How I Am Becoming Verbose, or Less Reductive Reduction. I Have So Much To Say. I Have So Much To Say. I Have So Much To Say. I Have So Much To Say. I

The last days at Orti di Mare felt similar to my last days in Delaware; the ghostly detachment and neurotic restlessness were in my bloodstream, only not so strong as before. The grape harvest was exhausting, but luckily I had a few chatty companions--there was Chris, the newly arrived Scottish WOOFer who generously gave his ear to my rambles and declarations, and there was Olga, a Moldavian woman in town for the work, who took a shine to me and talked like the sweetest gossip you've known. The day was difficult largely because of my aching headache from a few small glasses of grappa (read: moonshine) the night before.

The day I took off, I grabbed a bottle of wine, ate my breakfast, said goodbye to Chris and Ambroggio (the only two awake at the time), and headed for the bus stop. And waited. And waited. For two hours. The bus hours had changed with weather, and the next bus wouldn't come for another 5 hours, which would put me in Florence at around 8 that night if I was moderately lucky. I pulled on my pack, headed to a large road, and stuck out my thumb. An hour or so had passed without a bite under the Tuscan sun. I was wondering when my beginner's luck would kick in, when a German couple stopped for me. They were headed to the wrong city, and I needed to get to Portoferraio for the ferry to the mainland. I stood with my thumb out for a while longer, waving at cars with a smile as they passed, because at least sometimes I could get a smile back. I sang to the empty road, too, hoping to bring the cars to me like the Grecian ships to the sirens, though this didn't work so well. And then another German couple stopped and brought me directly to the ferry, which departed only a few mintutes after I boarded it.

I watched Elba shrink in my field of vision and thought of the limits of my sight, and my thought, my body, as reminders of the terrifying largeness and wonder of things and potentials--indirect signs of the infinite all around me, including me.

I hit the streets of Florence after missing my bus by mistaking the arrival time for the departure time and catching a train to the central station, Santa Maria Novella. On the way to my hostel smack in the center of the city, I passed the Duomo, overrun by tourists and all, and stood for some while looking at it with teary eyes. So large. So thick with intention. So sincere. In short, it was an imposing beauty. I tried to read some of the architecture's dense text--noted the circles (heaven/nature) within other circles, father, son, and holy ghost, the 3 circles within a larger circle which is the whole damned family; the almond-shaped vulva of Mary, by which God gives birth to himself; the spirals towards the heavens in the vertical and circular time of Vico and the others living in Medieval Europe. What's more, some of these cathedrals contain decorations that were hidden upon their creation within the walls or columns of the church, for the eyes of God only forevermore. There was a point in front of the main doors where the central firgures of Mary and baby Jesus are looking and pointing down at you, saints and popes surveying the land in all directions, and you are dwarfed. How dangerous art can be.

The tourists seemed so ugly and unappreciative, which we are, but not only. I got to the hostel, sweating like a pig who has also climbed six flights of stairs with a pack one third its body weight. My bed had all the charm of a plastic bag, and the room had seven other occupants to whom I was forcefully indifferent, and happily so. I was in Florence. I went off in search of dinner, bouncing down the street with no weight on my back other than my shirt, walking around for a good long time and finally found a calzone for 3 euro. I squatted in front of the Duomo again and ate my calzone, thinking of Pound's banking conspiracies and Perec's commerce as culture as art. I walked more, not tired yet and wanting to more of the lay of the land, maybe find some cheap eats for the days following; and my eyes led my feet from restaurant to restaurant, consumed by the insatiable hunger of expected hunger. The streets at night are filled with Africans hocking sunglasses and purses. As the cops roll by, the Africans "hide" their wares, but there are no secrets, just farcical nicities and tenuous relationships. I commented to one of the vendors that they had a good system in place, he laughed.

