A Place To Read A Book And Write A Letter: Venice

This weekend the whole Arkansas in Rome program took a field trip to Venice, the city of salt water and the ever present feeling that one is sinking. There are small roads in Venice, but all mass transport takes place on water - no wheels for rolling or for steering, only fins and helms. All cars are parked and left outside the city, on the mainland. Not even a Vespa is permitted.

Venice was built on a marsh, which seems to happen a lot with old major cities - which is ironic, given what a bad idea that seems to be. Settlers fitted wooden poles into the mud of the ocean floor, waited for a spell, then started building on top of said wood. After learning this, the whole of the time I spent in Venice was accompanied by a small minor fear in the backwoods of my brain that said that I was about to bear witness to a second Atlantis, and that maybe in another three thousand years people with say that Venice was just a myth, and that Cass Trumbo was just a legend - truly, no one could ever be that handsome and smart. Certainly no one could ever run as fast as they say he could.

One thing I found interesting was the patron saint of Venice, St. Mark. In the beginning of the city, there was another, lesser saint tasked with divine protection. Once the power of the Venetians grew, they decided they deserved a higher ranking saint, possibly one who was on Jesus's T5, and so they sailed off into the sunset and stole St. Mark's body from Alexandria. When asked about this turn of events, St. Mark had no comment.

Our eccentric professor Emilio led us through the smaller streets of Venice, touring buildings and making up stories about his lost loves. Not once, but twice did he feign an attempt to commit suicide over fictional affairs, trying to climb over railings and jump into the ocean before his students could hold him back. In the end, though, no one was harmed. Though I did see a Penn State student jump off one of the two bridges spanning the Grand Canal, landing in the water twenty feet below. When asked if I was next, I said I'd jump for a dollar and good moral support. However, no American dollars were to be had, and no support was to be found.

Abstract art is on the opposite end of the spectrum from understanding. Venice is one of the three places in the world with a Guggenheim Collection, which is apparently a big deal. I didn't know. I went there by myself, which was a very bad decision - I think the Guggenheim took a piece of my soul. I spent about an hour wandering aimlessly, unable to form any sort of plan for seeing the entire museum, nor to assess the meaning of various works, so assailed by the forces of surrealism was I, that I was driven to abstraction (which is much worse than being driven to distraction).

The Guggenheim is staffed almost entirely by young people, earning pennies on internships from around the world; and I say around the world, but most were from English speaking countries. Heavily discouraged by the surrounding art, I turned to talking to the staff, and managed to strike out with the British answer to the strawberry blonde.

ME: What do you make of it?

SB: I believe it's Picasso's The Studio.

ME: Oh. I thought it was a rocket ship.

SB: Well, that's obviously his self portrait, and that's obviously a figure of a woman.

ME: Yeah, you see, I figured that was a square, and that there was a circle, but beyond that I was lost.

SB: Then you are an idiot.

And you might say, no one could either be that rude or know that little about Picasso, but if I'm lying I'm dying.

I Am Disconcerted At The Palazzo Farnese

On Wednesday morning, my roommates woke me up thirty minutes early and told me that I needed to get to the bus station Termini lickety-split. I complied, without question, in the same manner with which, an hour later, I boarded an out-bound bus when so instructed: with an unaffected air that suggests I have no idea what's going on, and have not had any such ideas since arriving in this country over two months ago.

The what's-going-on was shortly explained, as it had been the previous day and the day before that, but that was an explanation I missed, because once I sat down in the bus I immediately took out my current book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which, by the way, was recommended to me by Seth Cohen on the first season Chrismukkah episode of the O.C. That is where I get most of my reading material.

Instances like these, missing out on important instructions and instruction because I am star gazing or, the more often occurrence, glazed gazing, where I become as comatose as an animated person can, define my time here. Ignoring Professor Emilio's itinerary outline in favor of my own personal world, complete with personal rules and physics, I think, is a cookie cutter cross section of my Roman academic career.

Once inside the massive Palazzo Farnese, I caught up to a classmate and finally got some answers. "We're in the Palazzo Farnese," she said, with the words you here in movies where someone caught time traveling asks a passerby what year it is; "weren't you listening?"

The Farnese were a very powerful Roman family, spawning multiple popes and many of their secular counterparts. They built this palace about an hour north of Rome, as the bus drives, but I guesstimate it took longer by horse and carriage. The building is a pentagon centered on  a circle; the innards dazzle with biblical frescoes and a sense of humanism that almost upends such frescoes with sarcasm. Much more interesting were the gardens.

