Week 2 Image Junkyard 4

An old man sits outside Bar Duelle, book in hand and empty espresso mug on the table in front of him. He dresses well, a nice, wide brimmed hat rests snugly on his head and a brown suit coat adorns his body. He gets up to leave and I see the title of the book: “The Tale of Genji.”

Week 2 Image Junkyard 3

The smell of curry fills my nostrils even before the Indian Restaurant comes into view. Window shoppers peruse the various goods in shop windows nearby, and an older Italian beggar approaches me with a bird and a chest filled with lottery tickets. I do my best to be firm in my refusal to participate and I leave him awkwardly with regret and embarrassment flooding my belly.

Week 2 Image Junkyard 2

The square is filled with drunken yells and throbbing music as we try to make our way through the crowd. I stay behind, finding a semi-comfortable perch to message my fiancée. No place is safe tonight as every few minutes another youth makes their way out of the bar and stumbles loudly down the road.

Week 2 Memory 1

Rounding the corner in the Capuchin Basilica, I nearly stumble backwards as nothing could have prepared me for the sight that now fills my field of vision. Bones. Bones of monks, now dead for centuries, decorate an otherwise plain chamber. Mummies propped up onto their dried, half preserved feet stand watch over the piles of femurs and skulls that are piled high against the walls. Death watches over the tomb, hanging from the ceiling, scythe and scales gripped firmly in his skinless hand. Jawbones and hipbones, nailed to the walls and ceilings, create beautiful patterns and spirals inches above my head.

When my great grandmother passed away I was still struggling with the Christian concept of death. Held in my father’s arms I looked down on the body that I once affectionately called “Maw Maw.” My dad tried explaining to me that what I saw was no longer Maw Maw but she had a new body now. Expecting her to walk in, younger and healthier, I kept my eyes trained on the door to the sanctuary. Maybe the pastor would wheel it in on a cart and boot her up like some sort of android in front of the audience. The Capuchin Order’s wonderful display of mortality bewilders me even now. Even if they believed they had new bodies waiting for them in heaven it will still disturb and fascinate me for the rest of my life.

Week 2 Image Junkyard 1

Tourists gather around the Trevi fountain, it’s beautiful white form polluted by hundreds of human bodies restricting movement and preventing any clear view of the marvelous sculpture. Gawking at the sight of the fountain people huddle around, taking pictures so much that anyone within one hundred yards is preventing someone from snapping a photo. A single seagull rests upon Poseidon’s head, unaware of the history and meaning of its perch.

Week 2 Reportage 1

Boarding the train from Rome to Spoleto at the last second, I move from car to car in search of a seat. In one car stand two nuns, baby blue habits covering most of their bodies. At the next stop I continue my search, squeezing myself between the rows of people already comfortably seated. In the small compartment past the seats is a group of Italian high schoolers. They speak in much softer voices upon my arrival and glance at me with raised eyebrows. Their clothing is distinctly different from the nuns I had seen earlier, the young men dressed in polos and shorts while the women are wearing skirts with skin-tight leggings and tops that show off their bronze shoulders. I become self conscious as I realize I'm an American lugging around a large McDonald's bag with the remnants of my lunch. Deciding not to ride with such nosy passengers I move even further down the train once we reach yet another station. Frustrated and tired from searching for an open seat I give up once I reach the next compartment and decide to ride out the rest of the trip with an Italian mechanic, still in his work clothes, and a quiet Italian woman content with watching the scenery and listening to her music through headphones that disappear beneath her raven black hair. At the next stop both the young woman and the mechanic disembark the train and leave me the small fold-out chair to myself. After the train had reached full speed I tried to make myself as comfortable as possible on the inadequately cushioned seat and enjoy the rest of the train ride. Several minutes had passed since the train had left the last station and two girls in their early teens enter the compartment. I hastily remove my headphones once I realize they're trying to talk to me but removing the earbuds does not help as they're shooting Italian at me so fast I can't keep up. I tell them, blushing with embarrassment at my inability to speak the language, that I'll try to work with them in English if they speak it. They decide to attempt to communicate with the oversized foreigner and we converse in an odd mixture of terrible English and even worse Italian. Slightly annoyed they tell me they'll ask someone else and walk through to the next car with a friendly "hello." I'm both embarrassed at my lack of language skills and amused at the fact they just bid me farewell with a word that can only be used in greeting.

Week 1 Image Junkyard 4

The group of travelers stops for a moment in Rome to peruse the selection of Italian books in a small stand outside a small public park. A young Italian boy chases the large flock of pigeons picking bread crumbs off the ground and his young father chases after him apathetically, as amused at the spectacle as I am.