The next day, I gave a half-eaten gelato to a man asking for money. He had come to me and I knew what he wanted when he stood in front of me and moved his hand out and began speaking. I said that I didn't understand, saying French or English? and this was perhaps a demand for further supplication. I gave him the cone of chocolate and strawberry gelato, my favorite part being the cone and gelato together in each bite. And I gave this to him after he balked a few times and then he asked for money again. I began habitually digging in my pockets for coins and accidentally pulled out a 2 euro piece. He saw it, I saw it, and I put it back. "Too much," he said--"Troppo," and I said yes, I only have 10 euro for each day. This to a man who may have a fifth of this to survive on, though I rather think he does well enough for himself with all the tourists around. I gave him 4 cents, the only other coins I had and he walks away, maybe muttering a vague "grazie." I feel cheated, angry, and then I think this must not have been generosity if I wanted something in return--I wanted to have him act as though I were a good person in exchange for my ice cream, and good will 4 cents of a euro. And giving my gelato, even, was a quirky manifestation of this--I didn't care whether or not I ate the rest of it, but I expected something in return for the gesture at the least. And was his action wrong? No. He asks and takes what is given; the interactions are that simple, "are you going to give?", it does not matter why, why should it? Actions are what create the social character, but these are opaque. The only reasons to give other than in exchange for some other thing, nebulous or immediately tangible, are the desire to give itself or indifference. I felt as though I was beginning to understand what my parents mean when they tell me my openness is wonderful, but to be aware that some people will try to take advantage of this, only it is not that I should be aware of being taken advantage of, but rather that I should be aware of why I am giving, what I expect in return, and the reality of this return. Karma or other religious figurations of debt and credit are cold comforts because of the dogmatic rule of them, though the release from immediacy is potent.

It is amazing how many people look at my notebook while I'm sitting and writing, as if they want to see what is important enough to record that they are not taking down themselves. And how many will look into your eyes without quickly averting their gaze, without passing it as a mere glance? I want to look at you, you are specific, and can I know you? You are surely a fount of interest, but can I see in this fascination something meaningful? The quickness of action, thought, and reaction is difficult to maintain, to smile or not to smile, to look away or fix the gaze.

I have the habit of seeing differences strongly--a woman is more a woman to me than a man is a man, a black person is more black than a white person white. I do not value these differences as less or worse than similarities, but I do see them more fixedly. This is how it has been, but I am feeling different, myself, and we are similar in being different. In this, I am not finding myself less fixed upon differences, but blurring the distinctions between differences and similarities, between my self and other selves in the mode of Rimbaud's "I is an other." There is something in this similarity in difference like the infinite in the limited, that which we cannot see being present in the horizon of all we do see--a wall, a face.

I wandered the labyrinthine streets without much trying to remember my way. The streets forgetting themselves behind me; and every return is thrown into a new light...

...Frescoes with center action, and secondary and tertiary action further from the physical center, but no wholly decentered scenes that I have come across so far. And the thought behind all of the characters' expressions, dress, orientation, action, is overwhelming--whole conceptions and schemes of the world and beyond on a square yard of canvas or building.

Calvino says, "the city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit the desire and be content...your labor which gives form to desire takes from desire its form [and you believe you enjoy it wholly when you are only its slave]." There is not enough time for desire to die. Instead of being ruled by this desire to rule and kill?, desire, I think I prefer "there is enough time" for desire to be desired, to feel and be felt. Still, there is not enough time to satisfy desire, and there never will be.

I got into contact with a family of Violin makers in Florence, the Vettori family. They took me in, fed me, gave me company, and housed me with such generosity that I could not imagine what I could give in return. I spent most of my time with Dario, who reminds me of James, a friend from Portland, in the way he laughs with his whole body, the little happy stubbornnesses, and the appearance, at times, of being at once completely entrenched and removed from social situations. These things endear him to me even more than his confounding generosity.

My last night at the hostel before ditching it for Dario's, I was talking with some boys and girls from America and some young women from New Zealand, finding myself very much apart. One boy began talking about terrorists and the so-called war on terror and his desire to "fight dirty" by killing indiscriminately. Nobody said anything. Was this happening? I began to respond and the room began emptying. The monologue had become a dialogue, and what is so boring and so sensitive as politics? It is understood as polite and couth to sweep the gorilla under the carpet and pretend it doesn't fart.

