Reportage Week Four

The piazza de Santa Croce is full of Dante and pigeons. The steps of the museum where Dante isn't buried remains covered in bird poop and granola bars from the Asian tourists that walk by. I watch as the rain scuttles everyone but four Americans into the shops. No one buys anything. A flutter of umbrellas open once the rain stops and a young boy hides under his father's blue poncho. Antialias male with an umbrella and a fedora walks by the steps, an Italian pimp. On his right, a girl about three years older thn me is dressed in suede stilettos and a dress cut mid thigh, hiding through tights. An Italian female companion. Her heals clatter on the cobblestones as she wanders past the Korean tourists who all have the same burgundy hat with the embroidered SOMME. I want to know what it means...but I don't.

Junkyard Quote Four Week Four

I'm standing in Assisi, the same scene as in Gubbio. One cobblestone street up to the church, see the throngs of people from every end of the Catholic world, and not. One cobblestone street down to the restaurants, the shops all saying SOUVENIR in intricate, archaic fonts, yet different colors. The only thing that differentiates these places. Franciscan necklaces, a T, half a cross, dangle from every doorway, taunting me. I have so much left to learn from this place, from them all. How do I sift through the junk, the trash build ups in the corners? The fairies trapped in snow globes sit next to the ones of Francis and his wolf, Francis and his sheep, laughing at me. This town is a bubble. A place preserved like the Saints in their caskets, or the intestines of Francis that hide in the new chapel. The withered pipes actually rope holding up everyone here. The nuns, hunkered over in the side pews, quiet protectors of their protector. I wonder who protects me. Not a saint. Or a nun.

Junkyard Quote Post Three Week Four

In Spoleto something is always happening. Currently, a television show: "Don Matteo" season nine, takes up an alley way with a donkey, or a piazza with a fight. Over that, while the sky hails, a neighbor takes out a wall. Jackhammers and men with tool belts and dusty hands chatter from behind our windows, shades closed to retain some inherent form of privacy. Nothing is private here. Yet, everything is quiet.

Junkyard Quote Post Two Week Four

A fresco, outlined from a ripped out festival stand, tells the story of Jesus. The crucifiction specifically, accurate down to the thieves on the left and right. The only one with them, Daniella says as we crane our necks, straining to see every detail, right down the lapus lazuli that makes the deep blue sky on Giotto's pieces. She points out the bottom piece, Mary holding baby Jesus, with Francis and John on either side. Her microphone cuts in and out, static from the thousands of guides each with their blue and pink boxes on lanyards. My eyes glaze on the halos, slightly puffed out from the wall, the closest we have to touching these men. I disagree with Mary's thumb, pointing towards Francis, his painted shock the same as mine.

Junkyard Post One Week Four

In the dungeon of the hotel, where we are supposed to eat breakfast, I eat a croissant and yogurt. The yogurt is apricot today, the croissant, hard (but softens when covered in honey.) As I type out my response to Daisy Miller, I'm encompassed by languages. The hotel is a melting pot, a bowl for the German, French, Italian and American fruits. I want to pick one: an apple from New York, bitter accent green like the skin, or an orange from Rome, tan-ish an pocked, hints of citrus hiding under the spice before taste. The basket in the breakfast room almost empty, like the coffee canister, and a husky voice of a Norwegian asks for more bread.

Masters Reading Response to Daisy Miller

In Daisy Miller, the story takes place in Vevey, Switzerland and Rome, Italy. The narrator, a man only known as Winterbourne, is visiting his aunt who has a home in both places. She is a woman at the top of the society and she expects her nephew to acquaint himself only with those of his same stature. When Winterbourne becomes taken with a girl named Daisy Miller and her brother Randolph. The Americans are going to Italy as a little vacation and as a sort of medical necessity. The whole family has a disease called dyspepsia and the climate is easier on them. Italy is seen as a place where one can recuperate quietly, without being disturbed, and as a place where one can then do what they want. Winterbourne's aunt is recovering from headaches and she is never disturbed, wherever she goes. The Miller's mother is recooperating from her disease, and she hardly ever goes out, nor does she need to.
Her daughter, however, takes Italy as a place to live out this life that she imagines in America. She has a large gentleman society in America, and in Italy, she is able to be known as "the American flirt." She seems to like this idea. She mentions the moment when Winterbourne wants her to get into the carriage so as to not ruin her reputation and she laughs and does the opposite. Italy is represented as a place to be whatever they want. Daisy Miller wants to be chased, wants to have a slew of men after her but Winterbourne and everyone else to put up a fuss. She wants to be the center of attention, she wants excitement, adventure. Italy offers all of this to her. People hardly speak her language. They don't know anything about her, nor she them. Italy is her freedom.

Original Work Week Three

This is based on the piece from Deep Travel "Reading About the Earthquakes in Assisi" by Anne Marie Macari.

As if what was sacred had become ridiculous, I peeled off my shoes.
The forest twisted behind me, left in a field of moss and history that will be discovered
by the next group of wild Americans, ready to learn for the moment.
Rocks fall from my socks, lined in the bottom of my shoe, making a pile of rubble
to put in a bag as a souvenir. I am cheap.

250 euro for a five week trip, my mission: Travel to Rome, Gubbio, Bologna, with
only the clothes on my back, scream in excitement at shampoo. I'll smell of cucumbers
and hibiscus, miss my mother, who shoves candles in my face saying "for the bathroom?"