Week 1 Reportage 1

One by one the party of adventurers shuffle in to the already crowded subway train. Remembering tales of master pickpockets who could swipe a wallet with a weary hand placed firmly around it, we kept our guard up. Back to back, scanning the crowd around us, our eyes resting for much longer on a suspicious face or an itchy palm. Music starts to play from further up the car, quiet at first, then gaining volume as the music took its course. At first I think it's the cars PA system, adding ambience to the dull and quiet metro ride. Standing on my tiptoes, my gaze bounces from head to head until it spots the source of the melody: a young Italian, accordion in hand, serenades the weary travelers with whining tones and up beat tunes. One stop, then two stops the train makes, passengers lurching forward in unison at each one. On the second stop we make our way off the car, staying vigilant against any attempts to abuse us foreigners' naivete. Up the slowly moving elevator and into a chamber filled with sandwich shops and souvenir stands, then out into Rome. Our first sight of Rome slams into us like a Gladiator's flail, the Coliseum stands before us, introducing itself without warning.

Week 1, Memory 1

I find myself trying to wrap my head around the distance between Spoleto and "home." Riding in a box encased in metal and flying through the air without a window to look out of disconnected me from the distance we were traveling. In the smoothest moments of the flight you might even think you weren't soaring above the clouds at five hundred miles an hour. A rocky patch of air puts knots in my stomach and reminds me how fast and how far we're moving. We seem to have lost respect for the distances we can travel today. We complain about being "packed into planes like sardines for nine hours" when a century ago that sounded like a luxury.

When I was a child I had a very poor sense of distances and measurements, as every child does. Gilette, Wyoming isn't a large town, in 2000 it had just under twenty thousand residents. One day, as I rode into town in my father's work truck from the plains covered in nothing but sagebrush and dust I asked him, "Do you think Gilette is more than a mile wide?"

He chuckled and said, "I certainly hope so."

I was fascinated, maybe it was even two miles wide?

Week 1 Response 1

It's great writing like this that reaffirms my belief in you as one of the greatest writers I personally know. The imagery in this entry is rich and your word choice is spectacular.  I'm particularly fond of, "the way my lower back wheezes." Having a "wheezy back" in the morning is never fun and the way you drowsily go about your morning is wonderfully illustrated. Also, let me say that statue is horrifying when I'm drunk or tipsy and I come up the set of stairs in front of it or come around the corner behind it and it stares at me like a silent sentinel. The night it moves or disappears I'm taking the next train to another town. The situation with the beggar is handled quite well, both in presenting it to the reader and what you actually did. "Pastries glazed like jewels," not only gives me a vivid vision but is also something I would not think to use to describe pastries that cost less than two euro. I'm also able to conjure a clear image of every person you meet, from the black beggar, to the surly old man, to the curly haired barista. When you end the entry with another reference to the statue (I see what you did with the slender) it's an eerie reminder that it's always there, silently watching over that small section of town.

Masters - An Italian Affair

Laura Fraser could only write this book in Italy because it was the only brochure she had within arm's reach when she sat down write the novel. It seems like every cringeworthy cliche is in the first chapter, from the description of the streets she walks down to the people she meets. Every word has been said before and will be repeated for all time. The cliche of meeting an exotically erotic stranger in Italy is compounded by making the professor French. She only takes notice of the most simple things, pizzerias, clothing shops, gelateria. The way Laura looks at Italy is, quite frankly, insulting. Almost every man she meets is annoying to her and disposable, all the history and culture she almost dismisses because she's seen it before. Her girl friends are all smart, sensible, do-no-wrong women and they may be the only people in the entire novel Laura doesn't insult at some point. Italy has become a place where middle aged women dream about running off to get swept off their feet by an exciting Italian lover and Laura Fraser's "beach book for the brain" is just another drop in the bucket for this shallow, cliche ridden genre.

Week 1, Image Junyard 3

My feet pound the cobblestones used for centuries carrying me towards the distant hills, their vibrant green spotted with orange and pink buildings. The sun shines brightly in the sky above, unobscured by clouds and mirroring my high spirits. Children run circles in the park, playing tag or kicking soccer balls beneath graffiti of English swears and sacrilegious art. Flowers of purple, yellow, orange, and blue line my path, dogs of various breeds lead their owners towards territory that must be marked. A young couple dances and laughs in the shade of trees reaching into the skies. I feel eyes from all sides bearing down on the oversized American Viking strolling uneventful Spoleto streets, far from home but not a thought of it in his mind.