Category — Italy

As I’ve mentioned, I tend toward binary thinking. The black-or-white thought process was helpful in law school – if not in practice. Following rules and constructing rules has long appealed to me. Just tell me what the parameters are and I’ll figure out how to do what I want within them.

I laughed when Clinton said “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” He was totally right. And totally horrible.

When someone asks to copy a CD, I flinch. And usually only say yes if I haven’t let anyone else do it, and make them agree that they are holding my “backup” copy, in case mine should disappear in a ball of flame (I’m pretty sure that’s legal).

Yesterday brought a conversation about DVD burning and its legality. “I paid for my license. I just want to be able to view it on my ipod!” Sounded fair to me, but (as one law professor used to tell me) I didn’t go to fair school. “You can probably find an illegal copy on youtube,” came the suggestion. True story.

Yesterday, when I climbed on the elliptical for the first time in about a month, it was with high hopes of watching SURVIVOR on Hulu or CBS.com. SURVIVOR is really the motivating factor behind my workouts. I love the show with the kind of fervor usually reserved for religious zealotry. I’ve applied 4 times, attended an open-casting call and brought a replica Buff to Italy with me. I watch recorded SURVIVOR episodes while I work out. During the season, it’s great. I record on Thursday and watch every morning for the next week, rehashing, analyzing, plotting my own takeover of the game.

But I left for Italy in the middle of the season, and haven’t had occasion to catch up on episodes. Until yesterday.

So, I plugged my computer in, set it in front of the elliptical and logged on. And got this message “this program is not authorized for your geographic region.” What? You’re kidding me, right? This is some elaborate scheme cooked up by the same people at CBS who keep denying my application. Must be. Not authorized for my geographic region…

Okay, okay. Not to fear. Next stop: youtube. I was able to find part 1 of episode 7 relatively quickly (AND WITHOUT SPOILERS). Soon I was in workout heaven, cursing Russell and working the puzzles with everyone else. Part 2 was easy to find as well. Part 3, however gave me some troubles.

This is the part of watching bootlegged copies of shows on youtube that isn’t so glamorous. First, you’re watching what someone recorded off their tv, and in some circumstances, what they recorded using a video camera pointed at their tv screen. Insane. Second, the programs are posted in 10ish minute chunks, requiring you to find and load multiple parts of the program. Third, people don’t always post the entire show, or don’t post the parts with any type of naming-convention. So you have to scout around to find the whole program. Yesterday I used at least three different people’s posts to piece together most of the show.

And I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I would have HAPPILY watched the 20 minutes of commercials that usually infiltrate the broadcast program. I find commercials fascinating. I TRIED to watch them on the CBS site, but “this program is unavailable for your geographic region.”

This morning, I was able to find a complete set of the episode, as well as the next episode. I think I’m only one behind now. It’s a beautiful thing. (Did I mention I haven’t spoiled anything? I still don’t know who was voted off in the last two weeks. For the love of all that is holy, don’t spoil it for me by posting in the comments. I’m a forgiving person, but I’m not sure how I would react to this, and I don’t want to find out.)

People have long said to me that I’d eventually move out of my black-or-white thinking in to an understanding that there are grey areas; that there need to be grey areas. Okay you people who said that, listen up. I’ve always said that grey is just black and white when you get close enough to it.

I don’t know copyright law as it applies to SURVIVOR episodes on youtube. No idea. I’m okay with that. What I do know is how to find the complete set of Season 19, Episode 7. Took me two days, but I figured it out. It was in the grey area, just between “willful suspension of disbelief” and “ignorance of the law is no defense”.

People often ask me why I don’t drink. Honestly, I think I was just a really lucky self-aware kid. As I watched most of my high school friends start drinking, going to parties, and into the woods for keggers, I started to plan. Sure I’d like more friends, sure I’d like to socialize more. But in small-town Idaho, those opportunities aren’t had at the mall. Here’s what the plan sounded like:

Plan A: I will begin drinking small amounts daily, gradually increasing until I can drink anyone under the table.

Yes, this was the plan in my 15-year old brain. Build up a tolerance so I could compete. Not so surprising, really. It’s a lot like athletics. Work-out harder and longer each time, preparing your body to do more than your competitors’. I was an athlete, so this was just like any other training routine. Fortunately, I was also already a little Type-A, so I had a Plan B. Here’s what it looked like:

Plan B: I will never drink.

Now, it’s possible that these two scenarios are a bit extreme. I’ve been known to tend toward this type of binary thinking. However, it was the realization that I was thinking in just this way that allwoed me to pause and say to myself, “self, perhaps we should give serious consideration to Plan B”.

