exposure

I was taking the usual way to school this morning, down a slope and through a cobblestone ally, and as the heels of my boots clicked along I watched the people I passed from behind large dark sunglasses. The sun is beginning to show its face in earnest as of late, and I’m glad of this not only for the temperature change, but also because it gives me the chance to cover my eyes so I can observe without detection. This used to be a favorite past-time of mine in London as well as on visits to New York, and I’ve really tried to adopt it here as it keeps my razor-sharp mind focused externally as opposed to internally.

On my left near the stairs, a dashing young man in a suit jacket on his cell phone. An Englishman with hair just long enough to run your fingers through and deep brown eyes. A little further on the right near the military base, 3 construction workers covered with chalky dust and paint quarrel amongst themselves, and the only thing they seem to agree on is that their quarreling should be temporarily postponed and exchanged for lewd comments and a full body examination of the passing redhead. I’ve learned not to break a stone face until I am at least 6 feet ahead of them, at which point a subtle chuckle is appropriate. Two German women pass by, furrowing their brows at the unfolded map in front of them, and a mother chasing two children dart from around a corner. Three mopeds and a Carboneri car (the chicest of the Italian law enforcement bodies) whiz by, and I can smell fresh pizza as a restaurant door swings shut behind an old man waving “Arreviderci!”

I continued walking, but I hit an empty place in the road. Between the cafes, shops, and intersecting streets, there was little reason for this short stretch to be inhabited, and so I found myself alone. At the loss of the external, my mind turned internally, and I began to replay conversations and moments and new discoveries in my head. I began to think about the newest change I’ve found in myself – my inability to be alone. This is something I have never experienced before. With questionable roommates and big dreams, I spent almost my whole summer alone, and as someone who has been single for the better portion of the last 3 years, solitude is not something I am unaccustomed to. But I’ve never minded it; I’m a good introvert, and have always had the ability to be at peace with myself. But now, I find that I have a wonderful time when I am with my friends – traveling, exploring, or even just sitting around and drinking wine – but within moments of being alone, I begin to eat away at myself. I miss people and things, I feel guilty, question my personal growth and progression towards self actualization, I worry, and I feel glum. rinse, lather, and Repeat. The gloominess is easily assuaged by finding some company, but as they depart they are quickly replaced by this little lingering voice of mine.

As I was poking, prodding, and picking away at myself, I noticed another breathing being on this empty street. A young man, probably mid-twenties, with wet curly brown hair down to his shoulders, light features and light eyes such that he must not have been an Italian. He wore a light camel blazer and jeans, and around his neck hung a black strap with a red stripe, holding the baby he held tenderly in his arms. By baby, I mean camera. It was a bulky black squarish thing, and from friends and boyfriends past I was fairly sure was the type of camera that can be held at waist-level while an inquisitive photographer shoots his subject discretely. As I reached into my memory bank, trying to retrieve what was probably a part of my photography-knowledge-via-osmosis at one time, my suspicions were confirmed. I saw him press his hand down on the camera, and subtlely he lifted it was from his chest to view the display on the back. He smiled, apparently satisfied with his shot.

It could have been of the empty street I suppose, but I assumed it was of me. He was doing the same thing as I was, except he was exposing his thoughts instead of just making mental notes of them. He reminded me of the photographers I have grown up with, and I wondered what he was trying to illuminate with the picture he took. What did he see in me? I looked quite Italian today black boots, skinny jeans, a fitted bomber jacket, and with dark sunglasses; did he assume I was a local going about my daily business? Or could he tell I was just as much of an outsider as he? Did his photograph give the feeling of chicness – the cool confidence I was trying to portray with clicking heels and hidden eyes? Or could he see a rootless girl, picking away at herself every second between great adventures?

“You don’t take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it.” – Author Unknown

yours.Rachel

fever dreams

the easiest way to force ones self into dreaming is a fever.

Sure, the other INFs in my life help. But as I have only met 4 others in my life, and they are spread across from American coast to coast (literally East, Midwest, and West), their presence is not always strong enough to pull me from the mundane plateau of existence to the transcendental one. That, and my claims to intimacy with them are as laden with fine print as something produced by the Italian government.

