The End/Beginning

I am currently sitting in my apartment, with a pit in my stomach as big as the cliche about having a pit in your stomach.

Our very annoying collection of all the wine and booze bottles accumulated throughout the semester is gone, leaving the kitchen table looking naked and forlorn (and yet the dishes are STILL not done... hmm). My backpack and the suitcase I'm leaving here in Rome are mostly packed, due to my neurotic obsession with preparedness that leaves me without clothes for sometimes weeks, but this time only a few days, and they're sitting in my room, which is now devoid of any personal touches it might have accumulated during our time here. I finished my last final this morning, walked out of the garden at AUR and down the stairs to my house. It's a beautiful, sunny, sky-blue day, and Rome is no longer my home.

They call Rome 'The Eternal City'. While some places have names that are complete non-sequiteurs (read: The Big Apple, The Garden State, The Big Easy (ask FEMA about this last one)), Rome's is completely, 100% accurate. Not only has it been here forever, but it feels like it's going to be here for longer than that. Once you're here, you feel like you've always been. Once you start living your life surrounded by all the history of the world incorporated matter-of-factly into your everyday life, you start to feel as though nothing ever ends. Nothing really ever does. At least here.

Yes, I know that sounds a little melodramatic, but it hit me with all the force of the buses that I've gotten so adept at avoiding while J-walking... I don't live here anymore. Yeah, we have two days left until we're kicked out of our house, but those two days are going to be filled with cleaning, goodbyes, packing, goodbyes, and finally, leaving for real.

There's still a weird veil between me and realizing that I'm leaving and, after this European jaunt of mine is over, I don't have a clear idea of when I'll be back. I've become so completely at home here that most days it doesn't even cross my mind that it's only been a temporary thing. And yes, there have been some very annoying, even negative things about being here, but those things have just served as normalizing factors making life seem completely natural and ordinary. I had no idea at the beginning of this adventure that I would fall so hard and fast for this city, but it's taken me even more by surprise that, even after the honeymoon decisively ended, I'm still in love. And it's hard to have a long-distance relationship with a city.

My thoughts right now are all over the place, but I want to write some of them down, so we're going with list form:

Why I Love Rome:

*My inability to explain why I love Rome. I just literally sat here for five minutes thinking about how to start this list. I think the fact that I can't quantify the reasons should just be an indication of how important this city has become for me, and how very integrated into it I feel. It's an aura more than any number of things that I enjoy. Rome's personality and mine just match really well, I think. I'm a big-picture person who sees the big picture in the details.

It's a little counter-intuitive, maybe, but looking at the color blue in the Virgin's robe in a Venetian versus a Florentine painting will tell you entire volumes about trade and commerce in the Italian city-states during the Renaissance. The shift of a villa from the center of the property to one end smacks of the uncertainty and imbalance brought about by the Reformation and the Sack of Rome that changed the Renaissance into the Baroque. The palle in the Medici coat of arms run through the political unrest of Florence in the 1490s and all the way back to the saints Cosimo and Damian who the family claimed as their ancestors and who gave legitimacy to the power of Il Magnifico, who basically made the Renaissance possible. The little things are the big things.

Rome is like that, too. Everything means something else. The Palazzo Venezia built by the Venetian ambassador in the mid-1400s has a balcony from which Mussolini appeared to the people of Italy, and it now hold the art history branch of the Italian National Library. The ridiculously busy bus stop that is a hub for basically anywhere else in Centro is also the Flavian Amphitheatre... that's the Colosseum for the uninitiated. The beautiful little church where I've taken every visitor I've had here to see the spectacular view of my city is also the place where St. Peter was ostensibly crucified and sits at the top of the steep, winding stairs that lead down to my street. Everything is something else, but it's all connected into this living, breathing city that is still, even after all these centuries of shift and calamity and restored peace, the center of the world. At least as far as I'm concerned.

I wrote before I left Montana that I'd never encountered a place that could make you feel so small and yet so important at the same time. Now, I have. Having grown up in my beloved home state is probably the reason I feel such an affinity for this place. It's not necessarilly big in the same wonderful, natural gradiosity that I grew up with, but big things have happened here, big things that made the world. It's hard not to be surrounded by the achievements of all the singular men and women who changed the world over and over, for good or for ill, and not think that, no matter how big the world is, it's small groups and single people who change it. It's hard not to feel like great things are possible. That's particularly empowering when you're 20 years old and trying to figure out where you're going to take your life.

I love Rome because of the things that have happened here that infest the place like a constant fog of larger meaning. In every corner of town, there's been some decision made and acted upon that rocked the world, for entire populations or for only a few, but that sense of purpose remains the same. I love Rome because being here makes me feel like my aspirations and goals are entirely possible, because they're much more modest than the incredible things that have been done in the world before I showed up. I love Rome because it is Rome and I am me, and we understand each other perfectly.

