastic watering can and had four more patiently waiting, their long spouts all in a row. he was very inviting when i asked if i could fill my water bottle. he gave me directions to the trailhead where i could start up towards monte falco, one of the high peaks of this region and of in the appenine mountain range. i'll gloss over that part of the journey, suffice it to say that it was steep and took a long time. when i came out of the oak forest into this little bald meadow at the top, to my left was all of eastern italy. the appenines run down the spine of the italian peninsula, and on a clear day, they say you can see all the way to the tyrrenian sea, and from monte falterona (the peak just to the east), you can see to the adriatic. really fantastic, even with a little haze.

from there i followed the appenine ridge for about 15 km until i more or less slid down the eastern side to the sacred hermitage and monastery at camaldoli. i spent two nights there in the guest house of the monastery, where i had a cell to myself. this made me very happy, despite the fact that the bed was about 4 inches too short. after walking more or less 30km, i slept great. tuesday i ambled in the forest and chilled out by the little brooks that dante describes running down the mountain; at a pasture hidden in the forest, i stood shyly at the fence while two horses nibbled at hay from my open palm.

in the afternoon and evening i sat in on two sessions of a national conference on liturgy. i heard an architect's fascinating talk about the centrality of the altar, how the altar defines a church as 'lo spazio in attesa,' the space in waiting. space waiting to be actualized, made into a place.

yesterday i left camaldoli shortly after 6, taking a different path to the southeast towards la verna, the summer retreat of St. Francis of Assisi and the site of a beautiful monastery that sits on what dante calls 'il crudo sasso' - the raw rock. that seemed pretty spot-on to me: approaching through the forest, there were huge boulders everywhere, covered in moss and jutting out of the ground like impacted teeth. i don't know much about geology, but from the extreme angles of the striations in these stones, the area seemed like the place tectonic plates come to party. either that, or it is the scrap heap of the LORD.

rising out of the canopy, the forbidding surface of the largest boulder was chosen by Francis and his closest followers as the site of their retreat. at the time, they simply spent the summer months each crouched in his own hovel. standing beside the site of francis' first cave, one of the friars explained that it was chosen for him by his brothers as the most luxurious: only a little rain would come in when it was windy. a nice gesture; it is always windy.

il crudo sasso figures prominently in francis' hagiography as the place he received the stigmata, the spontaneous appearance of the wounds of Christ on his hands and feet. i knew that. i did not know, as padre gildo explained, that in the last years of his life St. Francis wanted only two things: first, to know in his heart the love that Christ had for all people. and secondly, to know the pain that Christ experienced on the cross. i don't know how to react to that.

falcons

2007-07-22T16:14:00.000-04:00

party people (and those who would not identify as 'party people'):

this is the casentino valley, which follows the route of the arno river south from its source in the appenines towards arezzo. this is twilight. this is gherardo, who goes to art school by day and by night is one of italy's most accomplished falconiers. and this is a falcon. in italian, un girifalco grigio.

last night i found myself at gherardo's house chatting with his parents and drinking coca-cola, watching as gherard set his two prize falcons free to float about on the evening air, watching him swing a logoro - a length of cord with a baby chick tied to a weight on the end, watching the falcons scream down from on high to claw the chick to shreds in midair. their rear claws (which correspond to human thumbs, i suppose), are muscular and the talon is longer and much more intimidating than the others, which were already considerably intimidating. at the last possible moment, the falcon's feet drop down from their aerodynamic tuck to thrust these rear claws into their prey. when i saw this happen in living color, the force of the falcon's descent and the strength of the claws ripped the chick's head off.

it was awesome.

as gherardo eloquently explained, falconry has been an art since the middle ages, with rich traditions in the west and in asia. the logoro he used with the chick was a western design, but gherardo also showed us a logoro that falconers have been using in pakistan for centuries. a length of flexible cane with string on the end, it allowed gherardo to simulate the flight of smaller birds by using a real bird's wing instead of a weight at the end of the cord. he handled the cane with practiced grace; his motion reminded me of flyfishermen. then, he reached into a small pouch at his belt and pulled out another chick, which he pulled apart with his bare hands, throwing pieces to the falcon, who caught them in the air.

it was awesome.

although gherardo has established an obvious intimacy with the birds that he's had for a long time, he was very frank about using hunger as a means to keep his new acquisitions close. the falcon comes back because of the chick, whether he tears it to pieces or whether gherardo does the job for him. in the end, that only increased my appreciation for what these falcons are capable of. birds of prey seem to be machines of desire. when they flew towards their prey, it was as if every feather was perfectly aligned towards their aim, as if every atom of their bodies were drawn effortlessly along their line of sight.

tomorrow i'm going up to camaldoli, a benedictine monastery in the northern casentino valley, and on wednesday i'll be at la verna, St. Francis of Assisi's summer refuge. thinking of the falcons, it makes more sense why monks everywhere take a vow of poverty, and why perhaps St. Francis, who spoke of 'lady poverty' as his beloved, was able to revolutionize the church in his brief lifetime. i don't know if it's 'right' to deprive falcons of food to bind them to you. i've tried to starve a few girls into liking me, and it didn't work very well.

but watching those falcons, i felt free. the grace with which they moved their wings to catch the currents, the speed and control with which they approached, the ferocity of their attack: the air is their element, and they can do almost anything they want up there. being in the presence of that power, i felt a part of it. but also because it's slowly becoming real to me that my desires are my own, that i can make choices. i don't intend to take any eternally binding and highly uncomfortable vows in the next few days, but i want to take a long look at these monks, who have pointed every fiber of their being toward their desire and are living in the consequences. to be really free, does one have to choose to live in desire?

hot bodies

2007-07-15T18:19:00.000-04:00

hello, it's 00:20, and i am sitting in arezzo. i should go to bed, but the last two days are worthy of description, so here we are:

i spent yesterday more or less around the house labelling photos for the dante project and typing up a translation of a mario rigoni stern story that i'll finish tomorrow. around 16:30, i put on some clothes and walked in to the center of town, where i met up with a local poet and high school latin teacher with whomi had chatted a few times last year. she was going to give a lecture in nearby monterchi, comparing the work of two painters: in this corner, from 15th century san sepolcro, piero della francesca; trading uppercuts and color palattes with with the 20th century florentine ottone rosai. taking advantage of the opportunity to salute her, listen to some italian, and see some art all in one swing, i was going to check it out. i was getting a ride with her and her husband. it was very, very hot.

the ride to monterchi bordered on the surreal. i don't have time to do justice to the complexity of the personalities involved, but there were three principal players, plus me: professoressa verde, made-up to the max, expressing her anxiety about her lecture by confirming a series of superfluous details over her cell-phone. her husband, francesco, smoking incessantly, expressing his anxiety that we were running late. every 2 minutes, he would set his jaw and announce the time, followed by our expected arrival time in monterchi. with the interaction between these two characters alone, i was already primed for a spectacle. we left 10 minutes behind schedule, only for professoressa verde to realize 5 minutes into our 45 minute drive that we had forgotten a friend of hers from the previously mentioned provincial government, to whom she had also promised a ride. and so, another rapid, pointed telephone call. the woman was on her bicycle, on a nearby street. we would turn around and pick her up.

prof.ssa verde gave her husband a brief description of this alessandra as we went in search of her. she's passionate about art, specifically piero della francesca. she works at the provincia. she's taking classes at the university. she's a little...spaced out. she's rather fat. and there she was, waving at us eagerly on the sidewalk, next to her dilapidated bicycle. a brown skirt and leopard print top were stretched across her generous build. as she settled herself very close to me in the back seat, she chattered away; beads of sweat collected on her upper lip. somewhere in the middle of the unfiltered narrations of her consciousness, she made my acquaintance. no, really, the pleasure was mine.

over the next 45 minutes, prof.ssa verde became more and more nervous about her talk, and now having no one else to call, she turned to the two bodies in the back seat. she delicately took a book from her purse and did an impromptu commentary on some of the verses she herself had written inspired by these two painters. she encouraged me to buy her book after the lecture. alessandra kept interrupting with the most far-fetched mental associations ('listen, you know what comes to mind...?'); francesco was clearly furious about our continued state of tardiness and that this fat lady in the back seat - the reason we were so late in the first place - wouldn't shut up and let his wife read her damn poems. and all the while, it was very, very hot.
the sweat pooled precariously above alessandra's lips and then ran down into the folds of her neck.

today i got up at 6 and caught a bus to the marina di grosseto on the adriatic sea, italy's west coast. my host family has been there on holiday for the last 2 weeks and i went down for the day to be with them and take a dip. the beach was narrow and crowded, but the water was beautiful. i swam out to the buoy and floated there, looking back at all the people under their umbrellas, walking along the edge of the water, splashing each other. summer in italy is a celebration of the human body. every woman wore a bikini, regardless of age or physical fitness. every man over 25 wore a speedo. there were bellies that spilled generously over waistbands, thighs that slapped against each other. old women sunned their shoulders, their tops arranged in ways that tempted physics.

and i have to tell you, every body was beautiful. the sun was high and the water calm and blue all the way to elba. many of these families have been coming to this beach their whole lives for a few weeks in july or august. and it is very, very hot. what a wonderful freedom, to lay down your weight and have the sea take it. to come back under the umbrella, and read the afternoon away in magazines.

immigrant girl

2007-07-13T04:35:00.000-04:00

hello, i'm back in arezzo this morning after four days on the road to the north and east. i was in bologna, verona, padova, and ravenna taking pictures for the dante project. the mosaics in ravenna are really mind-boggling (the area above and around the small altar in San Vitale has over 400,000 individual tiles), and a youth hostel there was my home base.

as i arrived on monday evening to check in, the carabinieri drove up. i was slightly concerned: unlike the polizia, who write parking tickets, the carabinieri are military police whose uniforms are a very serious shade of navy and whose sidearms are not attached to their belts by a little elastic cord. i was not the reason for their visit, however: as i was chatting with the saucy blonde running the place, they brought a dark-skinned and dishevelled girl from the back seat of the car into the hostel. once inside, the driver of the car spoke with the proprietess. this officer seemed to spend his spare time lifting small automobiles into the air and biting the heads off small vermin or unattended infants. tiredly, he explained that they had found the girl wandering in the middle of the road; she had no where to go. as he was speaking, she seemed ashamed of herself. she stared at the floor. she pulled a carefully preserved romanian passport out of her large fanny pack. the saucy blonde's gaze chilled and she sighed. there was a bed for her, she could stay.

ravenna is a port city on the northeast coast, and so is a popular point of entry for eastern europeans looking to find work to support their families. italians have a complicated relationship with these immigrants. as in the united states, immigrants work the lowest level service jobs. the cops are always chasing dark-skinned vendors of trinkets or off-brand merchandise away from tourist attractions. italians call these young men 'vu comprà' - a jab at their poor pronunciation of 'voule comprare:' do you want to buy a...? many of the issues have correlates in the united states. immigrants often bear the brunt of frustrations about the lack of employment opportunities for young people and a political system gridlocked in partisan bickering and back-channel corruption. non-native speakers or darker-skinned individuals are often looked at with the same diffidence as hispanics are in some parts of the united states.

as in other european nations, racial diversity is a relatively new phenomenon in italy. until recently, the first sentence of french elementary school history texts was 'our ancestors the gauls,' and 50 years ago, that was accurate. but not anymore. europe is struggling to maintain national identities that can no longer rely on the subconscious support of 'people who look like us.' what can they lean on? in france it's the secular state - no head coverings allowed. elsewhere it's language. the term 'vu comprà' preserves the distinction between the old stock and the newcomers - those who know how to use the subjunctive and those who can just make themselves understood. in the netherlands, it's knowledge of national history and customs, and how high you score on the test determines your eligibility for citizenship. last year on the camino de santiago, we saw the unfolding of a publicity campaign billing this 1200 year old pilgrimage route as the 'main street of europe' - a path that predates all of the nations that now surround it. but history resists that sort of simplification, and clashes with the present reality. every few towns there was a statue of santiago matamoros, one of the later incarnations of st. james (whose tomb is the journey's destination). matamoros is rougly translated as 'moorslayer.' is that an image that a unified europe wants to rally around? europe is struggling with difference - between its own member nations and between the northern and southern hemispheres. i chuckled to myself yesterday in mantova, virgil's home town: the mythic history of italy begins with aeneas, the founder of rome. he too arrived on italian shores bedraggled and without a reservation.

the carabinieri gave the romanian girl a last glance and walked out, their keys and handcuffs jangling. the proprietess processed her documents, gave her a key and pointed to the stairwell. the girl never spoke. as she was shuffling away towards her room, a cell phone rang inside her small backpack. she rummaged furiously through some shirts and a small towel. she found the phone and answered, mumbling. there was a long silence, then she cried a little and choked out three or four words slowly, quietly. i don't speak romanian, but i got it. who hasn't said it?

