Body of Lies, Moments of Truth

It’s called Body of Lies, he said.  I’ve never heard of it, but our choice was that or High School Musical, so it wasn’t difficult to make.  We met like we always do, walking together inside, saying hello to the faces behind the counter we know longer recognize.  When did they get so old? He asked.  When did we? The catch up was minimal, the special effects budget was high; we were underimpressed to say the least.  But now that we’re getting older, we figured we should probably do the thing that people our age do – move to the bar.  One mocked me for ordering a glass of white wine at a pub, while the other debated ordering a pina colada just to get the funny looks.  (they’re nothing if not comics, both of them). I ignored the looks directed at me, and they did the same.  We were all used to it.  This is a game we’ve played many times before.

We meet between semesters, the same way we used to when were were drum majors and homecoming kings and smokers.  We catch up on the important details – the love, the sex, the secrets, the self-discovery.  And the dirty jokes.

Would you call this a double date or a threesome? one asked.  That question has remained unanswered for 5 years, and it seems almost criminal to answer it now. Call it whatever you want honey, but the words can’t even begin to describe.

We drank and laughed and returned to our favorite conversation – secrets.  We make a good confessional, and as they took turns pulling the skeletons from their closets, I listened and let them make their peace with one and other.  It made me wonder if this is what men look like when they’re together on their own.  Fumbling for words and making jokes but poking away at free flowing emotions, or if I am yet again a catalyst for feelings unspoken.  Then it was my turn.  Forgive me father for I have sinned.  Resentment.  Idolitry. Boredom.  Not quite what it used to be, they agreed, but we are all growing up.

This is totally off topic, he interjected, but why the hell was it called Body of Lies? We had no idea.

He gave up cigarettes – very impressive – but I still came home smelling like smoke.  And secrets.  They told me the names they’ll remember when they’re old, and I told them the ones I won’t.  We could say anything, which is a feeling wonderful and forgotten to me as of late, and we knew it would stay between the three of us.  Sure, they had their “moment” that changed it all that they refuse to share (mostly because it makes great teasing material), and I won’t give them a number of knotches on my lipstick case, but everything else is open season.  In a room full of people there are private moments of truth, somehow floating between a football charmer, an irreverent commedian, a sweet little girl with bright eyes.  A settling soul, a Seattle-bound body, and a feisty little girl looking to answer to no one but herself.  A double date, or a threesome.  Call it whatever you want honey, but the words can even begin to describe.

“The only thing worse than growing up is never quite learning how.”

Yours.Rachel

Like It Means Something

That song. Do you have that song “You can’t go home again?” She asked me with the crystal wine glass in her hand. She was drawing eyes and fire and a flower like the one on a broken wrist, and across it she had scribbled the word “POWER”. We were chewing on the words I spit out with the sounds of Our Endless Numbered Days soundtracking the moment (except without your song because it wasn’t my time), and we switched to a little DJ Shadow. “Do you want Blood on the Motorway with it?” I asked. Of course you do.

The four of us sat there, letting it wash over us like those lights bathed me in the tunnel over a year ago. “You were in the back seat with the two boys in the front… I listen when you speak” she said with a smile. What conversation there was had stopped until she with the locks that hang far down her chest mentioned the sampling of Simon and Garfunkle in the midst of this song. We smiled, breathed a little deeper. When it ended, we said somehing I don’t remember now, and I changed back to the song I’d been avoiding before.

I was trying to explain this to someone else over road-trip fettuccine the other night. I’ve gotten too old for a lot of things in these endless numbered days, and one of them seems to be this insatiabile ability to talk about mundane things with romantic excitement, and at my ripe old age of (almost) 21, I’ve all but given up on roses.  Still, I said as I took my glance briefly from the odometer, Its like a tiny blue flame – nothing you would ever rally the campus around on homecoming weekend, but something you find with a little digging, something glowing white-hot (that’s what my mother used to say about me when I was little – I was full of white-hot intensity. I’m sure at the age of 4 I had a less than complete appreciation of this concept.) It makes me cry, I laughed, like that nonchalant answer meant something meant more than flowers and babies and God’s love I (and all of that). I had this urge to flip the hour glass, my mother’s unknowingly epic gift to 501 Michigan Avenue, as I found it and pressed play.