Things I'm Going To Miss:

*Pizza: It's just pizza, right? I mean, of course, it's not even comprable to the fried bread and two pounds of cheese we eat back in the States, and I'm going to be in Italy again before I leave the Continent for good, so it shouldn't be that big a deal to not have regular access to pizza. Well, since pizza is basically the go-to takeout food around here, it's become rather a staple of my week to bop over to Simone's after my early class lets out at noon and get some funghi e mozzarella. It's just like going to the caf for lunch, except way more delicious and I'm allowed to take food out of the store without being chased by Eyebrows. And yes, I can get pizza that's good other places in Europe, and even some in the States, but Roman pizza is a completely unique thing that is a lot more suited to my tastes than the heavy stuff we eat in the States or the paper-thin, charred nonsense that the Neopolitans claim is the real deal. I'm like the Goldilocks of pizza, and my two places in Rome have gotten it just right.

*Water Fountains: The novelty wore off after a little while, and they became situation normal. I'm trying to forsee how problematic it's going to be for me when I go to places where they make you pay for water. It's not going to be pretty. I might die of dehydration.

*ATAC: The public transit system in Rome. So easy, so omnipresent, so necessary to my life. I've become a huge believer that public transit can be effective and easy, and it can be convenient. We don't all have to be martyrs for the green cause... if every city had a slick system like Rome's, we'd ride the buses and trams completely selfishly without even a thought for the good of the planet. But that's a plus, too.

*The sky: I'm from Big Sky Country. Michigan is hard for me in this respect. You can't see a whole lot of the sky through the trees, and it feels clausterphobic a lot of the time. Also, for a large portion of the year that I spend there, it's grey. And cloudy. Rome has this incredible blue blue sky and the lay of the land reminds me a lot of Missoula or Helena or one of the other more picture-esque towns in Montana. That's been really comforting when I've been homesick. And now, I'm headed north, where it seems that there is no big, open bright blue sky, and so the fact that I'm leaving Rome for a sojurn in a place with a sky much like Michigan's, only to go back to the States and the wonderful sky of Montana seems eerily full-circle.

...I've spent a long time writing this post. And this encompasses only a small, small part of what my experiences here have meant to me. For more, I obviously refer you back to the rest of this blog, or you could just wait til I see you again and bore you silly with the details. It's your decision.

I'm off to Florence in literally a few hours. Remember those posts at the beginning of this blog, where I gush like a thirteen year old at a JoBros concert? Lather, Rinse, Repeat. It is literally going to be a shambles. I'm happy that I get to experience it the first time on my own, because I think any friendship that I had with any travelling companion would be ruined as they desperately tried to escape my dramatic hyperventilating. Much better that no one sees this.

Internets, as many of you are well aware, don't grow on trees. This meaning that my posts might be fewer and further between on this next part of my adventure, but keep checking! I promise I will update as often as is humanly possible, for my own sake more than for yours, but you can pretend you're really that interested if the mood strikes.

Thank you, Rome, for everything you've taught me. I don't know precisely when I'm coming back, but you haven't seen the last of me. So... until next time... ci vediamo!

La Bella Figura

Perhaps this is a foreign concept to you, perhaps it's not. 'La Bella Figura' is one of the most interesting facets of Italian culture that I've witnessed and yes, also attempted to adopt into my own life. It's really presented me with an interesting conundrum, but not a new one. Women for millenia have struggled with the same question, from the first woman who decided that wearing mastadon fir could be a fashion statement as well as a survival essential to those idiots in Victorian England who squished their organs into porridge trying to cut themselves in half with corsets to basically the entire state of California and the resulting thriving plastic surgery industry. The question: are looks really that important?

The answer: DUH! Seriously, in our society, one of the only ways women manage to make a blip on what is taught as history is through fashion. But this is not the place to get into that, so I won't. The point is: of COURSE looks are important. We'd all dress like Midwesterners if they weren't. Just kidding, Michigan!

For the Italians, though, appearances aren't just important. No, they're essential. To keep them up is basically the reason we exist. Now, that might be hyperbolizing just a tad, but think about it. What do you immediately think of when you think of Italy? You think of art, certainly, right? Is there anything more beautiful or pleasant to look at than a good piece of art? Right. There's not. And the Italians have been raised on this stuff. There's beautiful art literally sitting in the middle of piazzas here. You can close your eyes, spin around three times and walk in some random direction, and guaranteed, within ten steps you'll have hit something aesthetically pleasing and historically important. Trust me, I've tried this.

So the Italians have this desire to make basically everything as aesthetically pleasing as possible. It's in their blood. If they're serving you pig intestines (as they're wont to do in Rome, so you have to be careful), they're calling it trippa with their stupid, musical R sound that foreigners just can't do and serving it to you with such rustic elegance and simplicity that you'll forget what its function was just a few days ago. If you're walking through the supermercata pulling a jar of Nutella here, a box of pasta there, you can just bet that there's some girl who is dressed to the nines like no Meijer employee you've ever seen coming around after you and straightening the lines on the shelves again. People make a big show of interacting with everyone else with a confidence that often comes off as downright bitchy. The thing is, though: the Italians treat everyday life as though it were an opera. Emotions are meant to be felt strongly and articulated with the complete confidence that one is in the right. Think Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird mixed with the most enthusiastic orchestra conductor you've ever seen. That's basically la bella figura.

