File che fanno senso

"File che fanno senso" - which I THINK is Italian for "lines that make sense" (corrected translations welcome, amici italiani!). This is something that simply does not exist in Italy that I have a renewed appreciation for as I am back here in the States. The blissfully simple 'rope and stanchion' system that is so prevalent here in the good ole' U-S-of-A, combined with a country full of people who are not only familiar with said system, but respectful of its role and the resulting orderly waiting that it facilitates.

Italians are shockingly bad at lines. Indeed, they don't really even HAVE lines, more clumps of impatient nebulousness moving generally in one direction. This is something I was completely unaware of before moving there: it's not highlighted in the guidebooks or commonly known as one of the cultural stereotypes (like amply-sized grandmas, dark chest hair, ass-pinching, or gold chains -- some, to be fair, more accurate than others).

No, you actually have to get there (and be waiting for something in a group) to experience the true disjointed, expanding and contracting, nebulous, shoving, edging forward, shrewd shoulder placement, total disregard for others' presence and personal space, complete shared psychosis that is the Italian 'line' system.

By contrast, we Americans are brilliantly ordered. "My dance space - your dance space". One after another. Every person gets his turn. I'm proud that America leads the globe in a few things, and I can definitely add respectful group waiting to the list.

File under: Things I didn't Know I Missed

Bourbon. REALLY good bourbon, made by people who know them some bourbon. On the rocks. Make it a double.

Fried chicken. And big salads. But the chicken rocks.

Big band swing music and a guy who REALLY knows how to dance.

People who say 'yes, ma'am' and somehow don't make me want to kill them.

A gift of a really swanky black buffalo felt Stetson hat, steam molded to my head with a sassy style by the good folks at Wild Bills. Looks like I was born in it.

Putting on bluejeans and aforementioned hat and two-stepping around a dance floor for hours. (quick, quick, slow ... slow. Quick, quick ... slow, slow.)

Poker. Watching Sparky do us proud taming the mechanical bull.

The 'yeeee-haw'.

Melt-in-your-mouth beef brisket and coleslaw.

TexMex and LoneStar beer.

America is a whole bunch of really different places, but Kentucky and Texas are culinarily and socially about as far from Italy as I can imagine. Yee-haw, baby. Nice places to visit.

So close, and yet so far

Ohhhh, where IS the justice??!?!! I live in Italy. I rang in 2006 standing on the front porch of a 1650 farmhouse in Tuscany (in the sleeting rain, yes, but there nonetheless). And starting this week, Torino (maybe 5 hours from my home?) is hosting the Winter Olympics, a point of pride for Italians and those of us who love Italy. So that makes it even more depressing that I watched the amazing (they-did-us-proud) opening ceremonies of said Olympics on Tivo, standing in a hotel room on the 15th floor of the InterContinental Hotel Dallas??

It's the same reason that I watched Katie Couric's 'pre-Olympic tour', broadcasting from my newly-adopted Firenze, through slightly teary eyes - missing being there, as I sat in a hotel room bed in Louisville, Kentucky.

I really hope that GiaGina and Laurie and all my other new friends from Torino are having an amazing Olympic experience. But I'm on the road, sadly far from Italy and the Olympic spirit.

Because sitting in the sun drinking Chianti doesn't pay the bills, baby. And work means travel this time of year. Which also means seeing a series of people I haven't seen in a while.

I know, my situation is a strange one; chat-worthy at cocktail parties or business soirees. At least twice this week, I got the 'trained monkey' nudge from a friend of mine ... "Hey, now tell him where you live". After the initial story and ooh-aaaah reactions, invariably, one of a series of predictable yet probing questions is posed:

"Well, when are you coming back?"
"Aren't you really lonely?" "I mean, have you made any friends?"
"When you say 'home' do you mean Italy or DC?"
"Is this about a guy?" and/or the more subtle "Did you move alone?"
(Even better...) "So, have you found an Italian man?"
"Oh, are you still over there? Does it feel like home yet?"
"Well, where do you stay when you're back? Doesn't it feel weird to not have anywhere to really call home here?"
"Are you going to stay there? Is this permanent??"

My typical response is usually something flippant like, "Home is where my suitcase is, I guess. My crystal ball doesn't work that far into the future." No kidding, I have told the story no less than 500 times in the last three weeks, and I'm kind of over it, now having shortened it to the least possible information that still gets the point across.

