Live from Firenze

Complete day 1 in Florence is in the bag but I must start with yesterday.

I left the train tickets on the kitchen table. I left my shoes in Canneregio beside the bed... I think. I was upset all day because I realized the first of these mistakes as we packed to leave Venice ... no, I must go back further. First, we overslept... No further. Two nights ago...

It started when I broke that man's candle on the Strada Nuovo after a complimentary aperetif and a bottle of Valpolicella when my husband told me to pose next to the display of brightly lit candle holders. Who said you can drink all the wine you want in Italy because it has a lower alcohol content so you wonàt get drunk? (By the way, the drinking age in Venice is strictly adhered to! No one under 16 can drink!) Anyway, they probably never had this valpolicella! So, tipsy, I placed my fingers on the ledge not realizing the candles were resting on a piece of wood that was as tipsy as I was. I didnàt see it fall; I heard the crash and the man yelling in Italian. I said "I'll buy it!" but he kept yelling so I started to walk away which made him yell in English, "Where are you going?" I said I had offered to buy it but he was being mean! So he got nicer. I offered him money and he started giving me change, insisting I only had to pay his cost... I think he gave me more that I had given him but it was dark so who knows. And then he insisted on wrapping it! And then I started crying! I don't know why because it was over but there I was, in a puddle. And I realized, I hate making mistakes!!! Boy, was I right.

So we go back to our beautiful hotel and book a tour for 10:30 a.m. to the island of Murano to see the glass factories and I ask for a wake-up call at 7 which never comes. We wake up at 9:20 thanks to the maid who closed our shutters when she turned down our bed thus leaving us in blissful darkness. We fly out of bed, grab breakfast, arrange our check out, leave the bags with the bellman so we can quickly grab them as we head for our 3:30 train to Florence and then it hits me... the tickets! I had put all our papers in a blue folder weeks ago and when the tickets arrived by Fedex, I put them there as well. But two days before the trip, our travel arranger sent me a whole new set of vouchers so I removed the old ones and put the new ones in the folder. On the day we left, I took the folder and, on a whim, told my husband to put the envelope in his suitcase so we'd have two copies. This would have been perfect since the train tickets were in the envelope, and had my husband listened to me, we would have been fine. But he didn't. It remained on the kitchen table and we left for Italy.

So I spent the entire day beating myself up. Why should I have expected he would bring the envelope. I have never held him responsible for any of the "business" of our lives. WHy would I expect he'd start now. My mistake ached in my body all day, It was a pall over me as we took the boat to Murano and walked the beautiful cobbled streets and bridges of that wonderland of handmade glass objects. I was nauseaus as we walked to the ferrovia to get new tickets for Florence; sick in my stomach thinking about calling my son in CT and asking his to overnight them to us so we could get a refund on the unused tickets and still get to Rome on Thursday; just miserable as i watched the Italian countryside slip past the window, and somwhere between Padova and Bologna I realized I had forgotten my shoes! I was certain of it. In my haste to pack in Venice, I was certain I had neglected to pick them up from beside the bed. And the shock started me laughing. They were the most comfortable shoes I have ever owned and they were in Venice and I was on a train I had paid for twice to a city I had never seen before but I was certain would cripple me if I tried to walk it in my mocassins. My husband was sleeping and I was shaking with laughter. Tears stremed down my face and the woman next to me must have thought I'd gone crazy because she didn't so much as look in my direction which made me laugh harder. But I hadn't lost my mind. Just my shoes. And my tickets. And the pain in my heart. It was gone.

We got to the hotel, called my son who reminded us how we'd be lost without him. We agreed. We went to our room (another story) and I opened my suitcase. There were my shoes,right on top. Perhaps the curse has passed.

Staying Present

I lectured today on the need to stay “present”. Well, it wasn’t much of a lecture actually. I was teaching Acting 1 to a group of high school students, which is quickly becoming a really cool way to start the day. I mean, just when I started to be convinced that I hated teaching, I got the chance to start a year with kids in this public arts magnet school and, you know what? It ain’t so bad. In fact, I’m thinking I could be pretty good at it, if I could be exempt from the formal lesson plans and the bureaucracy and the cafeteria duty, etc.

But back to being “present”. I have gotten in the habit of looking at the calendar and saying, “Two weeks from now, I’ll be in Venice.” Two weeks from this moment, I’ll be having a glass of vino rosa in la Piazza San Marco.” Two weeks from now, I’ll be driving to Sorrento.” And that’s not good. Between now and then, I have a lot of stuff to do! Most of it requires a great deal of concentration! If I’m focused on “then”, I explained to my class, I wouldn’t be a very good teacher “now”. I saw them nodding in agreement as I suggested they put away thoughts of their upcoming history class and stayed focused on the task at hand. Be “here” right now.

This blog entry is a case in point. There’s no wi-fi where I am sitting, babysitting two kids who have been given “lunch detention”. There are several things I could be doing to make better use of this time, but the lack of an internet connection prevents me from catching up on my several other jobs. I could bitch. I could be frustrated. Instead, what a nice moment to relax and let my thoughts go where they want to go. … to Italia.