'i want to come home.'

back in arezzo

2007-07-05T12:35:00.000-04:00

let me be brief. i got back from the farm on sunday evening. on tuesday, i went to siena for the famous palio - a bareback horserace around the semicircular campo in the center of the city. if i start talking about it, i'll be here for an hour, and i have to go. but suffice it to say, it was absolute madness. a girl passing by bumped into the guy next to me, who took offense and said something, so without a word, she just punched him in the face. that is how invested the sienese are in this: emotions were running high. when the 10 riders finally started, 2 were thrown in the first lap, their horses still tearing around the track shaking their manes - even they couldn't believe it. there was confusion at the finish - first the flag of the nicchio contrada was flown out of a window of the palazzo pubblico, but they took it back in after a just a minute. oca was the official winner and the place exploded. young girls were consoling their sobbing brothers. when the nicchio flag was flown from the palazzo, two middle-aged men from that district standing near me screwed up their leather faces and embraced as if they had both just become grandfathers. when that flag was taken back, their joy turned to a rage i had never seen.

yesterday i spent part of the day in florence, taking pictures for my dante project. i was just going about my business when i came across a piece in the Museo dell'Opera in Santa Croce that really rocked me back. preparing for a bronze bas-relief with scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, the late 16th century sculptor giambologna made some studies in terracotta, two of which are preserved in the museo. in the first, joachim is being chased out of the temple. the piece was pretty beat up, and so was the second. it was entitled 'the meeting of joachim and anne.'

i did some research on this, and while i knew that anne was the mother of mary, according to apocryphal texts, joachim was her father. he was chased out of the temple because he and anne had been unable to bear children: not having 'given children to israel,' he was publically humiliated. just as i would have done in that situation, joachim left the city and went to live with shepherds. but he was called back to his wife when an angel appeared to him in a dream; at the same moment the angel appeared to anne telling her that a child would be born. joachim and anne met at the gates of jerusalem - this is considered by commentators to be the moment of the immaculate conception of mary.

i didn't know any of that when i was looking at the sculpture. i just knew that giambologna knew what he was doing: this little terra cotta bas-relief was so obviously a study, a rough rectangle of baked clay, and yet the two central figures were so animated, reaching out to embrace each other. their movement and their desire were palpable. and the figures had no heads or arms: broken, lost in the last four and half centuries.

tease

2007-06-26T11:55:00.000-04:00

so let me tell you a little bit about the farm. it is run by an american woman named edith who came to italy 35 years ago as an art history doctoral student. she's been here since. la fonte ferrata is half organic farm, half retreat 'place,' and edith herself follows a modified verson of st. benedict's rule for hermits. she is delightful.

edith has several cats, one of which got half its face ripped off by a fox or boar on the day i arrived. while it convalesces, the kittens that belong to it have been adopted by a surrogate calico. the little ones often...how to put this - meld their three miniature feline frames into a single sphere, which they then roll up next to the calico flank. it's impossilbe to tell which tail, ear, or muzzle belongs to whom. cute is a word too brief to describe this.

the adriatic sea is about 5 km away, and saturday night i found the perfect spot to view the sunset. next to the olive grove, there is a big fig tree and two long rows of lavender. the lavender looks like something out of dr. seuss. it is beautiful, but simultaneously so spiky and purply alien that i actually got a little freaked out thinking a sneech or lorax would materialize over my shoulder. but, for better or worse, we stayed this side of whoville and nothing more spectacular happened than the slow dunk of the ripening plum-sun into the sea. it was a fierce orange against the lavender, and the cypresses in the distance were silhouetted...I was like, dude - can we spread this out a little bit? can we donate 5% of this beauty to the krispy kreme parking lot at the corner of jefferson and 15A?

i do a lot of solitary work, but a couple times a week some neighbors come over to lend a hand. danielle is quebecoise, and has been living in italy for 8 years. french is her native tongue, and her english is excellent, but in trying to negotiate all the different idioms she sometimes makes these mistakes which are made more hilarious by the general context of fluency. above all, these instances make me feel better about being an amateur language user here myself. today, she tried to ask me if my time in italy is part of research for a dissertation or a thesis. and there, right at the end, she fell back on an anglicized version of the french 'la thèse' and ultimately came out with, 'so, are you here for a tease?'

i laughed. yes. i am. sunset with a side of cypress and lavender - that is a tease. whatever i will be able to accomplish doing research on dante or translating short stories, it's just a tease for what's really out there in both areas. more broadly, i think danielle hit right on it: thinking about the best essays i've read, the thesis - the main idea, the point - is so often just a tease. all the detail and example and description is so much more delicious than the summing up. the idea? that's great. the experience? better. let me rephrase. the idea of 'surrogacy/adoption' is beautiful - it means you can have more than one family. but the idea is nothing compared with a ball of kittens warming themselves at the breast of a strange cat.

3 minutes

2007-06-22T12:26:00.000-04:00

hello all,

i have three minutes remaining on my hour at an internet cafe/tobacco counter in donoratico, LI. this week and next i am working at an organic farm called La Fonte Ferrata - the iron fountain. it's solitary work, a lot with the weedwacker, and i take an inordinate amount of pleasure mowing down the tall grass and making it even. i am reading dante, james wright poems, and thomas merton. and harry potter 3, il prigioniero di azkabàn.

hopefully some more content will be forthcoming in the next few days. until then...

interview in the legislature

2007-06-17T04:29:00.000-04:00

good morning.

one of my projects here in italy this summer is conducting research for an interactive database on the geography of dante. although the protagonist of the Divine Comedy (dante the pilgrim) undertakes a journey through the metaphysical terrain of the afterlife, dante the poet makes that journey real to his readers by frequent allusion to landmarks and vistas that he himself experienced in 13th century italy and that are still (to some extent) available to modern readers. my project is to take photos and collect information on the various locales that are part of dante's life and the tradition that continues to develop out of his work. whether it be a place where dante himself stopped or stayed during his exile from florence, a place he may not have seen but mentions in the Comedy, or places that travelers have explored since - imagining themselves following in dante's footsteps: my assignment is to catalog these places in image and text and then weave together the various itineraries into a coherent network of interactive web pages.

as part of this project, this past thursday i conducted a preliminary interview with il Dottor Pierluigi Rossi, an official in the regional government, doctor/nutritionist, and local television personality. this week on 'terra di arezzo' he presented his findings collected over the last year surrounding the Battle of Campaldino (11 june 1289), in which the florentines literally massacred the aretine army and their two commanders, Buonconte da Montefeltro and Bishop Guglielmo degli Ubertini. beyond the fact that dante himself was in the florentine cavalry for this battle, Buonconte has a prominent role in Canto V of the Purgatorio volume of the Divine Comedy and Guglielmo was the bishop who initiated the construction of the Duomo in Arezzo. This Dottor Rossi and others have found the skeleton of Guglielmo buried beneath a small Fransiscan church near the battlefield alongside two others - one of whom he believes to be Buonconte's. as far as the dante database goes, it's kind of a big deal.

in any case, the actual content of the interview aside, thursday was an interesting insight into italian local politics. il Dottor Rossi told me to meet him at 11:30 at the Sede della Provincia - the regional government offices. the Sede della Provincia is probably slightly more prestigious and powerful than a county legislature, but housed in a 14th century stone building with an interior of hardwood and fresco. il Dottor Rossi arrived at 11:50, we made our introductions, and he led me into the Sala dei Grandi - the room where the legislature meets and where it was, in fact, in session. il Dottor Rossi led me into the center of the room and gave me a quick visual tour of the room, including a detailed description of the far wall, covered with beautiful 18th century portraits of all the historical greats born in the province of Arezzo. now, il Dottor Rossi was completely at ease, but this was a slightly awkward situation for me. i needed to appear simultaneously attentive and respectful to him - he will probably become one of the most important contacts in this project - while also conveying to the entire assembly that i didn't intend my presence in the center of the room as a sign of disrespect. which it almost certainly was. a man immediately to our right was, in fact, making an impassioned oration about public health, and there i was, getting the dime tour.

after 3 or 4 minutes of being stared at by 75% of the regional government (perhaps the only that day that a majority was achieved), il Dottor Rossi told me to wait off to the side - he would sit for a few moments, sign the register to indicate that he had been present for that session of governance, and we could go out to the terrace for our interview. that is precisely what happened. il Dottor Rossi took his seat and chatted for about 7 minutes with the woman next to him while this man (apparently from the opposition) railed on and on about small town health care. a page came by with a beautiful leather bound portfolio; he signed his name, got up, and left. our interview and tour of the area lasted about an hour. i had to go to another appointment, and il Dottor Rossi had to go to lunch - no doubt worn out by a contentious morning of governance.

portrait: perugia bus ride

2007-06-14T18:29:00.000-04:00

yesterday i was in the umbrian hill town of perugia to meet with a professor who is generously helping me as i investigate the process of translating short fiction from italian to english. so far it is uniquely satisfying, but oh my a lot of work.

i stand towards the front of the bus. i need to see what's going on, where we are. in the future i'd like to be able to recognize those landmarks, navigate on foot. i'd like to have no questions for the bus driver. i'd like to pretend i live here. i'd like to get to the point where all the beauty is old hat. it's awful: it's too easy to pretend i'm already there. even in italy, aesthetic experience asks for eyes up, ears open. there i am, turning over what i read in some book.

in the first seat, a few feet up and to my right, an unshaven man with dark eyes was slouched down in a washed out black sweatshirt. he looked around and i looked away. he was too lean, shifty. a few moments later, a young olive skinned woman in old sneakers came up to my elbow, holding a baby. a woman of her stature had approached me on the train 20 minutes before, asking for money. she had also been holding a baby. cheap, i thought.

but this woman was just waiting for an old man to get out of her way. the man in the sweatshirt was sitting with his eyes closed, his mouth just slightly open and breathing shallow. when she put her hand on his shoulder, he slowly raised his eyelids, then suddenly turned to give the fat baby a big toothy smile. it faded into a gaze of genuine...gratitude. then his eyes fell a bit and his mouth opened again, like something bitter might fall out. i looked for the first time at his right hand, which he was holding up along his jawline. it was bloated and swollen to twice its normal size.

there was a noise in the back of the bus. the man took only the slightest moment to gather his strength. a baby stroller had fallen down into the aisle. as he passed and moved decisively towards the back, i couldn't take my eyes off his hand, held up on a bent elbow against his chest. there was no protecting it from the maze of shoulders; it had to be broken, badly.

man. even in perugia, people are just trying to live. sometimes it is hard - to pack up the baby, come in from the outskirts of town, and take two buses up to the hospital. and the stroller won't stay put.

culture confrontations

2007-06-10T04:22:00.000-04:00

1. american foreign policy is all over the television. the telegiornali this last week have been packed with news and commentary about the G8 summit in germany and the preparations for president bush's arrival in rome friday afternoon. on the one hand, the commitment that came out of the summit were encouraging: we americans have finally pulled our heads out of the sand, noticed that 'it's getting hot in here' (here being the atmosphere), and agreed that yes, climate change is a reality. also, the 7 most industrialized nations in the world plus russia renewed and expanded their commitment to fighting AIDS in africa, which is fantastic.

on the other hand, all the posturing is just so disappointing. leaving aside the issue of planetary destabilization - a term that david orr prefers to 'climate change' - i'm offended that all these decisions are being made by 8 people, all white and very well fed. i know that all of the leaders have consulted extensively with people 'on the ground' and of course this money will do worlds of good, but at the very least on the symbolic level there is no room at the table for africa.

