Kebab

It's 23:45, and I have been holding lovely conversations with Best Buy and Apple attempting to discover any possibility of recovering my computer.  The chances look bleak, but I was able to eat a kebab during one call with a nice chap named Austin.  Kebabs fall under the food group of fats, oils, and desperation.  I had quaffed a few rounds with Prof. Ewell after grading exams this afternoon.  Having gleaned a solid daytime buzz, I decided to purchase and consume a kebab on my way home.  This happened before 21:00, a world record, or at least a Western world record as no one west of the Adriatic has ever eaten a kebab sober or as a proper meal. The kebab, however, is a staple many in the Middle East, who bitter about their lot, which forces them to live a world of sand, heat, mountains, and ice and bans pork products, booze, and women, the three things that prevent most suicides in the West, are ready to cry “jihad” and murder us white, slobbering pig-begotten curs. I can’t blame them for being jealously irate, but I hope they take some small comfort from kebabs, which are delicious, as I did while speaking with Apple earlier this evening.

Besides eating a kebab, a few nice things happened today.  I finished grading exams.  Although they were take-home exams and Professor Ingersoll allowed the full use of notes, some students still did poorly.  Amazing!  Some people would fail at paint-by-numbers.  I had beers with Dr. Ewell and the anthropologist who wrote a book examining the anthropological implications of Walt Disney’s rides at the Magical Kingdom. We attempted to divine exactly how the world would implode upon itself, agreeing that Facebook, corporations, China, polarization in the US, fascism, and the automobile would be the leading culprits.  We agreed that baseball offers hope.  A charming Russian couple on their honeymoon joined us, and we all decided that Russia and America should be friends.  Nasdrovyah!  Best of all, I ran into Giulia, my old host-mom, on the street. We had not spoken since last year, when we talked over the telephone about plans that we repeatedly never realized.  We caught up again and are planning to meet soon, although I will not believe it until it happens.

I pack tomorrow to begin the next phase of living like a gypsy, not the whining, unwashed “Dammi una moneta per i bambani, per favore” type but the romantic, Stevie Nicks type.  I will be living in an apartment during high season in order to allow more vacancies, which will in turn lead to more revenue for the church.  Since everything I own fits into two suitcases, moving is only a matter of climbing a few flights of stairs; however, the apartment has no electricity, water, or gas.

Thieves!

Yesterday, someone stole my computer.  The burglary took place in the middle of the Easter service when I was celebrating mass with the congregation of St. Mark's in the basilica.  I believe that no greater offense has been committed in Tuscany since the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478, when the Pazzi family in cahoots with Pope Sixtus IV (not Fourthstus VI) attempted to murder Lorenzo il Magnifico and his brother Giuliano during high mass at the Duomo.  They only succeeded in eliminating the later and then being chopped to little pieces, disemboweled and hung from the public buildings, or driven into exile by Medici partisans.  The difference between then and now is that my brother is alive and well, and having never seen the criminal, I do not know who to disembowel and hang from my window, although I would very much like to do it to someone.

Fortunately, I had backed up everything, and nothing else was taken, not even the charger.

Pompeii and Herculaneum

Yesterday evening I wrote this entry on a train traveling back to Florence from Naples, passing through the mountains that surround the Bay of Naples, the ancient home of the Samnites against who the Romans perfected their Republican war tactics that won them first Southern Italy, then the peninsula, and finally the Mediterranean.

I was Naples leading Professor Ewell's class on Roman and Etruscan art and archaeology through the ruins at Pompeii, Herculaneum, Villa Oplontis, and other sites. The trip was successful, despite the fact that Dr. Ewell, who was suffering from the flu and a poisonous spider bite, was not able to join us.  Another TA and I led the group of forty-one students along with a guest lecturer and friend of Charles, Giulia, who is an excellent professor and one of the nicest Florentines that I have met.

The sites we visited were destroyed on August 24th, 79 AD (a Thursday) when Mount Vesuvius erupted and dumped thousands of tons of ash, pumice, and earth on Pompeii and Herculaneum.  The larger city of the two with a population of roughly six thousand, Pompeii features an excavated forum and early amphitheater. Herculaneum is a smaller site and is not fully excavated; it was a resort town that was submerged in hot mud rather than ash. The mud carbonized and preserved much of the organic material in the city, and as a result, Herculaneum is in better shaped and offers unique examples of Roman woodwork and furniture. Despite the differences between the two cities, they both boast beautiful homes, baths, and wall paintings.

