Introductions!

Expansion of "About Me"
Ciao ragazzi,
My name is Cara, born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. I have a northern east coast affinity and accent, I’m proud to be from “da burgh”, and I love four seasons even if I suffer terrible allergies and I hate the cold. I graduated form Penn State University—Yes I am a big Nittany Lion and Steeler fan--with a degree in visual art and art history because I am an aspiring artist. Currently, I am living in Italy in an attempt to beat the current financial crisis—working, studying, and living. You will find that I am fascinated with this country and culture, and I am obsessed with truly becoming a part of the fabric of this society. My deep love comes from my Italian-American roots, and I have a deep appreciation for the history and the people who have come before you. My greatgrandmother is a great inspiration to me, and I find it lovely that I retraced her voyage in the other direction—vowing to learn the language, study the culture, understand the complicated political and social structures, and truly soak in a new life experience living on the boot. I would also love to share my “research” with you all! Since December 2008, I have met some truly incredible people, and I have grown more than I probably realize since I have transitioned to my new lifestyle. This blog starts this summer even though I hopped over the pond with two suitcases and one acquaintance in Milan, Italy months before. The fun of this blog is seeing how I combat the waves, currents, and obstacles that come my way during these tumultuous 20’s while living in this fabulous country. My life is incredibly unstable, and sometimes I don’t know if I am being courageous or stupid.

Of course I find calling myself an artist a bit disconcerting, but I believe an artist is anyone who has an uncontrollable impulse to create and capture different realities—as I have. I love life and culture, painting, photography, travel, journalism, sociology, foreign languages, intriguing people, descriptive adjectives, and interesting stories. I also like making lists because I’m incapable of paring down or summarizing things that inspire me. I am a girl traveling through her mid-twenties, and I have recently found upon my official entrance into the “real world,” that I actually have no applicable skills to any structured working environment—nor can I picture myself working in one. I have always worked as a freelance mural and portrait painter during my free time, rejecting doing free internships in galleries because I didn’t have the money. I believe in following your heart and living each moment of your life—telling the people “I love you” when its true, and conquering your fears. I think the film, “Sound of Music,” ruined me as a girl because since then, my main goal in life has always been to spin in a flurry dress, singing on windy mountaintop whirl-wind worlds. Therefore, in different senses of that analogy—I try to spin freely when I find the chances in life.

Challenges are exciting for me! Despite my positive outlook, my chosen pathway looks more like a jungle where I was given a pickaxe to chop and find my way. I would like to face the instability of my life with a good attitude; despite the many difficulties I face pursuing my dreams and my ideal environments, I feel that you should follow your heart no matter what, with a reasonable dose of using your head for rationality. For now, I am eating gelatos, pizzas, taking in the history, marveling at the art, learning the language, kissing the boys, and enjoying high-flying adventures and experiences in Spaghetti land. Join me in my adventure, because who knows where this road will go—least of all me!! The Odyssey.






Note: I wrote the following excerpt as an introduction on a rainy day, and I hope that it will provide you with a brief summary of my current life situation. However, I believe that as I continue to write, you will learn more and more about my crazy little life. This is my third blog, but this is the first blog that I would like to make public. Unfortunately, I really love some of my "old entries", and I might throw a couple into this new writing venture for someone's reading pleasure. I hope that you will enjoy joining me on my adventure as I meander and speculate the roads of my mid-twenties. Enjoy!!!

<3 Cara

I would like to begin a rather disenchanting story about a girl who finds herself disillusioned along her little life’s journey, and naturally very lost. They say that life is a natural progression, but I have been bucking the currents ever since I was young because I see something truly distorted and unnatural for me to grow up in this structured environment. I am living in the years of the recently created category and the so-called “odyssey” generation of youth that travels from jobs and lovers, constructing resumes without creating roots or long-term commitments; I am 24 years old—just turned in March.

I have just discovered that I actually have gained no useful skills to insert myself in the current working world, and considering the ongoing global financial crisis, I really don’t think that jobs are really looking for my paper description; what a shame and incredibly blatant and conceivable. So blatant I could stamp it on myself. Insert: sarcastic chuckle because I have just pictured myself as some kind of strange and awkward lamp dinosaur from the 80’s with an amber lampshade—dangling balls included--wasting away in some garage. But no, this would insinuate that I had a function at one point in time, so now I am thinking of other humorous metaphors that are pathetic in their uselessness. In this aspect, the object becomes very dear because it is so pointless, in my opinion.