2. last night i went with my host-brother filippo to a birthday party for his friend sara. there were about 15 people up at a little house in the countryside near to arezzo, and we spent a wonderful evening eating and talking. granted, filippo and his friends are all in their late twenties, but i was so impressed by how an italian party works even for young people. everyone rolled in around 8:30 and we sang happy birthday to sara and did a toast. that brought us to 9pm. from 9 until 1:30, we ate, drank, talked and sang without ceasing. throughout the evening a soccer ball would appear and all the males would be drawn to it by a distinctively european magnetic force. but i was most struck by another magnetism that animated the evening. it's as much a comment on the college party or american bar scenes as it is on filippo's friends, but there was a strong sense that last night we were in it together. of course smaller conversations were always breaking out and breaking up, but everyone was there for the long haul. eating and drinking were means for time together, not means unto themselves. while even i was aware of some small dramas unfolding over the course of the evening, no one was positioning themselves to go home with someone else and no one retreated into the privacy of drunkenness.

the conversation was immediately interrupted so i didn't have to answer, but late in the evening someone asked me what the differences were between italian and american culture. so i thought only to myself: 'tonight is the difference.' in italy, even among a group of 15 young friends, the family at table together remains the most important social model. for better and worse, the dominant american ideal seems best expressed by the most recent barrage of military recruitment advertisements on television: an 'army of one.'

Italia x2

2007-06-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

hello everyone,

i'm back in italy. i thought the blog was an interesting forum to keep everyone informed of my various experiences and reflections last time around, and so i've decided to see what this medium inspires this time. as i remember writing in one of the very first posts, the title 'in the middle of the journey of our life' (taken from the first line of Dante's Divine Comedy) seems even more appropriate now. 18 months ago, setting out for 6 months in europe, i was heartened in thinking of my travels as part of a shared journey, whose challenges and blessings would be illuminated by those who had been a part of my life to that point, and also as part of the human experience of going out alone to make some aspects of the unknown more intelligible. i felt it was the least invasive way to keep interested parties abreast of that my particular process and its development.

i just wrote a whole paragraph about how fragile the 'our' in 'the journey of our life' can be, and maybe i'll come back to that in a later post, but the blog form encourages leaner fare and the thoughts that i'm developing on that front aren't as interesting or pressing as my most recent observation about italians: they rarely sweat. now, i am still acting under the assumption that if, hypothetically, one were to carry around a 25 lb. pack for an hour with the sun is beating down on an 80°F afternoon, that one might, nay, should expect some sweat collecting in the lower back region and potentially under the straps of the pack. and yet, here in italy, arriving at the home of friends in such a state provokes a cascade of commentary ending with a push out the door and commands to go take a shower and come back for dinner. of course, their company and the meal are more than worth it - even worth the phone call to the absent daughter of one's own age to inform her of one's arrival and an only slightly abbreviated rehashing of the afternoon's commentary - oddio tutto sudato come mai!

maybe i'm the only one around here drinking any water, or perhaps my scandinavian heritage or acclamation to the rochester clime has made me totally unable to handle heat, but on my run today i passed two other joggers who were both wearing sweatshirts. again, it's like 80°, and the young lady was wearing knee length tights and the gentleman had his long socks pulled up over his shins. perhaps the overarching realization about italians, evident in their cuisine, impeccable dress, social interaction, quantity of time spent drinking coffee away from work, is that everything for them is effortless. my northern european, protestant upbringing has given me an affection for work and a particular satisfaction in production (1) - whether it be the nuanced expression of an idea, the aesthetic experience that freshly cut lawn can be, or, when out for a run, ever expanding sweat stains emanating from the chest, back and underarm areas. i doubt i will ever become such a subtle creature as these italians.

Notes:
1. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

call-in radio

2006-07-21T01:48:00.000-04:00

I have been listening to the radio. On Tuesday I was eating a sandwich and listening to ‘1370 Connection,’ the local NPR show that plays from 12 to 1, and two area ministers were discussing a recent conference they had been to in DC on the issue of poverty in this nation and around the world. I believe it was organized by the Christian activist organization Sojourners. They were inspired. They were listening carefully to the callers. I decided I wanted to be one of them.

When I got onto the air, I noted something that had been suggested over the course of the hour, but hadn’t been directly addressed: without a doubt, alleviating poverty is going to require massive structural changes across economics, politics, and social policy, and more importantly, it is going to require sacrifice. (Ironically, this is a word never heard from the Bush Administration, unless it falls within the broad context of “please sacrifice your desire to know what’s being carried out in your name and your ability to participate in those pivotal decisions.” We have yet to hear an even half-hearted call to sacrifice our familiar and destructive habits of self-gratifying consumption. Not incidentally, I believe that we, the people are actually starving for a larger vision that demands our participation and action. We’re waiting for the opportunity to make a contribution – if only someone would give us enough credit to ask.)

Of course there are barriers to sacrifice. People are not going to throw down their remotes and plant victory gardens on Obama’s say-so. Even with the starry eyed diagnosis above coming from my own lips, I’m not sure I’m chomping at the bit to give up the ability to walk into Wegman’s and buy whatever my heart desires. I’ll ride my bike there, but I want a selection of rich foreign cheeses that stirs indecision and feelings of inadequacy. Speaking more seriously, it would be difficult to move away from an abundant array of choices in fresh produce when, well, most of the country is under a blanket of sooty snow. Yet that might be one of the 12 steps to becoming recovering petroleum addicts.

Getting back to poverty and these two ministers: what is necessary, then, is a structural adjustment program here within our very borders. But that institutional transformation (or victory garden) won’t happen unless, to use some extremely appropriate language, something or someone ‘changes our hearts.’ Being ministers, I imagined that these gentlemen would be familiar with some of the ins and outs of interior transformation. I asked what ideas or even specific verses from the prophetic tradition of the Bible touches and inspires them in this mission.

Both men spoke about Jesus’s discussion of the Judgement in Matthew’s Gospel. As one put it, on the last day “God is not going to judge nations according to their GDP. The more important matters are ‘did you feed the hungry, help the oppressed, visit the sick and imprisoned?’ And these are the questions we need to be making into priorities here and now.”

The other expounded upon that idea by directing listeners to a nearby passage in which Jesus says that ‘the poor will always be with you.’ He explained that many have used this passage to bolster an argument that poverty will be a perpetual and irresolvable problem, and we should essentially give up. He took a different tack. ‘I myself am convicted by this [convicted – word choice...wow]: I think this means that the poor are always here, and certainly as people who deserve human consideration, but also that the poor are here for us to learn from.’ The poor will always be with us, that we might see God at work and manifest among the most humble, those pushed to the margins. For if those in the gutter are deserving of God’s love and indeed have it showered upon them, are they not worthy of ours?

we are convicted.

day 32: the end of the world

2006-06-17T09:41:00.000-04:00

on 15 june 2006 pilgrims pat o'brien (usa), damien walsh (south africa), and carl adair (usa) drank a bottle of champagne on the rocky outcropping known as cabo de fisterra. more than one thousand years prior to the arrival of the first pilgrims in santiago, celts and other wanderers were following the milky way west to this point where the land still comes down hard into the angry surf. each night the sun falls down below the infinite horizon and i can understand their doubts that it would ever come up again.

it's amazing to think of ourselves as participants in a tradition that has existed for 2 millenia. just as they did, we and the others scattered across the rock in various reflections had made a journey towards...what? the camino seems to have denied us that which we were seeking and showered instead other blessings upon us. the whole process and this ending has so much mystery wrapped up in it: it seems that the most finite moment of the trip, the point at which it is physically impossible to keep walking - the point at which the journey must end - that is also the point at which we recognize the infinite. we have been down to the ocean, we have been down to the sea. i'm telling you, it goes on forever. we're nothing before it. our journey seems like nothing before it - a few steps. but i can't imagine a better feeling to have - a feeling more worthy of 900 km, a more appropriate end for this experience along the camino. i only hope we may keep on.

day 28: santiago de compostela

2006-06-11T15:49:00.000-04:00

there are no borders.
there are no boundaries in the land of the living.

day 21: the microcosm

2006-06-04T10:56:00.000-04:00

we're in villafranca, expecting several things:

1) calling home in about an hour
2) our sabbath menú del peregrino: 2 solid courses, dessert, and wine for under €10. t minus 2 hours
3) tomorrow's climb up to O Cebreiro. there's a lot of hype about this climb - apparently from villafranca it's 20 km more or less on the flat, followed by a jack up to 1.297 m in the last 5. we're not worried too about it, we've made it through the meseta. it's amazing how it's easier to get to the top of a mountain that it is to get to the other side of...the earth.

something i need to fill you all in on, today being day 21. on the first day, an extremely challenging 26km through the pyrenees undertaken foolishly after little rest and less food and begun at 2pm from st. jean pied-de-port, Pat and I had a formative discussion about microcosms. specifically, we considered the idea that this first day might be seen as a microcosm for the entire camino, which in turn would be a microcosm for our entire lives. we even expanded it further, conceptualizing each moment of the day as a camino unto itself, and on the expansive end, our lives as microcosms for all human life in all of time. the camino wasted no time in humbling us with a 9:45 pm arrival into roncesvalles having been soaked with rain and even pelted with marble-sized hail, but this microcosm idea has remained around in a different form.

we have been imagining that each day of the camino represents a year of life. our lives. things got off to a rough start - the world out of the womb is an uncomfortable place, and your skin's got to thicken up quick if you've got aspirations beyond the crib. since then we've endured the terrible twos, our first day of school, getting made fun of on the playground, and adolescence. only three days ago we were graduating from high school and going off to college. when you're on the road, the days (years) go slow - but looking back is another story. seems like only 3 days ago i was actually graduating from high school.

anyway, today represents the momentary unity of model and modeled: i'm 21 years old in real life and 21 years old in camino life (which is to say, extremely real life). tomorrow, we march off into the future. here's hoping that O Cebreiro doesn't smack us around too bad, otherwise i'm going back to 19. 19 was great.

twenties: what have you got?

tentative schedule - we're ahead of schedule mileage wise: arrive in santiago 12 june, officially receive half time off in purgatory (score!), hang out that day and the next. 14 june, depart santiago on foot for finisterre, literally 'the end of the earth' - out on the atlantic ocean. frantic waving across that body of water, general rejoicing, frolicking. bus back to santiago 17 june for our flight to london the following day. celebratory fish and chips, pints. 20 june, the camino continues, homeward.

day 16: the 'meseta'

2006-05-30T08:49:00.000-04:00

greetings from day 16 of el camino de santiago, where our heroes have just paused at the half-way mark of the camino francès, high fived, and continued on their journey. that half-way point was ensconced in the no-nonsense mini-metropolis of Sahagún, where we visited the Iglesia de San Lorenzo, but were kicked out after a small horde of women finished taking down the decorations from sunday's wedding. we weren't supposed to be there at all, but that's how we roll here in spain - sneaking into every house of the Lord we come across, getting off a few stolen prayers, reading a few illicit psalms, jotting down notes in our journals while looking about mischieviously for spiritual authority figures, or, in yesterday's case, women with brooms.

but my real purpose here is to tell you about la meseta - this utterly flat region of northern spain that does not seem to participate in the space/time continuum with the same strictness as other geographies. to clarify, we get up at 5:30, eat a loaf of bread with jam, then walk 6-8 hours in a straight line through shadeless wheatfields, hunting the horizon. we dream of mountains, of anything at all to break up the endless expanse.

the meseta has presented us with a unique challenge, and i use the past tense because when we reach león tomorrow we will be preparing for mountains again. the meseta, as far as i can tell, is teaching us that there are times when one must become intensely involved in the location of stones scattered across the path in the 2 meters preceding one's forward foot, when the pile of rocks ahead must be a goal whose acheivement can inspire just another 50 meters to the next, when you've got to find a rhythm in your footsteps and your breaths that become a familiar and consoling song. perhaps this is the root of ancient hymns. i find myself humming tunes i thought i had forgotten.

the meseta does not fear us, as we may imagine foolishly that mountains do. the meseta will not be conquered by our strength or youthful brashness: it holds us in its grasp, not merciless for spite, but only because we are weak, and we must face it. the meseta is teaching us what the camino is at the bare bones: a road whose true length is impossible to measure, whose half-way markers have little to give us. the surest stride will never make it across the meseta without a stumble, a look around, a fall of the brow. we have yet to make it to the horizon for all our leaps and scurries. yet it also seems that the span of our journey is never so broad that we cannot cross it with a heavy breath of resignation, a clap on the shoulder, and a single stride that feels beneath it the earth's subtle, dusty curve.

day 12: castrojeriz (between burgos and leon)