Love helps too. Its overwhelming magnitude is enough to shake even the cynic in me, but the proximity of my loves (and the relative size of the Atlantic ocean plus the spiritual distance between here and there) seems at least to change the object of my dreams somewhat as well.

So, at times like these I may begin to lack dreams, or fantasies outside of the reality that is my life here. I am beginning to think that my body has some sort of a “dream switch”. Like you might flip the light switch because your apartment is dark, my body seems to flip a switch when it contains dark voids it knows should be filled with dreams. This switch raises my body temperature to a point of shivering and blurring of reality. I take something in an attempt to normalize my body temperature, and fall into a pseudo-sleep riddled with strange images and fantasies.

Or maybe I just catch a little bug sometimes. It may all be bullshit, or easily explainable by rational thought, but it does at least smack of something spiritual. Usually, I can will myself into health. I never take anything for colds, flus, etc, if I even come down with them at all. I can usually decide I don’t want to be sick, and with a good night sleep and a will of iron I fend off whatever comes my way. When I was little, my parents’ friends used to joke that no germs would dare mess with me. I was the warrior princess, and no streptococcus or influenza in its right mind would come anywhere near me. But on occasion, I find myself stuck to the ground, with a temperature upwards of 102-103 degrees, completely inexplicably. Humbled, I resign for the day, and by the next morning, I have returned to normal.

It’s these few hours of fever that act as a theater to strange images and twisted realities. Surreal pictures and scenes filled with lobsters, nymphs, and swirling colors seems to appear interspersed through slightly more realistic dreams.

This dream sequence was an interesting one; It opened a can of worms. This idea that I don’t actually know where I will be in just over a year. Or who I will be. I suppose a person can never completely see the path in front of them, but as young white upper-middle-class suburbanites, we have a pretty good idea. Preschool – Grade school – Middle School – Summer Camp – High School – College – Semester abroad – Graduation and a path toward a successful career or graduate school. But where? With who? My professional experience and aspirations could lead me to New York, Chicago, Boston, London, or back to Michigan – not one of these would be more surprising than any other. As a ’single’ woman, considering anyone else’s future in tandem with my own is not necessary, and it opens me up to be many different people. But this lingering sense of homesickness and straightening of priorities begs a question. What do I want? Do I want to get a job in Michigan – land of the four seasons and perfect Midwestern paradise? Or Chicago – a place a little bigger, but still a comfortable distance from the people I’m beginning to wonder if I can live without?

I had a series of dreams dealing with alternate realities. A Sex and the City scene in London – with a Samantha I hardly know (but I like to pretend I do because I like the look in her eyes) and a Charlotte I’m just beginning to get to know. An apartment in Notting Hill, a sexy career, and an elegant life laced with chic clothes and dinner parties with our photographer, artist, and down-to-earth designer friends. An epic fallout between the Carrie (me) and the Samantha, and a glorious return to the states upon the completion of our parallel journeys – she as the moon and I as the sun.

Or a Michigan scene. Maybe Chicago in the end, but growing old with the constant knowledge of the real priorities in my life – they weren’t the profession. Working towards and end that’s been in the back of my mind for ages.

Or an escape. To NY or Chicago or Boston or California or where-ever took me far away from the notions I’ve always entertained. Like my morning coffee and cornetto routine it would begin with the bitter but end with the sweet – self actualization and the knowledge that I created my place in the world on my own, owing nothing of defining myself or my life to anyone.

Who do I want to be? Which of these ideas (or another yet to be revealed) would make me happy? which would I sink into the groove of, and which would awaken me in cold-sweats in the middle of the night? I honestly don’t know what, or who, I would choose.

If the choice is even mine to make. People can not have things that are not theirs, and I can not choose from options that are not presented to me. Sometimes growth happens most profoundly when new doors are opened unexpectedly, or when old doors are closed and we are left looking for shelter in places other than the ones we have always sought.

bleh.

that’s about all I’ve got in me for the moment. maybe I’ll have another dream sequence soon…

yours.Rachel

funny story…or maybe just awkward

The alarm went off at seven-thirty this morning, and surprisingly I was already awake.  Vaillant the Hot Water god was smiling again, and after a pleasant shower I scuttled around the apartment in my leopard slippers.  Time constraints meant that my hair was not getting done, so I flipped my head over, shook out like a dog, and threw some gel into the mass of red which I would swear is getting straighter every day.  <I’m not sure how I feel about that> My throat was rough with the signs that I am getting what my roomate has, and so I grabbed an orange, peeling while I checked my email, hoping for some good news on the summer internship front.  Feeling this was simply not enough vitamin C to deny that I am becoming ill, I decided I should also take one of the vitamins my mom and sister brought me for the states. (God only knows what’s in anything over here).  I gulped down some water with it and applied eyeliner.

