2005
Stag Sunday
Since I returned home two and a half days ago, I’ve spoken to exactly two people (three sentences to my landlord and “thanks” to the clerk at the gym) and left the house exactly once. I thinks I brushed my teeth this morning, and I nose it’s time I take a shower.
Is this social extraction a direct response to the constant crush of ugly humanity (read: tourists) in my recent past? Perhaps. Am I alone because everyone I want to see is out of town? Certainly in part. Is it because it’s easier to wallow in one’s sad solitary state while cloistered away from personal contact? Yeah, okay, maybe I’m playing that game. Mayhaps I’ll call up the pizza guy and have a little chat with him and, after that, maybe a word to the delivery fellow.
I have of late acquired a good number of photographs of beautiful and/or interesting strangers. Herewith is compiled a collection of shots of some of these people–in particular, those going about their day solo. Cue “All By Myself” and muster an appropriately Bridget Jones level of melodrama and enjoy what I think are pretty darn good pictures for an amateur, even if they’re all compositionally left-heavy. I’ll just pretend that’s my trademark. I totally intend my audience to list portside.
p.s. The caption about the monk bones refers to the Capuchin crypt beneath a church on Rome’s Via Veneto. The five or so small chambers contain the real actual bones of more than four thousand monks that have been collected and assembled and artfully arranged and *gulp* posed in what might be called either inspired works of art or grody-gross gruesome life-sized dioramas of death. Pictures here. When I die, please don’t arrange my shoulder blades into a whimsical bowtie beneath my skull, thank you.
p.p.s. The underwear on the guy at the Disco McDonald’s was pastel striped and ruched, which, if you don’t know, means that the material was gathered and cinched in a vertical line right up the butt crack. I am embarrassed to say the jury’s still out on this one. What do you think?
p.p.p.s. I only ate at McDonald’s once while in Italy. As opposed to the six or seven times on my last visit. Shut up.
2005
Falls Mainly on the Plain
The weather in Italy was pleasant if not a little on the hot side some days. (Like the days we walked for twelve straight hours or the days the humidity was hovering near 1000 percent.) The one exception to the unadulterated sunshineyness was a flash rainstorm that struck while we were outside the Church of San Miniato al Monte, on the hill behind the Piazzale Michelangelo, from which everyone takes all those pictures of the red tiled roofs of Florence (or takes pictures of people taking pictures of the red tiled roofs of Florence. Can you say lens envy?)
The clouds in noble Firenze, as I think I already mentioned, were ridiculous every single day. Impossibly white and impossibly puffy and billowy and marshmallowy. I was constantly perplexing passersby who wondered what in the world I was taking pictures of in the ostensibly vacant air. Cloud drama: you either get it or you don’t, I guess.
If you get it, click here and here. They’re really exciting, I promise, and there are some other things in the shots besides just sky, particularly views of the Boboli Gardens, which I managed to make look attractive instead of dead and neglected.
It was about six or seven o’clock when we found ourselves on the patio in front of the Church of San Miniato al Monte, from the ancient bowels of which monks or priests or some other robed figures were chanting Vespers. Storm clouds had been threatening all afternoon but we weren’t the only ones sans umbrellas (or bumbrellas, as my dad says) when all of a sudden the sky broke open with an audible crack and the clouds splashed their insides onto the patio, shepherding the small crowd up the stairs and into the church. Dad and I stood just inside the doorway, enjoying the spectacle of tourists scampering for cover, old ladies with plastic bags over their beehives, crazy photographer girls shoving equipment up their tank tops. Oh wait, that was me. The rain came down medium-hard for about five minutes, then let up long enough for everyone to spill back out onto the patio again before the it really started pounding and everyone scattered again. This time we took refuge under a tree and I got some good, if spotted-lens shots of the downpour.
After the second rainstorm, the clouds smoothed out and the light turned all soft and glowy and the patio filled with unusual company that included a film crew with a fancy, prancy lead actress (we watched for an hour as they set up a shot that they never actually filmed) and a bride and groom posed on the steps for a cadre of photographers and videographers. The air smelled new and dewey, the greens got intensely green, and the flat, rectangular stones on the ground gave in the middle to glassy puddles and it was a new Florence, one you’ll never see on a postcard.
2005
Picture Pages, Picture Pages
Right now I’m finding it very interesting that since returning home late Thursday night I haven’t felt one little bit of jetlag. I’ve been sleeping when it’s dark and sitting on my ass in front of the tv when it’s light–just like old times. I even went to the gym yesterday because that’s what I do when I feel like I have for the last two days, which is to say that I’m in a condition I’d really love to elaborate on but can’t, see, because my life is one big secret that I am bound by the laws of honor and insanity to keep some things to myself, even if it kills me. Gee, does the awesomeness never end?
For the last ten hours, I’ve been sitting on the couch with the laptop, catching up on blogs, pushing the razor-clawed cat off my stomach every three minutes, and wishing I were anywhere but here. If I told you that I was fiercely homesick from Day 4 of the vacation and couldn’t wait to get home, you might think I was one of those people who was never satisfied with what she had–when I’m at home, I want to be away; when I’m away, I want to be home–but I’m really not that type of person, so don’t go jumping to conclusions, you. Or maybe I should say that I am not historically that type of person. Maybe generalized unhappiness is actually my lot and I just don’t know it yet. Maybe August will be different. Maybe I’m kidding myself.
As much as I want to wallow and wail, let me attempt to take care of the business of those 1,800 photographs, taken with The Camera that Must Be Placed on a Lofty Pedestal and Worshipped as a God. The clickiness of the shutter is downright delicious. The following slideshow is an accurate representation of what I looked like from July 13 to July 28:
And while we’re at it, let’s just get the whole vanity project out of the way. Even though my parents said they were taking pictures of me with their camera all along, I didn’t catch them at it more than thrice, so I suspect most of their shots will be of my backside, arguably my best angle, but still…So, you see, if there were to be any evidence of my having been on vacation at all, I HAD to resort to self-portraits, which are one thing when you have a compact point-and-shooter but are quite another when you have a big, professional-looking piece of photographic equipment and so you end up looking neither sophisticated nor saavy (both promised by the people at Canon) but more like, as they say in Italian, uno completo retardo. Alors, self-portraits; don’t laugh:
Okay, enough about me. Now is a good time to acknowledge the work of my guest bloggers. Thanks, guys, for taking care of things while I was away. I heart you all and if you need any favors, I’m your gal. It was wonderful to drop in on my own site and see your posts during the sole half hour I was allowed to get online during the trip before my mother stormed into the Internet cafe in Monterosso and announced loudly in front of about a dozen kids giddy with senior trippiness that I had been online long enough and she was hungry and was going to eat RIGHT NOW so I’d better get off the computer if I wanted dinner. “JE-SUS CHRIST,” I said in the universal language of Exasperation, and when I paid my Euros to the Italian guy running the joint, he grabbed my hand and held it for a moment while looking deep into my eyes and saying in English, “I am so very sorry.” All those eighteen-year-olds must have wondered why a girl my age was stuck travelling with her parental units. That and an unfortunate hairdo surely convinced them I was president of the Rosemary Kennedy Club, although they probably don’t even know who the Kennedys are because, my god, have you noticed how dumb high school kids are these days? Shameful, shameful. And speaking of dumb–Note to self: Don’t vacation with your mother, even if you like her. But that’s a topic for another day.
Here’s another self-portrait–one of my favorites from the trip. Is the cotemplativeness (contemplivity?) not tangible?
