I’m an idiot. Still.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009.  Rome, Italy.

Leaving the Galleria Borghese, an art gallery/historic villa in Rome:

Some cute stranger: “Excuse me, could you take a picture for me?”

Me: “Sure”

He hands me his camera and stands in front of the Galleria Borghese. So.  This building is nice.  But it’s not super nice.  I mean, yeah it’s this beautiful mansion or whatever but we’re in Rome.  The bar is set pretty high in Rome.  The city happens to have a lot of really nice architecture.  I certainly didn’t feel the need to have my picture taken with this particular place but whatever.  To each his own.

A picture of the Galleria Broghese that I got off of the internet because I didn't think to take a picture of it myself.

Me: “Here you go”

I hand back the camera

Stranger: “Thanks.  Uh, have you been inside yet?”

Me: Over my should as I’m walking away “Yes, it’s beautiful.  Have a nice day.”

I rejoin Giovanna, Marshall, and Chanel.

Giovanna: “That guy really wanted to keep talking to you.”

Me: “I know.  But you know how I feel about dead people.  I don’t care how cute you are, the bone church closes in less than an hour and we’ve got to get a move on!”

The Bone Church:

Whoa.

This bone church may not be the biggest or the grandest but let’s get one thing straight: it’s still full of and decorated with human bones.  People are so amazing.  Not only do they have fantastic ideas but their bones can be arranged in a way that creates lovely floral designs.  It was a striking combination of….

This blog has come to a screeching hault.  I’ve been trying for the last week to think of the words that describe the two main kinds of chrisitan mysticism but I can’t come up with them and I’m pissed.

It took me three weeks to think of the words basenji and Kumba.  Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll finish this post…

Kumba (a basenji) with Captain (corgi) and Clarence (beagle)

I’m not gay gay. I’m just gay for Giovanna.

Sunday, June 14, 2009.  Rome, Italy.

Giovanna and I have been getting along too well and I’m looking for ways to add that fiery mix of anger, annoyance, and disappointment back into our relationship.

For those of you who haven’t seen it already, and for those of you who can’t get enough, enjoy!

PS – RomaPride 2009 was this weekend.

Ali’s Circumcision

Thursday, May 14, 2009.  Istanbul, Turkey.

It’s about 10 am and Giovanna and I are enjoying our breakfast on the patio outside the hostel.  As we eat our tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese, and delicious crunchy bread (our same breakfast every morning in Istanbul) we notice a local family strolling down the street with two small children dressed up in fancy, frilly, red outfits.  G and I casually comment and speculate on the purpose of such spectacular outfits.  Birthday?  Religious ceremony?  School event?  One thing is certain: whatever they’re doing, they’re going to look damn good doing it.  Ali, the owner of our hostel, overhears our conversation.  He informs us that the children are in fact on their way to their own circumcisions.  G does a double take, “But the one is so old!”  Ali laughs, “I don’t want to tell you how old I was…”

G and Ali at some half-assed Australian themed bastard of a bar

Nobody does amused and shocked muddled with disbelief like Giovanna.  Jaw dropped to the floor, eyes popping, laughter approaching hyperventilating.  Everyone’s laughing now.  With a little encouragement Ali continues.  It’s traditional for closely related and aged male children to be circumcised at the same time.  The circumcision(s) occur in the morning and then all of the friends, family, neighbors, and whoever else comes to a celebration party that afternoon.  Ali happened to be the oldest of a long string of brothers and first cousins.  Every time someone got pregnant the festivities were postponed until the outcome and inevitably it would be another boy.  Life would get hectic, things would get put on hold, and by the time the process was started again, well, another baby on the way.  And so the cycle continued until Ali was eleven.  Eleven can be a tough age.  Especially when a stranger wants to cut off part of your penis.  Old enough to know full well what’s going on but too young to possess much perspective.  To make the situation even more traumatizing, the doctor was late.  Really late.  So instead of performing the circumcision hours earlier, it was done minutes before the party began, in an adjacent room, after the guests had already started to arrive.  His friends wouldn’t stop badgering him.  They were teasing him, saying they wanted to watch.  He didn’t enjoy the party very much.

As for G and I, I’d count this as one of our most enjoyable breakfasts.  Most entertaining by far.

It’s pathological. Ask G.

Thursday, May 14th, 2009.  Istanbul, Turkey.

Turkey is well-known for producing several highly prized items.  Arguably the most recognizable of  these (aside from delicious tumbak, adorable boys, and delightful hats) are Turkish carpets.

Rug and rug fragments owned by the Ottoman Sultanate.