She'd love it here in this medieval town, flags with clouds straight out of Medieval Times, without
the eating with your hands. I pick up a ceramic butterfly, brush my thumb over the blue and yellow wing, study the misplacement of a black spot. The only one imperfect, a throwaway in America.
Yet this man behind the counter, full of mood rings and little glass angels holding gems, throws
it in a cardboard box with others that don't fit on the table.

I'm this butterfly. One wing bent too far to the left, the other wing too thick.
My stripes don't match. But one day, I'll make my way off this table.
Ceramic butterflies and people can't fly,
but they can smile.

Response to Blog Post Week Three

This is a response to Joanci's "Week 3 – Image 2 "

 "Life sculpts niches in cracks and corners.

Sun reaches street level only at mid-day.

Plants grow lush and green shadowed

by three stories each side of history.

Roots decay pavement, carving

survival between and below ancient granite

desiring only possibilities of change."

   

This is what I posted in response: 

"Joanci,
I think that these are really cool snip-its of images, but I can totally see this becoming a piece. What I think you could do is choose one or two: I like the plants and pavement, I think those two compliment each other in a different way. They are sort of reversals, one grows up and the other stays on the ground but grows out. Then, flesh these out. You have "plants grow lush and green"...okay, that's a start. What kind of plants? What other colors are there? Where do the grow out of? You go on to say "shadowed by three stories each side of history." That's intriguing. Whose history? Where are you? What happened during this history? How do the plants tell this story?
Then, what you can do is contrast this with the idea of the pavement, which instead of growing out is decaying. How does this embody the history that the plants are growing around? "Carving survival between and below ancient granite desiring only possibilities of change," what are those possibilities? This is again super intriguing to me...how does granite desire change? What or whose survival? I think if you create a distinct character and location and flesh out these images you could create something that would be a great piece for workshop and the portfolio."

Masters Reading Response to Don't Look Now

I know I've said that I've enjoyed all the readings we've done, but this one sucked me in from the very beginning. I feel like I had deja vu while reading this, it seemed so close to another plot line that I read, but even still, I could not stop reading. This piece is set in Venice, which is very appropriate because of the Gothic nature of this book. Venice is home to Gothic architecture and art, and Du Maurier's Gothic novel thrives on this idea. Venice is considered a dying city, since it is drowning and the city as a whole has converted to wood because it is easier to prevent decay this way: underwater, wood is oxygen deprived. This may seem unimportant, but in Du Maurier's piece, the family is slowly dying. Laura and John have just lost their little girl and their boy is away at school, so they decide to get away and try to cut off the oxygen to their loss. Under this water, there is a extension on the decay of their marriage and family. But there are new things to worry about. Venice has to worry about heat and rain, smell and crowded places. Just like this family, or at least John, who thinks that now that they have this daughter out of their mind, they are free to not worry about anything. But not long after, John realizes that there are two women that bring up a whole different set of fears. Venice is full of fears. Italy is full of fears. I have realized this since traveling to Italy. You have to worry about food, about transportation, about stores closing, about where to sleep, about getting in contact with someone, about everything. But this is just like normal life. The only difference is that you are in an unfamiliar place and when you put a huge emphasis on it like John's wife does with the fears that the women bring to their attention, that is when something more excessive happens. But the reason that this is set in Italy and cannot be set anywhere else is the mix of this fear and Gothic influence. There is nowhere else in the world that these two can mix: Italy is the birthplace of the Gothic.

Reportage Week Three

While walking around the aqueduct a few days ago, Jo, Joanci and I stopped to take a sip at the fountain by the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta. Up the hill, a man in a blue jacket speaks into a walkie talkie and steps behind a barricade. Two girls, about my sister's age run up to the man in aviator sunglasses and giggle as he signs a booklet about the size of a slice of Italian bread Diamond bought from Tigre. He takes them off to the side of a brick building and one of the girls stands still long enough to take a picture. They bid him "Grazie" and prance down the steps to the church. We creep around the barricade, hoping that the police won't stop and start rapid firing in Italian. Down, just in front of the fresco of Mary and Jesus with the Evangelists is a group of Italian stars with lights and microphones and cameras, fixing hair and holding prop briefcases. Jo slowly starts to walk down the steps, pretending to blend with the Italians but her white blonde hair sticks out among the dark. The man and woman on the Palazzo steps push each other, acting out a scene that I'm too far up to hear.

Junkyard Quote Post Four Week Three

In this garden, a secret I convince myself since it's atop a hill in the great beyond of Gubbio, there is a villa. This villa, the color of a Fanny May mint green patty before they went under, has shades with flitting birds and leaves from an oak tree. There are no oak trees in this garden.
When we first walked in front of the great wooden doors, I saw a brush of golden brown hair shut behind a shade. This villa is home to Emanuella, a nineteen year old Eugubina who paces her door every day from nine to six waiting for Luca to return from the shop on Via Garibaldi, where they sell dried sausage and hard cheeses hanging from the ceiling. She makes ravioli with truffles from the garden for dinner and their pit bull Giovanni eats the scraps that falls off the table. Emanuella died in 1902 in the storm that knocked down the tree in the backyard and caused the avalanche in the hole down by the temple. A fountain turns on once a year to commemorate her death and out in front of the clock tower that stopped keeping time in 1926, a monument stands. That unnamed cement tube contains a notch in the top, a placekeeper for Luca. When he returns, there will be a topper of gold stars to symbolize the return of the principe and principessa.