2006-05-26T13:18:00.000-04:00

so we've entered the pre-teen years of our journey, and things are continuing without too many tantrums and we've miraculously avoided the awkward growth spurt. then again, i was kind of a late bloomer.

i have 5 minutes here, so let me spell out for the curious our more or less daily schedule:

5:15 alarm segueing into final preparations for the day: breakfast
6:00 (ideally) rubber on road
6:00 -9:00 follow yellow arrows and signs with seashells along El Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route that is older than any of the nations it crosses
9:00 take off our packs, apply sunscreen, eat 4 or 5 muffins and some fruit, stretch
9:00 - until we're tired: one foot in front of the other
when we're tired: take a little break, drink liters of water, stretch
after the stretch: follow yellow arrows (seriously, if a yellow arrow led into a bottomless manhole, i would jump into it without scruples)
we usually arrive into our destination between 12:00 and 14:00, depending on mileage (we're averaging about 27-28 km a day, pushing ourselves up to 36 on one occasion, resting the sore and blistered feets with a 21 earlier in our diaper days)
we then check into the albergue, a variation on a barrack facility, eat our lunch (without fail: bread, cheese, chorizo sausage, fruit), and proceed to afternoon activities.

afternoon activities:
sitting there
sleeping
reading (i'm in the middle of canto VI of dante's inferno in italian and loving it)
stretching, attending to minor medical concerns
hobbling around the town in search of physical sustenance, the silence of church spaces
eating
chatting with our fellow pilgrims in a variety of broken languages and hand gestures
talking about what we want to eat when we get back to AMERICA

8:30-9:30 in bed and excited to be there.
rinse and repeat.

these days are full of reflections on the many blessings in my life, not the least of which that there are people out there who are reading this and thinking of us. thoughts and prayers, to avoid confusion in the vastness of the cosmos and meta-cosmos, should include full names: Carl Claude Adair and Patrick Michael O'Brien.

el camino de santiago

2006-05-22T14:46:00.000-04:00

greetings from day 8 of el camino de santiago. pat and i are getting kicked around by this ancient trail - we are sunburned and sore, but we are safe and we are keeping our heads up. keeping the eyes and ears open. looking for signs.

i had a dream last night that i was home in fairport and having trouble accessing my email while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. thank you, unconscious, for making it just that much more clear that i am getting ready to be home, and that the strain of this trip has got me craving peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. that being said, the day's reflection warranted this: a lot of the most important things in my life seem to happen when i wish i was already home.

on the move again

2006-05-12T13:40:00.000-04:00

i'm under the gun - i have to get to firenze campo di marte and i'm at santa maria novella. i also have to call my host parents and chase bank to straighten some stuff out.

suffice it to say that i have been working on an organic farm for the last week in Castegneto Carducci, which is near the western coast of italy - one afternoon i walked to the top of the nearest mountain, illegally climbed a forest fire lookout, and saw the bright blue against the deep green of the hills that roll right down to the edge.

this organic farm is also a spiritual retreat, run by a wonderful woman named edith who has moved to italy from the states 35 years ago and has established this sustainable farm as an opportunity for people like myself to come and to some work within, some work without. i am bone tired, but i feel refreshed, collected - ready to walk. ready for the long haul. time has begun to stretch out in front of me, which both frightens and inspires me. but the better question than 'what am i supposed to do in all this time?' is: 'what am supposed to be doing right now?'

the answer to that, right now, is to say a quick word of thanks for the myriad blessings in my life, strap on my pack, and get on the road. my love to you all.

5 minutes each

2006-04-25T12:02:00.000-04:00

ciao tutti -

as my time in italy is wrapping up (thursday is the last day of this program), i am suddenly struck by the desire to narrate innumerable passing observations from this time as a means of convincing myself that they in fact occurred. that being impossible, i will settle for partiality and offer these 3 or 4 five minute sketches. i'm holding myself to the five minute rule for each - i should be writing a paper about italo calvino, but i'm intimidated by him.

1. beggars : 18:20

although in greater concentration and better organized among themselves in major cities, there are people here in arezzo who sit on the side of the street with a small dish either in front of them or held out to passersby, sometimes associated with a sign. the signs, without fail, begin with 'sono povero' or 'sono povera.' not to sound heartless - when ever i have change in my pocket i try to pass it out to people who need it, but it sounds like they don't even believe that they're poor. you're begging for money. i'm going to go ahead and make the connection with a less than ideal financial situation.

the problem is that a lot of beggars don't need the money. in major cities, as i alluded to before, there can be networks of beggars working in conjunction with pickpockets. here in arezzo, my favorite beggar is a guy who comes into public places with an electronic keyboard over his shoulder and plays the demo music as he comes around with his hand cupped for your change. his method is so ingeniously lazy, i wanted to give a few centesimi as commendation for guts. but i once saw him doing this routine while eating an enormous sandwich. that ruined it for me. yesterday i saw him walking around town in a new sweatsuit and nike shocks.

2. change 18:25

in the united states i hate having change in my pocket. in italy, it's practically a necessity. first of all, i like to think that some people really need the money, so i put it in their little dishes outside of churches. but beyond that, i'm afraid. afraid of going to the supermarket without change. of course in the states i've been in the situation where the stuff that's rolled off that slick reptilian belt across the laser-beam scanner thing have come to like $5.02. the cashier usually asks, have you got 2 pennies? OR, gift of the gods, there's that little bowl of benificence 'take a penny, leave a penny.' here in italy, there is no such benificence, and the lady is pissed if you don't have exact change for your €3.47 bread, cheese, and beer lunch. so i try to keep a collection of coins of diverse denominations in my pocket, hoping that that mess, that incompleteness will make for a more complete cash drawer (or till, as w.b. yeats likes to call it). so after she flings my receipt at me, i can do my little bow that displays subservience, say 'grazie, arrivederci,' and bolt.

3. gli api 18:32 (damn it)

coming from america, a land where cars have become a sort of meta-accessory with which we match our outfits and even personalities on the road, it is delightful to be walking along the sidewalk and hear the subtle doppler effect of un ape as it passes alongside you. the symbolic significance of this name needs to be pointed out - ape (ah-pay) in italian means 'bee,' and thus it is sonically appropriate that a small tricycle truck (an elongated three-wheeler with an enclosed cockpit and a flatbed behind) should be given this name: as it comes alongside, it is almost possible to imagine a giant hand swatting it into a guardrail, or a stiff wind throwing it dangerously off balance, caterwauling from side to side as the now-wakeful driver overcorrects, pulling on the handlebars like reins on a spooked stallion.

it's a nice commentary on the italians that these gritty workmen in rough shirts and padded jackets can light up a cigarette, spit on the ground, and get behind the wheel of a 50 cc machine that drives along the shoulder at 15 mph, still managing to look like the master of materials and machines.

18:42 - i love gli api - i wanted to do them justice.
i like this format. maybe more to come.

ok already

2006-04-20T11:17:00.000-04:00

sister and brothers -

to briefly venture into an entirely surreal, new-age linguistic landscape: i'm finding myself in a weird emotional 'place.' i don't feel entirely myself these days; i've been experiencing a mini ego crisis; my chakras are out of alignment and my auras are dissonant. i'm out of touch with the gaia life force source; i'm communicating unhealthy energy. i've lost the link to the mothership.

i'm sorry i haven't given you all the update for all this time, this program in arezzo is hanging in that odd end-of-semester equilibrium between winding down and ramping up that makes me think with interest and shame of arranging crystals on my chest. but really, any old rock will do to bash against my forehead.

i have been living with and in an aretine family for the last 5 weeks: a casa Gallo. Giulio and Valeria, my host parents, are the salt of the earth and i am having trouble thinking about leaving them and their most generous hospitality. i have been eating very well. my favorite part of every day is coming home, throwing my coat and bookbag on my bed, and bounding back to the kitchen to help make dinner while we discuss our days, political developments, tuscan curse words, the consistency of perfectly prepared pasta. my host sister cecilia is a frequent presence, and filippo and matteo come home on weekends from their respective residences in aquila and bologna. i am known as the blonde son.

this semester has illuminated to me my real need of constant intellectual stimulation - unfortunately by its absence in our courses here, relative to semesters past. more accurately, i find that i do miss the american university and the freedom allowed and encouraged by its resources - libraries here close at 19:30 and access to books are limited. i miss hanging out in b stacks and just looking at books, making notes in their margins to puzzle over later. i miss my seat, my table, and the people i share it with. in short, i'm looking forward to the fall.

i'm caught: while i'm more than ready for this phase of my academic life to be over, i'm far from ready to leave italy. although i am ready for a change of scenery. i don't know what's going on! - seriously, its my chakras. i am beyond excited to move on to phase 3 of the european adventure starting 15 may, that being el camino di santiago - 900km across the north of spain. 4 weeks on foot, on the road, material possessions manifesting themselves in their most fundamental form as mass upon my back. walking alongside others who are taking the journey seriously, but not themselves. others providing a model for me to live up to.

in the meantime, my family is coming and i couldn't be more psyched to see them in the flesh, to show them around this place that has become somehow mine and yet continues to elude me. after a week with them, i'm thinking i'll head back to taizé for a week of reflection, reorganization, and preparation. something which i'd like to start on right now. and what's stopping me?

mi è sbagliato

2006-03-27T17:28:00.000-05:00

one of the greatest things about living with a family who speaks another language is the inevitable moment in which one makes a subtle but grievous error. switch some letters around, confuse your vocabulary, experience some maschile-feminile discordance in a high pressure situation: languages can be minefields. but with the right attitude you can also turn yourself into a source of entertainment for those generous enough to invite you into their home. briefly, my top two.

last monday, when i moved in to my new digs in the apartment of i Signori Gallo, i put all my stuff down in my room and then, during the tour, asked if they would prefer if i took off my shoes when i came into the house. or at least that's what i intended to ask. my clothing vocabulary is a little rusty, so in actuality i asked these wonderful retirees if they would prefer, upon entering the house, if i took off my pants. good one.

just tonight - monday is apparently my off-day: at dinner we were talking about varieties of local sausage and i proudly recalled a type that we had shared the week previous - the complex and delicious san budello. but, again, the disconnect between the tongue and a mind overtaken by hubris: what i ended up saying was 'san bordello,' which, after a period of collective and prolonged laughter, my host sister informed me by less-than-subtle circumlocution to mean 'holy whorehouse.'

london, paris (part III)

2006-03-23T16:06:00.000-05:00

allora, i'm going to be a little more brief for this second half of the spring break highlights, i'm exhausted.

after visiting the arkitektur museet and moderna museet in stockholm i jumped on a bus to the airport, where i jumped on a plane to london. one hour after touchdown, i arrived at my buddy ted's flat with chilled guinness in hand. it was fantastic to see him - ted, my other soulmate tom and i were roommates on the theatre in london program, and ted has remained in london with an internship at parliament. not too shabby. the next morning, we enjoyed together a full english breakfast, which attentive readers may recall had become a veritable institution for room 14 during our january stay in london. with such rocket fuel in my blood, i finished up and mailed out my take 5 application (take 5 is a u of r program that allows students to pursue a course of study novel to them for one year, tuition free - i'm hoping to study german history in the early 20th century). ted and i went for a nice walk in hyde park and shared our deepest secrets. the rest of the day we caught up with other people from the u of r in london and went to various pubs and clubs with them and theirs. we were lucky enough to catch some live irish folk music, which i must say is almost on par with a full english breakfast in capacity for circulatory acceleration.

thursday i went over to the national gallery for the morning and took in the sights of many of the paintings we have been studying in my art history course, specifically piero della francesca and other quattrocento masters. in the afternoon, ted and i went to the novello theatre and saw the royal shakespeare company in a production of As You Like It. it was simply delightful - on the theatre program we had seen the same company in productions of Twelfth Night and A Comedy of Errors and i couldn't have enjoyed more the opportunity to soak in the thematic correspondences with those productions in this, the final play in their comedy season. plus we sat front row centre for 5 pounds. yeah bud. rather, yeah bud. the use of italics is an art i have yet to master.

ted and i left his flat at 03:45 the next morning to walk to waterloo station; from hither we took the train to paris nord, otherwise known (in this sentence) as 'yon.' we strolled around in the morning (arrived at 09:30 local time), including a peak inside sainte chappelle - stained glass like you've never seen, and notre dame. we had a humorous moment of self reflection on our american identities when we overheard a large woman's grotesquely nasal southern drawl resound within the otherwise silent sainte chappelle: y'all wanna go see that big church naow? by big church i can only assume she meant the nearby notre dame, among the world's most recognizeable and well-known monuments to human capacity when creating with an intention toward the divine. i did not appreciate very much this insertion into the silence. oh well, we chuckled about it later.