Conclusion: it's an attitude much more than it's a tangible style. Though that's certainly part of it. The Italians aren't as palpably judgy as I hear the French are on this subject (I made sure to bring only my trendy Euro-clothes with me to Paris, so as to avoid that sniff of disapproval), I think they take it more as a matter of course that you're going to want to look your best to take out the garbage or run to the store. They give you the benefit of the doubt, which means, of course, that if you don't, you're going to just look really dumb next to everyone else who DID make the effort this morning. Way to go, you silly americana.

Here's how la bella figura functions in everyday life, at least for me: you wake up, wash your face and brush the teeth, put on enough make-up to make yourself look put-together and, well, made-up, run your fingers through the wild tangle of curls that I had the remarkable foresight to procure before coming here, without even knowing how in moda that was, put on your clothes, which are, of course, colorful or accented by some interesting jewelry or pashmina, apply chap-stick to make your lips look softer and shinier without being too obvious that you thought about making your lips look softer and shinier, put some girl-power music on the iPod and walk out of your apartment like you own the world. That was a long sentence. It takes a lot less time in real life, since you get used to it pretty darn quick.

Fashion is very important in Italy. Maybe you've heard of Gucci, Dolce & Gabanna, Fendi... but most people aren't walking around looking like those ridiculous runway models. Nope. They're walking around looking ridiculous without any help from the runways, since for the Italians, style often means looking like you got dressed in the dark. At least color-wise. This is a phenomenon in which the Italians wear these really odd color combos (like... mustard and terra cotta orange and navy) and still manage to rock it. If I tried this, I'd be laughed off the continent. If they're not playing color-roulette, the Italians are wearing violet/plum, which, in case you're one of those poor souls who doesn't live in continental Europe (sarcasm here), is The Color. It's everywhere. Try to find a store that doesn't have an entire purple section. You can't. Which is nice, since I like the color, and it's an easy way to look like you know what you're doing.

Americans would tend to think, with all this emphasis on how you present yourself, that there would be a huge consumer culture here. Well, if there is, it's the tourists who are doing all the consuming. Romans (I don't know if I can speak for the rest of Italia, since the country is so localized in culture, but I think this is pretty much the same everywhere) do not spend a lot of money on clothing. They buy a few really basic, good-quality items and then supplement their wardrobes with trendy pieces that make them look completely with it.

The concept of 'shopping' as we understand it doesn't exist here, unless you're in the UCB right by the Trevi fountain... which is, I venture a guess, more like being in a mall in Novi on Black Friday than in Rome. This is because the Italians go into stores knowing what they need to be in style. They buy that thing. And they leave. There's not a whole lot of dithering about if it's useful or will I wear it or all the other nonsense that's part of shopping culture in the States, because they know it's going to be useful, and of course they're going to wear it... that's why they're buying it.

Is this a healthy way to look at things? That's an extremely complicated question. On the one hand, it's nice that the Italians aren't so hung up on consuming for the sake of consumption. Their take on fashion is more measured, less hysterical and fetishized, than it's become in the States. On the other hand, the reason it's more measured and deliberate is because there's basically only one style, with little variation, to which everyone conforms. On the street, no one looks exactly the same, but you'll begin to notice a pattern as to what constitutes la moda.

Basically, you conform or... that's really it. You conform. There's not a whole lot of variety, and people know what they want to buy only because they buy what they need to look like everyone else. Now, on the whole, they come off as pretty wacky-looking if you're not used to the colors and the big hair and the bigger attitude, but it's all the same kind of wacky. Is this a problem? Really, it depends on what your biggest hang-up is. Is individuality more important than responsible consumerism? Or is it more important to guard against becoming one of those horrible mall-girl cliches maxing out Daddy's credit card than to guard against becoming an unthinking fashion sheep in a purple puffy coat. That's hyperbolizing a bit, but you get my point.

I don't actually mind either way, since me trying to fit in here is like trying to teach cats to walk in a parade; it's ineffectual and dumb. I'm an americana, and in spite of my big hair and newly developed strut, I still look like a foreigner. I might not look like an AMERICAN, precisely, but I think I've become some sort of weird amalgamation of Montanan functionality (my horribly ugly tire-shoes) and Italian flair (that look-at-me-aren't-I-fabulous walk that still makes me laugh at myself every time I catch me doing it), with a little bit of Michigan college-girl and wannabe fashionable person thrown in for good measure. It's weird. It confused the hell out of the French. I've definitely noticed it as it's developed. And I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not.

La bella figura is incredibly interesting. It's incredibly problematic from a feminist perspective. It's incredibly hard to explain if you haven't experienced it for yourself. And it's also incredibly necessary for living here. I didn't come to Italy fooling myself that any person anywhere would mistake me for Italian, and nevertheless I'm sure I'm going to go home with some wacky colored clothing that will be totally out of place in the States, hair like I stuck my tongue in an electrical socket, too much makeup for a college girl, and a walk that might be appropriate for some girl on America's Next Top Model who doesn't make the top 25. Thanks, la bella figura. Thanks a lot.