Roma is not pulita

You’re going to have to be patient with me and this introduction. We’ll get to the point eventually but we’re going to take the long way there. Or just skip to the next paragraph to get on with it. After I had finished writing post, I happened to be reading an article that was discussing how the format of a post to Facebook (video, image, text) impacts the audience response rate. The conclusions aren’t terribly surprising, an image post beats video and text, video beats text (if we could find a way for text to beat image we would have a new rock, paper, scissors) but it convinced me to add an image to this post (which was previously all text) so that it could be all that it could be. See, I told you we would get there.

For the regular followers of this blog (read: my mother. Hi Mom!) you’ll remember that I mentioned last week that I was going to Rome for the weekend to see my friend Slate. He had been on a multi-day bike tour across Italy (he actually rode through Ancona last Friday) and was spending the night in Rome on Saturday before flying back to Portland on Sunday. On Wednesday this week he was in Las Vegas at Interbike. The week before he was in Italy riding his bike up a mountain pass. Now he’s staring at Vegas’ take on Rome in Caesar’s. Cool.

Well I try to be blasé about it, casually saying, “Went to Rome for the weekend,” but I still felt pretty giddy getting off the train on Saturday afternoon. I mean, I wake-up Saturday morning, get on a train, ecco, I'm in Rome. Rome! I was talking to a friend of mine who lived there for a while a few years back (Hi Olivia!) and her take the desire to return and the simple pleasure to be taken in being there pretty much summarizes my giddiness.

I have been thinking of Rome a lot lately. I am not sure why. Maybe I am dreaming about it because I know I can’t go there anytime soon. Maybe it’s because I am so curious to see how and what I feel about it now, years later. I want to go back to Trastevere and walk the cobblestone streets. I want to go back to the Villa Borghese and sit on the benches and eat my gelato. I want to go back and sit in Piazza Navona next to the fountains and stare at the tourists aimlessly wandering by. I want to have drinks and a pizza at the tourist cafe that was right around the corner from my old apartment next to the Vatican. I want to walk up the hill to my old school and bitch the entire way about how hot it is. I want to fall asleep in bed listening to the incessant buzz of the motorinos.

He was late getting to the hotel. If we had been meeting in Gresham, I would have been bummed. But killing a few hours in Rome is pretty easy to do. I spent the time wandering around some of my favorite parts of the city, having a gelato outside the walls of the Vatican, and watching the nuns and priests walk across St. Peter's square. I love seeing nuns and priests in St. Peter’s square. They seem like props, like Mickey Mouse and Goofy at Disneyland.

When Slate arrived I showed him around Rome a bit (yup, I am familiar enough with Rome now that I can show someone around) and then we had drinks at a little bar within view of the Castel Sant’Angelo. Just hanging out watching the sun set behind the Vatican while having some wine. Ho hum.

Saturday night we went to Trastevere, the district in Rome trying its best to be like Alberta, and had dinner at a tiny restaurant. While we were waiting for our table, three girls walked up to take a look at the menu. I overheard (it wasn’t very hard) one of them loudly declare, "There are enough restaurants in Rome that I am NOT going to eat at one with English on the menu." Fair enough. I've been guilty of sporting the same attitude. Joke's on her though, and I wonder how often the joke has been on me, because a friend of mine who lives in Rome had recommended the place as one of the top restaurants in Trastevere and it's about as authentically Roman and Italian as you can get and we were the only tourists in there by the time we were seated. Cue ridiculous feelings of smug superiority. Also cue giant smile remembering the plate of roasted potatoes and the bowl of Polpette della Nonna. Seriously tasty. Back at the hotel we snarked about the silliness of single beds in twin rooms in European hotels. Yet somehow we both slept through the night and didn't fall out of them. Go figure.

Sunday, Slate left at 9 for his flight back to 'Merica and I sat on a bench in Villa Borghese and watched the people in the park and listened to the street musicians. Just another Sunday in the park in Rome. I had some amazing pizza from a place beneath the Spanish Steps which looked too touristy to be good but proved me totally wrong (I'm sensing a theme here...) and then took a hot, crowded, slow, crowded, hot, slow train (and crowded) back to Ancona. And that's what a weekend in Rome can look like.

I’ve mentioned my new roommate Simone? The vet. From Montova in Lombardia. We’ll just refer to him as Simone from now on, shall we? Our ongoing adventures in communication are fun. By fun I mean it’s fun trying to explain the flavor of ginger or why there is a name for blondes and brunettes but not for women with black hair. (In case you were wondering it’s so that blonde jokes can exist.) The Italian word for clean is pulita which I confuse in my mind with polluted in English because they sound the same. The word for dirty is sporco. I finally got that clear in my mind when I put my pile of dirty dishes on top of the clean ones he had just washed because Simone said they were puliti. (By the way, never refer to a girl as sporca because it’s REALLY rude.) And I keep calling cold water calda because those two words sound similar even though calda means hot. I’m told Italians have the same problem going in the opposite direction which is some consolation. That is, if you take consolation from knowing you make the same mistakes as everyone else.