Junkyard Quote Post Three Week Three

There is a place that smells of body odor and herbs, up the hill from the pizzeria that has a bathroom where Febreeze and Glade made a baby that killed fourteen people and hid the stench with its scent. A place filled with modern art that looks like garbage cans and box springs. This is the park in Gubbio. Little doors of blue metal lock back the secrets from St. Francis and his wolf, secrets that the Eugubini know. Sounds of water echo through the door as I bend down, there's a man in this door. A wood dwarf who runs behind us flapping a flag in the wind, tells his friends at the other doors to keep them locked, ducks around trees when we turn.

Memory Post Week Three

As Diamond and I sprawl out on the bed, trying to read and finish some homework, a pair of purple and pink undergarments hangs out drying on the towel rack in the bathroom.
"This isn't the first time I've had to do this." Diamond's voice says behind me. I laugh as she shrugs. "As long as the jeans don't cut up your junk you'll be fine." She goes back to Lolita and I giggle, remembering when my family and I decided to visit my father's mother in Montana when I was ten. We nearly missed our flight into Salt Lake City, my father on his phone and my mother met someone in the group next to us. I click the button on my CD player to the next song and look up to see my father running across the gate to the booth. My mother calmly but quickly gathers up my sister and I and follows him to the gate muttering something along the lines of "Thank you God, oh thank you."
Later, as I come to find out, we nearly missed our plane, and if I turned down my Radio Disney CD, I would have heard my father's name called over the intercom.
We thought we were in the clear. But when we landed in Salt Lake City, there were no people at the gate. The stewardess tells us in a voice reserved for a Kindergarten teacher that we had missed our flight and would we like some vouchers for a hotel and free breakfast? Our luggage is still in route to Montana, secure in the plane, so we have nothing but the clothes on our backs and some books and snacks for the plane. Pointless material that won't be any help for my toothbrush dilemma.
The next morning, we stand at the ticket counter for what seems like three hours discussing and re-discussing the situation. Now there were no flights into Bozeman, where my grandmother lives, and after a quick call to her, we book a flight to Kalispell. Kalispell is six hours north of Bozeman, about two hours from the Canadian border.

Masters Reading Response to Cask of Amontillado

In Poe's Cask of Amontillado, Italy is represented through Fortunato. He is a dark character that is respected and feared. A very knowledgeable person when it comes to wine, he is described as a virtuoso Italian by the speaker. The way I read this, it sounded as though this Fortunato character was a personification of Italy. He was what everyone thinks of when Italy is discussed. The reason that this piece cannot be set anywhere else but Italy is because of this character. He is the fortune that goes away with the temptations of the world. This piece, to me, is talking on the dangers of the world. There are things that you assume will go one way and then when they go another, the outcome isn't good. For the speaker, he assumed that Fortunato would take him into the vaults where the speaker would either take from him or leave him down there. But the way I read it, the speaker was the one left down there. This would therefore, represent the trickiness of Italy and the way that you have to be on your toes while around it. This is relevant to the life that we have here while traveling and studying. Recently, a few of my friends decided to go to Pompeii, where they were swindled out of about 300 euro and one of my friends got pick pocketed. The other thing that occurs here in Italy that doesn't present itself so much in America is the gypsies. One of my friends gave some change to an old woman with a baby who "needed" change and another friend gave change to a woman: later one of the girls on the trip told us that both those women were gypsies, swindlers of change. This is Italy. This is Fortunato.

Masters Reading Response to Rappaccini's Daughter.

Rappaccini's Daughter is a very creepy story to me. Creepy in a beautiful way. Italy fosters this creepy-esque-ness of the piece. In the piece, Italy is a place of unknown knowledge and beauty. The flowers especially represent this unknownness because they are something that Giovanni has never been exposed to. He says himself that these flowers are the temptation that was in the Garden of Eden for Adam. But he cannot stay away, because of Beatrice. She is the reason that these flowers are so intriguing to him, she loves them like they are her sisters (when in fact they pretty much are).
This piece couldn't be set anywhere else but Italy because of that quest for knowledge. This place is the breeding ground for all things knowledgeable. It was here that the Enlightenment took off and brought out a whole new way of thinking. This is seen in Doctor Rappaccini. His "experiment" of getting flower poison into his daughter from childhood to make her resistant to the effect could be seen as a sense of enlightened thinking. This is something someone would only think about (or at least act on) after this new wave of thought was introduced. Italy is a place that fosters this new thought. In the Italia Romantica, Italy is this place that is starting to lose its intellectual "boil." If Nathaniel Hawthorne experienced this idea of Italy losing its intellectual power at any point in time, then Rappaccini's Daughter could be considered a response to this idea. It could be a way for someone to point out why Italy is brilliant in their thinking, yet flawed in the procedure. Italy becomes a place that is humanized and flawed: just like these flowers that Giovanni and Beatrice are so taken with as well.

Junkyard Quote Two Week Three

Sounds of an accordion wiggle through the slew of people on the Rome metro. Tyler and I attempt to clap along with the sounds while hanging onto the pole to prevent the Germans from finding America on their laps. While we wait for the next train, Megan buys underwear at a children's store called Z, hoping a twelve year old has the same size as she. At least they're on sale.

Sydney and I rush from Enrico after eating pizza, stopped by a elderly group outside a hotel meandering for a taxi. We pause, laughing about the day's events when the crop duster sounds from the white haired man with a cane in front of me. We manage to make it past him before doubling over in the bushes, trying to walk up the Via del Corso so as to not pee ourselves.