I get it; I'm being oversensitive and irritable. And I know it's an interesting story. It's not that I don't have serious thoughts about these things; I do. It's just that these approaches, usually at a loud cocktail party with people I've just met, often make me feel like a circus sideshow act... "Look here! The crazy girl who sold everything and moved to Italy! Poke and prod her emotions! Ask probing questions that you wouldn't dare ask your neighbors! Watch her survive and try to live up to your expectations!"

I take it as a compliment that people a) notice and b) care enough to make my life the subject of their precious cocktail party chatter (must be a slow news week). However, the continual 'animal in the zoo' feeling can be a little overwhelming. I find it remarkable that people expect my life to somehow be more more mapped out than their own is; or that somehow my decisions are less personal than theirs, more open to public commentary and dissection. I also find it FASCINATING that in Italy, where I legitimately *am* the 'animal in the zoo' - the straniera ... noone asks these things, ever. The only question I OCCASIONALLY get there is whether or not I'm afraid to be living in a rural area alone, but none of the OTHER questions. Are Italians more polite, or do they simply take things at face value? Hmmmmmm.

Imagine if my responses were equally probing ...

"Well, I don't know. Are you going to cheat on your wife again? You know sometimes these things can't be predicted."
"Sure, it can be lonely sometimes, you know, like that empty nagging feeling you get when your husband is late at the office AGAIN."
"Maybe. It's kind of like you asking if you are going to have another child, or do the ones you have seem to fulfill you?"
"I might stay, kind of like how you will probably stay in the house you just moved into if the new neighbors aren't creepy, you keep your job and stay healthy, your kids like the school, and your husband doesn't leave you for his secretary. Life's full of a lot of unpredictability."

The thing is, people don't want the real answers. They just want me to regale them with the pretty parts of the story. I'm their own personal version of Diane Lane (what I wouldn't give...) They want the fairytale; what they IMAGINE it to be.

And it is that, sometimes. The other times, imagine what happens to the mojo of the cocktail party if I burst into tears, clinging emotionally to the "aren't you lonely" questioner!?!?

It makes me value all the more the people who know how and when to ask the questions, and who can stomach hearing the real answers.

I completely lost my voice this weekend; no kidding. A miniature karmic gift of a legitimate reason not to answer any questions. I didn't realize quite what a responsibility it was to be living so many other peoples' dreams. They want the highlights and the well-edited big screen version, not the reality TV.

Pressure can also create diamonds

I know that I've been gone for a while, and I'm sorry. I've missed you. I hope it shall suffice to say that I've been in the midst of a few weeks of intense work and my blogging skills are directly proportional to the number of hours' sleep I get in any given night. As I've been averaging about 3.5, my blogging has been - as you know - nonexistent. It's all I can do just to slam a little mascara and lipstick on daily, and paste on my perky 'good morning / managing a crowd of 1000 with one hand tied behind my back' work face, much less be keeping up with this.

Capt. Silver Fox has a saying: "Fatigue Makes Cowards of Us All." I know from firsthand experience that this is true. And when I hit that point of fatigue, if I do not have the luxury of cowardice(hiding in my hotel room until 11 am, when I had to actually confront reality today), then I am generally an exhausted and easily-triggered puddly emotional mess. A fascinating juxtaposition for someone so normally publicly 'together'.

It takes about 10 days of continual pressure to reduce me to this point ... (the 10 days of no sleep and overblown expectations and constant barrage of inquiry that I have just been through)... after which, on day 11, anyone I remotely respect can reduce me to tears simply by saying something nice to me. It happens, predictably, every year, 'round about the last day of our conference (which coincides with a much more important anniversary in my life - the day my father died.)

Last year, it was 'Tearjerker' (the Poet Laureate.) This year, the dubious honor went to John. I could find a nickname for him, but it wouldn't do him justice. So for now, he's just 'John' -- sufficiently anonymous that most wouldn't know him, but unique in the world to those who do. His words ... his outreach ... his humanity in a sea of anonymity, meant everything to me this week. Noisy bowling alley be damned, 'there are moments in time that are meant to be held like fragile, breakable things,' and that was one of them. The ability to ignore the chaos and selflessly offer a quiet piece of your soul in a world where superficial connections are the norm is a rare talent and gift. Thank you.

Our life's wealth is measured by the connections that we have made, and I am a rich woman indeed.