I was running a little late, but I was over it.  I felt a little strange in the stomach, so I snagged some crackers from my roomates to eat on the road and headed out the door for class.

I walked a little ways, eating crackers and continuously brushing crumbs off my new jacket,  but as I nibbled and wondered about my growling stomach, I remembered a story told to me by a good friend.  It was funny, although undoubtedly a little awkward as is happened.   She was driving to school, and as she passed through an intersection near her school, she vomited all over herself, the steering wheel, and the car in general.  Why?  She took a vitamin on an empty stomach.

It didn’t seem quite as funny anymore.

As I was reflecting on this, a cute Italian man walked past me, and I turned the corner and vomited.  Then proceeded to do it again infront of a cafe (but in the street at least) on the way back.

Maybe that’s not so funny either.  But I felt really compelled to write something on my blog, and for the moment that’s all that I can articulate.

hope your morning was a little more pleasant

baby girl done finally found her way home

It’s 10:30pm.  I am an American, living in Rome, eating Chinese food.  Happy Valentines Day.

It’s been a strange day.  This morning began entirely too early with a nagging alarm and an ice shower, followed by a brisk walk through a tunnel and across coblestones to school.  Business Communications.  then Death.  No, really.  I’m taking a course entiled “The Ancient Roman Art of Death and Dying.”  It’s an art history course where we learn about the various rituals (and thus, art and monuments) surrounding death in Ancient Rome.  I’m not shy about the morbid fascination I have with death; in fact, I would say I revel in it, and I thoroughly enjoy its awkward social implications.  I have my class schedule recorded in my planner, and every Thursday I have filled my Franklin-Covey month-at-a-glance box with “Death – on site, 11am” or “Death – JCU 10:30″.   I also enjoy sharing my enrollment in this class with others; in my Italian class for example.  Our first major assignment was a presentation to introduce ourselves.  “Mi chiamo Rachel Tripp.   Sono di Farmington Hills, Michigan.  Suego Italian, Mythology, Religion, Business Comm, e The Ancient Roman Art of Death and Dying.”

<this may have something to do with why I am celebrating Valentines day with my roomates (who have boyfriends in America) and fried wontons>

After Death, I checked my mailbox.  Elated, I found a Valentines card from my Kappa Delta sisters.  I floated back to the apartment, stopping to go grocery shopping for the flat. (more specifically, to buy trash bags so I could begin to pick away at the left-hand corner of our kitchen.)  I returned to find the landfill cleared and a new trash bag in place (God bless you, Hillary), and I gleefully prepared myself a sandwich and a salad.  I had purchased the components for both while at the store;  in the checkout line I decided I simply could not stand one more meal of pasta.  Sitting in the dining room uploading pictures to Facebook, I could only think one thing.  lunch-meat and leaves have never tasted so delicious.

I blew off the job applications I should be doing in favor of browsing riads in Morocco, sending Facebook free gifts and Valentines messages, drinking peach tea, and eating toast with peach preserves.  I wrote it off as a mental-health afternoon, and prepared thoughts in my head for this entry I knew would come later.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote an entry on homesickness and sleeping.  I found myself homesick is a dull sort of way, most often manifesting itself as a subtle ghost keeping me from sleep.  Since then I’ve regained my ability to drift off to the land of dreams, but I haven’t been able to give up the ghost.  And yet, that’s all it is.  A ghost.  A shadow.  a feeling in the pit of my stomach.  When I was in London this summer, homesickness was a much more agressive presence.   When I missed home, it was no quiet matter.  I wanted to curl up with George under the covers and never get out.  Or, I wanted to go to Sports-Cafe in Piccadilly and get smashed drinking American drinks and eating frenchfries.  Or I would just excuse myself from the table at Essence, saying something about needing some sugar and running out the big white door, covering my eyes with oversize sunglasses just before Niagara came crashing.  Usually, when I feel anything, it’s big and fast and loud and hard. I don’t do in betweens, and emotions are seismic forces in my world and my heart.  They aren’t ghosts in my thoughts – subtle shadows cast on the back wall of my head.