Ahh…I have to bring this up! The other day I was looking over my balcony in someone’s little quadratic backyard. The yard was normal with laundry hanging to the left and a lovely grill to the right with a big wood-burning stove. Smack in the middle of the yard, in the middle of everything and nowhere, there was a single fern protected by a square of white stones bigger than the plant itself. It is probably the best thing that I have seen this whole month! This is what I mean by “dear in its pointlessness”—someone decided that this one random fern should be “protected or highlighted” in the middle of this yard, and one day they found 12 stones and formed a square around it. This is priceless…but in a sad poetic way.

By the way, my name means “dear” in Italian; however it means “expensive” after the noun, which is far from correct in my opinion. “Face” in Spanish, but I prefer to speak Italian.

My fern story could lead to my discussion and fascination with yard gnomes and other decorations that people choose to put in the lawns, but I will spare you the pain of my speculations.

Excuse me, you will have to get used to my digressions because this is my nature—one subject leads me down absurd and uncanny associations that tend to confuse the listener. This is probably why it is best that I write so that I can actually get it all out to facilitate direct thinking. Not possible. Cara’s written therapy.

I guess I am writing because I have many things to say of no authority, which would also function as a perfect metaphor for my current situation, or my life. In any case, ironic, metaphoric, or whatever—I feel that I have something to impart and of course you can feel free to listen and interact with my meandering thoughts. Feel free to also comment from your authorized or unauthorized position. Maybe you have a certificate that says you know something? Yes?

I say that I am an artist, but what is an artist anyways? Of course, I draw and paint and have an obsessive need to capture colors, pictures and moments, but does this really justify my description? I feel that true art is nature, and an artist is anyone who tries to express, capture, or interact with it. Screw all the philosophy books about the definition of art, and listen to stupid little me: art is in the eye of the beholder. If you are the beholder, you can describe what you are beholding, and there is no authority that should have the deeming power. Obviously you have scholars that can tell you a thing or two, but let us allow the equality of free description.

Poor Nigel Wartenburg wrote a lovely little book about the “Question of Art,” and I appreciated his direct way of dissecting and evaluating recent and poignant theories of the grand question. However he ended his well-composed book saying basically that there is no definition to art. Ha-what a dramatic and obvious ending? I can appreciate that philosophers obsess over water-tight definitions to complex realities or non-realities in the world, but there are some studied subjects that we can call a waste of breath. In this case, my writing can be considered a waste of breath for those who believe it to be so.

Oh yes, I am an “artist.” I also say this because I have so many interests that I think that the title gives me the freedom to describe all the other beautiful connections and intricacies of the world. I once described to my one boyfriend, the only boy I have ever loved, that my perfect job description would be that of an “appreciator.” Appreciator in the sense of one who is willing and filled with a craving to appreciate everything that life has to offer—the good, the bad and the grey. It is justified then that I would invent a job that would perfectly describe my skill set. Of course I blurted this out at age 19 so I should have known then that I was destined for quixotic failure.

Failure: My one greatest fear in life is that all my high-flying ambitious dreams will be dashed in one flat moment of realization and grounding, a disillusion that is too great to handle. I am filled with such exuberant energy and naïve embrace of the world that I am almost bound for this romantic failure, and this is almost sickeningly funny. I am on some kind of julliet flying on a roller coaster destined to let me crash in an unexpected turn. This crash could be predicted to happen around the age of 28-32 speculatively.

This talk would make you think that I am some kind of monotone Daria sadist or something, but really I am taking this all with a lighthearted sarcasm of one who is aware of her chosen naïvity. Chosen is the appropriate word in that sentence because I choose to affront the world with naïve wonder, but also awareness and perception tucked behind the shield. However, I don’t say that this is correct I just look at it as a means to preservation or something. I think that “wonder” is one of the most lovely words in the English language, and I think that everyone would do well to wonder about things and wonder over things, around also if you like.

On the other hand, this grand failure of my life will not really happen, at least without a great and super-human struggle. I will be like David going against Goliath in my mind trying to preserve my made-up job of being an appreciator. In fact, Michaelangelo sculpted David’s piercing gaze just right, blood pulsing and ready for its opponent. Defending the non-job, or maybe a job that is too all-encompassing to be really useful or desired. Does it seem like I have aggression? I am really very pacifistic, and I usually avoid confrontation of any kind. However, at the same time I love a competition and I turn most things into competitions—like running on the treadmille next to other “treadmille” opponents at the gym. Therefore, Golliath shouldn’t be much of a challenge. He he he.

