* * * - Erin rambles forever...

It’s Sunday! Blog post day! As much as I’m finally beginning to feel like a legitimate resident of Florence, my well-intentioned but often sorry Italian is a comic reminder that I’m not as “in” as I’d like to hope. I guess it keeps me humble, right?
It’s been in an interesting week in terms of developing my ideas for this class… or maybe not so interesting is more like it. In terms of really getting at what fascinates me, I’ve really just been following this kind of serendipitous feeling that I talked about last week. The same things keep showing up: little surprise moments of beauty and lots of twinkly, glowy light. Tuesday, after getting out of Regan’s class at 4, I was struck by this bizarre urge to just go to the Arno… so I did. I can’t really explain why… but the shadows were long on the golden ground (finally, sun in Florence!) and I walked from Via della Ruote all the way to Ponte Vecchio… then to Ponte S. Spirito… then the next bridge. I positioned myself smack in the center and sat on the ledge, just watching the colors change in the twilight and the lights emerge in buildings and again, reflected, in the Arno.
I feel as if I’ve done a lot of wandering around this week, just trying to look for little things I haven’t seen before, streets I’ve never been down. On a random street in Santa Croce, I found a big, grated window (the Florentine standard) that someone had outlined a shadow for in black marker. I’m guessing it may just be a traced shadow from when the sun hits the window late in the afternoon, but it’s gorgeous and very fresh to me. It’s kinda interesting to look deeper too, at the implications of a shadow that’s always there… or as a reminder of how our lives are a constant, repeating cycle – of shifting shadows, of everything. In retrospect, I’d really like to see if the actual shadow of the window ever matches up with the traced one – or if it’s even been traced or just concocted.
Personally, I’m still wrestling with this concept of giving or gifts, because I guess one facet of art for me if being able to share a transformative, sweet little experience with another person. That’s why I feel like I’m drawn to these little things, like windows full of pastries, reflections of light, or this little abandoned ball of string I came across near the Uffizi. I don’t know why things give me these reactions, but they do. Or, like this thing, sticking out of stone wall… when I see it, I just think of all the emotion behind it… its creator, walking the streets of Florence, clicking and unclicking the cap of this silver paint marker in their jacket pocket – like a nervous habit, click on, click off…click on, click off… just swimming, I bet, in that glorious heady feeling of being in love, of being overwhelmed with such care and affection for one other human being. Other things pass through his or her head: grocery lists, the events of the day, and so on… people pass… buildings fly by… but, maybe, at some moment, the street was empty. There was a pause, a moment of hesitancy… but, no. The marker came out, and all that feeling got serendipitously left on that little piece of iron. Maybe it was a spur of the moment thing, maybe weeks afterward it was meaningless, but in that moment, it was the realest, purest thing. But, it’s also hidden. You could walk that street every day and potentially not notice it, jutting subtly out of the stone.
Maybe that’s what interests me, like with the newspaper bouquets… that feeling of caring so much for someone, but being too shy to show it or not knowing how to show it. All that emotion just continues to build up and up and forces itself out in these almost embarrassing little manifestations, like the newspaper bouquets or the hidden, street love letters. That childlike scrawl on that little fragment of iron is directed at no one; maybe the artist didn’t have enough guts, or maybe it didn’t even matter. It’s such a selfless expression. Does the object of affection even know it exists? It’s that build-up of affection, that pure, untainted thing… but, as humans, I guess we hesitate. We can’t own up to it. and then, from all this swelling, hidden emotion, all these beautiful things are born… these simple moments that are just loaded with so much feeling that you can’t even scratch on the surface. You just have to have lived and known, and have to imagine the hand behind it, the heart behind it… we all know what it feels like… and we’re somehow blushingly mortified to show how much we care! It’s just so interesting to me how much can go into such a tiny thing, how much is overlooked, and how simple things can be so precious and affect me so powerfully… from the glittering of glass shards to an abandoned ball of colored string. I don’t always get it, but I’m rolling with it. Why not?

Erin