don't ask me why i am not sleeping right now.
the national have a new song out, "so far around the bend." it's for the red zone's new benefit compilation, dark was the night, which comes out february 16th, incidentally the same day that girl talk plays at wellesley. they are streaming a new song every day on the cd's myspace:
here is the song, too (courtesy of 4ad's cute little widget)
bryce dessner is collaborating with visual artist matthew ritchie for a two-day arts and music and performance piece wonderful nonsense extravaganza at mit this wednesday and thursday. special guests include aaron dessner and an mit/wellesley chamber string group (. . .) it's called darkness visible and i'm really excited to go. also, it is free!
wintersession has come and gone with nary a whisper. we start school again in a little bit over a week, but not before serena and i journey to new york for restaurant week at convivio, bklyn vs. bmore curated by todd p and possibly even drinks at pdt. one of janna's friends bartends there, so it's not a sure thing but far more likely than if we weren't friends-of-friends. also also, totally didn't know that janna had an argentina blog, even though one) it is not defunct as janna is home and two) she knew about my blog.
e.b. came and went and left a trail of broken hearts in her wake (kidding) though her visits to wellesley have all been epic. the last one also brought a most welcome guest, the famed (infamous?) phillipp s. penka, real person. eebs, know that every theme party and inevitable shitshow that happens this spring will be thrown in your honor, and that you will always be an honored guest in spirit. but in a less creepy, pseudo-eulogizing way. it is 3:15 in the morning after all, you can't expect me to be that coherent.
i'm going to rename this blog.
good night.
26 January 2009
02 January 2009
so maybe i lied
now that no one's reading this anymore,
i've discovered the perfect recession-diet food: kale. at super stop and shop in old saybrook (that's in connecticut), kale is 50 cents a pound. and it's bulky but light, so yesterday at said super stop and shop, i bought a rather humongous bunch of anti-oxidant-packed kale for a frugal 37 cents. steamed with a little bit of garlic and then dressed with olive oil and salt, it is both delicious and almost absurdly healthy for you, being a 'superfood' as designated by diet gurus everywhere, and more legitimately, the usda.*
if you want a side of cholesterol with your leafy greens, kale is also much like sage, eminently fry-able. once again, i would first heat some garlic in a sauté pan until carmelized and then throw in the kale until it's crisped up a bit and bright-green. blame it on the top chef marathons, i think.
* claim has in no way been sustantiated through internet research. but i bet it's true, really.
i've discovered the perfect recession-diet food: kale. at super stop and shop in old saybrook (that's in connecticut), kale is 50 cents a pound. and it's bulky but light, so yesterday at said super stop and shop, i bought a rather humongous bunch of anti-oxidant-packed kale for a frugal 37 cents. steamed with a little bit of garlic and then dressed with olive oil and salt, it is both delicious and almost absurdly healthy for you, being a 'superfood' as designated by diet gurus everywhere, and more legitimately, the usda.*
if you want a side of cholesterol with your leafy greens, kale is also much like sage, eminently fry-able. once again, i would first heat some garlic in a sauté pan until carmelized and then throw in the kale until it's crisped up a bit and bright-green. blame it on the top chef marathons, i think.
* claim has in no way been sustantiated through internet research. but i bet it's true, really.
25 December 2008
all things must past
so here we are. i'm home now, as you know. merry christmas, everyone. and this is the end of the blogging experiment. i thought that when i started "actually italy," describing a new environment would give me the confidence to write about myself. i've always had trouble with journaling, memoirs, etc. because of the inherently solipsistic nature of writing about yourself. it's just one of my too-many weird emotional hangups, i suppose. and that's the reason why i stopped writing here. i was afraid that my daily activities were (and they were) too mundane to be of interest to anyone, because they were too mundane to be of interest to me. paradoxically self-centered, i know. nevertheless, the end is the end and i have reached it. i'm really happy to be returning to wellesley and seeing all of my friends for second semester, especially the january visit of darling, 21-year old e.b. andersen bartels. for rory, rachel, emma, and e.b., best of luck to (the rest of) your time abroad. everyone else, thanks for listening.
