The End/Her Majesty

Alright, I feel absolutely no legitimacy in making this post given that I haven’t been in Italy since December, but I’d like to straighten things out proper and award myself some personal closure in the process.  Let’s go back in time to tie up the last few knots in the story.

I arrived at a crossroads in mid-November. I had the opportunity to establish myself in Bari, as an English teacher with the aim of staying until mid-summer.  However, the sleigh bells of the holiday season were beginning to ring and the opportunity to return home beckoned powerfully.

I was torn.  One side of me wanted to stay in Southern Italy, continue my study of Italian,  live la vita Bari, and perpetuate the gratifying liberty of living on the road.  Tugging me from the other side was a longing to see my friends and family, New York City, a new stage of life, and a deep satisfaction of the experience so far.  I was split 50/50 and I couldn’t rationalize it, so I let me subconscious sort it out.  I consulted my dreams, my emotional reactions to: music, e-mails, advice and conversations, and the way I spent my free time. To sum it up, my focus naturally began to drift away from life in Bari.

I decided to come home.  It ultimately FELT like the right thing to do (Capitalized felt in the sense that I listened to my instinctual feelings as opposed to a use of the past tense in order to forecast a change of mind in the future).  I spent a lot of time thinking about my decision between booking the flight in November and arriving home in late December.  If I was to write a paper about it or something, I would organize my thoughts somewhere along these lines.

This kind of traveling as a form of escapism, like watching movies, playing video games, and taking drugs, is  valuable and truly didactic for a certain period of time, but it’s also important to graduate from the experience, taking with you the things you’ve learned along the way.

Conscience: Escapism how?  escapism from what? Isms isms isms, but no definition?

I suppose what drives me to travel, to explore, is a dissatisfaction with some institutions here in the U.S and a resulting curiosity about the rest of the world. Things like Scandinavian welfare and Southern European lifestyle really appeal to me because they ease some of the blues I feel at home.  However, every place has its ups and downs. Everyone in the world feels the strain of the global capitalist system in some way or another.  The super-market is always around the corner. Permanently moving to Italy was never going to resolve these dissatisfactions. Accountability for one’s own lifestyle is everything, and the endless potential of this world makes this a beautiful, beautiful thing.  I realized: Life is what you make of it, and a poor craftsman blames his tools.

On a more personal level, the day is meaningless without meaningful relationships:  “Happiness is only real when shared.”  Although I was making a lot of good friends in Italy, leaving my friends and family in the States could never make sense to me.

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A Little Reminiscence

I sit here in Hoboken under the fury of a cosmic blizzard, thumbing through my phone book and reminiscing about the names through which I scroll.  There’s Andrea, the owner of the guitar bar where I waited on tables and strummed Dylan tunes;  Betta and Iside, my two lovely roommates in seaside Bari; English Express, the school where I taught Italian “youths” English; Lorenzo, the owner of Fish Pub who sent me on covert marketing missions in the Florentine universities; Marin and Alessandro, maghi delle seghe; Nicla, the farm owner who employed me on her picturesque farmhouse in the middle of Tuscany; and Maja, my bluebird from Denmark.  People are the greatest resource this world has to offer and it is these characters who shape the memory so well.

The pilgrimage to Italy was a lovely six months of liberty and la vita dolce. I’m going to miss the fertility of the Mediterranean peninsula, the Sunday strolls along cobblestone streets, the balmy evenings, the sweet clementines after dinner, the romance of the Italian language and the sanguine blood of the Italian nation. Despite my sappy longings, I’ve made my peace with these memories and look forward to whatever it is that lies ahead.

Since returning to America, I’ve picked up a few jobs to keep my hands busy.  I’m currently working as a blogger for xanga.com, interning at an independent publishing company in SoHo and enduring the pains of an indentured clerical servant at a home health care company in Union City, NJ.

I’m quite busy in these days but perhaps I’ll have the time to start another blog if there is enough demand.  I’ll call it: Craigorio Does Regular-Ass Life. Until then:

Buon Viaggio,

Craig