Junkyard Quote Post One Week Three

Nine Americans pick Florence and the Machine, Childish Gambino and Spice Girls to pair with red wine and grappa. Glasses clink and slosh as the motley crew shakes around the room as laughter mixes with cigarette smoke and wafts through the Spoletian air.

Junkyard Quote Post Four Week Two

There is a painter across the street from our apartment
who propped a piece up in the window yesterday.
The three colored canvas: sin
in paint.

The top right corner takes a minute to see,
a snake like creature with four eyes gives birth
to a man with two sets of teeth, a man on the tongue, and another snake
eating his eye.

If you can, glace up farther: the four eyed snake has a brother,
who prefers women to men. Tongue doubles as the pelvis of a woman,
engulfs her body to feed his brother. She blackens to the corner,
headless, unknown.

You are her. 

Original Work Week Two

I took the line "the one road a thread into a small spool" from Anne Marie Macari's Leaving Settefrati from Deep Travel.

The one road threads into a small spool that is Spoleto.
Nuns walk up and down the road to St. Mary twiddling their Rosaries
like my grandmother twiddles her thread.
What do Nuns think of when they walk
through the train station in Rome?
Past the couple, parted for weeks, reunited through kisses.
Past the man sleeping in a wheelchair, covered by the red and orange striped quilt who's twin sits
on my bed. Made last year by grandma.

She told me a story of the Nuns over the whir of the sewing machine,
pumped the pedal in time with the Beethoven in the kitchen.
The Nuns say the Rosary as they walk, repeat over and over to ward off
Gelato cravings and judgements of the girl with the peace, love, and sex shirt
next to the half naked poster of a Colors over Benetton model.

I stare at the shirt, study the threads, stitches, criss cross patterns of the text.
Remember the needle bouncing up and down, life in a moment.
Remember Keats, who wrote love into the wood of the English tree, and carried it to Italy
in his lungs.

Response to a Blog Post Week Two

I did a response to Jo Brachman's : Memory 1 - Pine Lake Jehovah Witnesses - Week 2

(Inspired by the Spoleto Jehovah Witnesses)

"I catch a glimpse of the two older, black women wearing shrouded black dresses as if in mourning. They stand in the middle of the street at the corner, wiping their brows, trying to decide which narrow street of Pine Lake to go up, away from the lake or continue on around the lake. I fear they are moving towards my front porch, designed to welcome visitors. I grab my cell phone and hurry to the back of the house out of sight. I call my friend five houses up and warn her that there are JWs in our midst. She curses, thanks me for letting her know. Says she will hide out in the spaceship, her nickname for her closet office. My doorbell rings. I stay hidden in my bedroom; modulate my breathing as if they can hear; wait for what I think is the appropriate time for them to disperse and peek out to the living room, then beyond out the sidelight windows of the front door. The two women once again stand in the middle of the road in the sun looking like ancient mourners at the Wailing Wall. They inch up the street so slowly I know it will be awhile before they are ringing my friend’s doorbell. I wonder if their ankles are swollen; if their salvation hangs on their willingness to go into neighborhoods; how many doorbells they must ring, how many pamphlets they must hand out or leave. I think of two black slugs sliding along the uneven pavements of our roads, and text my friend, “No hurry, but here they come.”"

This is what I wrote to her. 

"This is such a brilliant image. I immediately thought about when we were introduced to the Italian Jehovah's Witnesses. What I was most taken with was the line "The two women once again stand in the middle of the road in the sun looking like ancient mourners at the Wailing Wall." I feel like this could be the start of a really interesting poem about this. You could use the experience with the women in Italy who were doing the same thing as the women from Pine Lake. I also love the idea that your friend is so upset with these JW's. Why? What has happened in the past that she is bothered by these women when instead of hiding out or cursing them, one could do what Joanci did and gently close the door and say "no we are all set." I think that would be one way to go with it. The other thing I think you could do is challenge the triggering idea of the JW's and write from the perspective of the woman ringing your doorbell. Flip it, your friend finds them irritating, what about the woman trying to talk to your friend? What does she think when people don't answer the door?
I love this idea though...maybe because I was there when the Jehovah's Witnesses came, or maybe its just something that doesn't happen often. Either way, you could do a world of awesome with this image!" 

Masters Reading Response to The Italian

This piece was very interesting to me. Maybe it is because it started out with an assassin in a church and secretly I've been obsessed with assassins. They just fascinate me. But that's beside the point. Italy in this piece was represented to me, as a place where rules are their own. For example: the Englishman was extremely surprised when the assassin was able to walk around the church freely. The friar explained that was because he sought sanctuary there and his justification was that this assassin would starve without the sanctuary. Italy seems to be a place where a lot more is legally acceptable. Our group recently discovered that Italians, especially the ones throughout history, have been oppressed by whatever empire had taken them over at that time. So, breaking rules was their way of getting back. The other day, we ran into a couple who rode the bus without a bus ticket and their justification was the fact that it was late and no one really cares. The other thing that I've noticed about Romans and rules, especially regarding crossing busy streets, was that there are no rules. They just walk across whenever they feel like it. You may or may not get honked at, but every driver will stop. This is relevant to The Italian because that's the way it seems to be within the churches in Italy: there is a different set of rules. I think this could be the same in America, but you don't here about it, and you definitely don't see it with assassins. Italy is represented as a place with it's own code of conduct, that can still be seen today.

