I'm baaaaaaAAAAck.

Whoa, what a week it's been.  I just got back to Rome this evening and all I want to do is sit in on the sofa and watch MTV Italia for the next few hours with a jar of Nutella and a trowel.  I've been up to the Swiss border and back, so needless to say I'm a little pooped.  I will collect my thoughts for the next day or two and then post some of my adventures.

xoxo,

Megan

Going and going and going

Tomorrow morning I leave for what I hope will be a six city excursion.  I have no train tickets, no hotel rooms, and as of this very minute (11:32 pm), no bags packed.  All I know is that there's a 10:45 train leaving for Bologna and I will be on it.  But right now, I'm tired.  When I come back, I will let you know where I went, how I got there, and whether or not I slept under a bridge.  

xoxo,

Meggie

Road-Tripping on Fathers Day and Other Adventures

Tomorrow is Father's Day and next Friday is my 28th birthday.  

Is it me, or does time just seem to move at a much more rapid rate of trajectory than it did in the 80s and 90s?   I often cringe in disbelief when writing the date.  'TWO THOUSAND AND NINE!?!?!'  Shouldn't it still be, like, 1999, or heck, at the absolute LATEST, 2002?  I posit that 2002 is a much more reasonable date for the present.   How the hell did it get to be June of 2009?  Where have the 2000s gone? I humbly ask you.  

Of course, this is a rhetorical question.  

If you're somewhat in my age range, let's say late twenties, early thirties, mid-thirties or perhaps forties, you might have spent the 2000s becoming a grown up.  Maybe you have a grown-up job, drive a grown-up car, live in a grown-up apartment or if you're lucky, a grown-up house, and, most frighteningly, listen to (gasp!) grown-up music.  (I myself, can confess to not only NOT changing the station when a 10,000 Maniacs song comes on the radio, but also (gasp!) listening to it, and (double-gasp!) singing along.  If my fourteen-year-old, green haired, black lipstick-wearing and Suicidal Tendencies-listening self knew of this malarky, she would undoubtedly kick my present day self in the teeth with her steel toe Doc Martens.)  So all of a sudden, here I am, or better, here we are, in 2009, wondering where all those years went and how it came to be that there are now people of voting age who were born in the 90s (i.e. many of my classmates at Occidental).  Holy shit, right?  I can distinctly remember listening to "License to Ill" on my Sony walkman in 1990.  But alas, I digress.  

Back to the present, June of 2009.  Tomorrow is Father's Day, which will be my third since my dad died.   I didn't even remember that it's Father's Day was this week, but I was reminded, however, after reading this Op-Ed in the International Herald Tribune by Garrison Keillor:

Don’t bother calling to wish me a Happy Father’s Day because I won’t be here, kids, I’ve got the day off.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. But I’m in Minnesota. So I’ll just climb in my black Lamborghini and head for the territories and west of Minneapolis pick up a county road that runs straight on flat prairie for a couple hundred miles.

I’ll let that 270 hp V-12 engine run free and reach the Dakota border in the time it takes to drink a cold one and listen to Waylon and Willie — and don’t call me on my cell because I don’t have it with me, just Mr. Samuel Colt, a deck of cards and a dog named Lucky.

It’s like Robert Louis Stevenson said: “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.” That’s a man talking.

Father’s Day is all about retail sales and zero about me and I am having none of it. I’ve got enough cheap cologne to open a funeral parlor and I don’t need neckties — I just carry one for a tourniquet in case of snakebite — and I don’t want a card that says “It’s Father’s Day and I’m here to say: when it comes to the Long Haul, I’m awfully glad that you’re my Dad cause you’re the BEST of all!!!” because you and I know it ain’t me, babe, so why say it?

I never wanted to be a Father. All I wanted was the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, and a gray mist on the sea’s face and a gray dawn breaking. But I was in Minnesota at the time. We were dancing at Whiskey Junction, Suzanne and me, and she took me down to her place by the river — and how much of this do you really want to know? — and I touched her perfect body with my mind and the next thing I knew I was dating a lady with a basketball under her belt.

She got big and she got very needy. “Rub my back,” she said about 37 times a day. “Go get me some persimmon sherbet and dark chocolate with anchovies in it. The good kind.” She used to be wild and loved to jump on a horse and ride like the wind, and then she became Somebody’s Mother and was transformed into an obsessive neurotic. One minute she was Cindy Crawford and one night I came back and she was Dorothea Lange’s sharecropper’s wife from the Dust Bowl, a good-hearted woman in love with a good-timing man.

Women say, “Why don’t you talk to me anymore? I wish you’d tell me what’s going on with you!” so I start talking (like now) and they say, “How can you say that?” This is our dilemma.