I guess I should properly introduce myself and my situation for you all so that you may know me properly. Also now seems like an appropriate point before I go on getting carried away. As I have told you, I am a 24-year old female named Cara. I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I come from a big family with three younger siblings. I went to a Catholic elementary school, a public high school, and I went to Penn State University. How lovely is that, I have a nice and neat educational ladder to describe many years of study and experience, and I have to say that I was a well-rounded student, well-rounded person. I could go into much more detail, but I am sure I will delve into more of my past during this little blog, if that is what we can call it. For now I will cite my virtual profile which is fitting in this day and age--I think my Facebook profile adequately describes me in a very simple way:

Interests:
Family, friends, Sunday dinners, painting, traveling, Bella Italia! the Steelers! PENN STATE! Penn State football! dance parties, my robe, tailgating, breakfast sandwiches, singing, cooking, hiking, watching movies, comfy clothes, hot tea, reading, daydreaming, sleeping, laughing until my stomach hurts, partying, hanging out with friends, eating lots of pasta, watching soccer, current events, economics, politics, history, history, history, bettering the world, yelling on top of mountains, interesting people, awesome stories, fear, amazing adventures, ridiculous adjectives.

Favorite Music:
All Kinds
Favorite Movies:
I love movies and I have way too many favorites.
Favorite Books:
I can't choose a favorite

Favorite Quotations:
May you have enough joy to give you hope, enough pain to make you wise.

"Laugh hard, apologize when you should, and let go of what you can't change. You only live once, so kiss slowly, laugh insanely and forgive quickly."

It's the heart afraid of breaking ,
that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking,
that never takes the chance
It's the one who won't be taken
who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dying,
that never learns to live

-Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion-

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." ~E.B. White

Un buon viaggiatore, non ha una meta' stabilita'

About Me:
fun-loving, goofy


There you go, my virtual profile; how fitting for this day and age. I will go on to talk about Facebook and my opinions about world social networking sites, but I must describe but a few things in my profile thus far. 1. I have not yelled from the top of many mountains in my day, but I would like to make it one of my goals in life. In fact my interests don’t really accurately portray my hobbies, they are just things that bring me joy that I try to do when I get the chance. 2. I never have favorites because I always like various things for different reasons so you will rarely hear that something is my “favorite.” 3. I think that it is useless to search for intelligent quotes or sayings that aren’t exactly the wisdom you want to live by. Therefore I sometimes create my own quotes when the situation calls for it, and I write: “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.” Someone else probably said it too because it is very simple, but I’m not going to look for him so I can quote him to avoid plagiarism because I freaking said it too! Song lyrics often disappoint me as well, and I sometimes think I should begin writing songs. I then realize that I have no time to be writing songs for non-existing artists so I give up with this though before I finish it. 4. I really like the E.B. White quote.

I could probably add or delete much of this information about myself, and I rarely ever make additions; I am really very lazy with updating information. I don’t mind this flash of a portrait, but I am debating on deleting my profile. Who knows if it will all remain in the cookies of cyberspace….I think so.


My present life:
I think it is also pertinent to say that I am currently studying in Italy at the moment. This probably complicates my “disillusioned plight” because after all I am living in Italy, Milan to be exact. However, it would be best to talk a little bit about the fact that I am here on an earned scholarship, and it has been a very challenging experience despite the amazing learning opportunity. Before I go on defending myself, I am going to take advantage of this beautiful evening and go out and drink a Mohito with my friend Riccardo. Oh, also, I did watch a bit of the Michael Jackson funeral online, and I found that some moments were very touching. I think that he did want good things for the world despite his eccentricity and alarming accusation of pedofilia, and maybe he was just a man very misunderstood and warped from spotlight….good at heart. It is undisputable that he is a music legend.

Speaking of Michael Jackson, I am shocked and annoyed at how much news is still being reported about his death and the controversy a month after he has died. I hate American news media. We won’t even get into Anna Nicole Smith and the length of news coverage she received—unfathomable—all of those reporters should have been fired or shot based on the debasement of their journalistic righteousness. I remember throwing a fit on a treadmill in college watching all of the news channels squacking away a month after. It is amazing with this news media and the garbage mind-numbing television shows being transmitted that most of Americans aren’t complete brainless assholes.

This is where I will end in my ramblings. I have many other posts to add because I've currently compiling my thoughts on Word--now to post them.