Junkyard Quote Post Three Week Two

I sit on a suede couch next to Joanci and am in the middle of telling a story about where I will be living in the fall to Jo, when the buzzer sounds. Joanci, thinking its her alarm clock, meanders into her bedroom, but the buzzer sounds again. I look at Jo. Its the door, which opens to the voice of a woman's rapid Italian. I can pick out two words: Jehovah's Witnesses. I see Joanci's spine crinkle: No speak Italian.
Oh you're English? Do you have a Bible? 
A pamphlet is passed and the door shuts.

Junkyard Quote Post Two Week Two

Down past the Metro in Bologna, Rome, there is a small sign that reads "YouthStation Hostel." If you were on the other side of the road, behind the orange trees that sop up the Roman air, you wouldn't see the blue and white. Once you enter the welcome area, a woman with a slightly German accent hands you a paper and asks for your passport, you pay fourteen euro and get a laminated tag with the wifi code and a key. Doors line the hallways of a green building, you pass Asia, North America, Rome. Europe and Great Britain are on the other side, you meet them at the common area where a girl in a pink shirt and black skinny jeans takes a pizza out of the microwave. The woman at the desk tells you that "there is a grocery store down the street" and "you better hurry, because it closes at eight."

Junkyard Quote Post One Week Two

"grease mullets dance in sweat"

"made by a French accented Italian"

The Capuchin Crypt, filled with real skeletons from the Barberini family, welcomed us with a woman at a granite desk asking five per head. We walked through the same information from the two hour lecture from a St. Francis enthusiast. The crypt, an underground tomb with a set of stairs and one sign that reads no smoking, cellphones, pets, food, or photography, in symbols. We are in Rome, language barriers are the medians.
The underground home for the heart of Pope Sixtus the fifth's niece also houses intricate wall decor and chandeliers made from kneecaps and vertebrae.

Reportage Post Week Two

Today, we walked from Piazza Libertad to the Alberghiero, where Daniella went to school to be a tour guide. We were welcomed by a man with hair past where the neck meets the back and his co-worker, who reminded me of the secret service with Ray Bans darker than night and the ear piece to talk to the Director, who we met at Elisa's party the weekend before. I smile at the teenage girls at the front desk, dressed in matching uniforms and spoke better English than my Italian. To the right, the kitchen, with four boys younger than me laughing at my misshapen lump of dough: a jagged edged circle. I thump the rolling pin in the pimpled boy with the earring in front of me, and sigh. He wraps the end around the pin, trying to smooth it out, the boy next to him tosses flour to destickify it. Side glances at a snickering Jenna prove that my pasta will never live up to the standards of this cook. I think about how grateful I am for High School and the opportunity to go to College, where my work lives up to my standards.
In the other room, where we migrate like herded cats after scarfing down too thick strigoli, there is a group of teenage boys and a girl at the front of the room, dressed in graphic tee-shirts from surf shops and Hollister, awaiting instructions from a saggy pants teacher with a buzz cut. He looks like a friend of my mothers, her trainer from Chicago, with the sleeves of tattoos and bulging triceps. It makes me miss home, this Italian teacher of American Bartending.
Working Flair for two shots and Sex on the Beach is basically one person throwing bottles of Skyy Vodka in the air and jumping up and down in sync with bad Pitbull Zumba music. The row of added American stress bores into the stand from Bartender Stars, not blinking, not wanting to miss the drop of cranberry juice that spots the table.This is their final. I realize I would much rather have a cranberry scantron in front of me, than a twirling cranberry bottle.

Memory Post Week Two

A girl in a butterfly striped shirt, the same girl from the school up the street, holds a Stracciacelli gelato in her right hand, the calloused hand of her farming boyfriend's in her left. Their lips meet each others more than the sugar that drips down the cone. His spoon dips into a strawberry cup and a bluebird lands on the bench next to them, sings a tune that reminds me of the Hunger Games.
Italian children on bikes laugh in the background, a bell chimes: two o'clock.
A woman sits alone two tables away, nursing her own cone, a pad of paper with lamb, asparagus and pane sits in front of her; a pick up list at Tigre for dinner with a tabby cat tonight. I watch her watch the couple, eyebrows scrunching up with the right side of the mouth, hands fidgeting with the pen: click, click.
I think of the pen, my fingers unconsciously move to my left pocket, the silver cylinder with black etching; what you gave me three years ago for a birthday everyone else forgot. We stood on my balcony, fingers tightened on the metal spirals. My eyes searched yours for a hint, some speck of something in the pupiled blue, just like the girl in front of me now in Piazza Garibaldi.

Masters Reading Response to An Italian Affair

I might get some jeers or curious looks from some of my fellow English peeps, but I truly enjoyed this snip-it from the novel. It was an easy read that I felt like I could really get deeper into the piece through the second person writing style. That way, as a reader, I was able to become part of the story and be Laura. The other thing that I really enjoyed about the story was the way that Italy was represented. Although it was the cliched idea that you go to Italy for an Italian man to sweep you off your feet and become your lover, it was really interesting the way the way that Laura Fraser writes it. It reminds me of the movie Under the Tuscan Sun, when the main character goes to Italy on a whim and finds herself a Tuscan villa. In An Italian Affair, Laura goes to Italy to escape a bad divorce with her husband and finds a man who more or less is her imagination of what an affair should be like. He isn't even Italian, but a tourist himself. This is one of those times when Italy is portrayed as a matchmaking place, a place where people find what they are looking for. I don't know what it is or why it is that Italy continues to have this sort of reputation, but it continues to pop up in literature and movies, but it kind of earns this reputation as a magical sort of place where love blossoms. It could be because of the art that exists, or the architecture, or the discovery of knowledge that has occurred here. I know for myself, there is a sense of awe for visiting people and that awe seems to turn into lust in this book, especially sense the couple is traveling together to see beauty in the scenery. Italy seems to be a place that is a catalyst for this affair.