One reached for her bag – notebooks it seemed – and the other two lay on the floor cuddling with their heads on a pink fleece pillow; I polished my silver. Like it meant something. I’d intended to take it from it from its robin’s egg blue pouch for quite some time, but I hadn’t gotten around to it until this moment where I felt the insatiable need. It was neurotic and I was well aware – I’ve know enough photographers to know when I am being noticed, but with the same sentiment I’ve begun to ignore it. The smelly pink liquid went on smoothly and took off more dirt than I could have imagined. I marveled to one with curls how black with tarnish the polishing cloth had become and she just laughed. So did I. “Oh the metaphor” she remarked, and I refused to touch it with a ten foot pole. Ask me to get back to that in ten years, I said, and I’ll have something brilliant for you.

It faded to a song of another, and each of us was in our own Sodom, South Georgia. Sleeping like buckets of snow or awake like a tree full of bees, or maybe both at once while white tongues sing God is Good. I noticed a heavier beat, rhythmic knocking, and I had the worldly thought to answer the door. Her eyes were tired but bright and young, and in waltzed visitors fresh for our entertaining. So I played the hand I know best – I smiled. We chatted about a lot of things while she held her wineglass and newly chewed monologues as a shield for them, while sheer stature served as adequate for the other. I think we’re going to make it to the weekend I said, probably laughing louder than was necessary to make my point.

And here I am. She’s asleep, they all are.  And I am alone.  There’s something about Black Sheep, and I’m looking at the clock counting the hours until tour guide training later in the morning. Like it means something.

Ask me about it in ten years.

“The only thing worse than growing up is never quite learning how.” (From a sticky-note I found unexpectedly while unpacking)

yours.Rachel

Forkful by Forkful

My newly-named GPS Juliette directed me to the park where I met her – beautiful and wearing orange.  A lot has changed in the six months since I’ve last seen her – I’ve played blue when I should have played red and she’s played her share of unexpected cards too – but after speaking to her about commutes wet with more than the rain I knew we’d meet with me in a dress and her in orange.

The waitress had to come back three times before we were ready to order.  I apologized – “we’re catching up: it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other.”  When lunch came we ignored ettiquite and dug in – we were both famished.   We remarked about the weather, wondering together if it’s ever rained this much around here.  Neither of us – well, none of us actually – are quite sure what to make of it, but I suppose in situations like these there’s nothing to be done but laugh, grab an umbrella, and wait it out.

My mother told me the other day that leaving a good tip is a sign of a viable marriage prospect, and she left a great one – our soulmate theory once again confirmed.  We headed to the car as large drops began to fall, sitting and listening to a song that meant the world, waiting together for the short but violent storm to end.  We met then with another, newly pedicured and tattooed.  She kept making remarks and laughing at herself – “I’ve changed a lot” she said as we nodded silent and introspective dittos.

The lady in orange left, and she the newly painted and I were left.  The “P” in her took us to Albion, and we socwered the place for sisters or something we knew.

We found three – They were bright as the setting sun and we were weathered as the pavement that had seen an unseasonable amount of rain.  She and I could watch them in the rear-view mirror of her suburban SUV, but as we drove the back-roads of the Albion “suburbs” we declined commenting on the irony.

We ate dinner at La Casa, a surprisingly delicious Mexican restaurant and one of the few multi-cultural treasures that Albion can boast.  (The loss of New China was unexpected and devastating.)  The music was peppy and as vibrant as shades on the walls.  Her recommendation of the famed vegetarian quesidillas was an excellent one, but one a little too large to take in one sitting.  We asked for boxes.

She looked over at me, moving my fork between my plate and a white styrofoam container, rearranging small piles of rice from one to the other – She laughed as I spilled a few spicy grains each time.  “I’m glad I’m not the only one doing this bit by bit with my fork.”  I looked her; for a moment I was completely unable to comprehend that any other way to sort through these leftovers might exist.

She held a fork in her hand as well, but one across from us had thought to pick up the plate, dumping everything leftover with one quick and efficient swipe of the fork.  I furrowed my brow and thought for a moment – and we laughed together through it.

I’m with you one hundred percent. I said as I returned to my slow and somewhat messy process.  Bit by bit – forkful by forkful.

