it's been a tad more difficult to update in this here diary than i thought it would be. certainly not for lack of subject matter (!) but more for inconvenience and maybe a little lack of motivation. i know i'll probably regret it. but i am capturing my adventures in many other ways and with many other types of mementos...
ok, so i just took a five-minute hike from my apartment and went up to the Piazza del Michelangelo. i smoked a cigarette and watched the sun setting. oh how i wish i place a photo here right now... the place is elevated, with a spectacular view of the entire city of florence. i watched as the sun burned through the clouds, saw the colors deepen and illuminate the red rooftops and stone walls of the ancient architecture... watched as the orange light slowly reflected off the olive-green Arno River... watched the lights slowly light up on the Ponte Vecchio and the other bridges... slowly spreading through the city like fairy-dust.
my experience of this place is growing more meaningful with my studies... coming to know of the lives of Michelangelo and Galileo and the many, many other brilliant artists, scientists, etc. who have called Florence home. i can only begin to fathom the blood, sweat and tears shed in creating the works to make this city beautiful. the pride of it is awe-inspiring... that level of absolute love for one's home, that they would devote so much to making it such an aesthetic marvel. i have never felt much connection to anywhere i've lived thus far in my life... so it is astounding to me... that one's town could feel like an extension of themselves; a larger being...
sometimes when i marvel at these relics... the art and architecture that are hundreds of years old - vestiges of the renaissance... i can't help but get this sense that we are taken with ghosts... that these things are all ghosts of the past. these tourists walk around and take snapshots and consume and revel in the novelty of it all as if this place - Florence, Italy, Europe - was all just some giant amusement park. ghosts... the meaning of it all is, in a way, just a memory.
but it is a reminder, too. i was just in Rome this past weekend and visited the Vatican. i walked around the dome of St. Peters... staring down into the cathedral, the people walking around in it looking like ants... and i climbed up through the countless spiral stairs to the very top of the dome and looked out... a 360-degree vista of all of Rome and the surrounding areas. and then i went back down in the cathedral and walked around. it is very difficult to put into words the sense of awe that these things bring to one... and not even photographs could capture the sense of space and the air and the feeling of it all... as i walked through, past tombs and sculptures and paintings galore... passing through the rays of sunlight from the enormous windows so high above me, i heard a choir begin to sing and i was overtaken with emotion... it was so overwhelming, and it was all so much larger than me.
anyway, so there's been tons of amazing stuff like that. and i'm just living here, doing my thang. i'm going to school during the day and going out to bars and clubs at night. and i am spending much, much, much time with people. i feel so incredibly social. for the past few months i really haven't spent all that much time hanging out with people, relatively. but here i realize i spend most of my day engaged in conversation. it feels really good. it feels really easy... all this connection, connection, connection...
several times on this trip so far, i have had the desire to have a conversation with everyone in the entire world. i want to interview them. i want to chat with them. i want to find out who they are and what they feel and what they think and feel and dream and do. so far i have probably conversed with at least 50 people. and there is always a reality... a commonality. i don't feel so isolated these days. i feel different but together and very interconnected...
ok, i better run off now... but i will write more again later. i have much more to tell about.
buonaserra!