Masters Reading Response to Room With A View

Italy is used as a setting in this piece. It takes place in a Hotel, and it kind of reminded me of the first few days of our stay as a matter of fact. For example, there is an issue among the guests in the beginning: in our stay here in Spoleto, we were waiting for one of the apartments to be ready, so we stayed in the hotel. The next thing was that Italy seemed as a place that allows people to find some sort of re-establishing factor. That was one of the cliches that we discussed in class the first day. What makes it that people think of this as a place for re-discovery? I believe it is the idea of the Renaissance and enlightenment. The enlightenment was the whole idea about discovering a new way of thinking, and Mrs. Lavish says that one doesn't come to Italy for niceness, but life. That was the way of thinking about traveling: you take the plunge to find life. This piece uses Italy as the typical finding of yourself, which is seen in the end when George and Lucy kiss. George contemplates her, as though seeing her in a new light. This is that Renaissance era thinking: finding a new way of seeing things, a new sort of beauty in the thoughts of the time. That's what I thought the importance of Italy as a setting was in "A Room with a View."

Original Work Week One

This piece is based on something I read the other day in the book Deep Travel a poem by Rita Dove called Ta Ta Cha Cha. I riffed the line "sunk in a bowl of sky/ trimmed with marbled statuary."

Outside the Colosseum, sunk in a bowl of sky trimmed with marbled statuary
of the Forum, children clutch tickets for a day inside and mothers
grasp their purses instead of children.
My mother sends emails in a wifi-less zone, playing
Skype jockey throughout the day. Why focus on conversations
with parents, when there's a labyrinth of language.
I snap a picture, delete. Beauty of Roma incapturable,
inescapable.
In Cafe Vincenzo, Katy Perry plays against Graduation music and Jazz,
juxaposition like graffiti on a wall from 313 B.C. or blue
and white parakeets in a PetsMart cage in front of Hotel Clitunno and a pre 1700 church.
Church bells clang in the distance, and the nuns walk for a slice of pizza off Piazza Garibaldi,
staring at my jeans and hotel soap shampooed hair. They're painting the Sistine Chapel
and I'm the Pope.

Junkyard Quote Four Week One

There is an aqueduct connecting Spoleto to Monteluco. This aqueduct, once a bridge for carriage drivers coming to trade goods, barely fits five across, but when we get to the tax collection window, everyone stops to stare at the scene. The city of Spoleto laid out, a photograph waiting to be taken in the mist. On the side of the window, a splotch of red. Spray paint, from yesterday or three years ago, highlights an etched R on the brick. My little fish don't cry, white painted by B. If you keep moving, a family of snails sleeps on the wall where Luca and his friends rode their bikes when they were our age. The snails, shells swirled with brown and white, camouflage in the bricks, seen only by the keen eye of an artist, or a child who's attention needs constant attention. I imagine I'm a trader in Caesar's  day, hopeful to trade the clay pots in the back of my donkey drawn carriage from Spello or Perugia and one day marry my daughter to a farmer in Spoleto.

Reportage Week One

Three rooms where language classes are held in both Italian and English are filled with eight Americans chewing pizza squares and picking at their cuticles. One unwraps a orange sucker and sticks it in his mouth, an avoidance of Italian. Five Italians stare out the window and attempt to speak English with me. I look to my left at MacKenzie, eyes plead save me. The only word I can pick up is Roma, and my brain scrambles for molto bene and bellissimo amidst Spanish. The man with the embroidered F.C on his shirt stands behind the counter of liquor and food speaks a mix of Italian and English. He conducts like the self proclaimed host, pouring more Prosecco and starting conversations with everyone in the room. The real hostess stands off to the side, a glow of pink pride halos around her head. Rain begins to pour outside, two boys dip out to light up a tobacco stick and die slowly. One of the boys, lost earlier today on Monteluco, but found his way back to the land of birra e pane, and the phrase "now you should write about it." After a knuckle kiss from F.C, water drops on my head and I hike past the Indian restaurant and a store that sells Barbie dolls to Tebro and home.

Junkyard Quote Three Week One

Lego pieces of scattered swiss make this Colosseum look like a sandwich of the past and present- a metal worked star stands on the top of a stair-less area where spectators would have watched their favorite gladiator's death march. Sydney poses as a purple gladiator while Megan longs in the corner by a kitten. That star, a piece from an exhibition, loathed by our guide, forebodes the white wash by the maker of Tod's. It's a modern moment amidst the reflection of Roman society. Look up friends, society changes. We can never stay the same. It's a world where a Colosseum built by a Flavian Emperor can have a wall filled purely with etchings from Juno in 1960 or Julio who hearts Rebecca in '88 and a subway system stops construction when ruins show themselves.

