Milan and Turin

Garbage was strewn all over my apartment this morning. The Sherlock Holmes in me deduced from the tipped over garbage can that Tom Sawyer had struck again. I have a cat who applies Yin and Yang to my life by being both demonic and saintly. A friend was picking me up at 8, so I didn’t have time to clean up the spoils of Tom Sawyer’s midnight garbage raid. I got dressed, and quickly drank some microwaved coffee. Then I broke my mug by trying to set it down without looking and misjudging where the bedside table was. It was my mug from Thessaloniki, thankfully an unessential Starbucks mug, but still, a mug that reminded me of one of my favorite cities. I’ll have to go back and get another one.

Over breakfast, my friend and I talked about our recent travels. I went to Milan, Verona, and Turin. She went to Sri Lanka. We had very different, but equally exciting adventures. She saw elephants and water buffalo, I saw art. She went hiking in nature, I went hiking around museums. Italy was revitalizing. In my normal, day-to-day life, I put pressure on myself to create art, but in Italy I was reminded that just looking at art is a creative act in and of itself. 

In Italy, I drank delicious red wine, ate ravioli stuffed with artichoke, ate tiramisu, and twice had the pleasure of talking with two smart and handsome men. Their names were Jacob, pronounced Yacob in Danish, and Livio. We had delightful conversations about books and traveling. In Turin, I relished the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life. Who knew that pumpkin and gorgonzola would be a match made in heaven? The restaurant is called “Ad Hoc Pizza” in Turin. I must voyage back to that pizza restaurant and, while I’m there, go back to the Cinema Museum, which was the highlight of the trip. Milan was fabulous for the opera and the Brera Museum, but Turin was the homerun I needed to win the game. The Cinema Museum cast a magic spell over me that lasted for days. The spell from the opera, although I’d wanted to go to La Scala for years, wore off after a couple hours. I think if I had gone to a more serious opera, I would have felt differently, but I just went to a silly, comedic opera with an unremarkable storyline: Pervy old man marries chaste young girl who steals all his money. At least the costumes and the flying 50s convertible were cool.

This talk of Italian opera led to another kind of opera: soap opera. My friend and I both feel like we’re stuck in one. People around us create petty drama and try to suck us in. I know I didn’t audition for any soap opera, and what’s more, I can’t act. So how did I get into this mess? I suppose the best course is to avoid all drama. That’s one mess I can successfully ignore. The mess made by my cat is one I had no choice but to clean up. For the rest of the day, I felt lightheaded and sick to my stomach. Apparently, the pollution today was much worse than usual, and it may have taken a toll on my health. I drank tea, slept, and because I don’t feel well enough to do anything else, wrote this blog entry. I will sleep now and hope I feel better in the morning.