08 December 2008
l'arboro di natale
last night, kristin, gabriele and i decorated the christmas tree. it made me want to go home. this is ironic only if you are my parents reading this, and know that our family at home hasn't even bought trees in the past two or three years. you see? don't even remember the last year we did, though that could be due to my awful memory instead.
today is a holiday in italy, the feast of the immaculate conception. it was a long weekend, so of course a lot of people left for one last trip. i didn't, but i did finally go to the bargello, which is the national sculpture gallery, where donatello's bronze david is kept. it was actually kind of fortuitous that i procrastinated for so long, because it was under restoration until about a week ago, and when i saw it, it was bright and shiny new.
also, since this is the last week of classes, i obviously did what i always do when finals are upon me: not work. instead, i watched in the valley of elah with katie w. and her friend ashley. at least they had to watch it for film class. i had no such excuse. but it was quite good. i recommend it highly. it's dreary, but not too preachy, and that's all we can really ask for in these iraq war films. though i will say that it does not nearly have the same amount of bright, young, good-looking things as stop-loss. because i am a shallow and irreverent human being.
i'm coming home in ten days. i can't really fathom that. or how i'm going to fit everything in. i've bought eight (count them, eight) new books since i've come here. and i still haven't started infinite jest.
today is a holiday in italy, the feast of the immaculate conception. it was a long weekend, so of course a lot of people left for one last trip. i didn't, but i did finally go to the bargello, which is the national sculpture gallery, where donatello's bronze david is kept. it was actually kind of fortuitous that i procrastinated for so long, because it was under restoration until about a week ago, and when i saw it, it was bright and shiny new.
also, since this is the last week of classes, i obviously did what i always do when finals are upon me: not work. instead, i watched in the valley of elah with katie w. and her friend ashley. at least they had to watch it for film class. i had no such excuse. but it was quite good. i recommend it highly. it's dreary, but not too preachy, and that's all we can really ask for in these iraq war films. though i will say that it does not nearly have the same amount of bright, young, good-looking things as stop-loss. because i am a shallow and irreverent human being.
i'm coming home in ten days. i can't really fathom that. or how i'm going to fit everything in. i've bought eight (count them, eight) new books since i've come here. and i still haven't started infinite jest.
01 December 2008
exhausted,
thursday night, thanksgiving: the nonna (patrizia's mother, busybody and all-around annoyance) finally leaves, after staying with us for five weeks. we breathe a collective sigh of relief, most of all patrizia "i put an ocean between us." to celebrate, i go out to watch a movie at the odeon, the english-language movie palace, which was showing bird's nest: herzog and de meuron in china as part of their 'festival' of films about contemporary art. the movie was quite good-- it was in english, german and chinese with italian subtitles, or, all four of the languages i 'know' how to speak/read/write in various capacities (a generous assessment, to be sure). what was both entertaining and a bit confusing was trying to either listen to the languages while also reading both the english and italian subtitles. cognitive dissonance, certainly!
friday through sunday were spent on a hectic, wet but generally fun trip to ancient italy: ancient rome, pompeii & herculaneum along with naples (for the archaeological museum) and sorrento (just because). even though i had been to all of the aforementioned places besides herculaneum, it was wonderful to hear about roman esoterica from the mouth of charles ewell, scholar/aracheologist extraordinaire and my professor for the ancient etruscan and roman art class that this trip was part of as well. also, herculaneum was probably my favorite part of the trip, being more manageable in size than pompeii and more importantly, far less crowded. we also went to a place called villa oplontis, located halfway between pompeii and herculaneum, which was only discovered in the 1960s and thus far more well-preserved than the other two. the examples of decorative art, especially the paintings and mosaics, were breathtaking. what i really find amazing about roman decorative art is that it never was regarded as 'art for museums.' these frescoes were all simply decorating the dining rooms and bedrooms of wealthy romans. the famous alexander mosaic was found in a dining room-- as part of the floor. we saw that in the museo archaeological in naples, which other than that, doesn't have much to recommend.