ted and i then walked through les jardins des tuileries and up the champs-elysees to l'arc de triomphe, where we met our friend rachel. equally fantastic to see her. we bought a quantity of wine and cheese, several baguettes, and spent the afternoon consuming said gifts of gods. that night rachel's friends from her study abroad program in paris came over and then we went to a bar called le piano-vache (the piano-cow - i have no idea, apparently it's famous) for a st. patrick's day pint and then had crepes on the way home. crepes are also gifts of the gods.

the next morning we got up, ate granola, yogurt, baguette, and cheese, and headed out for a stroll. our destination: student protests against the current french legislation that creates an extremely 'precarious' situation for new graduates. as much as i sympathize with the cause and hope that the french government will pursue a lasting solution to these issues, i must admit that if one is going to write a popular polemic, one should find a more forceful title than 'against precariousness.' the article and bulletin that was pressed into my hands several times through the afternoon might have as well been titled: 'yeah, so, like, the way we feel right now - it's not great. we'd prefer to feel otherwise. can we do something about that?'

a brief note on this to put the american post-grad job market into perspective: under the current french law, if you're under 26 it's very difficult to find a job that isn't of a specified and very brief length, for example, 6 months. when you're hired, you know you'll be fired. with an unemployment rate of 20-25% in the 16-26 age demographic, that can't feel great. more importantly as a cause of dis-ease (one might say a feeling of 'precariousness') : if you're under 26, as it stands right now in france you can be fired at any time, and your (former) employer is under no legal obligation whatsoever to give you a reason. i just realized that sentence contains an unintentional but a propos sad face. i was glad to add my presence and voice to the number of protesters. there was some violence and about 100 arrests later in the afternoon, but we had long since gone to experience other aspects of french culture besides popular revolution. namely, montmartre and sacre coeur. on that note, mosaic is the artistic method that is currently most impressive to me.

that night we hung out more with CIEE paris people and did a little dancing at a fun club where the bartenders played cymbals and empty glasses in their spare time. i'm thinking of making that a career goal, but for no more than 6 months. sunday we laid pretty low - ted and i went to a park we thought was closer than it really was (actually in le banlieu - danger will robinson!) and wrote some things down on pieces of paper. on route to the train station, we visited with rachel's family, who had just arrived for a 7-day visit. it was equally lovely and surreal to get together with friends and family in a paris apartment.

i headed to the train station for the final leg of the journey - paris-florence overnight. i spoke a frightening creole of french and italian to the other passengers in my couchette and read the night away. arrived back in arezzo at 09:15 - just in time to wash my face and head to class. va bene.

20 minutes was not nearly enough (spring break part II)

2006-03-21T17:27:00.000-05:00

i have to move on from santa maria degli angeli, but here's a link to a picture of the doors: ready, get set, be moved.

in the afternoon i met up with joe and we ate lunch next to the colosseo. then we walked up towards villa borghese and took pictures of each other overlooking la piazza del popolo and the rest of the roman skyline in the late afternoon sun. in the evening we went out to a lovely dinner with my friend robyn drucker (studying this semester in rome) and mike higgins (among other things: my friend from rochester, fellow fairport alum, member of intramural volleyball powerhouse team discovery channel, robyn's boyfriend). then we hung out a bit at robyn's sweet pad and headed back to the hostel, where we promptly lost consciousness. we had a nice bonding experience with the other 8 people in the room when one of our number was snoring so loudly that everyone else woke up. but, being a hostel, we all chuckled about it until we were able to rouse him long enough to get him on his side. later we learned his name was jason and he is in the 5th month of an 8 month european tour - solo. the thought of that scared me.

saturday i went to the vatican museum, and can i just say, that was bitchin'. i was very excited to recognize and name many of the paintings from our art history class, and i spent most of the morning strolling around documenting the various symbols that accompanied and identified various saints. one of my favorites, san girolamo (st. jerome), is usually pictured with a book to signify that he done learned real good (if memory serves he was the translator of such famous and influential works as...the vulgate), a wide brimmed red hat (to symbolize his leadership role within the church) and a third image, seamlessly linked to the other two - yes, you guessed it, a ferocious lion. i read in one of the little commentaries that san girolamo kindly removed a thorn from a lion's paw - i'm serious, that really happened. i feel like one of aesop's fables treats a similar subject matter, but i can't remember if at the end the lion eats the mouse who helped him or if he sits for a portrait with some cardinal in the desert translating the bible while occasionally beating his breast with a rock.

two images from the sistine chapel: michaelangelo's self-portrait, just down and to the right of the barrel chested Christ the Judge, is holding in his hand a deboned, gutted, and yet entirely preserved human skin. it creeps me out thinking about it. secondly, everyone is ripped. if all goes well with my forearm exercises, this is what i'll look like doing my italian homework by the end of the month. speaking of ripped, i was blown away by Laocoon. even with that resolution, can you see the veins in his quads? from the moment i first saw that picture in a latin book with the caption 'vatican museum,' i was pretty much on my way.

i spoke with my parents on the phone from the elliptical piazza in front of st. peter's, and while i was doing that 4 nuns came up and sat down next to me and busted out 4 pizzas. they were so excited about it!

in the evening joe and i were walking around and happened upon a large demonstration protesting the recent intensification of italian drug laws - specifically, the criminilization of marijuana. we walked along with it for a while and joe took pictures. it was in the national newspaper La Repubblica the next day, but the front page was taken up by a demonstration that had happened simultaneously in milan. neofascists had gotten a permit to have a parade, and a corpus (disjointed, naturally) of anarchists crashed the party. by crashed, i mean arrived in a large number and started throwing rocks. when the police showed up, both youthful extremes of the political spectrum turned their aggression against them. the picture in the paper was of a young man in a ski mask hurling a rock at a police barricade - tear gas in the foreground, car burning in the back. oddly, it was impossible to tell if this young person wanted an all-powerful state or no state at all - it seemed that the political spectrum we usually think of as a straight line with distant poles had horseshoed around so the points nearly touched. these skinheads and 'no global' had more in common than i think they realized. unfortunately, that commonality was violence.

so yeah, back to the idea of home on the road - after we got back from the pot protest we had a little dinner and started talking to these two girls at the hostel. their names were jennie and ulrika, and they were and are beautiful swedish psychology students. we quickly discovered we would be on the same flight to stockholm the next morning. i, never having been to stockholm or flown out in rome before, was extremely excited to have found beautiful natives with whom to travel. we left the next morning and on the flight i read all about the riots in milan, the upcoming debate between berlusconi and his challenger prodi in the april elections, and students in paris taking over the sorbonne. more on that to come.

jennie, ulrika, and i arrived in stockholm around 3 in the afternoon and immediately ate indian food. it tasted good. then we walked around the central shopping area for a while, took a picture in front of the palace, and strolled around the old town. it was 5 below zero, celsius. i was glad that i had brought the stocking cap my mother knit for me last fall - first because it is warm, secondly because it was knit out of love. seriously, love was the raw material carded, spun, and woven into hat form. with a tassel.

i parted ways with the beautiful swedish girls (they were taking an overnight bus north to umea, where they had class in the morning) in the early evening to find my hostel , which was furnished entirely by ikea and was essentially a 3 star hotel for €17 a night. i wrote some things in my journal, read some of the introduction to Ovid's Metamorphoses, written by my latin literature professor here in arezzo, and turned in.

in the morning, i walked around the city of stockholm - saw some beautiful churches, an entire island that is a park (swedish urban planners love green space - white space last week), and the national history museum, which included a large exhibit on vikings, who i like to imagine as my ancestors as they travelled around putting northern europe in its place. i also walked across two frozen rivers and felt like a bad ass. yeah, that's right. i'm a descendent of vikings. i do what i want.

tuesday, prior to departure i visited katarina kyrka and the beautifully designed and linked moderna museet and arkitekturmuseet.

this last 40 minutes has not been enough either. this spring break is apparently serialized. stay tuned for london and paris, losses and gains.

20 minutes of spring break

2006-03-21T07:46:00.000-05:00

hello all, it's been too long. i've got 20 minutes before class starts, so i thought i'd pump out a quick overview of what went down on my 10 day tour of european capitals, also known as spring break '06.

my buddy joe bell and i left arezzo at 6 am on friday morning 10 march, hopping a train to rome. we arrived at termini station around 08:30 and went directly to our hostel to check in and drop off our stuff, which for both of us because as americans we understand well that stuff is baggage. not only in the literal sense that would seem most appropriate in this travel context, but in the spiritual sense. i was carrying the weight of exactly one black jansport backpack (in italian, zaino - great word) upon my soul. while giving our information to the proprieter and taking a look around hostel freestyle (now apparently closed), a tall redheaded youth stepped out of one of the hostel rooms in regal pyjamas and rubbed his eyes. it was none other than reid williamson, a friend of mine and my sister ellie's from our community college italian courses last summer. i had known that he was in perugia this spring and had been trying to set up a time to get together, but apparently our destiny was to meet rather at 08:30 in a 4 room hostel in rome. such meetings, i have come to believe, are beautiful reminders that the idea of 'home' rests much more securely in people that crop up along the way than in a concrete locale. home can come on the road with you; home can sneak up behind you; home can duck under a doorway in pyjama pants and rub its eyes, then rub its eyes again in surprise that you have found it.

after a communal caffé and catching up, i spent the morning at Santa Maria Degli Angeli e dei Martiri, known to its previous occupants (roman citizens, also women and slaves) as the Baths of Diocletian. the history of this place is simply ridiculous. originally built as an enormous bath complex, a feat of roman engineering perhaps yet to be duplicated in the last two millenia, it was ridiscovered (still standing in beautiful condition after nearly 1200 years of total neglect) by Michaelangelo, who suggested to the pope that the frigidarium (the largest, fairly cavernous room with a fantastic triplex vaulted roof) be transformed into a place of worship, which it had most certainly been for its original designer. the transition from pagan/political to christian(/political) was executed masterfully.

but i spent most of my time meditating on the new bronze doors of the church (installed 28 february). the enormous doors, which were the essence of gravitas, were designed and sculpted by igor mitoraj, whose previous work dealt primarily with the use of classical themes reinterpreted along existentialist lines. this personal artistic history, included and transcended in the sacred subjects depicted on the doors - the Annunciation and the Resurrection - had a fascinating and moving resonance with the tranformation of the structure itself from temple of intellectual mastery of material by the inbreathing of spirit. and the doors themselves are challenging - challenge those entering to reconsider of their understanding of their faith: the annunciation pictures a fractured, headless Virgin and the resurrection has a Christ striding out from the plane of the door, the cross carved into his very chest.

et al

2006-02-27T11:22:00.000-05:00

good afternoon to all for whom it is in fact morning:

i've had a few flattering requests for a more basic overview of life in italy, so i will try to do that concisely and yet with an eye to the depth of each day in a culture that becomes slightly less strange every day. but if you could truly understand the fearless popularity of the mullet here in italy, you would understand how it remains still quite strange even after more than one month.

my friend lee mazur and i share room number 3 at La Terrazza, (http://www.iltrovavacanze.it/vacanze/album23/B_e_B_la_TERRAZZA_di_Arezzo.htm), and my friend joe bell lives next door. every night, joe and i agree to run the next morning at 07:15, and that happens rougly two thirds of the time. after a shower and a quick breakfast, which consists of coffee we make ourselves on the stove from a mocha and CAKE that Signora Paola makes for us every day, i awkwardly greet the other guests (up to 5, sometimes none), and am on my way.

after my experiences in taizé, which in hindsight were a culmination of previous thoughts and trends and a beginning of new trends, i am pleased to have gotten into the habit of daily silent prayer in a nearby church, San Giuseppe del Chiavello. i find the atmosphere delightful on several levels.

1. San Giuseppe is the italian equivalent of a storefront church - it's on a residential street and has nothing that denotes it as a church other than a modest mass schedule on the double wooden doors. the interior is decorated in baroque finery that seems far too opulent for an iconoclast such as myself, although, speaking somewhat objectively, no more than 50 people could fit in there at a time. much too shiny for only 50 people to see it.