Villa Oplontis is a stand-alone excavation of a large villa that archaeologists speculate belonged to Nero's wife, poor woman. The earthquake in 62 AD that left Pompeii's forum in such a mess damaged Villa Oplontis, and neither site was fully repaired at the time of the eruption.  Nonetheless, Oplontis's grandeur and frescoes, offer examples of all four orders of Roman wall painting, are extraordinarily impressive and beautiful. The paintings cover ever wall surface save those in the servant and working quarters, and the rich saturation of the blacks, reds, and ochres is stunning. Digital photography cannot capture these colors nor the varied tones in illusionistic scenes of architecture and landscapes; it leaves them looking washed out and rather kitsch. Nor can digital means capture the experience of walking through the villa, room to room, and realizing the connections not only between the villa's architecture and paintings but also the relationship between your body and its space. Consider the difference between seeing a masterpiece on Google Images versus that same masterpiece in the Louvre.

Since this was my second trip to these sites, rather than listening attentively to the lectures, I let my mind wander through the ruins, imaging living in those cities then they were still alive.

Early morning streets filled with birdsong and hazy golden light filtering down through umbrella pines. The smell of warm bread baking, as women gather at the public fountains to draw the day's water, merchants sweeping the sidewalks and kicking up dust in front of their shops. Afternoons on terraces overlooking the shining sea and the full sails of vessels traveling between ports, the wind whipping through your tunic and hair. Trekking to deserted beaches and diving naked into clear, rich waters alone. Nights traveling between cities on horseback, torch held aloft, firelight dancing through the crypts and funerary monuments that flank the road outside the citygates, and the animal's hooves clapping on the cobblestones, sounding through the tombs. Perfect stars hanging in perfect dark. In August, the heat and emptiness and silence of blue hills buzzing with cicadas, and afternoons in January sweating and laughing in the caldarium of the public baths. That our modern rhythms were more just to our natures.

Rome's loss was posterity's gain. The eruption of Vesuvius would be similar to a volcano suddenly popping up off the coast of Massachusetts, erupting, and burying -- yet preserving -- the posh towns of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, which would then be discovered seventeen hundred years later. However, the Romans likely never chalked Vesuvius's eruption up to global warming, corporate greed, the coming Apocalypse, or any other conspiracy. Many probably did attribute the eruption to an irate Vulcan, the god of fire who lived and smithed in forges beneath the mountains, believing that he was angry about something humankind did, whether humankind recognized it or not. How interestingly ancient religion parallels modern secular thought. Replace the pantheon of the gods with the ecosystem of the planet, and the similar patterns of capriciously punishing man for transgressions, justly and not, emerge from the dominions both of the gods and of nature. Replace the wrath of Poseidon with global warming, and you have yet another anthropocentric and dubious explanation of the sublime and often dangerous engines of nature. Regretfully, the latter is much less poetic.

Humankind's need for control and understand leads us to conjure such illusions in order to find psychological comfort in the face of the unfathomable. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed in gods that embodied both the forces of nature and the nature of the human psychology, knowing that the two can never be divorced nor fully explained. It should not be terribly surprising that many modern secularists follow similar patterns as their counterparts in ancient Rome, who claimed secret knowledge through exclusive, Hellenistic cults that gave them a privileged vantage over the affairs of humankind and the workings of the universe.

A more tenable approach would be the one taken Pliny the Elder, who observed and recorded Vesuvius's eruption in a letter to his nephew, Pliny the Younger. While sailing into the cloud of ash to save one of his friends, he described the eruption in such detail that similar eruptions are now called Plinian. He died during the rescue, but his account of the event, as well those that he included in his masterwork, Natural History, demonstrated his empirical approach to individual natural phenomena. Pliny's approach and many of his conclusions, although not all, have endured, much longer than the writings of cultists that attempted to attribute natural phenomena to grand, simplified causes.

