Eternal City, Internal Exposure

*Italy is 6 hours ahead of EST (the timezone which Ontario falls under)


Jet lagged, stiff and sore. Great food though! Thursday night dinner was a savory meal of wonderous pasta with olive oil, capers and black olives, toast with olive oil and proscuitto crudo, which is raw, salted meat from the leg of an adult pig (my papa got it as a gift from coworkers, the entire leg, that is).

I learned that as an Italian citizen, if I make it to 70 years of age, I will get a government pension of 400 Euros a month. Today that would be approximately $600, but who knows what that will mean, if it will mean anything, if there will be a coherent Italian government at all, in 46.5 years.

I did a lot of dancing before coming here, and have some serious stretching to do to cure my muscular hangover in my lower back and butt. I think I will start exercising today.

Some of you may have met Lucy, the French WWOOFer at WV in April-May. Well she is now back in France, and will begin work in Toulouse as one who advises homeowners and businesses how to make their homes more energy-efficient. She has a passion in ecoconstruction, and Toulouse happens to be the major city in the Pyrenees area where Stephanie and I plan to explore, so we would like to arrange working together on an ecoconstruction project.

In the back of a French ecoconstruction magazine there are ads for volunteer opportunities with ecoconstruction projects. We will begin WWOOFing, and then look into these other volunteer opportunities.

Alice is my little sister-with-another-mother. She is 12, and is a tennis fanatic. She practices 4 hours almost every day after school. She is a wonderful girl. Some of you might have met her before.

Elisabetta is my stepmother, and she manages some hotel rooms and timeshare for tourists in Roma, two blocks from the Vatican City. If any you of are planning a trip to Roma, I can hook you up.


I have been observing myself as I have gone through a year of large and unexpected changes in my life. What I think I am noticing is that I am starting to get a hang of this staying in the present moment thing, and it is resulting in some interesting reactions. As time rolls on, and I have come closer, within days, to the ends and beginnings of new situations (coming to Whole Village, leaving Whole Village, starting an evestrough and window cleaning job in Toronto, coming to Italy, and meeting Stephanie tomorrow after 5 months of long distance correspondence--which, by the way, is longer than the total time we spent together before we parted!), I only experience the slightest emotional effects as I would conventionally experience (those of impatience, excitement, nervousness, anxiousness, depression, fixation on fantasy imaginations of the future). Instead, things seem quite ordinary.

Let me tell you what sort of ordinary. This is a whole world away from the boring, routine, numbing ordinary. It is a calm, satisfactory ordinary, an ordinary which I react to with light emotions, and sometimes what can only be described as non-emotions.

These emotions are usually externally imposed, it is almost like people momentarily convince me that I should normally feel these emotions, perhaps because they feel them when they imagine themselves in my shoes (anxiety, excitement) and so it is to an extent a transference of emotional state. It is short-lived, however.

An analogy. When one sits in a nice restaurant with good company, good food, some light background ambient music of some kind playing. One is engaged in the person infront of them, the eyes, words, posture, engaged in their food, engaged in the tastes, the textures, the throat and belly sensations. Sometimes the music will demand attention, even for an instant, and perhaps one tries to recognize the music, or make an emotional judgement of it. But the person and food infront of them is so engaging, the music drifts into the subconscious quickly. Even if the music is disagreable, it is forgiven, as the food and company overpower this negativity with captivating pleasure.

This background music is what the uncalled for thoughts of the future and past, and the emotions that arrive hanging off them like pilots of small hang gliders, represent to me a majority of the time.

Sometimes, of course, the background music is captivating, and comes to the foreground, either because it is so fantastic, or the food and company are not.

I enjoy writing. I haven't written very often, and perhaps that is why I enjoy it so much. I find with many pleasures, that delayed gratification enhances their pleasurability. I have abstained (voluntarily or not) from food, sex, intimacy, warmth, H2O, sleep, rest, sun, marijuana, alcohol, fresh air, cardio, heavy lifting, conversation, socializing, reading, chocolate, coffee, and water, and oh boy are they almost virginally sweet when I return to them.

However, I would like to write more often, and you readers can help me by commenting on my blog! Stimulate me! I will be the first to admit that social influence is a powerful influence on my behaviour (In Canada it is with an "ou" like colour and harbour, correct?).

I think I will go and exercise soon at the little gym at Elisabetta's workplace (it looks like it is raining in the Eternal City this morning).

Unless I write another entry later on today, or I find a cyber cafe in the small town of 12 000 near the mill called Amelia (which supposedly dates back to over 1000 BCE, pre-Roman, pre-Etruscan), I will not be writing again until sunday the 17th.

So I will leave you with a question, which I encourage you to respond to publicly on this blog: why does pleasure tend to increase in its own absence?

Cheers,
Mmmmmmaurizio