I think someone made a joke while a few others laughed, but we didn’t seem to notice – we just kept on going until we were done.

“You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow

yours.Rachel

Out of Body Experience

This afternoon it came to me.

For quite some time I had been trying to remember her name. I knew her first name – remembered it fortunately as we met coincidentally at Starbucks some months ago – but I couldn’t call to mind her last name. Clearly, I’ve had other concerns since the time I saw her grabbing coffee in the epicenter of our small town last summer, and so recalling her title was continually pushed back to make way for more pressing life issues. But sitting in my room today (in a spot that seems to be suited well for revelations) it came to me.

I looked her up on Facebook. 24 mutual friends, that’s gotta be her, right? I remembered her mentioning CMU and I saw FHS class of 08, so I clicked the “request friend” button and awaited my confirmation. Upon returning home from dinner, I found an email in my inbox notifying me I had been accepted as a non-preditor, and from there I did what any self-respecting non-preditorial individual would do – I stalked her from a respectful distance.

I read through her activities, interests, and other vitals first. As she cited writing and scrapbooking, and embraced a healthy love for Sex and the City, I found myself smiling. I remembered, I thought, that she was the president of the Student Council, and her mega-watt smile staring back at me seemed to silently confirm. Undying devotion to her darling rebel – her sweetheart with a healthy dose of defiance – seeped out of the page from wall posts and her relationship status.

I recall her most vividly as a Freshman, and from the moment I met her, I adored her. She sparkled with a natural energy, and her mind was as quick and sharp as her smile was charming. She wore a lot of black then as she was tying up the loose ends of a pubescent punk stage, but unlike the other punks she embraced the Stu-Co (student council, yes we thought we were that cool) culture of clean-cut WASPy fun. Still, unlike some of our fair-skinned friends, you could see the depth of her still waters shining brighter than any Tiffany that may have adorned her neck.

I decided then to flip through the photos of her, and as I did I found myself experiencing the strangest feelings of surrealism. She was sandwiched in between groups of girls, or holding signs displaying undying High School pride, or making funny faces in all the local restaurants. The one that really got me was of her in Charlie’s basement. He was a friend of mine – through my own darling rebel – and I would recognize those maroon walls anywhere. His sister, whose elfin figure was a constant source of teasing in my day, was in the picture (playing host) and four other fresh-faced girls held pool cues and were captioned by the words “Its weird to think about what your life would be like if you never met the people who changed it.”

There she was, with her bumper-stickers about love and girls standing on their tiptoes, hair straigh and make-up thick, smile shining with such a beautiful innocence. I’d always liked her partially because I saw so much potential in her youthful self and partially because I saw so much of myself there too. It became even more poignant today as I felt as though I was looking at my former self in pictures of her. Remembering that girl who loved a boy with everything she had because she had everything to give. The girl whose smile sparkled with childish innocence and lit up a room with genuine energy. Whose eyes were bright and hair was blonde and figure was slim and clothes were smart but young.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the past – burying things that have been long gone, and realizing how much, in aging, I need the things that I knew when I was young. Learning the difference between irreconcilable and irrevocable, and how important both of those words are to my existence. Redefining the place of things and people in my life, and realizing how my past life and self fits into the person I am now. Learning to look back at that girl – with the fresh face and bright eyes – and to see how she is, even then, the woman she will someday become.

“Growing up is never easy.  You hold on to things that were.  You wonder what’s to come.  But that night, I think we knew it was time to let go of what had been, and look ahead to what would be.  Other Days. New Days.  Days to come.  The thing is, we didn’t have to hate eachother for getting older.  We just had to forgive ourselves…for growing up.”  – The Wonder Years

yours.Rachel

this should be a paper about women in antiquity

according to my blog statistics page, the search terms “my life is useless” led to my site – twice. Boy, that’s a feel-good-thought.

I’ve been nagged to write, and a part of me feels the desire to do so, but unfortunately the section of my brain that builds poetry and profound thoughts doesn’t seem to be on board with this plan. In a time so epic as this, shouldn’t my head be filled with thoughts and feelings begging to be penned and typed as a sort-of cathartic release or enlightening exercise in closure? Perhaps, but the only part of me that has ever been predictable is my defiance of the logical and expected.