friday through sunday were spent on a hectic, wet but generally fun trip to ancient italy: ancient rome, pompeii & herculaneum along with naples (for the archaeological museum) and sorrento (just because). even though i had been to all of the aforementioned places besides herculaneum, it was wonderful to hear about roman esoterica from the mouth of charles ewell, scholar/aracheologist extraordinaire and my professor for the ancient etruscan and roman art class that this trip was part of as well. also, herculaneum was probably my favorite part of the trip, being more manageable in size than pompeii and more importantly, far less crowded. we also went to a place called villa oplontis, located halfway between pompeii and herculaneum, which was only discovered in the 1960s and thus far more well-preserved than the other two. the examples of decorative art, especially the paintings and mosaics, were breathtaking. what i really find amazing about roman decorative art is that it never was regarded as 'art for museums.' these frescoes were all simply decorating the dining rooms and bedrooms of wealthy romans. the famous alexander mosaic was found in a dining room-- as part of the floor. we saw that in the museo archaeological in naples, which other than that, doesn't have much to recommend.
26 November 2008
thanksgiving,
so maybe i'm ready to go home.
paris was nice enough. no, no, it was very nice. i finally went to see ste-chapelle, the 'jewelbox' chapel on île de la cité that is probably more stained glass than structural components. i walked along the rive gauche (left bank) again, and stopped at mariage fréres for tins of tea and ladurée (not on the left bank) for macaroons. i went to the musée rodin and saw my favorite sculpture of all time, probably, the burghers of calais. also there was the thinker, the gates of hell, ugolino, balzac and the kiss, along with an entire room of equally-impressive sculptures by rodin's mistress, camille claudel.
on saturday we went as a group (more or less) to chartres cathedral and versailles. it was truly magnificent to see finally see chartres after studying it so many times; unfortunately, due to a memory-card mishap, i do not have photographs of those iconically mismatched towers. oh well, they were nice. versailles... was the same as the last time i saw it, in paris, in the third week of november. i actually really do like that aspect of symmetry - it'd been five years to the week since i'd been in paris last. i saw all the signs for beaujolais nouveau and once again, i saved all of my metro tickets.
and, on saturday night, a group of us went to go see ra ra riot in this little (well, not that little) club on the outskirts of paris (past pére-lachaise cemetary), also in celebration of ryan's birthday. the show itself was very nice, and the entire experience of going to an indie rock concert, or any concert at all, which i hadn't been to since nextech way back in september. after ra ra riot, these exquisitely hilarious french rappers (think mc solaar but not quite) came on stage, and by that time, everything was funny. none of us had any idea what they were saying; but boy did we think it all hilarious.
the sleeper trains there and back (again) may have killed my nascent love for love distance travel by train. or maybe it's simply trenitalia. the trains were delayed both ways, which meant that to paris, we lost nearly two and a half hours of friday morning and back from paris, i didn't end up having enough time to go to my first class, which i really did want to go to (it was italian). walking home from the train station in a downpour on monday morning didn't enhance my mood, either.
okay, that's about it for now. i'm going (back) to rome, again, this weekend with my etruscans & romans class, led by the indomitable professor charles ewell. i'm also only in rome for one day, and spending the rest of the time in pompeii and herculaneum, sorrento, naples, and along the amalfi coast. it'll probably be too cold to go into the water, but i know the view will be nice. until then, signing off.
paris was nice enough. no, no, it was very nice. i finally went to see ste-chapelle, the 'jewelbox' chapel on île de la cité that is probably more stained glass than structural components. i walked along the rive gauche (left bank) again, and stopped at mariage fréres for tins of tea and ladurée (not on the left bank) for macaroons. i went to the musée rodin and saw my favorite sculpture of all time, probably, the burghers of calais. also there was the thinker, the gates of hell, ugolino, balzac and the kiss, along with an entire room of equally-impressive sculptures by rodin's mistress, camille claudel.
on saturday we went as a group (more or less) to chartres cathedral and versailles. it was truly magnificent to see finally see chartres after studying it so many times; unfortunately, due to a memory-card mishap, i do not have photographs of those iconically mismatched towers. oh well, they were nice. versailles... was the same as the last time i saw it, in paris, in the third week of november. i actually really do like that aspect of symmetry - it'd been five years to the week since i'd been in paris last. i saw all the signs for beaujolais nouveau and once again, i saved all of my metro tickets.