I’m beginning to believe that this isn’t homesickness; rather, it is the slow course of change or the revealing of a revelation.  Come May, 12 months will have passed, only four of which I will have spent in the United States.  And while that is wonderful and amazing and I’m tremendously lucky, I’m really beginning to realize that living in a different epic place every three months isn’t what I’m looking for in my life.  I love to travel, and I know I will always want exploring new and exciting things to be a part of my life, but I’m realizing that the operative words in that clause are a part of my life.  I want to have a life. that traveling is a part of.  I want friends I can actually speak to without the existence of satellites.  I want to be a part of something, and then to watch it grow and evolve without an ocean in between.  I want to start a career – something that I want to work myself into the ground for.  I want a chance to meet people, to build relationships, to fall in love.  To love with abandon and without an expiration date.

Rome is wonderful.  The food is probably the best I’ll have in all my life, and I doubt I will ever be able to drink American coffee again.  Wine and fashion are abundant, and the importance of beauty in the ordinary is inspiring.  But, like my dad said upon returning from a week(plus) business trip with negotiations and elbow rubbing in four exciting European cities, “at the end I just want to be home where I belong”.

I’m not bitter.  I’m not depressed.  I’m not sick to my stomach.  In fact I’m happy to be exploring this excellent city and many others.  I’m just beginning to realize where – and with whom – I belong.  and I know when the time comes I will be happy to be back home.

Maybe this Greyhound was built to bound, but never without a round-trip ticket.

“Travel and society polish a man, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.” – John Burroughs

yours.Rachel

on shaving

I’ve always been the type of girl who shaves every day.

Rain or Shine. Summer or Winter. Blissfully romantically involved or unfortunately frustrated with my lack of viable dating prospects. It doesn’t matter. Occasionally, if I am single and feeling slobbish or rushed, I’ll shave every other day. During times of serious depression or academic rigor, I have even been known to go a week without shaving. But these periods always come to a glorious end – chords from the Garden State soundtrack or similar ring in the air like bells, and the scent of citrus abounds as I slather on lotion, pampering my newly smoothed body in a fuzzy-fuschia robe.

upon my arrival to Rome, however, things have been a little different. 6 women in one flat (with two bathrooms) already carries certain implications – bathrooms with garbage cans, wars over shower and mirror space and more curling/straightening/glittering/cleansing /moisturizing/removing/covering/firming/lengthening/coloring products than the drug store on the corner. Then add to that what I have affectionately dubbed the “Italy factor” – at any given time and for no apparent reason, anything and everything inside (or outside) the flat could begin to malfunction or not function at all. No logical explanation exists, and the solutions to these inconveniences are as bewildering as the non-existent logic. And, even with calls to maintenance or seemingly random visitors tinkering with said inconveniences, they may or may not ever function again.

This has been the case for the wireless internet, the electricity, the washing machine, and most prominently the hot water heater. The citizens of Via Della Fornacci 43 apt. 12 have tried everything but sacrificing a lamb and offering libations to “Vaillant” god of all things warm and wet. This rectangular silver-gray deity seems to experience more PMS than all the residents of our apartment combined – which, considering the number of inhabitants with vaginas here, is astounding. This makes the morning ritual an ordeal at best, and a living nightmare at worst. And as no of us enjoy bathing in icicles, shaving is almost completely impossible, and tends to happen every week or two (or more) when a person can no longer stand the new layer of protection their body seems to be developing in case of an unexpected 7 year long snowstorm.

But this morning, Vaillant was smiling upon me and provided enough consistent hot water for a real shower – and I shaved. everyone else in the flat was in class or asleep, so the shower was all mine. Never have I been so happy to feel the sharp edge of a razor against my skin, and as I walked out of the bathroom in my towel, I practically floated out on a cloud of steam. *note to self – make offering at lunchtime to Vaillant.* I skipped back to my room – also mine exclusively for the moment – and covered myself with clementine body butter to the sounds of the mix of favorites I gave to my sorority baby. I sipped peach tea in my favorite mug (lime green on outside, sunny yellow on the inside, and the biggest mug in the apartment) and ate a bowl of cornflakes swimming in peach yogurt. The internet was still inexplicably broken, but I found myself unconcerned, still floating on the cloud of smooth clean skin. as I tidied my half of the room and made my bed, an old favorite song with a cheerful almost Caribbean beat came on, and I found myself smiling – thinking of the way we used to dance around to this in the KD lodge – and dancing around my room. by myself, in my underwear. And never once did I even consider a) how silly I must have looked, or b) how awkward it would have been if my roommate had arrived home from class with one of her boys to find me in such a state.