It’s like the time I tried to celebrate the Fourth of July in Copenhagen. I invited 50 friends to a barbeque. Took me two days to find a butcher shop that sells pork ribs. Danes don’t eat ribs. But Chinese Danes do, and I found a Chinese butcher shop near Trepkasgade and bought all the ribs in his freezer. Then I had to find Tabasco sauce. I whomped up the ribs, the Danes came and scarfed them all down and got a little drunk, and we sent a few dozen rockets flying over the beach, and then in the spirit of the Glorious Fourth I said something mean about Queen Margrethe (You Don’t Do That There) and they blanched and pretended I was invisible.

So that’s why I’m heading out to the territories. I’m going to join up with the gang out near Yellow Gulch, saddle up and go. I want to be with people who know the words to the same songs I know and those songs are “Freight Train” and “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Hobo’s Lullaby” and “This World Is Not My Home (I’m Only Passing Through),” songs about hearing the lonesome whistle blow, high-tailing it out of here, feeling the wind in your face, driving through little farm towns and not stopping and seeing the envy in their eyes. The journey is the reward and don’t you ever stop.

Back on Monday.

I enjoyed reading this very much, as in some respects it reminded me of my dad, and his love of long road-trips.  I know that on his first trip to California from the East Coast in the early 70s, he hitchhiked there and back.  An adventure, I'm sure.   So I feel much better knowing that this Father's Day, I'm having an adventure of my own, because, well shit, it's 2009.

Allora, aspetta.

Hello friends!  I'm sorry it's been so long since my last update, it's just that, you see, I've been so incredibly busy dicking around aimlessly for the last few weeks that I haven't had the time to post anything.  My apologies.

Life in Rome has been unique.  Every day has presented somewhat of a challenge.  I hate it here, and then I love it here.  And then I hate it here, and then I never ever want to leave.  It's not that I've had any major mishaps or faux pas, but being a foreigner here is a bit isolating at times.  I'm not quite a tourist, as I am renting an apartment, speak the language (to a certain extent), and am now quite familiar with the lay of the land (also to a certain extent).  But I'm certainly not a Roman.  I don't have friends or family here, I don't work here, and I'm certainly not from here.  So I find myself somewhere in the middle, I'm not a local, but also, thankfully, I'm not a conspicuously out-place-tourist.  

I must say that Rome is a fantastic city.  Holy cow, I've never been anywhere that is as enchanting and lively.  The nightlife here is unparalleled.  Drinks at 8, dinner at 10.  Each night, every table outside every restaurant in my neighborhood is occupied.  This goes on until around 1am, and then the cafes turn into bars, and everyone just sort of spills out into the streets and piazzas.  And this goes on until about 3am.  Every.  Night.  It's great, really.  I don't think I could sustain a lifestyle like that, but once in a while it's nice to partake in the nightly festivities.

My favorite activity, thus far, however, has been going for really really long walks while listening to my iPod.  If I need to go somewhere across town, let's say about three or four miles away, I walk there, and it's great.  I never walk in LA.  Ever.  If I'm feeling randy I'll ride my bike or take the Metro, but I rarely walk to a destination.  So being here, in Rome, and walking for hours and hours, feels great.  There is always something new to see and of course, plenty of people to watch.  Walking a lot with headphones on also lends itself to some major introspection.  There's a lot to think about when you're alone in a city in another country, thousands of miles away from home.  

Top ten things I miss about Los Angeles (in no particular order):

10. Vietnamese food

9. Good live music 

8. My friends...DUH!

7. KPCC

6. Big cups of iced coffee from Swork or Cafe de Leche

5. Highland Park

4. Talking to someone and having them know what the fuck I'm talking about.

3. Being talked to and knowing what the fuck someone is saying.

2. Going to parties where I know people, or at least just going to parties.

1. Riding my bike around Highland Park and Eagle Rock

Top ten things I love about living in Rome (also in no particular order):

10. Riding my rickety old bike around town.

9.  Going for epically long walks in the afternoon when the sun is going down.

8. Food.  

7. All the really good looking Italians who know they're really good looking.

6. Having a decent conversation in Italian.

5. Art.

4. Having fantastic dinners after 10pm.

3. Taking a train ride to another city, then returning to Rome and feeling as if I've come home.

2. Trastevere.

1. Giving directions to Italians.

Ok, that's about all I can muster for now.  Let's hope it's not another month until my next post.

xoxo,

Meggie

Oh, this is me at Pompeii:

New apartment and Ravenna

I've moved.

Before: 

After:

Much better, no?

Also, this weekend I went to Ravenna, which is on the northeast coast of Italy.  I saw some mosaics which were very old yet still very sparkly:

And then I went to the coast:

Saw The Vivian Girls and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart play at a great little seaside venue:

I did not take a pics of the band.  I did this out of protest.  Why?  Because throughout both of the sets people were constantly taking pictures of the bands, which really annoyed me.  But I will say that I did get to chat with several of the fellows from Pains and they were very friendly and quite enthusiastic that I was from the States, which I found very endearing.  One of them told me that it was great to have someone new to speak English with, hearing this, I could only reply "You have no idea..."