and, on saturday night, a group of us went to go see ra ra riot in this little (well, not that little) club on the outskirts of paris (past pére-lachaise cemetary), also in celebration of ryan's birthday. the show itself was very nice, and the entire experience of going to an indie rock concert, or any concert at all, which i hadn't been to since nextech way back in september. after ra ra riot, these exquisitely hilarious french rappers (think mc solaar but not quite) came on stage, and by that time, everything was funny. none of us had any idea what they were saying; but boy did we think it all hilarious.
the sleeper trains there and back (again) may have killed my nascent love for love distance travel by train. or maybe it's simply trenitalia. the trains were delayed both ways, which meant that to paris, we lost nearly two and a half hours of friday morning and back from paris, i didn't end up having enough time to go to my first class, which i really did want to go to (it was italian). walking home from the train station in a downpour on monday morning didn't enhance my mood, either.
okay, that's about it for now. i'm going (back) to rome, again, this weekend with my etruscans & romans class, led by the indomitable professor charles ewell. i'm also only in rome for one day, and spending the rest of the time in pompeii and herculaneum, sorrento, naples, and along the amalfi coast. it'll probably be too cold to go into the water, but i know the view will be nice. until then, signing off.
16 November 2008
and, i mean, some things that i've done recently, too
Weekends this November: five.
Weekends this November I will have spent in Rome: three.
This is the truth, because I went two weeks ago with the Michelangelo class, last weekend with the All-School trip (my 'free' trip to Rome) and I am going in two weeks as part of my Etruscans & Romans class. Now that we're clear.
Anyways, this weekend I was supposed to go to Rome with Ariel, but a continuing sinus infection and new stomach virus rendered her mostly incapacitated and I basically ended up taking advantage of Syracuse University in Florence's free transportation and lodging while seeing Rome on my own. This was extremely nice because 1) no matter how much I enjoyed Renaissance Rome and the private viewing of the Sistine Chapel last weekend, the trip was mighty hectic and I felt like I could barely catch my breath the entire time and 2) the two previous times I was in Rome in September were Russian visa-related/bureaucratic nightmares that stressed me out way too much to enjoy any part of Rome at all. Okay, bitchfest over, onto the wonders of Rome:
On Friday, I left the group almost as soon as we arrived at the train station. I walked from the train station to Santa Maria degli Angeli, a Renaissance-era (the interior was designed by Michelangelo, apparently) basilica hidden under an ancient Roman bath-house. It had the most impressive proto-Baroque organ I have ever seen and very nice porphyry columnar work. I also ran into the Manifestazione, the Italian students' protest over educational reforms implemented by the government. There were banners, shouters, and an overwhelming odour of marijuana. It was like I was back in Ann Arbor again. I walked towards the Quirinal Hill (my favorite of the seven) and stopped by the Palazzo Barberini, where there was a very nice museum of High Renaissance and Baroque art, in an altogether pleasing palatial environment. To enter the museum, you walk up this very nice winding spiral staircase (not at all like the one in St. Peter's) and then since the museum is in an old palace, everything is airy and spacious and the natural environment that the paintings are in are just so nice. And yes, the artwork there is very high-quality, too! They have Raphael's La Fornarina (The Baker), reputedly a portrait of his mistress; two excellent Caravaggios (Judith and Holofernes and Narcissus) and one of Hans Holbein's protraits of Henry VIII.
After Palazzo Barberini, I went to a restaurant called Birreria Peroni for lunch, on the recommendation of my Italian professor. There, I ordered, per her recommendation as well, a dish called scamorza arrosto, which ended up being an entire roasting dish of melted cheese. Mm-hm. Delicious, yes. Incredibly unhealthy, certainly. After lunch, I walked to the ancient Roman Forum, ran into the protesters again and ducked into the Capitoline Museums for a good dose of ancient Roman art and artifacts. There, I saw the enormous head, left hand, right hand, left hand, and right (I think) kneecap of Constantine. Wonderful, really it was. Also there in the museums is the Capitoline She-Wolf, that famous sculpture of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. Fun fact, the babies underneath the wolf were only added later for the necessary propaganda. Oh, Rome, my love. Unfortunately, by that time, I was dead tired and still had to walk all the back towards the train station for our hotel, so I missed out on seeing the Dying Gaul. Curses.