And that is why I don’t drink. It’s also why I don’t smoke, do drugs, or engage in very many things that could lead me to that place known as “rock bottom”. Don’t get me wrong, I have my vices. I realized I had a problem with coffee when one of the judges I worked with walked into my office – where the coffee-pool kept its coffee and coffee pot – looked at me, looked at the third pot of the day, and said “you know, the definition of insanity under the DSM-IV includes mania, aggitation and other elements related to consumption of substances.” When I removed myself from the coffee-pool, daily consumption went from 3 pots a day to 1. Yeah, 2 pots a day might be excessive. Just maybe.

I didn’t totally give up coffee until the prilosec I was taking for acid reflux (due to coffee) wouldn’t work anymore. And sugar. Blessed sugar.

You know, it’s entirely possible that the sense of euphoria I felt the first time I was in Italy was due to the fact that I suspended my 2-year coffee embargo and 1-year sugar ban for the duration of the trip. The coffee made my head swim and the sugar induced a little mania. In hindsight, I was probably high for the entire trip.

When I got back, I was able to cut out most of the sugar again, but the cappuccini stuck. And now I’m back in the land of caffe and pastry. For some reason, the coffee hasn’t torn up my stomach yet, so I’m still drinking it. That means I’m pretty much dependent on it if I don’t want to be a raging jerk everyday. As long as I have 3-4 cappu a day, and a pot of tea, I’m good to go.

The sugar, however, is a problem. It started as a cookie every now and again, and a lovely pastry – or two. Then it became a pastry or two, and another snuck in the kitchen. I know it’s getting bad when I start eating sugar alone…

Yesterday, I hit a place that I’m not proud of. Nutella is the devil. I mean, really, I think there are stories in the Bible about the temptations that Nutella poses to the mortal world. I am mortal. It began as a little bit spread on a piece of bread with everyone else, maybe once a week. Yesterday, faced with the stress of the internet I snapped. While Sandra napped on the sofa I tiptoed into the kitchen to find bread and a knife. The Nutella was already purched a foot from my elbow as I typed – and it had been whispering to me. Okay, maybe I sound a little insane, but I’m fairly sure that most anyone reading this who has lived with a jar of Nutella understands what I’m saying. Or I’m projecting. Either way, it wasn’t good.

The scene rapidly devolved from slices of bread, to one giant knifefull shoved into my mouth. When you go to bed thinking about sugar, and wake up thinking about sugar, it’s time to admit you have a problem.

Fortunately, along with the Nutella, I discovered something else yesterday. Deb and Sandra have an elliptical trainer! Yes, it’s true! It’s hidden in the studio in the garden. I had no idea it was there! My daily routine in the states was to wake up, workout on the elliptical (on on the wind trainer), watch recorded SURVIVOR episodes, and then get ready for the day. Waking up in the morning with the prospect of a workout and SURVIVOR was one of the best parts of the day. So, along with sugar plums dancing in my head, the vision of working-out and watching SURVIVOR sustained me through the day and night.

This morning I entered the studio in my ridiculously short running shorts, turned on my computer and loaded SURVIVOR. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to trade my old habits for the new ones. The 45 minutes of bliss that followed left me lighter and more awake than the caffeine and sugar I’ve been relying on. Of course. I know this. But sometimes I need a little reminding. This morning was a good reminder. Don’t get me wrong, I still had my cappuccino this morning, but I left the Nutella completely alone. Baby steps.

It happened today.  Culture shock.  I’ve had a couple of moments where I’ve missed home, wished I spoke the language, or wasn’t sure whether I’d complimented or insulted someone.  Today was different.

I spent the morning largely with Barbara, Deb’s mom, and Andre.  We went for our daily coffee and focaccia at Marino’s shop where we talked about the importance of family and the uncertainty of leaving one’s surroundings.  Barbara had come to Barga as a young woman to be with her husband, Deb’s dad.  We shared our stories of intentional discomfort – her moving to a new country with little knowledge of the language; my decision to take a fundraising job in order to deal with my outright terror of cold calling.

We went shopping, first to a bookstore where I bought another Harry Potter book in Italian, and then to the local grocery store, where I spent a while staring at the shampoo and face soap.  I’ll just say that it’s much less intimidating to buy vegetables and jam, and even order bread from the meat counter, than to figure out what is face soap and what is laundry detergent.  I mean, if I get the wrong bread, Sandra laughs.  If I get the wrong soap, it could be a pretty miserable week.  So, I left with jam and toilet paper, and even dishwashing detergent, but no face soap (I’ll make Deb interpret the bottles later).