2. there are nuns, for whom i have become a curious fixture in their daily routine. i'm usually there from about 08:40 until 9:00, at which time between 3 and 5 elderly women are entering the church for a prayer service. i don't think these women appreciate my presence very much, as one time i was detained by an interesting flyer in the vestibule on my way out, and as soon as i left, there was many angry italian words exchanged between them. however, since that time i have befriended one of the nuns, who seems to have intervened on my behalf in that social sphere. i don't know her name and now i don't know how to ask, but she gives me a big smile every day and often comes up behind me and startles me by putting both her hands on my face, physically turning my eyes toward the Madonna col Bambino above the altar, and saying 'Gesù ti darà la forza!' and other imperatives towards the priesthood. she also gives me printed prayers to read, which i always do immediately, partly because i am sort of afraid of this 60 year old woman but mostly because i'm moved by her compassion for the samaritan in the temple.

after chillin' with the religious, i'm off to school, although i often stop off for a caffé on the way and scan the headlines of the newspapers. monday, tuesday, and thursday, the academic day starts with italian, and on monday and wednesday that moves into art history. thursdays we have 3 hours of italian, straight until lunch. tuesdays we have 3 hours of italian history, which i enjoy because we look at history through the lens of novels. although i'm frustrated that we are reading them in translation. not that i'm capable at this point of reading long selections in italian with any expediency (or much comprehension, for that matter), but i wish i was spending less time in the english universe and more in the italian.

everyone on this program (all 9 of us) eat luch at 'Bar Centrale,' where i do my best to speak my best italian to the multitude of women who work behind the counter and in the kitchen, with my ultimate goal being to be able to casually flirt with them. the food is delicious.

every other afternoon we have another class taught by visiting u of r professors in their area of interest as it relates to italy. i'll speak more about this when i get the opportunity to write out here my reflections on this weekend's trip to ROME, which was other-worldly. on 'off' afternoons i get together with two italian students, erika and elena, and i help them decode videotaped interviews with american students studying in italy so they can write italian subtitles as part of their work on their final undergraduate thesis. they are both very nice and we have fun, and i am challenged both by the opportunity to provide an explanation of funny english idioms like 'i worship the ground she walks on' and the frequent need to apologize for the behavior and attitudes of the students being interviewed. it is a fascinating and sometimes painful look at how other americans perceive and perceived their time abroad.

currently, we are able to use the internet from 16:00 until 18:00. it's been very interesting to feel just how reliant i am on computers: for communication, for a sense of connection to the events of the world, and for writing. no one else can read my handwriting, so i have to use my time wisely if i want to turn in legible papers.

we eat dinner at santa caterina, a nearby girl's boarding school housing approximately 90 girls ages 14-22. there are 5 guys on this program - it's a little weird. we are definitely on display, a factor which we try to exploit for maximum comic effect. when i'm a little wound up, i sometimes sit down at a table of 4 middle school girls and try and keep up with their conversation. i've found this is the best way to acheive maximum exhaustion in miminal time. on more than one occasion, i have started sweating. the food could be better, but the social interaction is priceless.

after our dinner we head back to la terrazza and make coffee, do some homework, watch some olympics (italian coverage of the games has been CRAZY - italian television itself is often hilarious, but, coming from the athletic dominance of the united states, no self-respecting nation should get that excited about a bronze medal), and crash around 11. sleep like i've never slept before.

in the coming days: ROMA extra, extra, read all about it.

venice et al

2006-02-16T06:39:00.000-05:00

ciao tutti -

it's been a while since i last posted, i apologize for the delay. as always, i'm like a starving man torn between two plates at equal distances: on the one hand, i want to go out and live live live, soak it all up, and on the other hand i want to take time to reflect, to write, to place those experiences in a larger context that could be shared with others, with you. i've been doing a lot of the first, i need to do a better job of the second.

last weekend we went to venice. let me say, venice is beautiful. it's about 4 hours away by train, and after my extensive experience with american rail, i never cease to be amazed by the quality of european rail, notwithstanding odd ideas like having 6 stangers sleep together in a small closet moving at 60 mph. but these were day trains of a more standard and less intimate configuration.

the beauty of italy is at times overwhelming, in two senses: it can reach out and smack you between the eyes in a single moment, but its omnipresence can also be numbing after a while. venezia was the intrusion of a moment of this first type into what had become the surreally everyday. we walked out of the train station and looked out across the grand canal and i was pretty much speechless. i'm very excited to one day spend time in venice with a beautiful woman that i passionately love. it's that kind of city.

aside from the fantastic art (we visited the accademia, la scuola di san rocco, and the peggy guggenheim collection) and getting lost, we had the peculiarly venetian experience of visiting the workshop of Tramontin & Figli (www.tramontingondole.it). Signor Tramontin is the last remaining craftsman of handmade gondolas in all of Venice. His great-grandfather started this business, and while the workshop once was able to turn out 21 handmade gondolas in a single month (only 3 men working together), Signor Tramontin now works alone, making about 1 gondola a year. i must say: they are so choice, if you have the means, i highly recommend picking one up. about 35,000 euros for the basic model, and of course you can opt for extras.

Interesting things about gondolas!

Tramontin Gondolas are made from 8 different kinds of wood, used very specifically according to their different properties.
Tramontin Gondolas are custom-made according to the weight of the gondolier.
Gondolas are asymmetrical, very asymmetrical.
The paddle stroke used by gondoliers cuts the water 'like salami' (how apropos of Sgr. Tramontin to use this metaphor - his solid and substantial frame suggested that he was as familiar with the intricacies of Venetian cuisine as he was with the tools on his own workbench). This technique, which keeps the paddle blade in the water continuously unlike the English variation (think rowboat), works with the water to minimize turbulence around the blade and thus maximize efficiency. A gondolier paddling at 5 km/h expends no more energy than a tourist strolling across a campo.

needless to say, i found Sgr. Tramontin a very impressive figure. literally and figuratively. it's an interesting commentary on venetian life to think about the tragically slow death of the gondola craftsman and his art. venice, which earlier in the 20th century had 250,000 inhabitants, now has only 50,000 permanent residents, with tourists making up the difference. Sgr. Tramontin seemed acutely aware of the connection between the move towards gondolas made quickly and from lower quality materials and the move towards a tourist-centered venetian culture. in the 21st century, both gondolas and the venetian experience are, in a word, synthetic.

as we left, i made a point to thank Sgr. Tramontin in my best italian and shake his hand. he had the firm grip that i expected, but that final interaction left something to be desired, although it was an appropriate end to our time in the workshop. wrapped up in a conversation with someone else, Sgr. Tramontin looked at my hand long enough to guide his into it, and then back to his discussion. he never looked at me. he saw my hands - saw that they aren't used to long, hard labor, and moved on to more important things. while he generously offered us his time and a look at his workshop, he's not impressed by the tourist market. i'm glad.

my address

2006-02-08T09:18:00.000-05:00

if the desire strikes you to write me a real live letter, here's my permanent address in Arezzo.

carl adair
c/o Accademia Brittanica Toscana
Vicolo Pietro da Cortona 10
52100 Arezzo, Italy

working on some spring break plans. tenative itinerary: stockholm, london, paris. just beginning plans, though.

taizé reflection part III (of III)

2006-01-31T07:51:00.000-05:00

another journal excerpt:

21.01.2006 Taizé, St. Etienne Gardens, late afternoon.

i went down to the edge of the little pond and i threw in five stones. after i threw in each stone i waited until i became the ripples and then i waited until i could no longer tell which ripples were mine, were i, and which ripples were the ducks', the ducks. then i threw in another stone. the last two stones i looked at, and i brushed off some of the red and yellow french sand off of them - they had come from the middle of the little path and were covered with the path, having been in fact a part of it so soon before. i rubbed off the sand and thought, 'what is a rock but sand?' but i kept on, and i got down to the really hard sand that was pressed in the heat and the weight of the earth that bears my feet and this little pond. i think they were metamorphic rocks, which means they were changed in some moment when they thought they were still only sedimentary, still only sand and little rocks pressed together very tight. then i threw in these last two rocks. i waited for the first rock to become the ripples and for the ripples to become indistinguishable, unintelligible, unknown from the ducks or the wind, but a friendly dog came up and licked my hand so i missed that moment when all was transformed into reflections of itself. then i threw the last stone in after i had rubbed all of the parts of itself that only wished they had been transformed in the heat and the weighing down of the earth, but were only pressed on by the very little weight of my feet and other peoples' feet and glued by the very little rain from the day before.

taize reflection part II (more crying - i am such a WUSS)

2006-01-30T11:39:00.000-05:00

journal 22.01.2006 Taizé 11:45

perhaps the most beautiful thing i have ever seen.

today in the morning celebration of the Eucharist i was kind of crouched on the ground not knowing if i should sit all the way back down or what while others were receiving communion. There was some commotion behind me and to my right, where two brothers of taizé were distributing the sacrament. A small girl from town, about 8 years old, was standing between them holding a candle. The commotion had been caused by the boy receiving. He and 3 others are part of a French group of severly mentally and physically handicapped people who have been here since thursday night. they have lent a unique quality to common prayer times, as they often cry out or make noises, trying to communicate, to make their presence felt. or maybe they just do that. i don't know.

when i turned around to look, the action had already happened, and it looked as if the brother had placed the wafer in the boy's mouth, and in attempting to chew it, it had fallen out onto the ground. what i witnessed was the confused moment in which the brothers looked at each other and at the volunteer holding the boy, trying to figure out what to do. another volunteer came around awkwardly from behind (causing even more commotion as several of these in line were in wheelchairs) and picked up the host off of the floor and held it in his palms reverently.

then everyone just stood there for a moment. all of this was sort of obscured in my sight, so maybe the woman who was literally holding this boy upright was simply preparing to move him back to their place. but in that moment of stillness, i saw how the brother who had administered this lost host was looking at this boy. i'm sure that as a Eucharistic minister he was aware of the incredible sacrality of the consecrated host, and the myriad of technicalities that might be required of him to somehow atone for this profanation, but if any of that crossed his mind in that instant, he seemed totally unconcerned about it. in the moment i focused on his face, he was simply pouring out onto this boy a patient and overflowing love that knew nothing of regulations or restrictions, of purity or some sort of externally defined holiness. it was simply the human manifestation of the love symbolized in the body of Christ he was offering.

i was completely overcome in this moment - i feel so often like this boy - unable to move myself without another bearing almost all my weight, crying out into a sacred silence with nonsensical sounds that don't communicate anything, and when i'm allowed to participate in the most sacred of symbolic rites, i somehow manage to screw it up. the odd and unexpected realization of this week has been the power of paul's idea that God loved us 'while we were still sinners.' I haven't by anymeans become preoccupied with sin, and no guilt has been instilled or renewed in me. but i have been so moved by this idea that God's completeness, God's wholeness does not reject our brokenness, does not demand anything at all from us - any purification, any prerequisite understanding. God says yes to us in our human frailty, tempermentality, and even in the cruelty we show to those who preach only the radical extremes of inclusion and love.

and the other complementary realization and charge of this week has been that, like that brother, we must be the face of God's yes to others, to all others in the world. we must say yes, even to the last consequence to our brothers and sisters in brokenness.

taizé reflection part 1

2006-01-26T11:44:00.000-05:00

i don't know exactly how to approach this past week in taize, especially from the angle of writing about it in this blog. i guess i'll start with the facts and, as seems inevitable, reflections will edge their way into the picture. i took the bullet train from london to paris on sunday morning the 15th. that was just freaking cool. we were doing 90 mph easy, the cars on the parallel highways were no match for our razor cut through the northern french countryside. i also couldn't help thinking of mission: impossible. no helicopters in the chunnel, though. as far as i know.

made it to paris gare du nord right on time, only to realize just then that my next train to macon, near taize, left from gare de lyon. i figured it was a beautiful day, i'd make the trip on foot. but after i started out going the wrong way for a few minutes (something i like to do in every city i visit), i realized that i was more crunched for time than i had initially anticipated. add in a stop to take off my sweater which also involved an unintetional leaving-behind of my new glasses, and i was backtracking all over the city. made it onto the train with 2 minutes to spare, and i got strange looks from the well dressed young businessman sitting next to me, as i was pretty much in a full sweat.