At the hotel, my lack of friends meant that I got a room to myself for the night. Go me, obviously. I also fell asleep at seven pm and didn't wake up until seven am. You know those kind of nights. Necessary, and I'll just see the Trastevere the next time I'm in Rome. Saturday morning, I spilt from the group once again and went exploring in the suburbs, to the ponte Milvio, which is this bridge where lovers go and fasten locks onto the bridge pilings before throwing the keys behind them into the Tiber. Romantic, yet polluting. The hopeless romantic in me had to see it before I left Italy; and the ironic pragmatist in me chuckled when I saw the enterprising vendors selling locks and keys at various intervals for those less-prepared lovers amongst us. I caught a tram back towards the center of the city (the bridge is kind of south of nowhere-type) and just wandered down the via del Corso, one of the main arteries of Rome. Ostensibly, I was looking for the Museo del Corso, which had an exhibit of Dutch Masters. Unfortunately, I never did find it, and by the time I stumbled upon a Basquiat thing going on at the Palazzo Ruspoli (whatever that is, I googled it) which utterly made up for missing a Vermeer or three. I don't think the exhibition had a lot of his famous famous paintings but it did have one called Suiting, Tuxedoes that I really liked. They made me check my camera at the door though, so I couldn't even take any stealth photos. And I went to Muji in Rome. Obviously.
I finally re-joined the Syracuse group Saturday afternoon on the excursion to the Galleria Borghese, Cardinal Scipione Borghese's own "pleasure palace," the "Playboy Mansion of its day" (tm Sebastian, best guide ever) which is now filled with masterpieces of the Baroque, mostly Bernini and Caravaggio. Most importantly, it has Bernini's Apollo and Daphne and Rape of Proserpina. Seeing them was absolutely breathtaking, one of the first truly "wow, pause" moments so far in Italy. I think the only other one so far was when we went to the Laurentian Library, but that's not the point. The point was that you could see where Bernini sculpted Proserpina's tears and Pluto's fingers' indentations in her thigh. The point was after you took a turn around Apollo and Daphne, you could see the procession of her transfiguration, from the bark forming around her torso to the tips of her fingers turning into laurel leaves. The point was totally getting a talking-to from a humourless guard about "no pictures! no no no pictures!!!!" in the galleries.
After returning on Saturday night, I met Katie for a late dinner, where again I consumed a singularly unhealthy amount of dairy product, this time in the form of a gorgonzola-and-mozarella calzone that was supposed to have tomatoes in it as well but so emphatically did not. And then, gelato from Grom, this time caco (persimmon) and torrochino (torrone/nougat). It's not that I haven't gained weight, it's that since there are no dryers in this country, none of my jeans actually fit anymore. Deceptive, you see.
THEN, of course, Katie and I go out for American brunch this early/late afternoon. We went, this time per my roommate's recommendation, to a little restaurant tucked away between piazza Signoria and Santa Croce called La Via dell'Acqua, where we waited for an absurdly long time for absurdly good food. Katie got scrambled egg whites and turkey bacon while I ordered blueberry pancakes and a side of fried ham (really prosciutto cotto, but who's complaining). It was almost life-changingly (though still not as good as Egg) good, the blueberry pancakes, because they aren't even my favorite breakfast food! Like, that's how good the pancakes are, or, conversely, how much I miss the concept of Sunday brunch. Either way, delicious is the bottom line. And there was American coffee. Don't get me wrong, I will take a macchiato, always, but there is just something so comforting about a biggish ceramic mug, filled with coffee, and it even comes with a spoon of mini chocolate chips.
Weekends this November I will have spent in Rome: three.
This is the truth, because I went two weeks ago with the Michelangelo class, last weekend with the All-School trip (my 'free' trip to Rome) and I am going in two weeks as part of my Etruscans & Romans class. Now that we're clear.