The grocery store I frequent, as well as the daily farmer’s market, don’t sell chilis, but the farmer that Valentina buys all her vegetables from grows them so she occasionally brings me two or three since she knows I like spicy food, or at least I miss being able to eat if I’m in the mood. Sauté them whole in a bit of olive oil before adding onions and tomatoes and they make for the perfect heat level in sauce. Now if I can just find some fresh cilantro (coriandolo) I will have everything I need to make salsa and Raimondo's and Simone's heads will pop if I shove a bowl of chips and salsa in front of their maws. But finding cilantro is harder than you think it would be for a plant that is native to Italy. That surprised me too. I assumed it was from Mexico. It's not. I looked it up. The Roman soldiers are responsible. They spread it during their conquering and empire building. They would mix it with other spices and vinegar to rub on meat as flavoring and a preservative. But now, cilantro, indigenous, is "not typical" and seldom used in Italian cooking while tomatoes, unindigenous, are considered "typical" and always used. Today she brought me this bunch of fiery fellas.


This is the photo that makes this an image post which makes it more effective.
I left them sitting on the other desk in the office and promptly forgot all about them. A couple hours later my nose was running, there was a slight burn in the back of my throat, my eyes were stinging but I couldn’t figure out what was going on. That’s when I realized I’d mace’d myself! Because I’m a genius.

Hot, Sexy Teenage Girls & Beer & Justin Bieber

This post has nothing to do with anything in that headline. Except Mr. Bieber. Nah. I admit it. I used Google bait. It’s been so long since I posted anything that I figured it would take something titillating (hee, hee, I said titillating. Hee, hee, I said it again.) in your RSS reader to get you to come back. So welcome back.

I have this thing I do that I don’t know if anyone else does. No, not that! Don’t be gross. Besides, lots of other people do that. No, what I’m talking about has to do with time. I like being able to think about where I was and what I was doing at a specific date and time in the past. When I come back from a vacation and am sitting in my office again I get a kick out of thinking, “A week ago I was swimming in a pool at my friend’s house in Barcelona.” I know right where I was at 12:21pm on December 21, 1973. In a hospital room near 60th and Belmont in southeast Portland. I’ve seen the actual room. My dad took me there on my 18th birthday, just before we went to lunch and just after he’d dropped me off at a shrink. Weird birthday perhaps, but memorable.

Where was I? Oh yeah, time and place and space and all that. Ok, so birthdays are an obvious example. But. I have the pictures I took during the month I spent in Chamonix organized in separate folders by date. (I know that throws a light on my more anal, compulsive side but we’re not talking about that right now are we? Try to keep up!) Now I can go back though and remember that trip in the context of the continuum of time. It’s not just a trip that happened in March of 2009. It’s directly relatable to the present time. Every March 30th from now until I start forgetting my own name I can think about getting on the cable car to snowboard down the Vallée Blanche and with the time stamps get even more specific than that. While staring at a computer screen I can think to myself, “Two years ago today at this exact time I was standing at the top of the Vallée Blanche run,” or whatever. I get a kick out of that.


Valentina made me this cake to celebrate today.
Which leads me to today. Exactly a year ago today, 16 September, at around 12:30pm, I was stepping off the plane at the Ancona airport, dazed, cautiously optimistic that my luggage was soon to join me, and desperate to not to be a total disaster. Weird priorities I know. Up until today, I could say, “At this time a year ago I was in Portland.” But now, the story can start with me being in Italy. That’s pretty cool. One year. Italy.

I’ve been in Italy for a year. Mamma mia.

Valentina and I have a running argument that deals with a whole bunch of things (it rivals the Lincoln vs. Douglas debates in both its historic importance and intellectual sophistication) but basically boils down to Italy vs. the USA. Valentina is stubborn. Like a mule. The Italian word for stubborn is Valentina, as in, “Tu sei così Valentina!” also ”testardo come un mulo”. They’re synonyms. That’s a joke. She won’t laugh. She has a terrible sense of humor. Also a joke! I on the other hand am not stubborn. I’m magnanimous and open-minded. Really! That’s another joke. But the point of the argument is that we go back and forth with each other, each trying to prove to the other that our respective country, culture, food, music, food, energy policy, movies, food are obviously superior to the others.

Valentina recently returned from a holiday in Spain. As we were talking about her trip, I realized she was interpreting a lot of her experiences through the lens of how she is accustomed to and familiar with the way things are done, and done “right” or “better”, in Italy. “X is better” or “The way they do X in Spain is so strange” or “Why do they insist on doing X?” (I don’t know what X is either. Solve for X and get back to me.) What was fascinating is how much like me she sounded. I’ve spent the past year relating to and reacting to Italy through the lens of my Portland life. Obviously. But that filter is what starts a lot of our “debates” and it was fascinating to hear my words coming out of her mouth and gain that perspective. I’ve also noticed that I spend a lot less time comparing things here to the way they are in Portland and thinking that “they really should try doing it this way, it would be so much better”. My impression of life here has been to a large part informed by my tendency to relate to it in terms of how it’s different from “normal”, the normal I’m used to. I still do it a lot but I’m spending much less time experiencing things by how they are different and instead just experiencing things by how they are. And that’s about as far down this road we can go before my former philosophy professor gives this paper another “F” and tells me my ideas are terrible and please try again.

