Thus concludes my first weekend working at Claymore! Overall it's a pretty sweet gig. I get to make free drinks (well, one free drink per shift), which means Excavations of Claymore are soon to return! In just two nights, I've already created Crackle Cider and the Golden Mocha. At last my creative taste buds can be exercised to their full potential! Soon my tongue will be nice and buff, like Trogdor's beefy arm. Rawr.
My first night, two other baristas came in partway through my shift, both thinking they were working a double with me. As they were sorting out the schedule, I was working on drinks for a few different people and paused to rinse off some things (because if the next person orders chai, they don't really want residue of hot chocolate in their drink). This girl at the counter loudly demands, "HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO WAIT TO ORDER?"
The other two apologized and told her they were just trying to figure out who was supposed to be there. She said something along the lines of that wasn't her problem and she'd been waiting there for blah blah (she'd only been there for like, three minutes, and there had been two or three people ahead of her).
I politely told her that I could include residue of banana and hazelnut in her order if she'd like to place it right away.
I think this will be my downfall. I don't take shit from people like her; I dish it right back. Hope that's not grounds for unemployment (grounds... ha ha... that's punny, cause I work at a coffee shop... get it? Ha ha...)
The other downside is, I'm gonna have to make it through my 10:30-2AM shift without making myself any coffee, because I was up until 4 this morning even with the time change factored in. But it was a darn good coffee. Soon to be excavated.
Today, is an anniversary. First of all it's my parents' anniversary (and, crazy kooks that they are, they're taking me and JW out to dinner... this somehow seems backwards, but who am I, a hungry and broke college student, to complain?).
The popular thing to do these days seems to be divorce. When there's a hitch in the going, the hitched get going, or something like that. Contrariwise, my mom and dad have stayed together through thick and thin, and I admire that.
But their anniversary is not the only one I'm celebrating today. I'm also celebrating my own anniversary, the anniversary of my freedom from my last crap-tastic relationship. I guess it was kind of selfish of me to get dumped on my parents special day, huh? But alas that is how it happened.
I thank that breakup for reminding me how to love God school, for getting me into Adam Ezra Group, for making it permissible to sneak out of monasteries to make out with Italian boys in the middle of the night, and for scaring me into working seriously on my novel (I'm scared to end up like that).
I thank that breakup for acting as foil to the relationship I have now. Without knowing the worst, I would have no idea I'd stumbled upon the best (or been stumbled upon by the best, as the case may be). The most I could muster would be a half-appreciation. JW deserves better than that.
I thank that breakup for re-defining and re-outlining who I am. I'm not your average Christian, but I'm feeling close to God for a change, and I sure couldn't say that last October.
I think we celebrate a lot of frivolous things in our culture (half birthdays, national kids day, etc.), but this isn't one of them. You can celebrate an ending as much as you can a beginning. After all, as Semisonic said many a year ago in the song Closing Time, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
If you ever want to know what your mother went through when you were a teenager, try losing your roommate.
As crazy as she is, Taz is a creature of habit. She goes to bed early, gets up early. She hangs out with boys but won't let them touch her. She's random, but not reckless. JW, Jo Yo and I invited her to come see Adam Ezra Group with us tonight, but she declined on the grounds that her sleeping pattern had had a rough week and she wanted to get to bed early.
She made plans to watch an Adam Sandler movie with Abs, one of JW's apartment mates who she might be crushing on a little bit. Last I saw her she was vacuuming our living room in anticipation of his arrival, which was not at all extravagant for her - she goes all out for her boys. She will make a wonderful girlfriend when she finds the right dude.
Fast forward.
Went to the show. Paid three times more than we should've for parking because there was an event at the Agganis Arena next door. Lost tickets, found Rob (bassist), got new tickets for free. Got deafened and danced upon. Didn't stick around for drinks because the show went so long that last call was already over by the time we got out. Came home at 2:10AM to an empty room.
I was just going to go to sleep when it struck me how very odd it was that Taz was still out. It would have been less odd if she hadn't specifically said she wanted to go to bed early... but it still would have worried me. So I did what my mother always taught me I should do at at time like this.
I panicked.
Cue frantic phone calls, texts to JW asking if Abs was in the apartment (his light was off and JW was worried he'd wake up the roomie, so we never did find out), midnight wake-up call for Mnomanoms, and (half an hour later) a last-ditch effort sprint to the dining hall. I expected Lane to be closed at such an hour, but it was the last place Taz had told anyone she would be and the last place I could get into without a key to search for her.
It was open. This was the first time I've ever looked at our dining hall as a beacon of hope, and will most likely be the last. Sure enough I found Taz and Abs sitting on a couch downstairs, just talking. Taz was quick to point out that my fly was down. I was quick to point out that I'd been halfway into my PJs before the notion struck me that she was probably floating face down in Coy Pond and I had better go find her.