Anyways, this weekend I was supposed to go to Rome with Ariel, but a continuing sinus infection and new stomach virus rendered her mostly incapacitated and I basically ended up taking advantage of Syracuse University in Florence's free transportation and lodging while seeing Rome on my own. This was extremely nice because 1) no matter how much I enjoyed Renaissance Rome and the private viewing of the Sistine Chapel last weekend, the trip was mighty hectic and I felt like I could barely catch my breath the entire time and 2) the two previous times I was in Rome in September were Russian visa-related/bureaucratic nightmares that stressed me out way too much to enjoy any part of Rome at all. Okay, bitchfest over, onto the wonders of Rome:
On Friday, I left the group almost as soon as we arrived at the train station. I walked from the train station to Santa Maria degli Angeli, a Renaissance-era (the interior was designed by Michelangelo, apparently) basilica hidden under an ancient Roman bath-house. It had the most impressive proto-Baroque organ I have ever seen and very nice porphyry columnar work. I also ran into the Manifestazione, the Italian students' protest over educational reforms implemented by the government. There were banners, shouters, and an overwhelming odour of marijuana. It was like I was back in Ann Arbor again. I walked towards the Quirinal Hill (my favorite of the seven) and stopped by the Palazzo Barberini, where there was a very nice museum of High Renaissance and Baroque art, in an altogether pleasing palatial environment. To enter the museum, you walk up this very nice winding spiral staircase (not at all like the one in St. Peter's) and then since the museum is in an old palace, everything is airy and spacious and the natural environment that the paintings are in are just so nice. And yes, the artwork there is very high-quality, too! They have Raphael's La Fornarina (The Baker), reputedly a portrait of his mistress; two excellent Caravaggios (Judith and Holofernes and Narcissus) and one of Hans Holbein's protraits of Henry VIII.
After Palazzo Barberini, I went to a restaurant called Birreria Peroni for lunch, on the recommendation of my Italian professor. There, I ordered, per her recommendation as well, a dish called scamorza arrosto, which ended up being an entire roasting dish of melted cheese. Mm-hm. Delicious, yes. Incredibly unhealthy, certainly. After lunch, I walked to the ancient Roman Forum, ran into the protesters again and ducked into the Capitoline Museums for a good dose of ancient Roman art and artifacts. There, I saw the enormous head, left hand, right hand, left hand, and right (I think) kneecap of Constantine. Wonderful, really it was. Also there in the museums is the Capitoline She-Wolf, that famous sculpture of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. Fun fact, the babies underneath the wolf were only added later for the necessary propaganda. Oh, Rome, my love. Unfortunately, by that time, I was dead tired and still had to walk all the back towards the train station for our hotel, so I missed out on seeing the Dying Gaul. Curses.
At the hotel, my lack of friends meant that I got a room to myself for the night. Go me, obviously. I also fell asleep at seven pm and didn't wake up until seven am. You know those kind of nights. Necessary, and I'll just see the Trastevere the next time I'm in Rome. Saturday morning, I spilt from the group once again and went exploring in the suburbs, to the ponte Milvio, which is this bridge where lovers go and fasten locks onto the bridge pilings before throwing the keys behind them into the Tiber. Romantic, yet polluting. The hopeless romantic in me had to see it before I left Italy; and the ironic pragmatist in me chuckled when I saw the enterprising vendors selling locks and keys at various intervals for those less-prepared lovers amongst us. I caught a tram back towards the center of the city (the bridge is kind of south of nowhere-type) and just wandered down the via del Corso, one of the main arteries of Rome. Ostensibly, I was looking for the Museo del Corso, which had an exhibit of Dutch Masters. Unfortunately, I never did find it, and by the time I stumbled upon a Basquiat thing going on at the Palazzo Ruspoli (whatever that is, I googled it) which utterly made up for missing a Vermeer or three. I don't think the exhibition had a lot of his famous famous paintings but it did have one called Suiting, Tuxedoes that I really liked. They made me check my camera at the door though, so I couldn't even take any stealth photos. And I went to Muji in Rome. Obviously.