Wind breathing in the leaves
Gnarled hands that grasped once towards a blind sky
Trees sway
Young skin stroking the blue
Ferns breaking through the forest floor
Their heady smell golden green
As strong as woodbine in autumn
Seasonless days bright and clear
The world hanging on a pivot
And I stand before you
Fearful of the warmth
Of your flesh against mine

Coeds in Florence

The semester is winding down with two weeks left.  The apartments are fully booked, and the Popes arrive this afternoon.  I am negotiating a job offer with a start-up travel company that could potentially keep me in Florence for awhile longer.   In preparation for a trip I am helping to organize next weekend I am reading Robert Harris's Pompeii while still slugging through The History of Western Political Thought, which although convoluted and dry, is absolutely fascinating.

A few things to share:

American girls in Florence.  Walking down the street yesterday, I passed a bevy of coeds marching by in their shiny outfits and high stilettos.  One asked in her loud, spoiled accent, "Is my ass hanging out?" perfectly cupping and accentuating the "a" in ass as if that situation could potentially present her with an unexpected and embarrassing inconvenience.  I laughed out loud, and realizing she had been overheard (as if no one in Florence spoke English), she turned red and scurried into the protection of her friends.

Advice for the ladies, do not buy outfits in which your derrière or décolleté may breath too freely.  Although the sexiest part of the human body is the brain, if you would like to draw attention to different assets, cover them up.  Modesty makes plain women beautiful and beautiful women irresistible.

If you find yourself complaining about men being contant jerks, observe that when you present yourself as jerkbait, you attract jerks.  Amazing correlation.  When a woman dresses provocatively, dyes her hair platinum, wears too much makeup, and stumbles about clumsily in high heels, its radiates an aura of high maintenance and desperation.  She wants social power over her girlfriends and men, and sex is her means.  In a man's mind, such a woman is good for one thing, exactly the instrument of her power, the bait on her hook.  You'll be amazed how far a little modesty and confidence will take your love life.  Unless, of course, that's not what you're looking for.

Finally, the accent has to go; it labels you as a joke.

A funny story.  I went out with some friends the other night after a long, wine-soaked dinner party.  I woke up the next morning to a phone call from a buddy.  He had lost his wallet and asked if I had seen it.  I had not and offered my condolences.

"You think that's bad," he responded in a strong Brooklyn accent, "I woke in the hospital this morning.  I just escaped and have no idea how or why I got there."

Quotes.  If you ever have the chance to live with a Polish Catholic, leap at it.  Here are a few of the less scandalous quotes from my friend and flatmate:

On listening to bluegrass music by The Flying Burrito Brothers: "Is this Jewish music?  It sounds like Jewish music.  Is he saying, 'Don't let your negro down'?"

T to a guest: "Are you a lesbian?"

MA:   "Oh no, Townsend, not at the table!"

Regarding a fancy dress party: "I can dress up as a tiger.  That way I can avoid dressing up."

MA: "By the way, I am NOT a feminist."

Back to Florence

I am heading back to Florence this afternoon after a few weeks in South Carolina and dreading the flight.  I hate flying.  I don't simply dislike or tolerate flying, I hate it.

I have enjoyed being home, reconnecting with family and friends, witnessing two good friends marry one another, and celebrating with my brother when he matched to Stanford for his residency in cardio-thorasic surgery.

This current semester ends on April 28th, and I am formulating plans for the summer.  Most likely, I will return to South Carolina, where I can find work for the summer months, versus consuming what little amount I have been able to save from my salary as a teacher's assistant.  Finding employment in Europe is tough, a job, nearly impossible, since the system is set up to prevent foreigners from taking European jobs from Europeans.  It costs an employer upwards of €10,000 and tens of hours cutting through red tape to issue a work visa to a foreign national.  Some American restaurant or construction site may soon be graced with my presence.

Off to brunch.

Post Lecture

Just returned from a lecture on Titian from a practicing artist.  I enjoyed hearing Titian's style explained through formal and stylistic elements versus through historical data.

In addition to TAing at Syracuse, I have started substituting at ISF's Junior School in Bagno a Ripoli.  This morning I taught first, second, and fourth grade art classes.  It's official: I don't want kids.