Behind the Palazzo Farnese lie three successive gardens, each increasing in magnificence. The backyard is a small, take a turn about the garden type; very square and small, hemmed in with shrubbery crafted like tile. The second garden was a bit larger, and resembled (as was a common motif there) as miniature hedge maze. Show me a man who does not dream of participating in and reigning victorious over a hedge maze race, and I will show you proof that there are aliens, and that they have certainly not ever heard of a hedge maze, poor things, or they would wish to race in them, as well.

The third upended and moved itself up the street, at the top of the hill, in a bit wilder and more secluded suburb than the first two. Walking up the path, it became obvious that the Palazzo Farnese was a hot spot for jerry atrics; we were by far the youngest, and apart from our group, everyone was living off their retirement checks, I imagine. There must have been a shuffleboard hidden away in one of the more dense recesses of the park, because there was no other reason for so many old people to congregate in such a place.

The upper park was the Italian Pemberley; I realize that houses and lots do not have legs, but, upon my honor, I swear the Palazzo Farnese stepped out of a Jane Austen novel. The grounds were sprawling, and the bushes trimmed in such a way as to coil about the place with a purpose; no, the hedges were not so high as to satisfy my height, but they would certainly give young children and dwarves a run for their money. There was such a symmetry in the place that even fountains had their twins, facing them from across the lawn; Emilio at one point funneled us all into a small room, which soon revealed itself to be one of those fountains, long dormant, soon activated, as it laid in wait for unsuspecting Americans, pied by piper professors.

As bluehairs filed in like wayward Israelites under new management, I realized that the reason America is considered so uncultured by the world is simply because we have no real gardens. Any country without such a reserve as the Palazzo Farnese should be considered barbaric; add this to the ever growing list of such things. It shall join the ranks of widespread public transportation, multi-use buildings, and coffee shops that don't demand payment up front.

A Place To Read A Book And Write A Letter: Florence

Florence is usually identified as the city of the Renaissance; in fact, it was the city that won back all the English after the Catholic Church scared them off. The imposition of romanticism (whatever that means; I got it from a book) was so strong on Florence that in 1966, when it was flooded with heavy levels of mud (which, in sepia, looks a lot like dark chocolate), the entire world created a committee to fund it's restoration, and international youths descended upon the city to wipe clean all the manuscripts and etchings available.

Naturally, as a program, this could not be passed up. So the entire class took a weekend field trip to Florence, headed by our professor Emilio, a six shooter long ago loaded with art history. What's this Emilio? Bam! Michelangelo! And this? Bam! Brunelleschi! Who - Bam! Donatello! Bam! Audrey Hepburn! Bam! Bam! Bam!

(And yes, Audrey Hepburn did come up, as Emilio compared her merits to Julie Andrews for the good part of a half hour. No surprise, Audrey won.)

The dominating figure in the townscape is the Duomo, flanked by a separate Baptistry. The Dome is advertised to have 463 steps. This time, they are right. The climb to the top is measured in intervals, and at the halfway point tourists are afforded a chance to exit onto the catwalk, right underneath the final judgement frescoes; far away, the Last Judgement looks old and outdated. Up close, however, it literally scared my socks off (I later found my socks on the floor of the cathedral, having dropped six stories down. But here's the kicker: my shoes stayed on my feet the whole time. How in the world does that happen?).

The Baptistry is famous for its golden doors, solid metal doors that, in 1966, were swept away by mud and replaced with imitations, for insurance purposes, I suppose. Less known about the Baptistry is that it was the very chapel in which Dante himself was baptized.

Florence was the city that gave Dante the boot, by the way. His home turf threw him out and told him to, and I quote, "keep the change, you filthy animal" (that's a rough translation of his Inferno). From there he was forced to wander Italy, like the show Kung Fu, except without the use of martial arts. Or anything remotely similar. So it's not like it at all.

There is a Dante museum in Florence, fashioned out of his old house, but it sucks - and rightly so. I would expect nothing more than a large collection of Wikipedia entries, pasted to the walls in an elementary way, from the city which banished him (which, coincidentally, is how the museum goes).

Florence also is the home and shelter of Michelangelo's David, whom everyone has seen in pictures. A picture is of him, though, is not worth moon rocks on Mars. Seeing him in person was an overpowering experience. I like to think that he forced his way into the canon of art by his sheer size.

Our hotel had an English language CNN. I fell asleep bingeing in the news of the world.