in macon i met a man named johan from belgium who was also going to taizé, and he kindly explained to me some of the distant and recent events that have shaped taizé into what it is, most specifically the death of fr. roger, the founding brother in august. he was killed by a mentally disturbed woman from romania during one of the common prayer times. despite his relation of these disturbing events, johan was a very calming presence as i went further into the unknown. we made it to taizé at about 6:30, just in time for dinner and evening prayer. i was bunking down with 3 other guys in a small room, naturally the iron bars that enclosed each top bunk were a little constraining on my fully extended human form, but it was nonetheless comfortable.

there are 3 common prayer times at taizé that take place everyday just before or after meals, and last about 40 minutes, although some people choose to stay longer. the brothers of taizé, who have taken a set of vows to 'abandon themselves in silence and love' (also chastity, the old stand-by), kneel in the middle of the church, while all the 'permanents' (young people who come to live and work at taizé for 3months to a year) sit around the outside of their little area. each prayer time is a mix of beautiful, meditative song and silent prayer. these times were both frustrating and encouraging, as i was faced again and again with the difficulty of quieting my intellect and simply listening. the week as a whole provided many opportunities for me to reexamine my highly intellectual approach to faith.

there is a small medieval chapel in the adjacent town of taize (pop. less than 30) where i often went to pray in the down-time before dinner. i have never experienced such silence. i hesitated even to breathe, as even the slightest sound fairly resounded in this space. it was there on wednesday night that i had what i would call the most important conscious realization of the week.

as i mentioned before, moments of exterior silence througout the week often only highlighted the clamor of my interior. i felt and feel like my mind creates a static that obscures and scrambles any opportunity for supra-intellectual reflection. on wednesday i became, as usual, frustrated by this static and that was compounded by frustration at being unable to communicate with the many young people from Germany in their own language. i hate that english has become a sort of lowest common denominator in the international community. anyway, i said to myself in anger 'i can't understand! - i can't understand german - i cannot understand at all!' in this moment, i got the shivers and immediately started seriously disturbing the silence with the sniffles and even a few choked sobs.

i hesitate to admit this. i feel like i'm stretching this medium and perhaps showboating a bit. but i think it's worth it to make the force of this realization real. i can never understand all of what God is. God is beyond my understanding.

however, far from being a moment of defeat (although in many ways it was a moment of surrender), this was a liberation. first, i think God does want to be understood by us, however imperfectly our brains are able to conceive of God and however broken the language we might use to describe God is. that seems to me to be the true beauty and genius of the incarnation - God reveals Godself to us in human form, in terms comprehensible to us. secondly, our inability to completely understand does not preclude our ability to experience. we are in fact invited to experience 'the peace which passes all understanding.' so my search has been reoriented. more to come, my new friends are itching to see another incarnation of God - this one revealed out of marble by michaelangelo.

notes on taize

2006-01-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

i don't know exactly how to approach this past week in taize, especially from the angle of writing about it in this blog. i guess i'll start with the facts and, as seems inevitable, reflections will edge their way into the picture.

i took the bullet train from london to paris on sunday morning the 15th. that was just freaking cool. we were doing 90 mph easy, the cars on the parallel highways were no match for our razor cut through the northern french countryside. i also couldn't help thinking of mission: impossible. no helicopters in the chunnel, though. as far as i know.

made it to paris gare du nord right on time, only to realize just then that my next train to macon, near taize, left from gare de lyon. i figured it was a beautiful day, i'd make the trip on foot. but after i started out going the wrong way for a few minutes (something i like to do in every city i visit), i realized that i was more crunched for time than i had initially anticipated. add in a stop to take off my sweater which also involved an unintetional leaving-behind of my new glasses, and i was backtracking all over the city. made it onto the train with 2 minutes to spare, and i got strange looks from the well dressed young businessman sitting next to me, as i was pretty much in a full sweat.

in macon i met a man named johan from belgium who was also going to taize, and he kindly explained to me some of the distant and recent events that have shaped tiaze into what it is. he was also a very calming presence as i went further into the unknown. we made it to taize at about 6:30, just in time for dinner and evening prayer. i was bunking down with 3 other guys in a small room, naturally the iron bars that enclosed each top bunk were a little constraining on my fully extended human form, but it was nonetheless comfortable.

there are 3 common prayer times at taize that take place everyday just before or after meals, and last about 40 minutes, although some people choose to stay longer. the brothers of taize, who have taken a set of vows to 'abandon themselves in silence and love' (also chastity, the old stand-by), kneel in the middle of the church, while all the 'permanents' (young people who come to live and work at taize for 3months to a year) sit around the outside of their little area. each prayer time is a mix of beautiful, meditative song and silent prayer.

these times were both frustrating and encouraging, as i was faced again and again with the difficulty of quieting my intellect and simply listening. the week as a whole provided many opportunities for me to reexamine my highly intellectual approach to faith. there is a small medieval chapel in the adjacent town of taize (pop. <>never understand all of what God is. for God is beyond our understanding.

but far from being a moment of defeat (although in many ways it was a moment of surrender), this was a liberation. first, i think God does want to be understood by us, however imperfectly our brains are able to conceive of God and however broken the language we might use to describe God is. that seems to me to be the true beauty and genius of the incarnation - God reveals Godself to us in human form, in terms comprehensible to us. secondly, our inability to completely understand does not preclude our inability to experience. we are in fact invited to experience 'the peace which passes all understanding.'

so my search has been reoriented. more to come, my new friends are itching to see another incarnation of God - this one revealed out of marble by michaelangelo.

florence!

2006-01-23T06:25:00.000-05:00

hello friends and family. i arrived in florence this morning at about 7:30. i left dijon last night at 9:45, and spent the night in a 'couchette,' which apparently is french for 6 strangers sleeping together in a small closet.

i will write about my taize experience in a few days, i don't have the time to be faithful to it. in a few words, i realized that there is much that i will never be able to understand. and this is actually alright. also, i realized that there are non-intellectual ways of understanding things. i cried some. i spent a lot of time in silence, and i wrote a poem which i actually like. to be posted.

anyway, i must tell briefly of my adventure this morning. as the train pulled into florence, i heard a young woman speaking to another passenger, and she her accent and demeanor suggested to me that she was a fellow of the american genus, and probably of the collegiate species. i had the most recent issue of newsweek - a friend at taize had given it to me - and i offered it to her. we got to talking, and her name was emily and she was in florence to visit her friend sarah, here on a syracuse university program. they both go to oberlin, and they know my good friend nils's sister (also sarah). so that was a connection. but then it came out that i went to the u of r. emily is from binghamton, ny, and she knows both robert cavanaugh and becky hayes, friends and acquaintances of mine. i was in london with robert, in fact.

to make things only slightly more surreal, i didn't have a plan, and i had lost the information of the hostel where i would be staying, so i decided to walk with them to emily's hostel, hoping to find an internet cafe on the way where i could find again the confirmation from the hostel. we walked to this hostel, which was a hike up to a palatial villa. when we got there, she checked in, and i thought, i've got nothing to lose. so i asked if i had made a reservation. in fact, i had. two complete strangers had not only reconnected me to various friends back home, they had led me to my place of rest for the next two nights. mysterious ways.

i gotta go hang out with these cool girls now, i think we're going to see the david. more on taize next time. i swear. also, i would encourage anyone to make a reservation to spend some time there. silence...i've never been more crazy or more sane. paradox, a theme of the week.

scene change

2006-01-14T07:42:00.000-05:00

dear virtual community,

this time in london is winding down and i have very mixed feelings about it. the pace of this program has made me quite ready for it to be over, and i'm ready for a change of scenery, but i will miss dreadfully the intellectual stimulation and more importantly the friendships that have been made and strengthened here.

tomorrow morning i am taking a TGV train (that means i'm going through the CHUNNEL at high speeds - psyched) to paris, where i will have a brief layover and then on to the taize community near dijon. for those looking for more information on this religious community founded in the wake of WWII, check out www.taize.fr.

a week from tomorrow i train overnight to florence, where i'm kicking around and staying at a youth hostel monday and tuesday nights. wednesday the 25th i meet up with the other participants in the arezzo program, and we're off to some villa for a 4 day orientation. the availability of internet will probably be spotty through this next week and a half, but i like nothing better than opening up my inbox to find it full of messages from recognizable and friendly addresses. until then -

sunday, surreal

2006-01-10T11:37:00.000-05:00

ok, so this past sunday was a little weird. it was a great day all around, but i think the polarity of events will be clear.

my roommates tom and ted and i went on our habitual morning run at 7:00 down to the thames, where tom (while runnning himself) took a picture of us running across the waterloo bridge with big ben in the background. we then undertook a discussion of whether or not tom's speed had precisely matched that of ted and i, of whether the picture would turn out, of how sweet it would be if ted and i were in perfect focus while big ben was slightly blurred. we're all very excited to see the print.

then we had our full english breakfasts (FEB's, as they have come to be affectionately known), over which we discussed whether or not we were all addicted to full english breakfasts. as a collective, room 14 is very passionate about transparency. nothing is sacred in our tete-a-tetes. not even our most sacred ritual, the morning FEB.

after our morning class, most of the group went down to westminster abbey for a sung eucharist service. it was fantastic! thanks to professor peck's connections and perseverance in making reservations for our group, we were allowed to sit in the choir in the central chancel. these seats are used during big functions for dignitaries from foreign lands and officials within the anglican church. we were directly between the organ and the choir, both of which were near the top of their game. i sang as loud as possible during the hymns. quite seriously, the service was very moving, and perhaps i'll write about some of my thoughts about the eucharist itself in a few days. i feel like i have had a realization.

professor and mrs. peck, tom, my friend erin, and i went back to the hotel and had a delightful lunch, and after a brief lay-down we went to the playhouse theatre near trafalgar square to see a production of Luigi Pirandello's Come tu mi vuoi ('As You Desire Me'), starring Kristen Scott Thomas, who was phenomenal.

after the play, i walked through the rain with prof. and mrs. peck to conway hall, where we took in a really great chamber music concert by the primrose piano quartet. the violist was playing on an instrument made in 1630, and we were all impressed. what was of even more interest than the brahms piano quartet in c minor was the fact that this conway hall is the local headquarters of the National Secular Society of britain. the hall itself used to be a church, but it's fascinating to see how all religious imagery and ornamentation has been removed, replaced by only the words 'To Thy Own Self Be True' above the stage area. the atmosphere lent a certain pugilistic connotation to these words, as if the people gathered there would feel their very 'selves' under attack from an oppressive external force. which, to take a look at the literature available, seems to be precisely how secularists in britain feel. the issue i picked up was declaring the newly elected 'secularist of the year,' who apparently is particularly skilled at angering the british muslim community. three cheers.

anyway, i'll end things there, with the surreality of worshipping in WESTMINSTER ABBEY and then 5 hours later to be in a militantly secular space, both of which had some pretty swinging music. perhaps this is a bridging element. i hope so.

oh yeah, after the concert i went out with nearly everyone on the trip to a bar called 'revolution,' which had taken on a bolshevik theme, red stars and everything. the subtitle was the very spartanly worded 'vodka and food.' what else would a good comrade need? it was quite humorous to note that even the iconography of communism has been successfully commodified. also reassuring to know that such a trading on principle is happening outside of the united states. apparently other people in the world are also shameless capitalists. ah, thoughts of home. miss you all.

i have been going to plays

2006-01-06T20:36:00.000-05:00

i have been going to many interesting plays in the past week. most notably, tonight i saw the play 'paul,' which dramatizes the strengths, weaknesses, and even the psychosis of the apostle Paul. in this creation, yeshua did not in fact die on the cross, nor was he resurrected. joseph of aramithea bribed the centurion to let yeshua down, and he survived the crucifixion. he then appeared to paul in the flesh on the road to damascus as a political trick by james and peter to free the early christian movement from saul's vicious persecution. paul then used his unprecedented and unparalleled fervor for the risen Christ to not only raise congregations throughout the mediterranean, but also to persuade even those apostles who knew yeshua to accept and believe in his own mythologized Jesus Christ. anyway, it was really interesting. and that's all i have to say about that.

liminal spaces

2006-01-04T13:17:00.000-05:00

in my first post i had meant to offer some explanation of this title - 'in the middle of the journey of our life.' this is the first line of dante's divine comedy, the inferno cantica.