So, Mom, this post is for you. For the random times I didn't make it home when I said I would, or somehow failed to communicate what time I would actually be home, and for all the times I was over friends' houses with no cell phone reception (which was usually, because everyone I know lives in dead zones)... I'm sorry.
Wow. It really is true: Boys are the same across the board, regardless of age or religion or nationality.
Today my littlest, cutest camper was wearing a big, red ring on one of his fingers. One of my other kids told him that meant he had to kiss a girl, and the littler one accepted this without question. The bigger one then went on to coach him, helping him decide which girl to kiss and how to go about it.
Seeing as they're three, I saw no reason to put a stop to their scheming. Little did I know I was the selected target.
For the next hour I kept hearing, "Now, Shane!" This was invariably followed by a little kid barreling into my leg, wrapping his arms around it, and kissing my thigh (the highest he could reach) with a very loud and enthusiastic *smack.*
Now rewind about a month. It was my last night in Italy, and one of my companions had been pulling the 21-year-old equivalent of "Now, Shane!" for at least three days, trying to get one of the Italians we'd befriended to kiss me on the cheek.
Let it be known that I was more than okay with this plan. And he did finally go through with it. I guess the make-out sesh that happened afterward was where the situations varied...
But I'd say the evidence more than supports my hypothesis.
All you need is love, and my weekend was full of it.
Thursday I had dinner with my friend Shmoe and his parents. We've been friends since Shmoe moved here our sophomore year of high school and I've always been close with his family too. Now that he's in the Coast Guard, we don't get to hang out much, so it was really excellent to catch up. After dinner we went for a night walk to see the fireflies in the fields behind his house. I've never seen so many! It was most magical. Shmoe caught me one, but it liked him better and flew away when he passed it to me.
Friday I took Derry on a little road trip to see my buddy Extra Large in a Medium World (remember my Awkward Game adversary?). I didn't think the little guy (the car, I mean) had it in him, but he made it without a problem. If one considers me driving most of the way without stepping on the brake to be "without a problem."
XL's mom made us delicious French toast with homemade caramel syrup for brunch. Let's just say I can understand why XL doesn't like school food. After, he took me to this park with a pond and a waterfall where he used to go fishing. We found a tetherball pole and I challenged him to a game.
If anyone is wondering, taking on a 6'7" guy at tetherball is not a recipe for win, and I have a bruise on my shin to prove it (turns out climbing the tetherball pole is also not a recipe for win).
We had to stop for crumbly crack (to all you normal people, butternut) donuts from this place in his town because even crazies need a little extra crazy sometimes. Then we crashed XL's dad's college reunion. They gave us good food and we cloud-watched for a solid hour and a half while the alumni caught up. I spotted an elephant and Hokusai, the great wave. XL found a bunch of dinosaurs and a camel. Overall a pretty successful round of cloud-gazing. We'll call it a tie.
Saturday I got to play princesses with Princess Sharon. She used to be my teacher but now she throws magical birthday parties for little girls, and I help sometimes. I befriended this in the mansion we partied at that day:
"Ford." "Yes." "I think I'm a sofa." "I know how you feel..." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The party was in the town next to the town where my first boyfriend (a.k.a. He Who Must Not Be Named) lived. His house wasn't exactly on the way, but I was early and remembered how to get there even after six years (and in spite of the fact I hadn't driven myself there back in the day; it was before I had a license). So I thought I'd drive by and see how the place was doing. HWMNBN moved out west ages ago but the house is still crunchasaurus ice cream blue, so I assume his grandparents still live there. It was weird seeing that it hadn't changed at all. It was like, instead of going to the town six years later, I just drove back in time and saw it the way it used to be. Hm, surreal. But off topic.
After the party I drove into Boston (miraculously Derry STILL hadn't broken down) to see another school friend, who we're gonna call Rad because he showed me this amazing song by the band Radical Face:
You don't have to watch. Just listen and be amazed.
Rad and I grabbed dinner at Chipotle and walked around the Prudential Center playing Never Have I Ever. We realized we'd mostly done and not done the same things, except I'd never kissed a girl.
The mall was mostly closed since it was after 9, but Barnes and Noble was still open (cue heavenly light beams and angel choir). We bonded over creepy posters of Robert Pattinson and that werewolf guy, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and (naturally) poetry.
We were going to crash a bar after that, just to see if we could get in, but everyone was carding at the door so we just went back to his apartment. Rad played Train and Somewhere Over the Rainbow on his electric ukelele and showed me his balcony. Then I realized it was late-ish and my mother would worry if I didn't come home soon, so I left, and Derry still didn't die.