When I returned to the studio, I set to work on putting together a website.  I’ve been wrestling with the Italian site for the last week and thought I’d finally worked it out.  I’m very, very close, but not totally there.  After working on my little PC for a couple of hours, I switched to the big, pretty Mac that Ryo had left vacant.  It meant an Ethernet connection instead of the satellite one I’d been using, but it also meant using an unfamiliar operating system – in Italian.

I was able to find the web browser and, after about 15 mins, translate enough of the menu to figure out how to open up additional windows.  Brava!  Unfortunately, however, the internet was not cooperating.  I spent the next couple of hours battling against the computer and the internet, both of which kept giving me error messages in a foreign language.

When Sandra asked me what happened today to put me in such a bad mood, I couldn’t even explain.  “I battled the internet – all day – and it kept winning – in Italian.”  Not surprisingly, it didn’t translate.  So, we ate the fantastic meal that Sandra had prepared, joked about my hair, and, in the end, Tommy and I ended up playing cards.  And I won.  A lot.  In both Italian and English.  And he learned how to shuffle.  And that totally made up for losing to the internet.

Sandra has a problem with mugs. My first night here I noticed this. It’s not like she hides it. When I helped wash dishes my first night here, I spent a good 5 minutes trying to fit all of the mugs onto the little shelf in the kitchen. That was before I noticed the mugs sprinkled across the shelves in the cupboards, displayed decoratively on the bookshelves in the living room, and filling overflowing bags at the studio.

“I like mugs!” she says with a wiley smile.

Tea time was interesting for the first couple of days. “NO, not that mug.” I had assumed that all mugs were equal while preparing our afternoon tea. “That’s Tommy’s, can’t you tell?” “And that one is Snoopy. Don’t touch it. No, it’s very old, don’t even touch it.” “What about this one, Sandra?” She just smiled, and reached into the sink to rinse one that we had used that morning.

I’m getting better. I’ve had some time to watch which mugs she uses in the morning for cappuccino (and which ones Deb uses), and which ones she uses for afternoon tea, versus evening tea. I can anticipate which ones I can use, and which should be left alone. I haven’t had my choice corrected in maybe a week now. Wait. I just realized that might be because the ladies were on a cruise for the last week. Damn.

While they were away, I spent some time with friends in Lucca. We had a couple of day trips to Florence and Viareggio, and several days in the beautiful city of Lucca. Along the way I’d been looking for gifts for Sandra and Deb. It turns out it’s a little difficult to buy gifts for artists I barely know. Their home is filled with many beautiful things – and mugs. I kept finding lovely mugs, but rejected them all out of principle. There are plenty of mugs in the house and I was sure to find something better.

On my last evening, as we made our way to the train station, Giovanna took me to a slightly unexpected place – a Scottish tea house. Nestled in one of the winding backstreets of Lucca was a white-walled shop, lined floor to ceiling with white tins of tea. Gio and I chose a seat in the back of the shop where a great Japanese-style tea house stood. (I have no idea how they got this thing in through the little tunnel connecting the front and back of the shop. Probably piece by piece.)

We spent some time pouring over the tea menu. The shop-owner spent some time talking with us about the differences between Bancha and Sencha, Japanese Sencha and Chinese Sencha, and all manner of tea.

By the time we had finished, there were tea tins littering the little table where we sat, the owner having brought them to us, gently scooping leaves for us to smell. When the tea arrived, it was in lovely little pots with stainless steel covers that sat over the body of the pot. Gio and I wasted no time disassembling the interesting pots. The steel, it turns out, was lined with felt. Sliding smoothly over the white ceramic pots, the liners functioned as built-in tea cozies. Fantastic! I was put in mind of the mismatched teapot that Sandra and Deb use, and how quickly the tea goes cold.

I boarded the train to Fornaci an hour later with my gigantic backpack full of new coats and boots, and a teapot under my arm.

The day Deb and Sandra returned, I tried to make the house nice. I swept, went to the market for bread and flowers, and I actually managed to put all the mugs on the little shelf. It was a triumphant morning. The van arrived and we unloaded the extra bag they’d bought to carry all of their treasures. The dogs were ecstatic to have their moms back. I was happy to have my friends home.

After settling in a little they noticed the box on the table and opened their new teapot. “Bello, bello.”

“We have something for you, too.” They were both grinning. After some serious excavation, a package appeared and was thrust into my hands. How fabulous! A present. Who doesn’t love presents? I pulled apart the wrapping and laughed. A mug.