Their historical and cultural significance, beautiful designs, and outstanding quality make them an instant heirloom.  Developed in a culture that is subjected to climatic extremes and for centuries was largely nomadic, the practical skill of carpet weaving has been elevated to a fine art.  The rugs can be purchased new although these, in truth, are actually cheap knockoffs of the true product.  The real rugs are used, several decades old (at least), and handmade with natural dyes.  These are the true gems.

With some outside encouragement, Giovanna has decided to seriously consider purchasing a carpet.  A shopping experience that I doubt will ever be rivaled.

Before we begin:

The process of actually looking through the rugs is very laborious.  There is a ringleader (the main salesman) and then at least two others who do nothing but lay out carpet after carpet after carpet, pack them up again, rearrange, and start the whole process over until you’ve found a few you like enough to talk price.  Simply browsing is an impossibility.

G has done some research about the carpets, the industry, the scams etc.  We’ve talked about price and strategy and have a list of reputable sellers who are (presumably) less likely to rip us off or sell us a bogus rug.  Before heading to these stores we decide to hit up some others to get our stupid questions and rookie mistakes out of the way…

Store #1:

The initial appeal of this store was one, we happened to be standing next to it and two, a sign in the window read, “hassle free shopping”.  It may strike some people as odd that a store would specifically advertise that patrons would not be molested once inside but it was this very reassurance that brought Giovanna and I to the door.  It would be nearly impossible to overstate the aggressive manner of service and commodity providers in the touristy parts of Istanbul.  Each store has it’s own caller whose sole purpose as an employee is to wrangle you towards the shop and away from your money.  Every ten feet (or less) a new gentleman would try his best to engage you, hand you an ad, show you a menu, lead you in another direction, and/or follow you down the street.  At best it’s amusing (some of the strategies were very creative) and at worst it’s oppressively irritating.  For our first foray into the realm of rug buying we wanted something a little more relaxed.  This salesman was true to his word.  He brought out the carpets, politely answered all of our questions, and soberly quoted us prices.  In retrospect, the misleading part of this overly docile approach is that it was much harder to gauge the situation.  There were no words, actions, about-faces, or mustache twirlings to interpret or engage with.  Regardless, it was only a practice run.  We had learned a great deal, thanked him kindly for his time, and left.    

Store #2:

The next store was a great deal more pushy and pinned us for easy pushovers.  The difficult part about buying a Turkish carpet is not finding one you like–it’s coming up with the cash.  At this point in time, the lowest quote we got for a 6 ft by 9 ft rug was $1700.  The highest, over $4000.  I, fortunately, had the luxury of being far too poor to even consider this kind of purchase.  Which meant that I also had the joy of acting as the naysayer during the haggling process.  While the salesman worked every trick in the book on G (and he knew all the plays frontwards and back), I got to stomp around like an asshole complaining about the price while seeming wholly unimpressed and dreadfully bored.  Following some discussion over a particular rug, it came to our attention (at about the time when the salesman wouldn’t let go of G’s hand) that we needed to extract ourselves from this worsening situation.  Immediately.  After working myself into a huff, gathering all of our things, and nearly standing on top of Giovanna and the salesman while repeating that we were leaving now, with or without his information, he eventually relinquished and released G.  As we walked out I sensed a pleased smirk on one of the carpet boys.  After silently watching his boss work so many people over, I’m sure our ostentatious methods and ultimate refusal must have been pretty entertaining.

Store #3:

We’ve tackled a couple stores and decide it’s time for the real deal so we head over to a shop that was recommended by National Geographic.  The difference was astounding.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of  “shopping” with me, I am a terrible consumer.  I can’t buy anything.  Ever.  Not shoes when I’ve worn holes through my current ones or a winter coat when it starts snowing.  I can’t, I have a fear of commitment, it’s just not going to happen.  It’s pathological.  Ask G.

So.  you can only imagine my utter astonishment when (after some pleasant conversation, Turkish tea, and the ritual parade of rugs) I began asking myself, “am I seriously going to buy a $900 rug?”  (This rug was only 4 ft by 7 ft)

Whether through luck or clairvoyance, this salesman had my number (and to be fair, his wares were much nicer, but still).  Through a casual discussion that began with your run-of-the-mill pleasantries, seamlessly segued into an explanation of the cultural history of the area, and then highlighted the most impressive and intriguing facets of each carpet, I was taken on an intellectual and emotional roller-coaster that had bent my will near it’s breaking point.  “Am I seriously going to buy a $900 rug?”

These rugs were truly a treasure.  Apparently, many of the older ones were dowry rugs.  The worth and future of a young woman could be appraised and dictated based on her level of craftsmanship and aesthetic.  The amount of personal investment, tradition, and cultural importance imbued each rug with an overwhelming sense of gravity.  Although I was finding myself more and more attracted to the carpets I was also beginning to feel repugnance and anger.  These rugs were partially worth so much to buyers because they had been worth everything to their creators, a concept that I at once found myself accepting and abhorring.  Original owners (mainly from the rural and, in some cases, still semi-nomadic communities) were selling their personal rugs to distributors because they either needed the money and/or the carpets had lost their original value.  Either way, a sad state of affairs.  It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing money should be able to buy.  Of course, I guess being able to by stature and a husband with a rug seems a little odd too.