Today I had lunch with an atheist I met at my former youth group. It had been more than a year since we'd hung out, but thankfully he's one of those crazy people who never change. At least the parts you love never change. I'm sure he's smarter and more mature than back in the day. We got sammiches and ice cream and disturbed the other patrons with our enthusiastic discussion of mosh pits and hymns.
The reason I had to go back and write this very long post (thank you, anyone who's still with me) is because someone I consider a decent friend made me feel really stupid and worthless tonight, and I needed to remind myself how many amazing, positive, loving people I have in my life. The Beatles got a lot of things right, and this was one of them: all you need is love.
Rome may not be the center of the world anymore, but try telling that to the eight million tourists milling around the Vatican. For the number of people here and for the diversity of language and race, it’s easy to forget that all roads no longer lead to Rome. But the bustle of the city also begs the question: Has Rome been too commercialized? Or does it still retain some of the ancient magic that made it a cultural hub years ago? I think the answer is, “both.”
I believe it’s important for people to come here and see the artifacts and sites. It provokes a connection and sense of reverence regarding history that can only be gained in a hands-on way. It’s mind-boggling to picture a group of people more or less like me erecting hundred-foot-tall stone columns at their public forums or the thousand arches of the Coliseum, not out of aesthetic ambition but for practical use. Just as I walk to the dining hall and then to the chapel and then to the library each day without a thought, the ancient Romans worked, ate, worshiped, played and studied in these majestic structures every day.
Imagining a population for whom these sights were ordinary offers a moving peek into history that we are fortunate to have.
Beyond even that, structures such as the crumbling Coliseum remind us that no earthly empire is everlasting, no matter how vast or powerful. I am reminded of the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which tells of a traveler who found the ruins of a huge statue. An inscription reads, “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” Ozymandias thought his kingdom would last forever. In the same way, people thought Rome would never fall. Neither is with us anymore. It’s not hard to imagine tourists visiting the United States in a few millennia to see what’s left of the Pentagon or Mount Rushmore. It’s a sobering thought, but I think people need to grasp the transience of all we take for granted – not only so we can appreciate the good things we have, but also so we can learn to hold those things loosely, assigning greater value to the intangible qualities of culture.
Yet on the other hand, the commercialized aspect of the tourist scene makes me cringe, and it’s more than the pressing crowds that make me feel that way. It seems somehow wrong to “go see the Vatican,” a place that was built to be holy and honoring to God. It’s not a museum. It’s holy ground (or should be). I’m glad the Pope still used it for his weekly message and that pilgrims still worship there. In this way, it is still being used for its intended purpose. On the other hand, I think the builders’ original vision for some of the other monuments has been lost.
But then, we have progressed. Maybe it is too much to ask that a new culture in a new millennium cling to the values of a culture so old we can hardly understand it. To the ancient Romans, watching lions eat Christians was quality entertainment. It would turn our stomachs today. For us, it would be sick to reinstate gladiatorial fights in the Coliseum, yet I believe it is a good thing to use that space as the public arena it was meant to be. I heard there was recently a concert there. Surely the designers did not intend for power chords to resonate through the stone arches. At the same time, this use of the Coliseum holds true to a purpose the architects may not have intended, but which is nonetheless as old as the structure itself: spectacle.
The real disrespect is the way vendors and con artists have turned the historical and religious sites into marketplaces and stages for robbery. Walking out of the Vatican, souvenir shop windows display tacky gold souvenirs plastered with the face of the Pope as if he were some flamboyant celebrity. It makes me think of the Bible story about Jesus overturning the tables in the sanctuary. It’s an even greater shame that portions of the city, including some of the most ancient sites, bear the artwork and tags of vandals.
All else aside, the fact that the new Rome reflects aspects of the greater global culture can hardly be pegged as a bad thing. Global culture values green space. One can see this in the city of Rome. As a matter of fact, the Italians have valued green space for centuries. In the center of the city you’ll find the gardens of the Borghese palace, a sprawling grassy space with paths for horseback riders and knolls for picnickers. Trees are scattered about and green and yellow birds fight scrawny brown squirrels for branch space. The gardens have been there for six hundred years, way before the rest of the world had even begun to create the pollution we are now desperate to eliminate with our city parks and nature reservations. Rome does not just open a window on ancient cultures; it spotlights today’s in a manner that even the culturally semi-literate can comprehend as a good thing, in spite of what may have been lost in the sweep of time and tourism.
------------------------------ And now for the much-slaved-over video, for which my video partner Tyler went to great lengths to procure a firewire cable (which connects the camcorder to the Mac) and for which he was pick-pocketed in the process:
In Assisi, there is really nowhere to look but up. The buildings aren’t tall, but they loom as if reading over your shoulder, and when you feel their breath on your neck you must look.