Perhaps I’m stuck. Not in a sophomoric way, or even in a month-ago-obsession-with-crackers-and-olives-way, rather floating along and moving not but for the gentle tide pushing me slowly toward the shore. The end is coming, as is the beginning. Soon this journey over the ocean will come to an end, taking with it the violent storms and glassy-turquoise water. When my feet hit the sand it will be a new world – climbing trees and hanging from them, balancing a “grown-up” life with a summer of child-like adventures. I can see this sandy beach off in the distance, but no amount of paddling or anchoring will speed or slow my journey. And I’m not sure I want it to.

As I rode the train through the Italian country-side coming home from the beach the other day, I saw rolling hills and fields of yellow flowers glide gently by. Watching myself in the reflection of the window, I realized that I am in a place of true beauty – truest in the sense that it is fleeting. And St. Peter’s square, through which I walk every time I visit my closest friends, with all its fanfare and glory will soon no longer be a part of life as usual. I can’t decide whether I’m scared for the future, or whether it will be a welcome relief, or who I will be in a month or two or three or more.

But that’s nothing new. For the last 4 months, this page has been filled with laughs and tears, with love-songs and hate-songs, with the delicious dualism that peppers my existence even under normal circumstances. A few days ago, I found myself constantly filled with feeling and revelation, in a way that I need less than the fingers on one hand to count how many people actually understand what I mean. Feeling so full of life and understanding and questions and fire that its almost too much to bear (that’s a funny choice of words, isn’t it?) is an essential part of my existence, and it has been very much present in the beginning of this in between. But since then I have been calmed, mellowed for the purpose of self-preservation and functionality, and I find myself meandering through the days and listening intently to the soundtrack.

“You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow

yours.Rachel

Ciao Bella

I remember the evening I returned to Rome from London. As I touched down on the tarmac, I realized that after 10 flights in just under a month (with most of those 30 days spent speaking English or feigning French or Spanish), I would finally be returning for over a month solid to the land of pasta and the Pope. Waiting in line (an Italian line – meaning a large mass of people milling, shoving, and speaking loudly) for a cab, I prepared myself to be ripped off by the usual cranky cab driver from the airport. But, as I approached my cab, a young and attractive gentleman stepped out to help me with my luggage. He smiled and closed the door behind me. As we drove, he practiced his English on me. Unfortunately, his interpretation of my language was little better than mine of his, and so we ran out of things to talk about very quickly. I would have been happy to sit and watch the countryside roll by out my window, but I could tell as I felt his eyes tracing my features in the rear-view mirror that he would prefer otherwise. One word he knew well in English was “beautiful” – he used it without sparsity, and often as a filler for the lull in conversation. “You are very beautiful.” He repeated as he smiled and laughed at my Italian or use of “mhmm” as an affirmative answer (to other things). “Tu sei bella” he informed me “means you are beautiful”, and he encouraged me to practice this phrase (as well as in the first person) while he corrected my pronunciation and stared at me in his back seat. Finally we arrived at my apartment, and he asked my name. Rachel – a very beautiful name he said as he introduced himself (with some terribly Italian name I can’t remember at the moment). “Tu sei bella” he cooed as he took one last up and down of me, and as I closed the front door to my apartment I couldn’t help but laugh – I was back in Italy.

A week or so later, the blonde with her soul in her eyes and I were catching up over Italy’s greatest salads. We frequent this establishment near the school, and on this particular day we were seated in an exposed brick room with several tables of American girls and one table of 4 Italian men in the corner. Instantly upon entering, their eyes followed us to our table and lit up as we laughed and chatted. She could feel their eyes in her back, and I could feel them in my chest – looking down I regretted wearing a deep V-neck shirt as I saw them whispering and raising eyebrows amongst eachother. The waiter came and went with our meal, we thanked him with big and friendly smiles, and as we asked for coffee (which came to her with a heart in the foam of her cappuccino) and the check, he brought us little cups of a lemony-dessert. I was surprised but she laughed, revealing to me that this treatment was what she had come to expect after she made eyes with him on her first visit. We laughed together and as we stood up, a man from the table in the corner clapped his hands three or four times – just enough for her to shoot me a puzzled glance which I returned with an eye-roll.