A kid on a motorbike with a sticker of the Italian flag on it brought to mind the force through which desire manifests itself in discourse--the discourses of cool, identity, exoticism (insofar as a sticker is an adornment), as well as others, I'm sure, give coordinates (vague enough), or rather loci, for where they can affirm and reassert themselves; that is, desire finds expression in these things which propagate further discourse and desire--and it is only through desire that discourse is propelled, both from within and from without.

The Florentines have curses for God, such as "Di'ane," which is a slur of "Dio" and "Cane," literally god-dog. Also there is the word questo for this, quello for that, and then there is the word codesto for this thing between us. Marvelous.

I walked around the outside of the Pitti Palace and the Uffizi Gallery, and remembered waiting for ages in that line to the Uffizi the first time I came to Italy with my family. It seemed as though everybody milling around just wanted to take a photo and leave--to "collect" the "experience", which taken in this light means less than shit. I imagine a renowned rock floating in space being visited by men in straw hats and hawaiian shirts and the American atomic family of the 50s in an old Chevy with fins on the back fenders and all; they travel miles, lightyears maybe, to see this rock which is so popular that at this point it is popular for being popular, regardless of its other qualities, even if it played an influential role in the way their people ordered their calendar or conceptions of beauty. A snapshot and they turn around and take off in the typical cloud of smoke towards home or the next spot to be recorded and verified. Recording in this case means buying and cataloging. I want to see how my writing is different from this, because I feel that it is. In writing my experience, recording it, it is incorporated further into myself in my expansion upon and evaluation of it. It becomes more by this kind of recording--a sort of interest on the moment. Usura (interest, as Pound refers to it in his cantos as he is working out his conceptions of banking, Medicis, art, and, conspiracy) is a retrograde entropy, whereby the world is becoming more than itself. But becoming more, or as entropy would claim, less, is impossible in the logic infinite infinities, differing differences.

I helped Dario with a speech he's going to give as an introduction to a conference or concert by Yo-yo Ma before taking off for Milan with an exquisite lunch he prepared for me just before we made a mad dash to the train station. Got to Milan and Monica picked me up at the station. There are waves of connection like we've known each other for years, and then waves of jarring alienation. Her father looks at her with such obvious pride, but she tells me this is too much to bear, too heavy to be the vessel for all of his joy--nobody wants to be loved that much. We get to her uncle's summer cabin in the mountains and you can hear the cows grazing, the sound of tubular bells as they move. Every thing in the mountains has a bell attached to it--cows, goats, dogs, churches. Monica had a guitar, which felt so good to get my hands on at first, and it gradually became more of an instrument in my hands, more of a vehicle than a toy, which made me more reticent to play in company.

At the top of every mountain was a cross, an attempt to anchor the heavens to the earth. I was seeing many signs, many omens--operating very much in the symbolic realm, which feels in tune and yet might be complete delusion. I don't think it was the altitide. Monica tells me about a man who is like a wall and a woman who is like a wall, and how they are like two walls facing, and I see the city filled with these stubborn lovers. She is blinded by her pain and says she hopes I will not encounter such pain. I do not want to believe that pain must be blinding.

We went to a museum and I acted the tourist, exhausting myself by not opening myself to the exchange of energies with the art. There were weapons decorated so that you can battle with Beauty on your side. We went to Milan's Duomo in all white stone and stained glass windows that were conceptually disjointed--one window was new and had the insignia of the bank that sponsored it at the bottom of the window, also in stained glass. There were local parishoners there, too, who lines up for the confessionals which were set up like bank tellers' booths. I asked why gargoyle and other monsters should adorn a house of God, but couldn't get an answer. Monica abhors the superficiality of Milan, but I tried to convince her that you can see depth in superficiality, and that depth itself is only a complex surface, but I don't know if it got through. We hiked up a mountain with her friend and her friend's twin girls in their stroller over Roman stone paths. It didn't seem like a brilliant idea to me at the time, either, but I was assured that it was much easier than carrying the kids, which later became evident as pattently wrong.

Vittorio picked me up from the town where we were hiking, and the two of us headed off to an Italian Folk music festival, which was not so impressive. I spent the entire night talking to two guys who had come in for the festival on a lark and didn't care too much for it either. The next day I caught the train for Verona and bumped into some people I had met at Orti di Mare. More on Verona soon...