I finally re-joined the Syracuse group Saturday afternoon on the excursion to the Galleria Borghese, Cardinal Scipione Borghese's own "pleasure palace," the "Playboy Mansion of its day" (tm Sebastian, best guide ever) which is now filled with masterpieces of the Baroque, mostly Bernini and Caravaggio. Most importantly, it has Bernini's Apollo and Daphne and Rape of Proserpina. Seeing them was absolutely breathtaking, one of the first truly "wow, pause" moments so far in Italy. I think the only other one so far was when we went to the Laurentian Library, but that's not the point. The point was that you could see where Bernini sculpted Proserpina's tears and Pluto's fingers' indentations in her thigh. The point was after you took a turn around Apollo and Daphne, you could see the procession of her transfiguration, from the bark forming around her torso to the tips of her fingers turning into laurel leaves. The point was totally getting a talking-to from a humourless guard about "no pictures! no no no pictures!!!!" in the galleries.
After returning on Saturday night, I met Katie for a late dinner, where again I consumed a singularly unhealthy amount of dairy product, this time in the form of a gorgonzola-and-mozarella calzone that was supposed to have tomatoes in it as well but so emphatically did not. And then, gelato from Grom, this time caco (persimmon) and torrochino (torrone/nougat). It's not that I haven't gained weight, it's that since there are no dryers in this country, none of my jeans actually fit anymore. Deceptive, you see.
THEN, of course, Katie and I go out for American brunch this early/late afternoon. We went, this time per my roommate's recommendation, to a little restaurant tucked away between piazza Signoria and Santa Croce called La Via dell'Acqua, where we waited for an absurdly long time for absurdly good food. Katie got scrambled egg whites and turkey bacon while I ordered blueberry pancakes and a side of fried ham (really prosciutto cotto, but who's complaining). It was almost life-changingly (though still not as good as Egg) good, the blueberry pancakes, because they aren't even my favorite breakfast food! Like, that's how good the pancakes are, or, conversely, how much I miss the concept of Sunday brunch. Either way, delicious is the bottom line. And there was American coffee. Don't get me wrong, I will take a macchiato, always, but there is just something so comforting about a biggish ceramic mug, filled with coffee, and it even comes with a spoon of mini chocolate chips.
book reviews
From the three I bought at the Persephone Bookshop in London over fall break:
Actually, this is pretty counterintuitive and completely a ploy to avoid work. Anyways, the three books I bought were Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, Farewell Leicester Square, and They Can't Ration These. I've finished Miss Pettigrew and am about two-thirds of the way through Farewell Leicester Square. Miss Pettigrew was thoroughly diverting, but reminded me to no small account why exactly I always (strive to) read the book before watching the film. I don't like the film any less, but just like what the shopkeeper at Persephone told me, the book is very different and I would like the novel much more. True on both accounts. Mom, you would like the book - definitely read it when I return. Farewell Leicester Square is quite good so far, and easier to get through than I thought it would be. It's basically about the discrete anti-Semitism of bougeois London in the interwar period; about a Jewish film director named Alec Berman and semi-self-inflicted, semi-environmental prejudices that he faces. The author, Betty Miller, does a great job of probing the psychologoical depths and paralyzing self-doubt (hey!) of the characters, especially Alec and his gentile wife, Catherine.
Obviously, The Brothers Karamazov, started in the second week of September, still has not progressed beyond page three hundred seventy-something. Dimitri is furious, Ivan is totally giving me the "I told you so" look and Aloysha is already praying for my immortal soul. And Infinite Jest? Pretty sure it has a fine coating of dust on its thick spine. Shame, shame away.
Actually, this is pretty counterintuitive and completely a ploy to avoid work. Anyways, the three books I bought were Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, Farewell Leicester Square, and They Can't Ration These. I've finished Miss Pettigrew and am about two-thirds of the way through Farewell Leicester Square. Miss Pettigrew was thoroughly diverting, but reminded me to no small account why exactly I always (strive to) read the book before watching the film. I don't like the film any less, but just like what the shopkeeper at Persephone told me, the book is very different and I would like the novel much more. True on both accounts. Mom, you would like the book - definitely read it when I return. Farewell Leicester Square is quite good so far, and easier to get through than I thought it would be. It's basically about the discrete anti-Semitism of bougeois London in the interwar period; about a Jewish film director named Alec Berman and semi-self-inflicted, semi-environmental prejudices that he faces. The author, Betty Miller, does a great job of probing the psychologoical depths and paralyzing self-doubt (hey!) of the characters, especially Alec and his gentile wife, Catherine.