“Bellissimo!” We all had a good laugh and the mug, along with the teapot, was sent to the kitchen to be washed and put into service. I’ve used my mug about a thousand times in the two days since it appeared. There’s something wonderfully comforting in having it in the kitchen. I know that now I’ll get at least one mug right when making afternoon tea.

Have you read the book “The Alchemist”? Several people have been telling me to read it for a number of years. On my trip home to Idaho before I struck out to Italy, my sister handed it to me. It was one of those rare moments when I decided to do a bit of reading for pleasure. After the first chapter I realized that I’d tried to read the book before.  That time I ended up putting it down somewhere, where it stayed. This time, however, the book grabbed hold, and I spent the next day absorbed in it.

Somewhere toward the end, the boy in the story makes a deal with his heart, that if his heart would stop protecting itself by making him fearful of everything, he would listen to it, and really hear the messages it was sending.

I liked that idea very much, so I made the same deal with my heart. If I could be released from the daily doubts that cluttered my heart, I would listen to the little voice that whispers advice. So far it’s worked fairly well. The crippling self-doubt I’ve felt in the past is, for the most part, gone, and I’m listening and hearing. Sometimes, however, the little voice needs to yell a little to be heard over the excitement that can distract me. Today was one of those days.

My friend Franca , who is the regional secretary for the largest labor union in Italy, invited me to attend the sindacato manifestazione. Best I can tell, it’s a million person rally in Rome for the rights of workers (constitutionally guaranteed). Coolness. But a little voice wasn’t so sure. Damn. Really? But it’s a huge political rally IN ROME! I put in motion plans to go. I asked Franca for details and looked up the train schedule while cooking lunch. I’d meant to ask my friend Frank for his thoughts about the rally, but hadn’t. Maybe I’d do that in a bit…

When you’re tasting tubular pasta to see if it’s done, make sure there’s not scalding hot water hiding inside. This is a good tip, and one I shouldn’t have needed. The hot water shot into my mouth and onto my lip and chin, painting a great red stripe down my face. Damn. That sucked.

The pasta wasn’t done, so while I let it boil a bit more, I went to take care of a stray whisker (yup). I reached into my bag, feeling for the tweezers, and found a razor with its cover askew. What in the world is that doing there? It took a moment for the blood to come to the surface of my knuckle. Looking down at my red thumb I was a little miffed. What the F was going on? (Please pardon my abbreviation.)

I wrapped up my thumb and hurried back to the table to read about the rally on the union website, throwing myself into the chair. SMACK!!! I rammed my kneecap straight into the table leg – hard. Are you joking me about this?

Over the last year I’ve really tried to listen to the cues I’m being given. Today, it seems that the little voice was tired of being ignored. It had gone from an uncomfortable whisper to a full out scream. So I sat back. “What? Just what?” I was a little impatient. “Don’t go.” It wasn’t the answer I wanted. So the rational part of me emailed Frank, my local political expert, to see if I was missing something on the surface of the situation. It was totally unfair to pit him against the little voice, but he had the answer I wanted. And he had an invitation. Come to coffee and meet another writer/political thinker.

I sent a confirmation text to Franca to see if I could crash at her place after the rally, and I grabbed the car keys. I’m really lucky the little voice didn’t crash a meteor into the car on my way to Barga.

Still, I had a nice drive up, found a parking spot and managed to locate the café where Frank and Tom were sitting. It turns out that Tom really is the brilliant political thinker that Frank described. In the 5 minutes I had between Frank’s invite and leaving the house, I was able to do a quick Google search and read a piece Tom had written for the Huffington Post regarding health care. The next hour or so was consumed by rabid discussion of foreign policy, sprinkled with the niceties afforded a stranger. The guys, who clearly walk the same intricate paths they walked today with some sort of regularity, and had to keep each other at bay with “now, wait” and “let me finish,” were generous when it came to listening to the views of a newcomer. They sneered only slightly at the hyper-optimistic policy suggestions I’m prone to give.

When I left the evening it was with an updated understanding of US policy in Afghanistan, a firmed up concept for my next post, and another really interesting contact – something I would have missed out on if I hadn’t emailed Frank to ask his opinion regarding the rally.

And the little voice was quiet again. While I was sitting with Tom and Frank, I’d received a text from Franca. Giovanna’s mom was in town, so there was no place to stay after the rally. We’d have to try for next time. It made me smile.  Now I’ll have the weekend to nurse my face, thumb and knee. And to practice my listening.