It’s amazing how good it feels to do something you haven’t been able to do in ages. This morning I was on top of the world; my mood was untouchable, all because I had gotten to do something I take for granted while I am at home. I sat down (willingly!) to study for my Italian exam this evening, and I began to craft yet another plan of attack to find myself an internship for the summer. I cooked lunch for my roomates, and began the first load in a long day of laundry.

Lately, I’ve been observing a lot of privilege – over-privilege to be more precise. I’ve seen swarms of girls with their expensive accessories and blackberries, texting almost as much as they complain (which is constantly). I’m cold. I don’t want to sit on this bus anymore. I can’t believe they don’t speak English in there. I have to pee. I can’t believe my dad won’t pay for this… and it goes on. In recent years, my father – youngest of twelve, son of a milkman – has told me that his greatest fear for my sister and I was that we would turn out to be brats. As I sat on the bus returning from a day of exploring a quaint old town, wine tasting, and eating at a farmhouse in Tuscany, I sat listening to their whining, thinking that they were what my dad was afraid of. I remember looking across at my partners in eye-rolling; both sat with their headphones jammed in their ears and eyes closed. I remember rolling my eyes alone and then closing them to reflect on the day and entertain my latest favorite dream of a road trip out west.

…and now the internet is working again. The music has mellowed to a pleasant groove. I’m gossiping like a fiend with a sister from home, and every so often I kick my legs just to feel denim against my silky smooth skin.

For now, that’s good enough for me.

“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

yours.Rachel

insomniac

it was the way she said sandwhich that threw me through a loop.

“I just made a Saaay-ndwich”. saaaaayndwich. The mock-midwestern accent that I’m used to hearing over the phone or in your kitchen as you slather the bread with mayo in preparation for the ham. I nodded and mumbled something about laundry, scuttling into my own kitchen and looking for the chocolate.

or it may have been the way he asked about the letters around my neck. We were at the end of the table, sitting straight and putting the silverware down in between each tiny bite. The were talking about “bunker” at the other end of the table, and I could tell he was just trying to be polite. “Is that a sorority?” he asked? “Yes it is” I replied, pushing the prosciutto on top of the mozzarella with my fork, but for some reason I could muster no more response than that.

It’s not that I miss home so terribly. It’s not that I feel empty every time I inhale, or that I can’t stand to watch the pictures on my screen-saver. Or even that every time I hear one of our songs I can’t get the memories out of my mind.

It’s just that yesterday, when I found out my Grandma Buse had passed away, I wanted nothing more than to be in between two layers of your heather-gray jersey cotton. When I lay curled fetally with George listening to the same 3 songs on repeat, I really wanted to be lying in my dorm with you listening to Pandora Peter Paul and Mary with the candle glowing. When I talked to you on AIM, I really just wanted to sit across from you and look you in the eyes – staring like we always do, making faces and smiling. I wanted us to be sitting on my bed in our pajamas at 3pm again, looking out over the ravished landscape better know as my life transplanted into my 7 colored bed-room.

It’s more that I’ve been writing non-stop for the last few days. I’ve been dying to tell you about how everyday in my life is a profound and epic revelation of self and truth. It’s that I know you know that, and I wish I could just turn to you and tell you my revelations instead of having to write them in a notebook and post them on the internet, or wait to catch you on SKYPE or AIM.

It’s not that I’m not fine and that I’m not going to be. Or that I need to pay enormous amounts of money to take 6 flights so I can sit in Kewanee Illinois instead of going to Tuscany so I can have closure. Or even that I want to be back in the states with you.

It’s just that I haven’t been able to sleep since I got here. And I’d at least like to be able to do that.

“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the Night.” – William Blake

yours.Rachel