Then there was Bernardo. The man who parked his moto as I was crossing the street then and proceeded to walk with me for almost 5 minutes. His English was better than my airport lover’s, and after our introductions, we were able to establish that I was going to dinner at my friends house (lie), I did not need a ride from him because I couldn’t remember the name of the street they lived on (lie), and that – even though I was “very nice” – it would not be possible for me to have dinner or coffee or sex with him before I left Rome (not a lie.) Later that evening we met a stem-cell researcher with a passion for sailing and Jazz. (Fredrico? something like that) He translated the subtle nuances of our gourmet menu and bought us a (very nice!) bottle of wine (right after my Manhattanite’s friend saw him outside fighting with some woman). He regaled us with tales of his life as he “walked 4 American babies back to their hotel.”

ahhhhh… Rome.

“Men are like a fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it’s our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you’d like to have dinner with.” – Kathleen Mifsud

yours.Rachel

thoughts on things above, and elsewhere

On Blue Skies: She was escaping to another prison and I was sitting in my same golden-walled cell. We were sharing a moment across an ocean while she shared the latest musical discovery of hers with me.

Amos Lee, southern sugar dripping from his lips, serenaded us:    “My soul’s as open as the sky, and oftentimes as blue.”

The poetry of the line is beautiful, but it is my present location which makes it especially poignant to me. As anyone who has visited Rome in the spring (or my facebook photos section) can attest to, the skies here are as blue as you could imagine. On days when the sun is out, beautiful shades of everything between turquoise and sapphire paint the sky in such a way that you can not help but wonder if you tripped and fell into one of the postcards from the street-side shops.

As the warm spring creeps steadily in, I find myself spending more and more time beneath this great blue dome – laying on my back watching cotton-ball clouds blow or walking down the streets observing the steeples of churches thrusting their crosses high into the magnificent heavens above. I am continually struck by the never ending expanse above my head, and I marvel both at its magnitude and color as I find myself swimming in a sea of soul.

Caught between the warm rays of the sun on my cheeks and the cool breeze, my red hair blows into my eyes, and I brush it away to see the blue. For the time being I’ll tuck the red neatly away, saving it for the days when it will once again regain its rightful place.

On Sunsets: Since I arrived in Rome, the desktop background on my computer has been the same picture. Taken by a friend one early Manhattan morning, the silhouette of a tree stands against a purple sky ushering in a yello morning over sleepy Harlem. The tree is not particularly special – not the gnarled and knotted type that is usually photographed; simple and young it stands unpretentiously watching the beginning of a new day, solitary but for a few fingers of a neighboring tree reaching into the frame. <It replaced a photo of my sisters around a dinner table, ringing in the new year (in so many ways) in our holiday finest> An ideal background, this pictures carries enough emotions and memories to bring a smile to my lips, but is does not stare directly back at me with any of the piercing eyes and smiles I miss so dearly.

The matter of sunrises here in Rome is that there are none. Nor are their sunsets. The heavens are bright well into the evening, but when the sun does finally decide to rest her head, she leaves quickly – unannounced by any chorus of color. When she returns, she merely climbs quietly to her place in the blue heavens.

I find myself thinking something I never though I would say; I miss the in-between. The glorious entry of a new day, ringing out its fanfare of possibilities in warm hues. And the regal exit, creeping colors waving goodbye as they look back over their shoulder. There we stand, solitary as that tree in Morningside park, maybe with a few fingers reaching towards our own. I long to watching the celestial tides come and go, holding our breath as we prepare for what is yet to be.

On rain: Earlier this morning I sat in my dining room, fingers tapping on the vinyl tablecloth with brightly colored lemons. As my mind wandered from ancient Roman sarcophagi, my gaze wandered to the window. The song – Amos Lee again – ended and left something that should have been silence but instead pitter-pattered on the roof. I walked to the window, realizing it was raining, but as I looked closer I noticed the heavy raindrops only seemed to fall close to my window; not far off the skies were blue and cotton-cloud filled as ever. I craned my head out and watched, ignoring the inevitable hair-frizz and few black tears, to see that a large gray cloud had settled over my apartment building, leaving the rest of the turquoise expanse untouched.