Obviously, The Brothers Karamazov, started in the second week of September, still has not progressed beyond page three hundred seventy-something. Dimitri is furious, Ivan is totally giving me the "I told you so" look and Aloysha is already praying for my immortal soul. And Infinite Jest? Pretty sure it has a fine coating of dust on its thick spine. Shame, shame away.
09 November 2008
Rome, without the strife.
Before this weekend, I hadn't a good impression of Rome. This may or may not have been because the last two times I had gone there for bureaucratic/emotionally draining/Russian visa-related reasons. This time, it was equally as hectic a trip, but much more enjoyable. I went for Friday and Saturday with the Michelangelo and Botticelli classes. They packed in an obscene amount of activity, but I am (mostly) thankful to have been jerked around mercilessly for forty-eight hours. Most importantly, we had a private visit to the Sistine Chapel on Friday night. That was amazing. It ended up being about seventy people (not an inconsiderable number, but whatever) but having studied the ceiling, it was an unreal experience. Earlier on Friday, we got to climb up to the dome of St. Peter's, where we caught the sunset over Rome - also magical, obvs. The actual climb up, and down, the dome was one of the most hair-raising things I have ever done. Imagine an endless spiral staircase that is also at around a 45-degree angle. I... understand vertigo now, a little bit? But the views were so utterly worth it, baby's got the bends or whatever. Then on Saturday, we went back for the Vatican museums. There, I got to see the Laocoön, Apollo Belvedere and the Belvedere Torso. Um, I saw the Laocoön. The Laocoön. Biggest. Fucking. Moment. Of. My. Life. (Sorry, mom.) Then of course, the Raphael rooms, where the School of Athens is. And, and, on another one of the walls, the fresco of Mount Parnassus (the writers) where he included, of all the people, Sappho. I dissolved into giggles immediately, of course. Oh, Sapphic chic. Oh, Wellesley. Love y'all.
Of course, after the ridiculousness of seeing Laocoön (still obsessed with this, as you might be able to tell) we go to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo to see Caravaggio's Conversion of Paul and Crucifixion of Peter. That particular Crucifixion is known for it's realism, most famously in the dirty feet of one of the figures.
Look:
We first looked at that painting in Humanities at Pioneer (oh yes) and then I had forgotten all about it. Seeing it again reminded me of how much I liked it. It's probably my second-favorite Caravaggio, after the Supper at Emmaus. And THEN, we go to the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria to see Bernini's St. Teresa in Ecstasy. Saturday was basically one huge orgy of masterpieces. And of course, I had walked by Santa Maria della Vittoria about four times (it's really close to the train station) without having ANY idea that the sculpture was even in there. Absurdity.
Okay, I'm tired and I still have to upload ALL the photos from fall break and ALL the photos from this weekend. You'll get an update when that happens.
Love,
me
Of course, after the ridiculousness of seeing Laocoön (still obsessed with this, as you might be able to tell) we go to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo to see Caravaggio's Conversion of Paul and Crucifixion of Peter. That particular Crucifixion is known for it's realism, most famously in the dirty feet of one of the figures.
Look:
We first looked at that painting in Humanities at Pioneer (oh yes) and then I had forgotten all about it. Seeing it again reminded me of how much I liked it. It's probably my second-favorite Caravaggio, after the Supper at Emmaus. And THEN, we go to the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria to see Bernini's St. Teresa in Ecstasy. Saturday was basically one huge orgy of masterpieces. And of course, I had walked by Santa Maria della Vittoria about four times (it's really close to the train station) without having ANY idea that the sculpture was even in there. Absurdity.
Okay, I'm tired and I still have to upload ALL the photos from fall break and ALL the photos from this weekend. You'll get an update when that happens.
Love,
me
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