I don't know anything about people

I am often struck by the hands
That clamp the cold pole around mine
As I balance gently on the inside skin
Of the hurling metro car:

four fingers with wiry black hairs
on the back of the knuckles
and a worn wedding band.

strong fingers, French tipped,
a turquoise bangle dangling
from a carefully arched wrist.

a great grip with thick knuckles,
a bitten thumbnail,
a scratched watch.

They shift, our four hands, as we sway
In strange light, the skin
Stretching and moving, our thumbs
Leaving fingerprints where thousands
Have been left before.

-Maria

Modern Catecombs

I love the metro. It is cheap, it is convenient, and it is an adventure.

CHEAP: I pay only 18£ for a whole month's pass, as opposed to the more than 30$ of gas for a week.

CONVENIENT: Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to slip some money and a metro pass into your pocket and just start walking? It you get tired, there will be a metro or a bus stop near by to whisk you back. If you want to see anything specific, the clockwork carriages will take you there.

ADVENTURE: Well, first of all it is underground, and makes me think of some sort of modern labyrinth, with signs and stairs and tunnels, advertisements scrolling on the walls and magazine stands crouching by the exits.

Most importantly, it is full of people, with entire universes of emotion and history and knowledge and opinion behind their blank faces.

Sometimes there are beggers, squeezing old accordiants with some little kid in tow to hold the squashed cup.  Sometimes there are dogs, since there are dogs everywhere. Sometimes there are groups of tourists, calling to each other in foreign languages about which stop they are waiting for.

Sometimes it is late at night and the metro is almost empty, with a few tired people slumped on the chairs, sometimes in each others' laps, the lights of the stations sliding over them. Sometimes it is rush hour, and the metro is so crowded that you can't even see the pole that you have in a death grip, and your bag is wedged between your knees so that there is more room at torso level. Your elbow is accross some guy's wrist and your thigh is pressed against some lady's purse, and heaven help you if you actually have to get off.

I like it, actualy. It is fun to pull my hand back from the abyss, duck under whole collections of arms at once, and slide through, cheerfully calling, "Permesso? Scusi!"  until I get to the door and leap (the occasion always calls for a leap, complete with outstreached arms) onto the empty platform, and then turn around to watch the doors close on a solid wall of people.

-Maria

Post

See! I have not fallen off of the face of the earth, nor forgotten completely about you!

<<<
It's photographic proof: me, alive, and in front of the post office box with a handfull of postcards.

Fun Fact: The postal service of Vatican City is so much better than that of Italy, that people who live in Rome will go out of their ways to send things through the Vatican post office.

The Aeneid Revisited (upon a scorpion)

Guide me, oh muse, to open my lips!
Reach down from on high. Grant me wisdom!
How shall I sing of the horror and blood?
Only you, bright warrior, keen seer, can know.


Long had it dwelt in the house of the innocents,
Long since its discovery spread its poison of doubt.
Maria, foolish heart, had shifted the brooms,
Betrayed its presence to the light of the room,
Now bare feet no longer walk without care
Or hearts pump slowly in quiet cleaning.
The scorpion might someday reappear!

Carrie it was who sighted it crawling,
Math major, quick quoter, wearer of yellow pants.
“Guys, come here!” her voice sharp, insistent,
Calling quick feet, wondering eyes and worried friends.
“There’s something under my bag. It might be a lizard
Or it might be something worse.” A calm hand
Reached down to shift the dark nylon aside.


Horror!
Loathsome in color, slick tail over-curling,
Two pinchers lifted aloft to the virgins’ bright eyes!
“Kill it, Kill it!” they cry, daughters of Mars,
Heirs to Hercules, slayer of dragons.
Maria, just shamed, she who let the beast flee
When she first uncovered it, lifts her shoe,
Brings it down with all force to hear the sickening crunch.
What deity looked fairly on the beast in its plight?
What fault, oh muse, did he perceive in the group?
See, as the foot lifts, careful and quiet
The beast springs to loathsome life, frantic in agony!
Tail lashing, legs flailing, it slides on a smooth back!
Grapples with the air, twists its body and tail!

Then Carrie, bright warrior, calmly lays hand on a tome.
Her white hand reaching out, takes hold of a book,
Lifts it high, hoists it up, the Aenied of Virgil,
Pages crowded with heroes, weighted down with beasts.
She takes aim with clear eyes, flings the weapon with hate.
Sure, straight, deadly, it plunges from high,
Lands smack on the monster, sends it sure to dark death.
Scorpion no longer, and feared no more.


-Maria
PS. (It was only two inches long, and even that might be an estimate exaggerated by the imagination.)

Pictures and Gund

Italians walk uncommonly slowly along the street, but why hurry when it is such a nice day, and there is a park on one side of the street and ancient architecture on the other? On the other hand, though there may be seperate street lights for pedestrians, why bother waiting for the little man to turn green? Just pick your moment and stride straight through traffic -don't hurry or you'll look like a tourist- with your head held high. Timid people or foreigners who hesitate will even notice that the tiny cars and high-heeled Vespa riders automatically slow down at the sight of waiting pedestrians, and are surprized if they don't take advantage of the break in traffic.