I laughed out loud, and as I lingered in the window frame letting the rain-water stream down my face, I contemplated what I would look like as a cartoon character. Finally, one of my housemates came out, and as she folded her underwear and socks I could feel her furrowing her brow at me. I remarked on the one rain cloud above our building and she laughed: “That seems to be the way things have been going around here.”

I dried off my face, pulled my hair back, and went about my day. Rain gave way to sun, which stepped back for brief showers and then showed her face again. The rain and the sun dance together, weaving in an out, giving way but never sharing. The way a lot of things have been going around here. And we here in Rome are caught always between the summer sun and the wintery watery chill, wondering at what moment one will leave – as quickly as the night and day – and be replaced by the other.

yours.Rachel

today its rainy, but around here that doesn’t mean much

Last night I fell asleep in peace, but woke up to yet another dream where my father died.

class came and went, and the papers are coming along.

I’m having dinner with my favorite Manhattanite this evening.

I hope, over our anti-pasti and pasta, we will discuss what it means to be American.

It took me quite some time to be able to articulate exactly what it is about this place that makes me so crazy. By all appearances, I should love it. The other day in Italian class, my professor asked each of us why we chose to study in Italy. As you might expect, many people answered ambiguously, or with something about an English speaking program in a place that supposedly rains less that Great Britain. The cute-in-a-very-intellectual-way Classics major behind me spoke up, and I felt the path paved for me to say something reasonably intelligent. I want to be an event planner, I said, not even bothering to try and translate all of this into Italian. I wanted to visit the Mediterranean because there is such a sense of beauty and style in the everyday. He smiled and nodded, more pleased with my answer than Dinah’s about “spiagge” (beaches), even though hers was in the correct language.

And, after having been here for 3 months, I can testify to that truth. Its beautiful – the buildings are colorful and detailed ornately, and the soft lights and cobblestones are charming. When the sun shines the wind tosses the palm trees gently, it looks and feels like paradise. There are some infrastructural problems with electricity, hot water, and garbage collection, but those are relatively easy to forgive given the circumstances. The garbage collectors (when they are seen) are clearly putting their time to better use, none of them appearing without well done hair or lipliner. Even bland street corners are adorned with mosaics or filigrie-filled depictions of the Virgin, and around every corner is an imperial monument to the great glory of Roman past. Every restaurant has tourists from all over the world saying “Isn’t that the cutest place you’ve ever seen?” Absolutely everything is touched with gold.

But that’s just it – the Midas effect. Walk down the street, and every little “Isn’t that the cutest place you’ve ever seen?” trattoria is filled with the same colorful linen, exposed brick walls, and lit by candles and christmas lights. Every slim and beautiful woman, whether she is 12 or 50, is clad completely in black, the bit of color on her body being the honey blonde highlights in her dark brown hair. Everyone is fresh off the cover of a magazine – just one. The art and the architecture is glorious, but it is a giant tribute to one age of glory in one empire.

One size fits all.

And the mood of the people… They wake up and have something sweet with their family. Then around 10am they leave work for a cappuccino and cornetto at the local cafe. At 1 it’s time for a long lunch then a siesta, and dinner comes around just a couple hours after returning to work (with a break for espresso inbetween, of course). Life meanders along slowly, and anyone who does not have time time to meander along with it is working too hard. There is no need to rush to finish your espresso because nothing will be much different in 5 minutes or 5 days or 5 years or 5-hundred years. Things have been moving steadily along since the end of the Empire, and while the toga has gone out of fashion, everything else is just about the same.

In America, we don’t do steady. One minute you’re down – you’re working 60 hours a week to feed and pay mouths and hands, your father-in-law is dying, the dog has a peculiar rash developing, the kids need new shoes, and you’re not sure that the ditch on the side of the road is any less inviting than the home that waits at the end of your commute. It rains – pours – and you have no choice but keep driving and to hope you make through safe. But then, the sun comes out, and you’re up. You’re on vacation, with the entire family gathered around the fire singing camp-songs, laughing about the time your stupid dog rolled in some other stupid dog’s shit and got that bizarre rash. Your company makes a cost-savings objective, and everyone in the office has to take cabs home from the bar after work because no one is fit to drive. You’re lying in the bed with someone you love, watching the sunlight stream in through the curtains and dreaming about your future, and in the immediacy, whether you should make banana pancakes or Belgian waffles. Or you’re sitting around a car or dorm or a living-room in 501 Michigan Avenue smoking, drinking, and feeling like anything that means anything in the world is with you at that moment.