When you do, you’ll see nothing but texture. In the architecture, yes – rough-hewn rock is mixed with more recent, geometrical stones and modern-day bricks in the walls. The streets, too, are mostly cobbled. Wood and metal doors to homes and yards are set in the walls like gates to secret gardens. And there are gardens in plenty. The greens are intoxicating. Pines and palm trees live side by side. People raise cactuses next to wild poppies. The flora hides dozens of different kinds of birds, from city street pigeons to happy darting finches, that chirrup and tweet in disregard of the many tourists.
In short, the place itself is a paradox. Sacred shares ground with secular. Modern infringes on ancient. The rustic lingers in the urban. There is an old wooden cart in an alley off the piazza and a red crane repairs a tower held up by Roman columns.
Yet much of the texture comes from the juxtaposition of the people. Assisi is a pilgrimage town, which makes it more of a melting pot than even our home in the States. I’ve heard Italian, Spanish, German, and Swedish. Once in a while I even catch a snatch of English.
Visitors of all ages and races gather in the piazza. A class on tour takes pictures by the fountain. A group of Swedish tweens plays some version of sharks and minnows. Families dine under umbrellas at an open-air restaurant. A man wearing a beret sits on a stone bench and scribbles in a notepad. There are parents, grandparents and children, schools, couples, seekers and pilgrims, all bundled together in one jostling, joyful square. Countless camera eyes are poised to remember what the photographers fear they will not.
So, I have described the people in any tourist town. What makes Assisi unique is that all of these gather in the shadow of churches and basilicas that played major roles in Christian history. The streets bear the names of saints. Shop windows showcase religious souvenirs. To this day, friars and nuns walk the narrow streets, heads covered, alongside bare-shouldered visitors, Vespas, cars and buses.
And it’s relaxed. American tourist towns are so rushed in comparison, urging guests to squeeze in as much activity as possible. Assisi seems to call us simply to be. Enjoy. Take a leisurely meal. Nothing remotely like fast food exists here – the thought must be as appalling as requesting to check books out of the library (which is not allowed; most of the libraries are not even public).
Even groups on tours aren’t frazzled. The only ones in a hurry are the little children, who can’t wait to see the next new thing. As for the rest, they have nowhere to rush to, nothing to cause them stress. Assisi is a sanctuary from such things. Thus, the wine bar bubbles with company throughout the day. A man sits by himself, drinking and watching the traffic. A kid gets water all over his face at the bubbler and simply laughs. Most of the shopkeepers are gracious and patient while we try to communicate with them and everyone seems eager to help, like the friar who brought us around the library and even to the rooms and secret passages below. It seems Assisi extends as far down as it does up.
And everywhere you go, there is always something to look up at. But with the direction of up comes a compulsion to climb, and thus I find myself at La Rocca, a mountaintop castle that kept its eye on the rival city of Perugia once upon a time. From here the city is only patterns – unfolded origami rooftops, quilted farmland laced with wild poppies. You could play tic tac toe with the property lines. Patches of green pepper the rooftops where people have planted gardens. The city spills down the hillside into a valley of a thousand greens.
There are no people or cars from up here, no storefronts or pizzerias or wine bars. It’s hard to call Assisi a city from the mountaintop. With a castle behind me and the quilt below, I’d sooner say I got caught in a time warp. Tradition still holds sway in the stone labyrinths below me; it’s in the very mortar. One might say it is the mortar. Something has held this city together for over a thousand years, and I’m guessing it’s more than rocks.
---------------------- Still sorting through pictures from Rome, but I'll post them in the next couple of days provided I have time. Which I may not since I have to go back to Rome to replace my freaking passport. I dunno what happened to it. I didn't have it leaving for Rome on Friday, but I had it coming through customs at the airport. I remember the guy was all impatient because it took me a second to open up to the page with my photo and he just waved me through without even taking it. But beyond that things get a little fuzzy. I had been traveling for 12 hours at that point. Anything is possible. I could've gotten pick-pocketed by aliens and never known it.
Anyway, the fact now stands that I have to get the damn thing replaced before I can leave the country. I actually would not be opposed to spending a few extra days here, but you know... I might've rationed my Euros better if I'd known that would be the case, as opposed to indulging in so many of those yummy sprize things at the local bar...
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Thus concludes my first weekend working at Claymore! Overall it's a pretty sweet gig. I get to make free drinks (well, one free drink per shift), which means Excavations of Claymore are soon to return! In just two nights, I've already created Crackle Cider and the Golden Mocha. At last my creative taste buds can be exercised to their full potential! Soon my tongue will be nice and buff, like Trogdor's beefy arm. Rawr.
