From One Moment To The Next

Traveling, on its surface, is about getting away from one place to see another. At its heart, though, I think traveling is about getting away from yourself for a while- the people and places we know intimately make it easy to fall back on a "role" that is mutually comfortable.

I'm not being particularly original or profound here, but I think this truism has value in the questions it raises: how do we actually step outside of ourselves for a while? What does that look like? Removing ourselves from familiar surroundings is one way we can begin to deconstruct the "person" to get to the human beneath, but how else can we excavate? And, once there, how can we truly realize who we really are, and who we want to be?

As Jordan and I sat on the cobbled walkway at night and looked across the river at the murmuring lights of Venice, I reflected that this didn't really feel like the other side of the world. Jordan pointed out that it was only a few hours away from the eastern seaboard of North America.

In Florence, we saw the spectacular Uffizi museum, which housed the rich collection of the avaricious Medici clan.  After weeks of looking at an endless parade of religion-themed masterpieces, as I stood in front of Boticelli's excellent "Madonna Della Melagrana," the thing that finally struck me was how bored everyone looks in these paintings: everyone seems rather nonplussed that God is descending from a fiery cleft in the sky atop a chariot of divine light; no one seems especially impressed at the sight of the divine infant (though who can blame them?  He looks like a rather boring child, never smiling, always with that grave expression on his face); St. Sebastien doesn't look particularly discomfited by the arrows sticking out of him; no one looks especially devastated as Christ is deposed from the cross, or when St. John is beheaded, etc.

Purple patriot

Mary looks so bored, it’s as if she actually had to pose for all seven trillion portraits painted of her.  “Oh God, another Titian portrait?  Just get it over with already, my ass is killing me from sitting in this benedict pose all day...”

"Ugh.  FML"

As we took the train from Venice to Florence, then again from Florence to Rome, I began to reflect on what it means to experience a place. Maybe the pace of life of a tourist isn't really conducive to really getting to know a place- you have a few meals, and stand in the sweaty throngs of people frantically snapping pictures of buildings whose names they've already forgotten, and seeing the spot where Hemingway drank, or Picasso smoked, or Joyce fell down dead drunk, but in the end, how much can you say you really have learned about a place or its culture?  How do we find the opportunity to step outside of ourselves?

I also got to thinking about memory. We put so much emphasis on "creating memories," but what are the things we hold onto that come to define a place? Are they things like David's imposing stature (less imposing in certain unfortunate particulars, of course), or the amazing marble reliefs on the pulpit of Basilica Santa Croce?  Can I possibly be expected to remember the minute details of the Arc de Triomphe, or every work at the Uffizi?

Maybe the idea of "memories" is disingenuous.  Maybe what you remember most is the feeling-- the feeling as you catch the warm, aromatic air of Florence at night, or when you pass the sudden vacuuminous hush of a shaded side street leading away from a bustling thoroughfare, or the feeling you get when you see the beautiful Stone Pine trees of Rome  for the first time.  Perhaps, I thought, as Jordan and I sat at the Piazza della Repubblica, eating gelato and watching the street vendors as they continually bundled up their counterfeit leather handbags each time the Carabinieri drove by, all we can really hope to do is to enjoy it from one moment to the next.

Stray observations:

• If, many years from now, lying on my death bed, I can reflect that I never had to use one of those squatting in-the-floor toilets, I will consider this a life well-lived.
• In the European traffic hierarchy, bikes reign supreme. Walking on the sidewalk? It's a bike lane. Have a "walk" signal at a pedestrian cross walk? Fuck you. While the prevailing motorist philosophy seems to be "Get where I am going while applying the brakes as little as humanly possible," drivers are generally adroit at avoiding pedestrians; cyclists here will run you over as a matter of principle.
• GELATO GELATO GELATO

P.S.

While the title of this post wasn't intended as a reference to the Animal Collective song "For Reverend Green," it made me think that you should definitely listen to it right now...