Response to a Blog Post Week One

Here is the original post off of Lucas's Blog:

"Journal 1, Entry 2-Image Junkyard: Nicholas Sparks

When we rode the train back from Rome, I sat next to these Italian University students and who I assumed to be their professor. The professor was reading an Italian translation of The Barbary Coast by Norman Mailer. I wanted to tell that there are better American authors out there, but he was already 200 pages into the thing, so he probably already knew.
A couple of stops later, the students gather their stuff and get off the train. One girl's bag opened and I saw a translation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. You can never escape them. I didn't see the name of the book, but does it really matter? Nights of the Lucky Notebook Song Letters. Just someone dies and the other person has to deal with it. The first thought that came to my head was that, translating is as hard as writing a novel, arguably harder. Why would a translator waste his time on that? I know, money. And then I thought, what if the translator is really good? What if Italians think that Nicholas Sparks is the next American God of writing and that the movie adaptations are just smudging his oeuvre?"


Here is what I wrote to him:


"Lucas, this is a wonderful image. It kind of shows that no matter wherever you go, bits of American culture pop up. I particularly love when you combine all the book names together-they all have the same plot. But I think the importance of this being a translation (its like The Vampire Diaries books that were translated and sold at the stand past Piazza Garibaldi) is the fact that no matter where you go, there is a need for a cheesy romance or the need for an escape. Whenever I read a book that never should be labeled as a classic, its always because that book offers something that this life cannot give. Why is this girl reading a Nicholas Sparks book? Usually that is some sort of fantasy for the reader. I think you should do something with that idea...you could create such a great story behind why this Italian schoolgirl is reading a cheesy Sparks book."

What I said later to him was the example that I thought of where to start with this piece.

"What I though of when I read his post for the first time was a girl who either has been wanting a boyfriend or has just been broken up with. That is too easy though...it needs to be something difficult or hard to imagine immediately: so maybe is trying to escape from her parents who are pushing her to go to Rome to study to be an Art history professor, when all she wants to do is go to America and study English. That way, she is reading this book as an opportunity to live American life."

Memory Week One

Since this is a travel writing class, the first memory that comes to mind is a memory of the first trip I really remember going on as a child.

It was 2006 and I just turned 13. My family and I drive to Florida roughly every year to visit my mother's brother and parents. Road trips remain, to this day, eventful experiences because my parents love to play music deemed "oldies" by any recent generation. But their singing propels us to our destination and by the time we've reached Brevard County, ingrained in me are all the words to Blinded by the Light or any REO Speedwagon song. My sister, being 10 at the time, strained against her seat belt for N*SYNC or the Backstreet Boys.
Mid protest, her pleas were silenced by the sight of the Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise liners in Port Canaveral. Faces instantly mushed against the tinted windows, unblinking.
Thinking back, I don't know why anyone scootches closer to the window trying to see anything, it does not really help. You're still 5,000 yards away.
The trip planned for two weeks at Grandma and Grandpa's and halfway through the trip, my father took the whole family out to dinner and suggested we drive by Port Canaveral to see the ships again. Of course the answer was two jumping little girls, incomprehensible words screeched.
The part that sticks with me though, was when my father pulled into the Port, turned around in the drivers seat to face me and my sister and said nonchalantly, "Let's go see if we can get a tour."
Now, any normal person knows that no captain or crew, much less security, lets eight people off the street in to "visit" the Mariner of the Sea ship. But, when my father opened the trunk of the car to reveal all the suitcases, my first thought: Ha! That surly will let us in to visit the ship!
Turns out, we were taking a week long cruise around the Caribbean.

Masters Reading Response to R. Browning's "Two in the Campagna"

This poem uses Italy as a setting immediately with the line:

"I wonder do you feel to-day
         As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
         In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?"

Rome in this sense is a strengthener for people's spirits. It is somewhere to go that will help you figure out something about yourself that will aid you in the strengthening of your spirit. It is like the Triggering Town piece that Dr. Davidson assigned for our class to read: Italy (in Browning's case Rome) is the triggering subject that his speaker is discussing, but in the end there is a found subject, or discovered subject that reveals something about the speaker: in this case it reveals a part of the speaker that he wishes he could change and be more like the one he loves.

Masters Reading Response to P.B Shelley "Eugenian Hills"

This reading discusses Venice as a setting. The line that really stuck out to me was the line that read:

"...Underneath Day's azure eyes
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves."

I sat at the hotel while reading this, thinking back to a conversation with Dr. Davidson just moments before I opened this document, talking about staying in Venice. I have yet to arrive there, however, I know from stories my father told and images seen through friends who have been, that this city is extremely crowded and small and easy to get lost in. This is exactly what I got from Shelley's description, particularly in the phrase "people's labyrinth of walls." That line seems so beautiful to me: its not something you would hear on the street corner, but it perfectly describes the crowded confusion that is Venice...apparently.
The other part of the poem that stuck out using Italy as a location of meaning was the line that read

"...so thou art, Mighty spirit -- so shall be
The City that did refuge thee."

My thought when reading this was that Shelley's speaker is talking to someone that is suffering for some apparent reason, and this city (I believe it was Padua) is a healing place for that person. Something about this city refuges the hurting and the weak in spirit so that they can be healed and made stronger. That is kind of what Italy is doing for me: I wouldn't say I am hurting, but I was feeling very worn down and stressed/ frazzled when we got here. It was not hard, however, to fall under Spoleto's spell and become more brave in the ability that I have to travel around and venture out of my comfort zone. That is what I think Shelley's speaker is saying: Italy can allow someone to become more assured of themselves and their spirit, but this can be relevant to traveling in general.