In the end, I had to stop talking.  I didn’t want my thoughts to betray me.  I didn’t want to show how weak my constitution had become.  I sat.  Silent.  Still.  Waiting to see what G would do.  If Giovanna had bought a carpet that day, I honestly can not say what I would have done.  It probably would have pushed me over the edge.  So, no carpets, for G or I.  Yet.  But now I find myself asking, “Am I seriously going to fly back to Istanbul in order to buy a $900 rug?”

An exercise in denial and self-restraint.

Saturday, May 30, 2009.  Nice, France.

It’s difficult for me.  Sitting upright is as near as I can will myself to the water.  I’m watching.  Watching… a half hour, an hour.  Days.  There is a terror about the water and yet as soon as I see it, as soon as I smell it I feel… too much.  Too much to the breaking point until it’s OK again.  I am simultaneously pleased, panicked, plotting and possessive.  It is overwhelming past the point of despair, onto blissful submission, and back again.  Now, watching, I know what I have to do.  I have to get in.  But I can’t.  I continue to watch as a parade of people enter and exit the waves.  Young children, teens, topless grandmothers… what is it about this water that they know and I don’t?  I watch to learn.  I am attempting to trick my body into motion by telling it that observational knowledge of the sea will somehow change our relationship to it.  That it will somehow lessen the devastating disparity of power that this mass of liquid and everything within it has over me, my ridiculous bipedal body, and my pathetic air-breathing lungs.

Although large in scale and significance, the Mediterranean is still a sea and therefore not as afflicted by the tides, powerful currents, and tumultuous weather as the open ocean.  Today, however, it is windy and the succession of waves has increased in power and magnitude.  I have to get in.

Eventually, I reach critical mass and am on my feet, marching to the water.  Somehow, my fear of being in the sea and my anxiety over possibly missing the most powerful of the waves has culminated in an unwavering trajectory to swim far out into the water, past the azure and into the deep cobalt, cascading waves.  All trepidation immediately vanishes once I am in the water.  We belong together.  We are meant to be together.  My feet will never touch land again.  We are two entities merged: absolute and exclusive.  There is nothing else, only me and the sea.  And yet, the sounds and activities of the other beachgoers are all around.  How far out do you need to swim before the sound of the water finally crowds out everything else?

My quest for solitude with the sea becomes an exercise in denial and self-restraint.  As the sounds grow fainter and the calm draws nearer the terror returns.  A sickening sense of weakness and an unbearable realization of disadvantage send me fleeing to the shallow shores.  Again and again I swim out, a little farther each time.  Finally.  Finally there is only me and the sea.  I pause, appreciate, relax and float with the waves for awhile.  Then, I think of the fish.  I think of the sea creatures with ancestors even older than the land itself.  I think of the endless pockets of mystery and uncertainty along the bottom and I get the hell out of there.

You’re a beautiful man, Rick. – Rome, Italy

5/8/2009.  We’ve arrived in Rome and will be flying to Istanbul the next morning.  The main plan for the night is to 1) stop by Antonella’s, 2) write some blogs (see below) and 3) have dinner with Giovanna’s homestay family from when she lived in Rome fourish years ago.  Task one and two complete we are on our way to the restaurant and I still can seriously not stop laughing about Rick Moranis.  Our understanding was that dinner would be the two of us plus the homestay parents, their son, and his girlfriend.  The actual guest list also included a cousin, his girlfreind, another friend, grandma, grandma’s nurse, some guy who was of a stricking resemblance to Robert Downey Jr. during his rougher years and his lady friend.  It was a wild affair.  We didn’t leave the restaurant until almost midnight and I tasted one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten: baby octopus is some sort of sauce.  So. Good.  We go back to the parent’s house, chill on their beautiful patio, have a few drinks and head home at around 1am.  Did I mention we had to leave for the airport at 5am to catch our flight to Istanbul during which we have an 8 hour layover in Munich?  Munich was amazing.  More on that later.  Anywho, we’re exhausted and Giovanna is dead on her feet but I’ve had a sip of alcohol so I’m plunging head first into an absolutely giddy second (or third or fourth) wind.  She eventually tells me ıts tıme for bed and that she wıll no longer be respondıg to my ınane gibber gabbering so we can get a few hours of sleep.  Unbeknownst to her, suggestıng that I descend silently into my own thoughts is pretty much the worst thing that she could have asked for.  Only after a few moments of silence that amazing photo of Rick Moranis floods back into my mind and I burst out laughing.  Gıovanna: youşre thınkıng about Rıck Moranıs aren’t you?  After about five minutes of the most difficult battle I’ve ever fought with myself I’m able to stop shacking.  Some things are so amazing that they just stay with you for the rest of your life.