Enough with the descriptions. You people demand pictures.

The problem is that when it comes to the famous sites, there are so many much better pictures on the internet and other places for you to look up. In fact, it is one of the small pleasures of life for me to open a huge book of gorgeous photography and be able to say casually, "Yeah, I was there."

What is awesome about being here is being here, able to touch what millions of people throughout the centuries have touched, able to experience the vastness of certain places, to note the casually perfect collections of angles in a view from a back street. Pictures really can't convey the experience. They just prove that you were there because your smiling mug has been inserted into the frame.

With the knowledge that I was about to take photos that would be exactly the same as thousands that have been taken before me, I invited my friend Bobby Gund to help me out. Somehow, the process was made slightly more enjoyable with the introduction of something that really could not be explained.

Here we are at the Fountain de Trevi.

Here we are the edge of the Spanish Steps, which are not particularly interesting in themselves, but are great places to watch tourists wander around in the heat with maps, and pretend that you are not secretly one of them.

Here we are by a magnificent fountain which caused some scandal when it was unveiled due to its sensual nymphs, but it is so big that you cannot really take a picture of the whole thing.

Here is a great one of Triton. We became rather familiar with this towering aquatic sight since we got lost together and used this piazza as a reference point. There is a street that goes right through everything called Via d. Tritone which ends here.

Did you know that unless there is a sign declaring to the contrary (I have yet to find one) you can drink the water? It is incredibly wonderful, on a hot day, to remember this when you stumble upon one of the bazillion fountains randomly scattered throughout the city.

It think that the bees, which are scattered throughout the monuments of the city, are the symbol of some rich family that paid for most of the stuff. You can even find them in the Sistine Chapel.

For your amusement: a smoking centurion. Our Art and Architecture professore, who had just finished an impassioned explanation of Etruscan art and history, had made us all laugh by suddenly admitting that he did not like visiting the Colloseum because, "Eyeh hateh theh fake Romans!"

That's all for now, folks! Tune in next time for "a day in the life," a commentary on allowing dogs on the metro, or maybe a newsclipping about how some crazy american student became a great cat burgler and stole designer clothes until she was tracked down by the police, who figured out who she was by the size of the clothes she was buying. Seriously. I didn't care about designer clothes until I was faced with streets of the stuff. Now I am wishing to be a model.

Linguistics

Me: "Biongiorno!"
Megan: "Guten Morgen. No, wait, that's German! Biogiorno."
[Pause]
Megan: "Did you sleep well last night?"
Me: "Moy bien, gracias. No, wait, that's Spanish!"
[Laughter]

Learning a new language is not simple a matter of decoding a linguistic cypher. It requires a shift of mindset. Suddenly, you cannot equate anything with its name, but must keep the abstract idea seperate and then pick which word, phrase or connotation to express it verbally.

This sounds pretty difficult, but most people don't realise that language itself is a translation of thoughts and ideas into a collection of sounds that may or may not evoke the same idea in another person. These sounds are so superficial that they may change completely from area to area; not just country to country, but even family to family.

I love my Italian lessons. I love how learning a new language is not as gargantuan a task as it may appear. It may be difficult if you are confined to vocabulario, forced to memorize a list of words and their equivalent words in English, but when the words are in context they are remarkably easy to undertand, especially since all language is a bit like the next. Remembering is the hard part, but even then it is much easier to remember what a certain phrase or word means when you are actually using it, immediately equating it with its  meaning instead of another code (your first language).

On the other hand, the strain of absorbing as much as possible stirs depths of (mostly unused) brain power normally abandoned. Hence the sudden hodge-podge of language. It've even started to use the Latin that I was sure had been lost to the abyss! Interestingly enough, I even find myself struggling for English words when speaking to my roomates, or catching myself or others gesturing instead of speaking when we do not know the Italian equivalent, although we are perfectly capable of conversing in English. This blog post itself began with rather shaky eloquence, as if English were my second language, before my first language began to flow again.

I love to hear the bambini speaking! They suddenly seem so much more clever and interesting with their little voices babbling in Italian!

Ti Amore! I love you! (Yes, this was shouted to some of my friends. Ah, the perils of being young and pretty.)

-Maria

PS. Please excuse any spelling mistakes. I am doing my best, but not only are the keyboards slightly different, but all the spellcheck programs, even on Engligh programs such as blogger, have switched to Italian!

A Note on Roman Blogging

Originally, I wasw planning on blogging about my trip to Rome in a seperate blog, Have Brain, Will Travel, with the understanding that foreign correspondence would be more photogenic and less abstract than previous entries.

However, I have not changed. The way I think has not changed. In fact, my surroundings have cetainly not changed either, in the sense that they are less inspiring or retard truth, so I found that these entries would be quite comfortable with the rest.

Of course, I will supplement anything that I write with pictures and Italian observations, so do not worry about that!

-Maria