Naive Melody

This morning my mind has been calm, but not slow. It has been the kind of day where, if someone were to stick a gun to my back, I feel as though I could handle the situation with ease, thanks to some self-assurance almost certainly misplaced.

I think my Italian is actually getting worse--my enthusiasm has been waning and I've been paying a lot less attention to conversation; it requires a lot of energy to understand or intuit meaning, and fatigue has set in. There is something more pragmatic about Italian than English--a more redundant vocabulary and more transparent roots to the words. The Italian for "fun" is "divertimento," as in "to divert your attention from the festering obscene horror, here's a puppet show." I went to a puppet show with Monica and Serio the other night, and instead of listening I mostly watched the children's reactions, their free expression. At the end of the show music started playing and two of the puppets danced with each other and nearly every kid got up and began to dance, too. At one point, a moth flew in front of a stage light and I imagined thousands of moths flooding the lights, the amusement being overwhelmed and overthrown by this immediacy.

I'm about to begin "L'Isola di Arturo," a novel Monica gave me. I'm hoping I'll retain the willpower to keep flapping back and forth through the dictionary--should help my Italian. The first few days this past week I went to beaches with Vittorio and Monica, and was very content just being at the sea with the sun and the wind and textures of rocks and sand under my sandals. I've been slipping into and out of bad moods and too-much-in-my-head moods even though I've been out of my head more this week than in the past two weeks. Everything is swimming for the most part. Swimmingly. Monica is pretty much my main source for interpersonal communication, and with my language fatigue lately, I've been feeling more like a receptacle than anything else; so, sweet and well-meaning as she is, Monica's desire to communicate has been wearing on me.

I've been here for three weeks now and it feels good to be at the halfway point for this farm--to have more time here, but to also have this mild anticipation for the next leg. The farm in Sicily that was supposed to host me for October has not been responding to my e-mails, so I'm looking for another farm. Unfortunately, none of the farms I've heard back from so far have any need for WOOFers until the 15th of October, which leaves me with 25 days of unscheduled and unfunded Italy. Not sure what to do yet, still hoping I can find a farm to host me from the 1st of October until I meet my folks in London on the !st of November.

Last night I went to Port'Azurro with Monica and Chinzia. And Chinzia asked me if Jews believe Jesus is or was the son of God. The place was popping and crumy with tourists, but not in an overtly disgusting way--actually, it probably was, but I was so wrapped up in the the sights and smells, it didn't register very strongly. The architecture was right out of Escher, but not with that self-negating evenness; it was full of crooked stairways and intersecting halls built with from haphazard necessities. I walked around and loved the labrynthine feel of the place; I should have had 360 degree vision. And the smells of noasted nuts, fish or clams or mussels, strawberry bubblegum, flowers, I inhaled deeply and wanted to continue for the rest of the night inhaling without rest, but my lungs would not take in the whole night's air, so it was in and out and in. There was a church with doors that portrayed Creation and The Fall, and other scenes from the good book, in bronze. On the steps of the church, little boys and girls were selling plastic toys that they must have grown tired of; and the girls had a sign for bracelets for good fortune, 1 Euro (the bracelets were single strands of lanyard plastic they intended to tie around your wrist)--I passed it up this time.

Listening to the music and seeing the advertisements for this and that, it seems to me that there is a more naive aesthetic, commercially at least, in this country. There appears to be much less marketing of angst and cynicism than in the States, and half of the stores you enter have a picture of the pope hanging next to the cash register. Italy is not as inundated as the US with homogenizing mass culture, save perhaps the religious homogeneity. And though the angst sold in America is just as flat and surface level as the mush in both countries, one hopes that it at least provides a counterpoint by which a dialectical deepeining is possible.

There are no pennies from grandpa in Italy--less omens I am accustomed to reading; so, I am trying to learn the language of this geography, figuring how to navigate by this new star. Continually. In any case, I've got a jar of peanut butter now, so that's something.