Take your Vitamins!

August 4th, 2009

Today I am thinking about my little hill just before sunset, and the lightning bugs that are floating around in the cool night breeze. I took a walk with my dog after dinner during my favorite part of the day when the light glows orange, on the pavement, the houses, through the trees, onto my face. The beautiful thing about my neighborhood is that nothing really changes, and the tranquility and security you feel is nearly tangible, especially during those moments. Of course my dog slightly dampens my moments by her incessant urge to sniff and squat, but as long as I am in direct light-beam, watching the sun go down, I am content. Right now the cicadas are buzzing in chorus as I write in my backyard, and I listen to a dog barking in the distance. This summer evening is humming in my ears, and it is so easy to get carried away by my thoughts—I am completely at ease and at peace. This is my home, nothing has changed. At these moments there is no place I’d rather be—than on my hill.

My time spent in Italy was very rewarding for many different reasons, and I have to say that my schedule and responsibilities were so confusing that only now I am starting to make more sense of some life learning experiences. I am used to putting my head to the grind and not taking much time for breaks because I obsess over finishing my different obligations; in effect, I take little time to pause for reflection and recharge in the necessary moments. Of course I take time for recreation and fun, but of course even sometimes those moments can be a chore if you are run-down.

Of course, at the beginning I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t see straight, and my survival method was to feign indifference to everything —in fact my first day of school, I bought a bottle of wine and drank most of it. I became very easy and patient with myself, allowing a large space for error and insufficiency. It was a more humorous time because I have never felt so recklessly casual regarding my life in general. After I started climbing little steps of accomplishment, I immediately started demanding more and being probably too critical. In this moment I realize that I have to reintroduce more of this attitude into my self-demanding nature.

The week before I was due to come home, I met with a friend from school, Ishraq. She is Jordanian, and she had lived in New York for several years before going to study Textile Design at Naba. We met on the first welcome day at the school, and we didn’t start hanging out until the very end of the first semester due to our different programs. She is a very interesting and intelligent girl, and her job in New York was intriguing in that she worked for a Jordanian magazine designing fashion photo shoots of designer brands. I was fascinated hearing her describe the whole process.

We met for lunch near where I have been painting murals in the hospital in Milan. She had a horrible living situation with a roommate in Milan, and the horror stories she recounted about this roommate from Hell were at shocking levels of disrespect. Of course, after having battled the situation for so long, she had learned to look at the situation with humor and pity on her roommate as a survival method. In fact, some of her stories were hysterical in their absurdity, like the battle for the remote control. I digress. The point is that she explained to me what helped her lift herself above her funky situation, and I have been thinking of it ever since:

She claimed that a friend of hers offered her this advice in Italian: remember to take your “happy vitamins.” In essence, always make time in your day to do things that bring little joys into your life—they don’t even have to be significant acts. Simply introducing more activities that make you truly happy, whether that is painting your bedroom a certain color, hanging lovely photographs, walking in a park, drinking a coffee, watching your favorite movie even though you’ve seen it ten times, smelling a flower, smiling, or even chewing your favorite piece of gum. Life is meant to be lived, and you live life every day--not just in anticipation of future days or activities. I’d like to say that I try to live with a good attitude every day, but I too often let the many little things burden me down. In fact, my little daily vitamins are not present enough when I am not “on vacation” at my family’s home. Of course, I drink coffees and read the newspaper, chew gum and do pleasing things—however, there are certain activities that I view as guilty pleasures and feel bad practicing them when there are more “constructive” things to be doing. Wow.

In fact, it is about time that I realized that my interests don’t make for “constructive” working plans---there is a delicate balance to obtain when you put focused construction together with creative tasks. A safe person tends to stray to the concrete steps and deny the dare-devil in creative thinking.

There is a quote that I found by Thoreau that I really love, and I would hope to realize the veracity of it in my life if it is at all possible: “If you have built castles in the air, your work will not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put a foundation under them.” I have some fun ideas, maybe in my mess I will be able to tie together some threads.

An Italian song plays on radio Italia online, and I realize how much I am still fascinated by the language. It is like a secret garden in my life, and I am always hungry and inspired by simple words and expressions.

My family is busy packing for vacation tomorrow, and I should help my mother pack up the car if I can. It has been an extremely busy, action-packed couple of days in my LALA town life at home. It will be nice for us to spend time together, even if it is only a few days. I will read my book tonight—one of my vitamins that I need to take more often. Let us all try to take our vitamins every day.

The book I am reading is “the Fall of Rome” by Alexander Stille; it is an amazing book that describes Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, and his rise to power. I would encourage anyone to read it, and I would like to leave you with a quote of his cited in the book, “Imagine how many women would love to sleep with me and don’t know it. Life is a problem of communication. “ Only in Italy….