i was having a discussion with my friend tom about 'liminal spaces' - an idea that was imparted to me from the golden tongue of one patrick o'brien. it came up after we saw a plaque in hyde park that referenced lewis carroll, author of 'alice in wonderland.' a liminal space is a sort of boundary area, an amorphous threshold between the known realm and that which lies beyond our capacity to anticipate - the otherworldly, the creepy.

the opening of dante's divine comedy finds the poem's main character - dante himself - in such a space, at the foot of a mountain he cannot climb. his path is blocked by a variety of threatening obstacles, and he is paralyzed with an awareness of his own helplessness and lack of direction in 'the dark wood' he finds himself in. what's interesting is that he writes with all the emphasis inherent in the very first line of a 3 volume epic poem encompassing politics, history, literature, philosophy, and theology that he finds himself there in the journey of OUR life. this is not just a personal journey. his reader is invited along as he himself is guided 'by another way' at the heels of his guide, the poet vergil.

now, i destest melodrama, but to an extent i can empathize with the sentiments of that high poet and humble pilgrim. mainly, i'm aware that the challenges of this trip are insurmountable by my own power and wits alone. and whatever mountain of virtue or wisdom that demands my ascent may need be approached by a circuitous, unknown route. and right now, that knowledge is creeping me out. i'm trying to keep my eyes open for white rabbits.

new year's revelry

2006-01-02T06:40:00.000-05:00

i must first note that whoever last logged into 'blogspot.com' on this computer changed all the language settings to some eastern characters that i don't recognize. so i'm flying blind here. but aren't we all.

i'm frustrated by this medium - i've got 20 minutes to write something i hope you all might find relatively interesting, and i'm not sure if you want specific discourse on topics i've been reflecting on, or if a play by play of my activities is more appropriate. i'd like it to be more towards the former, because being abroad is stimulating my thinking on a number of issues i felt more or less blocked up in while in rochester. but, considering that it was just new years (and new year's eve just before that), i do feel obligated to relate to you my very sweet evening.

we all saw a production of Thomas Middleton's 'A New Way to Please You' in the afternoon of the 31st, and then after dinner we moved to Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' - it was a fantastic production that I enjoyed immensely. the music in particular was somewhat entrancing - it lent a 3-dimensional pathos to the whole play, but especially to the character Feste - the fool - that was entirely absent in the literal text.

after the play a group of 12 of us headed down to the 'food mart: express' to buy beer or wine, each according to his or her taste, and walked slowly over the waterloo bridge towards the national theatre. we took our time because london at night is beautiful and the city was especially dolled up for the holiday - images were projected on buildings, lights were shone into the sky - it was breathtaking. while people around us were setting up camp for the evening as this would be an ideal spot to see the fireworks set off over the thames by the london eye, we moved on and walked along the thames, eventually ending up at big ben, where we experienced the ritual rebirth of time with about 50,000 other people. it was great.

after midnight we quickly decided to head towards trafalgar square, another population center for the evening, but the street was blocked. at this juncture, we were packed in together as tightly as possible, and moved only by the whim of the crowd. because i am tall and visible, most people in the general area seemed to blame me for being shoved this way and that. i felt bad that they weren't in control of their own movement, but hey - we were all in the same boat and i had some girl's deceptively pointy purse shoved up under my ribs for 20 minutes. give me a break.

we ended up moving across the westminster bridge (away from our hotel, to the wrong side of the thames), being swept into these currents of people that moved seemingly without any individual volition. it was an interesting commentary on collective action, and exhilarating as it was unnerving. the downside of these powerfully pumping arteries of personhood was that half our group was in an instant shunted off into another branch of the social body and were ultimately turned around. we were separated and would not be rejoined until 2 hours later at the hotel. my group, now of four, took a round about route back to the hotel, as i, apparently the leader, forgot we were now on the wrong side of the thames and headed west when east should have been our heading. but we made it back.

however when we did arrive back at the hotel and were rejoined shortly after by our diverted fellows, we were 2 short of our original 12. my good friend tom and i immediately set out to look for them. so we scoured every place we had been that evening for the next hour and a half, returning to the hotel around 4am, only to learn that our lost lambs had gotten back of their own accord about 15 minutes after we had left. but such is the stuff of stories. about new year's.

i close this entry with an invitation to you all. check out this website: www.earthfromtheair.com

this is a virtual version of an exhibit on display near the tower bridge - the artist/photographer yannthus bertrand, in partnership with UNESCO is in the midst of an extensive series of aerial photographs of natural and human phenomena. the pictures are stunning, and the captions are poignantly conscious of the complex interrelationship between human and natural forces of beauty and destruction. the most intriguing and moving pictures are those in which the two interact in a single frame. i love the one of the man on the bales of cotton, but it's hard to pick a favorite.

i don't miss the states much right now, but i do miss you that populate them. peace to you all and happy new year.

The National Gallery

2005-12-30T05:51:00.000-05:00

Quick Run through of yesterday's (thursday's) activities: morning run that took me past most of the theatres we'll be visiting during this program, Waterloo Bridge and Station, the National Theatre, the place the London Phil plays (can't recall the name), the London Eye, the Dali Museum, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey (nice anti-war display there - moving), Parliament, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Strand, back to the Harlingford. Good run and most efficient sightseeing trip of my life

(juggling and fire are cool). Back to the National Gallery - spent some good time looking at Turner, Britain's prize impressionist. I enjoyed his paintings a lot, they put me in a sort of plaintive mood. Monet/Manet/Seurat. Pointillism blows my mind. Special exhibit of a local photographer from Hackney who quotes directly from Old Master paintings in his pictures of marginal populations (squatters, the homeless) and marginal events (bodies found in river, etc.). Very interesting, often disturbing.
Back to the hotel for a quick nap. Got together with Prof. Peck, his wife Ruth, and cellist from Eastman named Erin - we went up to Hackney for sis kabobs and then a production of Aristophanes's Lysistrata. 'True' to the tradition of Greek drama, the male characters wore 4 foot phalluses (phalli?), in a variety of neon colors. Very funny. Bed.

In the 15 minutes I have left on this computer, I want to talk a little bit about a recurring image from the 1500-1600 division at the National. Needless to say, much of the art from this period and in this section of the Museum was devotional in nature - religious subjects and imagery were dominant. In 5 or 6 of the paintings which featured a representation of Christ (Madonna and Child, preaching, crucifixion, piet'a, etc.) there was a figure standing off to the side looking at Christ and pointing heavenward. Often times this was John the Baptist, but not always. The note on the side of each painting commented that this pointing signified the final destination and ultimate purpose of Christ - to return to heaven, having flung wide the doors of salvation by his sacrificial death and resurrection. In the interest of time, I'll say this was trope was infused with the most pathos in scenes of the infant Christ in the stable, with one of the wise men or the infant John the Baptist pointing toward heaven.

I am amazed by the inclusiveness of the Christian narrative, and this inclusiveness has interesting consequences for the Christian understanding of time. Christ's birth is inseparable in the Christian mind from his miraculous rebirth at Easter, which of course brings in the horror of the Crucifixion. It's all tied together, a unified whole. And of course the narrative of Christ's earthly life and the Gospel authors' interpretation of purpose in that life - to redeem the world - is the lynchpin for all of history in the Christian meta-narrative. Interestingly enough,

journey to london via new york

2005-12-28T17:30:00.000-05:00

Well let's get this underway. I'm writing from the appropriately and succinctly named 'Internet Cafe' on Euston in Bloomsbury, London. I have been in London for about 15 hours, although I have been *not* in line (queue) or awake for only about 5 of those. Alas, I'm beginning in medias res. Odysseus before the Phaiacians, Aeneas before the Carthaginians, let me relate to you the story of my journey. To speak of it is to renew my pain. not really. at all.

I flew out of Rochester at 6am on Tuesday, Dec. 27th. I was all psyched up the night before and going through unnecessary mental machinations regarding departure and my general absence from the US for 6 months, so I boarded this plane running on about 2 hours of sleep. Got into JFK around 7:15, and walked to the baggage claim with Matt Owens, an old friend of mine from high school who happened to be on the same flight. We caught up a bit and talked about the Boston and NY jazz scenes, which Matt knows about because he is a Berkeley jazz trumpet grad, and which I pretend to know about because I'm currently reading the autobiography of Miles Davis.

We parted ways and I took the airtrain and then the subway into Manhattan. I got off around Times Square because, what the hell, I've got a 40 pound pack on my back - better act the tourist as much as possible. Plus I'd never been. So I looked around, got my news off that wavy scrolling light thing at ABC studios, strained my neck looking up at tall buildings. It was nice. Walked uptown to Central Park, where I spent most of the day reading about the endearingly arrogant Miles and writing down some thoughts in the old journal, trying to get my head together about what's gone down the past few months, figure out where I stand going into the next few. As Martha Stewart says, it's a good thing. I nodded off for about 15 minutes on my 3rd bench of the afternoon. I kept getting cold so I'd walk around for a bit and find another bench with more sunshine.

Walked around some more - down 5th avenue just checking it out. that was distinctively zoo-like. Crazed animals dressed like humans dressed in the skins of animals. Stopped at a post office to mail home the car keys I found in my pocket (could be useful to someone else in my family) and on my way back to the subway I ran into, out of whatever hundreds of thousands of people milling around in New York on that day, Joanna Reynolds, a friend from the U of R. She was shopping with her mother, and I must say, looked very much in her element. Her ever fashionable dress had been taken to the next level - she was clearly a native. I enjoyed talking to her and her mother was very nice and asked if I'd like to join them for coffee, but I needed to get going.

Made it back to JFK, did the check-in thing, had quiet time in the chapel. I must interject that there are 4 distinct and CLEARLY labelled 'chapels' right next to eachother in Terminal 4. On each, the wall facing the terminal was all glass, which struck me as very shopfront. Now, of course I'm impressed that airports are providing quiet areas for prayer and reflection, and was myself eager to take advantage of that space, but it was a little too surreally American on the whole. I think back to the meditation room in the Amsterdam airport en route to Kenya 3 years ago - that seemed a much more sacred space to me, probably because there was no differentiation between faith traditions. On the other hand, there were only 2 other people in that room in Amsterdam (although the architecture alone was a reflection of the divine). When I was walking to the non-denominational Protestant Chapel (which oddly enough had the word 'crusade' somewhere in the name - also right next to 'Our Lady of the Skies') our Muslim brothers and sisters were packed into their storefront like sardines. Then almost all of them left at the same time and went to the same gate to board their plane to Cairo. I thought that was very nice, I wish that a good one-third of my Virgin Atlantic flight had been shoulder to shoulder in one of the other chapels before we went down en mass to cross the Atlantic. Out of Egypt.

One more thing on the chapel note - can someone send me or post the text of the 'Every Valley' section of Handel's Messiah? I think it's the 3rd section - tenor solo. Good things to be thinking about in the midst of adjustment - 'and the rough places made plain.'

Couldn't sleep on the flight because I am 6'4" and my knees were right up against the tray table the whole way. Not the most comfortable I've ever been. Very very pretty stewardesses ahem flight attendents. So it wasn't wasted time.

Deboarded, stood in a passport control line for an hour and half, got my bags and headed for the Underground. Had some money trouble, got nervous, but it's all resolved now. Made it to the Harlingford Hotel in Bloomsbury where I'll be staying until the 15th without incident. meant to 'just try out the bed' for an hour or two - right. you see where this is going. woke up at 8pm local time - a nice 10 hour nap. no matter what, though, I'm getting up at 7:30 tomorrow for breakfast and a full day of gallery hopping. Tate and Tate Modern, definitely.

I will close by saying that over break I recorded some songs with my friend Dan Gocek. This project explores the degree to which one can really produce anything novel - or if that's even a desireable aim. I think it's more interesting to see ourselves in a dialogue with what's come before and what else is happening now. In that spirit, I recorded some of my friends at school reading something they thought was interesting, moving, quirky, or fun. I then tried to incorporate those ideas and their very voices into the music. In retrospect, I wish I had taken more time to work the very words into lyrical material, etc., but I'm pretty pleased with how the whole thing turned out. Basically, if you want to hear what this sounds like, email my distribution co-ordinator, sister, and future NYU freshman - Ellie.

let me hear your voices - give me a shout at cadair@mail.rochester.edu. peace.

Longest web address...ever

2005-12-23T14:21:00.000-05:00

Hello and welcome to the unfolding and incomplete record of my travels over the 6 months to come. I hope I can keep your interest.