Junkyard Quote Two Week One

Honks echoed through the piazza as Fiats roundabouted faster than Mario Andretti. Four Americans merged with the cheers, white lines of the cross walk blending with the black and white of Vidal's fans. Juventus and Palermo. A pop-rocket explodes confetti under the piazza billboard scrolling assorted Italian phrases. To the right, a tan finger shakes in the face of a boy no older than six, who stepped in front of a blue Vespa. To the right, a man and woman, dressed in color coordination, argue about whether or not he locked the door. Hands fly, a language all their own.

--The reason this image continues to stick out in my mind: this was my first experience of the celebrations that happen here in Spoleto. The fact that Juventus won a soccer game was apparently the most exciting thing and the fact that I witnessed this very public display of excitement was inspiring for me. I loved the fact that some of the people stood and took part in this celebration and others went about their business. It made me curious as to why they were not going to celebrate.

Junkyard Quote One Week One

Pizza, wine, and good talk with new friends are the cures for jetlag."
-Lucas

Willy Wonka had a party in my mouth.
-MacKenzie

Two parakeets: one a pale puke color, as if you've eaten too many bananas, the other blue and white, chatter in a five euro bird cage from the Italian PetsMart. The birds nuzzle each other and eat a piece of the pellet in the box under their ledge. This cage sits upon a white wicker bar matching all of the other outside furniture. The birds are the only splotch of color around, other than the three flags above the inscribed HOTEL CLITUNNO: blue flag with gold stars represents, the typical Italian flag with green, white and red bars, and the Hotel Clitunno flag with the logo from the cappuccino mug.

--The reason I love this image is because its the juxtaposition of the old and new worlds in Italy: architecture pre-1700 and the three relevant flags of this area slammed up against the modern furniture that welcomes free wi-fi users and lovers of parakeets trapped in a cheap plastic covered metal cage. This is another representation of the modernization of the ancient world, people becoming more and more attune to what is happening within the rest of the world.

Italy: First Impressions

Broccoli florets color a wall around this town that, from a view on a Roman carriage bridge, looks as though it could house sophisticated ants. Scenery fit only for a DaVinci painting in an Art History book makes my stomach drop to my toes. The trees and grass are deeper and cleaner than anything in America, where water must be filtered through a Pur attachment on the faucet in order to drink. Our group walks by four stone fountains cemented in limestone walls, where you fill your bottle with liquid purer than Holy water. After ten hours in the air, a Lana del Rey album on repeat outside a hotel that forgot you eat breakfast for free, internet and a cappuccino with lingering cinnamon and warm foam cures all jet lag. Paper thin walls echo the heels of teenage Italians while my brain draws blanks as to their conversations. I’m definitely the American; the glazed over tourist doubling as a student. As we wander streets that barely fit two cars and a single file line of students, nails disappear at the thought of traveling on my own. I gnaw the end of my pinky right now, thoughts of people who cut and stare at me confused when I speak Italian (sounding more of a mix of Spanish and French with an American accent) fill my brain. But I battle off hesitations with the postcard out my window: the rainbow of brown and terracotta ceramic lining the roofs of houses from before 1700, built into the mountain side with clotheslines drying sheets and acid washed jeans.

Italy: Expectations

Italy comes with its own ideas and stereotypes, as mentioned in the Cliches post. I expect to find pasta. I expect to find pizza. I expect to find art and music and Italian men arguing in the street using their hands in unorthodox ways to express themselves. All of these are expectations we get from television and movies.
I carry that baggage with me when I begin to think about packing and traveling to Spoleto, Rome, Venice, and all of the Italian places I plan to discover over the course of five weeks. I expect to travel by train most of the places I go. I expect, and am afraid, that all the people there will speak only Italian and will not know much English (though I have been told that they know better English than some Americans.) I expect that it will be hot, however, it has been warned that weather is quite fickle this time of the year, so I'm expecting a Georgia weather type on steroids.
I believe that Italy will be loud and filled with breathtaking cobblestones and rivers in the middle of towns where gondolas actually take people from one place to the next. I believe that Italy will have scenery that Americans can only dream of seeing: actual mountains that are not covered in billboards and trees that are not "just for decoration" but actually are what people travel to see.
I expect to see museums and architecture that we only see in art books. I expect to be blown away by beauty at every turn.

Italy: Cliches

I'm about to embark on the trip of a lifetime...Five weeks in Italy. This comes with a few cliches,
first of all being the food. When I think of Italy I think of pasta and pizza. However, I have read (and heard) that this is most definitely NOT TRUE. Italians love their meats and cheeses, they only eat a slice of pizza or a small dish of pasta in addition to other foods, and they do not eat carbs on carbs.
That threw me for a loop. Bread served with pasta is a staple here in America, how does one not eat a crunch piece of Italian garlic bread with Spaghetti? I suppose that is why America is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world.
The other cliche I have about Italy and writing about traveling there is the amount of times I have heard the word "quaint." It makes Italy sound like either a third world village needing missionaries, or a town outside of Atlanta that contains the only sit down restaurant in a fifty mile radius. I don't feel as though Italians would call themselves quaint. Italy seems like one of the most bustling places in Europe when I finally see pictures and actually sit down to Google "Rome."
I am truly excited to erase these cliches with images of the architecture and landscape.