Alberto Manodori Sagredo – Venice, Italy

I’m still sane. Barely.

We arrived in Venice last Friday straight into the loving arms of Alberto Manodori Sagredo, Giovanna’s uncle. He also has an apartment in Venice and was able to join us for the weekend. He is out of control. Acting as our own personal tour guide (his specialty is Italian art and whatever else you happen to be standing near) he marched us up and down the streets of Venice, Burano, and Murano and provided us with an endless stream of information and anecdotes. He is extremely passionate and knowledgeable; in Rome he teaches at a high school and a university and has published an immense (immense) number of books and catalogues. I speak no Italian and his English is limited and rusty at best but when Giovanna wasn’t immediately able to translate for him he couldn’t wait the four seconds it would take her to cross the street and would dive into a confusing yet mostly discernible tale about whatever was near. He literally could not keep the information inside of him. We ate. A lot. The first night I nearly lost my mind and burst out laughing when he brought out the second dessert after our additional courses of pizza followed by sausage, cheese, and bread. I most certainly completely lost my shit when we arrived at the Basilica Santi Maria e Donato on Murano (another smaller island community near Venice). As it turns out, Alberto is a descendant of a saint. Saint Gerardo Sagredo. The presumed remains of St. Gerardo Sagredo are housed in this basilica as holy relics within the altar. Alberto sought out the priest as soon as we got there. Once the priest learned of Alberto’s pedigree he was more than happy to lead us up onto the altar and remove the protective covering so that we could gaze at the very well-dressed assemblage of bones that constituted at physical connection between this world and divinity. Whoa. And then we got ice cream.

First night in Europe – Rome, Italy

We get into Rome from NYC via Paris around noonish on Thursday, April 30th.  I am still seriously afflicted by the conjuntivitis and can barely see so I spend our first day in Europe following closely behind Giovanna, staring at the ground, and shading my eyes as best I could with hat pulled down low and sunglasses awkwardly pressed over my real glasses.  Giovanna has arranged for us to stay the night with her friend, Antonella, because our train to Venice doesn’t leave until the next morning.  Unfortunately, Antonella has been ill recently as well.  She welcomed us into her home with open arms but between her need to rest and my inability to function we decide to stay in and keep the evening low-key.  Which works out great for me since I promptly fell asleep at 6pm.  Giovanna and Antonella stay up chitter chattering.  Everything is great.  Later that night, I wake up to the sound of a ruckus party and an overwhelming need to use the bathroom.  I lay in bed for awhile, weighing my options.  I looked like a mess.  And when I say a mess I mean I looked like whatever the bastard offspring would have looked like if Monster Sigourney Weaver and Monster Rick Moranis from Ghostbusters had actually mated.

Side not – while searching for a perfect picture of Rick Moranis (see link above) I completely lost my shit in this internet cafe and started laughing and crying.  Check it out sometimes.  Best part of the trip so far (other than Ron Howard).

Anywho, instead of running out of the darkness of my room and darting into the bathroom like a troll I throw on some pants and decide to join the party.  The people were guests of Antonella’s roommates (Antonella was none too pleased about the noise the next morning).  Antonella lives among students as a kind of local expert for people from abroad studying in Rome.  Therefore, all of the people at the party were American undergrads.  Weehaw.  I pour myself a drink and start socializing, meeting, greeting, apologizing for my scary eyes…. by 1 am the group mobilizes towards the bars and I’m left alone with my glass of gin.  All in all, a pretty silly but great day.

No Motherfucking Way!

Fun fact: Ron Howard was on our flight from New York to Paris.  I think I made him feel uncomfortable when I saw him sitting in first class while we were making our way to the rear of the plane.  I saw him with my scary eyes and then immediately turned around and said something along the lines of “no motherfucking way!” to Giovanna.  Which, I later learned,  she assumed was in response to the fancy space-age swivel chairs they supply important people with on planes.  She missed Ron.  She must be really upset that she didn’t get to witness what I’m sure is going to be the most monumental portion of our trip.  Sucks.

Airport City, Craptown USA

A full day of airports in all of their overwhelmingly understated and half-broken grandeur: Kansas City, Atlanta, LaGuardia, AND JFK (don’t worry about it).  The most exciting part about the journey was watching one of the security guards clean her ears with a ballpoint pen.  Woo!  But hey, leg one of the trip completed successfully.  And now, some wine with Giovanna, Baxter, and Coming to America with Eddie Murphy.  Delicious.