I thought I was just going to write about how I miss Portland but how much fun I’m having and instead I’ve dwelled on the continuum of time and Abraham Lincoln. Less gelato after work, more fruit.

I do miss Portland, a lot. All the time. And my family and friends and English. Especially English. I sat through the MTV Music Awards the other night just because it was so nice to hear English coming out of the TV. And I appreciate everyone who takes the time to keep in touch, say hello and share the news and send some peanut butter. Your kindness and generosity mean the world to me. And also make me miss Portland. So cut it out!

And how is Italy? Just before I left Portland a year ago I was freaking out, but in a really calm, suave way. I knew it was going to be overwhelming, but I way underestimated the sheer volume of whelming. It completely erased any traces of suave I may have brought with me. Getting to the point of being reasonably whelmed took the first few months and as I look back they are a blur. (Lucky for me I have my folders of pictures. See?) I knew the two years would go quickly but still, it was two years. That’s sort of like learning you’re pregnant (yeah!) and then hearing you’ll be having twins (yikes!). Amazing, joyous news, but a little overwhelming and hard to process. It’s enough to make your eyes roll back in your head and your world turn black if you think about it too hard. Two. Years. That’s plenty of time to do everything without rushing around. Right? But now one year has passed. And after today, each time I think about it, I’ll think I have a little less of that year remaining. That’s hardly any time at all! And I still have lots I want to do. Freak out! Ahhhhhh!

Reading this you could be forgiven for thinking I’ve decided to move back to Portland after my two year contract ends. The truth is, I haven’t decided at all and won’t make a decision until next spring but that doesn’t mean I’m not still using my two year timeframe as a point of reference. I don’t know what’s going to happen. And until I eat some pizza in Napoli I won’t make a decision. (Shhh, don’t tell my brother, but if he decides to come to Italy, we’re going to Napoli for pizza and to have our wallets stolen. It’s a secret though.)

The question I get asked the most is: How is your Italian? (That’s not the question I get asked the most but I’m telling you that it is because I’m tired of avoiding answering the actual question I get asked the most.)

Answer: Bene. (That’s Italian for good.)

Listen. Considering when I first arrived I had to write down a script just so I could order prosciutto from the deli at the grocery store and now I know all I have to do is ask Valentina to go with me to the tabaccheria so she can ask for my stamps or to recharge my phone for me (so I don’t have to write down notes, get it?) I would say I’m doing pretty well. To borrow a line from David Sedaris who wrote an excellent story about his struggles to learn a new language: Me talk pretty one day.

I speak fluent survival Italian. I speak terrible Italian Italian. I have a new roommate and he doesn’t speak much English which means if we want to communicate I have to speak Italian, and I speak enough Italian now that we have been talking and getting to know each other. Imagine that. I managed to travel with a friend around Italy for a week without causing an international incident. I laugh AT jokes now not WITH them just because everyone else has started laughing. Unless they are at my expense, which they usually are since I’m the funny American and then I just go to my default state which is to pretend I don’t know Italian. So it’s coming along. My Italian tutor said if she can make me fluent by the end of my second year here I have to stay for five years. I wasn’t sure if that was motivating or demotivating.

This has been a year of incredible adventures and the very rare misadventure. In truth, I can really only think of the adventures. (There was that incident with some pasta I made that drove my roommates from the kitchen…) For that I would like to thank the Academy, my parents, the director, my fellow cast members and anyone else involved. If I forgot anyone, you know who you are and how important you are to me and I thank you too. I guess I could name some of the highlights but I wouldn’t want to make the other lights jealous.

There is a trip to Siena that I will write about soon and this weekend I will be in Rome with Slate who promised to bring me more peanut butter. Next month I will be meeting up with Sean in Istanbul for a few days and I’ll be in Sevilla for New Years to visit Raimondo (he’s moving there at the end of the month for a new job). There is a rumor, much like the first snow flurry of winter, seen but unsure if it will stick, that a return trip to Ischgl is in the offing. My renewed permesso was delivered this week which means I can continue to live here. So I have Italy’s permission to stay and lots to look forward to. I’m excited to experience it all, beyond blessed to have this opportunity, and continuously mindful to take full advantage of the situation while it lasts, even if sometimes I prefer just to sit on my terrace and watch old Lost episodes. That’s plenty of naval gazing for now. Back to my regular gazing next time.

I wonder what Eric is doing right now. (Just kidding!)