To me, that is what it means to be an American. It’s not about guns, hot dogs, or picking up after your dog while on a walk.

It’s not that things don’t happen here. Every day, people die and people are born. People loose their jobs and get promotions. Sometimes it rains and sometimes its sunny.

But when it rains, no one frowns. and when its sunny, no one stops to smile.

“Without rain there would be no rainbows.” Hawaiian Proverb

yours.Rachel

I’ve got enough oceans in my life

We were sitting in a bar in Paris. His friend the anti-theist was the life of the party, having been found by a slew of friends celebrating St. Patrick’s day a week late he was gesticulating wildly, and his fan club of adoring ladies was increasing exponentially every second. We smiled at him and at them, waiting patiently for him to return as we chatted, made funny faces at one and other, and drank our cocktails. I recall a lot of singing to American music that night, but I also recall musing to him: “Maybe I need a new religion.”

Heading for the train coming back from Versaille, the anti-theist and the explorationist discussed religion, drugs, and humanity. I’ve never really liked drugs. Not in a judgmental way necessarily, but in a very personal way; I’ve always liked to entertain the idea that I don’t need them. I think the mind and the emotions are powerful enough to open doors to new ways of thinking, and I find that if I let myself go to it, I can explore great ideas and spaces in my own head without putting anything on my tongue or in my lungs. Between the boulangeries and cafes it occured to me that I didn’t need a new religion – I needed a new perspective. A new way to bring religion back into my life. A new way to see it and feel it everyday.

The next week called both the power of my own mind and this need for spirituality to the forefront of my thoughts. I watched myself cannibalize myself, tearing myself to shreds as I lost the ability to sleep (save the rare occasions when I tossed and turned with nightmares) and to eat.

Upon returning to Rome, I knew I had to do something. I called an old friend, seeking some sort of guidance, though as he is an agnostic(ish) I didn’t necessarily expect it to be religious in nature. Still, he surprised me as usual and shared his newest spiritual revaluations by way of a fiery-red new fascination. She had described God as a purple ocean. To summarize quickly and inadequately, her intention was to describe God as something a person jumps into and is completely covered by. I believe there was some sort of sink or swim concept involved, and as it came for a modern day oracle, I was certain there were hundreds of other nuances swimming within it. As a closet-spiritualist it struck a chord with him, and perhaps he expected it to do the same with me the metaphor-junkie.

I chewed on it – turned it around, rolling my tongue over its edges and tasting its subtle nuances, but spit it out with the gum in my mouth that was beginning to lose its flavor.

Back to square one, I scowered my mind under the guise of cleaning my room, searching for something, anything, that might get me through the night.

As I moved items from one shelf to another, I knocked over my small stack of DVD cases. Among them was Under the Tuscan Sun, a movie that has consistently been filled with poignant parallels and catharsis, and as I contemplated watching it, I turned through the chapters of the movie in my mind. I came across one scene I remembered in particular. Francesca is discussing the presence of the Virgin Mary – everywhere – which is a phenomenon I have come to understand completely. She is in the churches and the paintings of course, but she is also on street corners. Her ceramic or mosaic images appear on city walls and bridges. There are icons of her in restaurants, around people’s necks, and even in my own apartment. I went to my drawer and pulled out a necklace with the Virgin and babe that I bought while touring the Vatican museums with my mom and sister.

I’d been searching for one for some time. Not because they are difficult to find, but because I was very particular about what I was looking for. I wanted one where Mary looked sweet. According to the story, Mary is a girl in her early teens, terrified because some glowing winged guy shows up in her house while she’s trying to do her laundry or something, and tells her that even though she’s been virtuous she’s going to get huge and then have to go through child birth. I would consider her closer to a Juno than a Jackie Kennedy, and I wanted an image where she looked like it. I was raised a protestant, so as far as I see it, she came into the world like the rest of us girls, and as I recall at the age of 15 I was not even close to the wise and graceful women I often see haloed and holding the son of God. My other major qualm is the images of Jesus. I also believe I remember that the whole point of him being born of a human woman is that he came into the world as a human – not as a child who looks like he’s actually 30 years old. (If you ask me, that is just plain creepy.)

Finally, I found this one. Mary and Jesus are adequately humble and age appropriate, and it reminded of Francesca’s favorite Virgin image. This one was above her head on her bed-frame, and she took comfort from this image when a violent storm raged outside her newly acquired Tuscan villa one night. With this in mind, I put the necklace on (even though it was yellow gold and my watch and ring were white), and went about my day.

I’ve worn it ever since.

As Francesca says, I’m not expecting to come out of this a Catholic. She is not an someone I pray to, interceding to the Lord on my behalf. She is more like my favorite aunt. Someone who has seen quite a lot – just an everyday girl who got dished more than her share, but who took it in stride. And I appreciate her femininity, in such a male dominated arena. Sometimes I like to muse about womanly things to her. “So Mary… there’s this boy…”. And she is there when I need something to hold on to – literally I can grab her around my neck and clench tightly as I breathe “Be. Still. ”

I have not yet found the answers to my questions of spirituality, and I still toss and turn in bed at night. But Mary and I… we’re working on it.

“Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come.” – Under the Tuscan Sun

yours.Rachel

spring has sprung

This winter in Italy has been the coldest in years. Even the Italians were complaining – loudly and with flailing gestures – about the vicious chill in the air. It was a tease too, because the sun would come out and warm the stone just enough to encourage the old ladies to put away their fur coats for the season (that’s the thing here, along with gloves and hats…every woman over 60 looks like the best dressed-1950s woman you’ve ever seen), but by the evening it was chilly again. However, in the past week the weather has been warming, and even on the gloomy days in the city a person feels less like there’s nothing to be done but sit in the apartment on Facebook and AIM. *speaking abstractly of course* The icy chill of winter seems to be warded off for the next several months, and people are beginning to congregate in piazzas to eat gelato or simply to share the sunshine.

In honor of spring’s tradition and in denial of miditerms, I devoted myself to a classic pastime – spring cleaning. Our apartment was…ahhhem...less than clean when we moved in, so this task in its entirety amounted to several springs worth of cleaning. I began in the heart of it all – my bedroom. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had the time to clean my room (or, frankly, the emotional independence to be able to close the door on the world for long enough to do it), and it was beginning to reflect the sort of “disaster hidden underneath the bed” state I often entertain but dislike.

I actually began the process Friday night but only got as far as to remove everything from all flat (and hidden) surfaces, piling all my things in a mountain in the center of the room. (Fortunately my roommate was away in Amsterdam – not spring cleaning, I expect – for the weekend.) I awoke Saturday morning and began to tackle Mount Everest to the sounds of the newest yelloBeat and the Garden State soundtrack. Ignoring the fact that it was entirely too early to be drinking, I poured myself a glass of the fabulous Alsace white I was drinking the previous evening and went about my business – it was fabulous. Cleaning has always been a cathartic endeavor for me when I set out to do it, and I was happy to have found anew my ability to be alone with myself and the Shins (and their other musical companions). Within a few hours, I found myself lying on a freshly made bed, contentedly reflecting on the beauty of the newest musical additions to my life and the old favorite that defined me and others back when we were spiritual virgins and listening to blue-eyes screwing his latest conquest in the shower down the hall. We’ve come a long way from then…

there it was. It had happened – the sun had gone and murdered the snow – and the stargazer lilies were beginning to bloom. I suppose it’s all just a part of the seasons – this “W” shaped chart of our emotions courtesy of the AC Off Campus Study department. As long as I can get through midterms (credit/no-credit. Down, Overachiever… good girl), I’m looking forward to Barcelona, Paris, and London this month, and more adventures to come beyond that. And as long as I can let myself be dragged out of the apartment, I’m likely to find beautiful things and beautiful people, friendships developing with big plans in off the beaten path pubs, and plenty of good wine and great coffee. E dolce, no?

“Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow but a vision.  But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.  Look well, therefore, to this day.  Such is the salutation of the dawn.” -Sanskrit Proverb

yours.Rachel