Reading Journal 1, Week 5

Well, Gomorrah. What has this story accomplished using Italy without making me paranoid of every train ride and motorcycle or without putting the fear of God (and Naples) to mine? It's a hefty read, jam-packed with a great deal of information. I guess what I'm drawn to is the inevitable distancing the book provides while still expecting me to be engrossed and invested in its details. In fact, Gomorrah almost asks me to take a closer look at my own involvement in the criminal developments and that could be the most intimating and dissociating factor. For example, the first chapter investigates the shipment and creation of illegally-produced clothing goods and how we, as Americans seeking out Italian name-brands, add to the demand for these familiar and luxurious, though often false brands. It brings a bit of self-inquisition to light--am I buying these clothes? How many of my jeans and shoes were made in the heart of the Italian crime center? It's a little disconcerting, and the constant heart-breaking details only add to my guilt--Pasquale's suffering, the death of Emmanuele, and so on. In a sense, I feel just as much condemnable and involved in the lives of these people as I feel like I do not want to know them. If that is what's going on in Naples, I surely don't want to be a part of it. Sad, but true.

Classmate Response 1, Week 4

Response to MacKenzie’s Reportage, Week 3:

I’m pretty sure only you could write a bit about buying panties and leave me so engrossed. I love the idea of an experience transcribing discomfort across language barriers. So far, we’ve all delved into the difficulties of overcoming our inexperience with Italian, but I like that this time you tackled something that’s just as difficult in our own native language as it is in Italian—a sort of equality of experience. I think the opening paragraph could move a little more quickly, just a few cuts of unnecessary words or phrases. (sidenote: I love the verb “waffle”. I could also be severely missing waffles, but that’s another story). I’d like to see more about the shopkeepers. What makes the tall one intimidating? Her spiked heels and her height? Doesn’t seem enough. I’d like to see more interaction between these two ladies, between these ladies and you? And I realize the experience makes you feel alone and alienated, but Megan’s presence drops so thoroughly from the piece that I wonder if it really needs her at all? Some places for expansion: that moment where they are watching you outside the store, I’d like to see more on that. Why do you think they are watching you? What does that feel like? What are they thinking and how does that change once you come in the store? Or does it change at all? I’d like more investigation into why you feel so compelled to gather the nerve to go into the store in the first place. What does the green bra do for you? How does Megan feel about all this? The end seems kind of abrupt and I don’t quite understand the triumph. What was really accomplished here? What was the big goal, the big battle? And what happened to the others?

Original Prompt 1, Week 4

Been hoarding this assignment for a while because I have no idea what to do with it. So I'm going to approach it in the same manner of Didion's On Keeping a Notebook and see what happens.

Last night love entered my dreams, the slip reads, and then was morning. Wrinkled Bachi chocolate, blue foil, English translation, an after dinner treat pocked with hazelnuts, Bar Duelle. 
This is my epigraph. It has been assigned to me and at empty times, I toss the words back and forth inside my head. Vague trails form--like a stick trailed through the sand of my thoughts: love, I wonder, or dreams--those heaving and intimidating abstractions that seek definition, the trained focus of memory--some example of maternity or relationship--the sticky touch of lovers or the starry-eyed lens of night as I wrap and toss in a blanket not my own. What do I talk about? Those nights, heavy with sleep beside Taylor, who, never faltering on her source of energy, rises from the bedsheet and mumbles in her sleep. Or how the sun, those slivers of golden-white, always find some way around the curtains to tickle at my lashes. When was the last time I dreamed? When was the last time I felt the sonic textures of the mentally formed dance along my fingertips? And why, whenever I see the word morning do I keep thinking homophones, that distinct salt of sadness--the kind you feel in foreign countries when all the world presses in with vowels and sounds, reminding you of your loneliness?

Reportage 1, Week 4

On a train car, Bologna-bound, the cart churns and rocks with the sound of tracks meeting high-speed metal. The seats, mostly empty, so that the sounds of progression are the only things filling our ears, almost melodic and rhythmical now, so that some of us allow the noise to lull us toward sleep. In front of me, one of my traveling companions allows his head to fall backwards, stretch along the mouth while his lips form along the trail of his own breath. Something about the slack pull of his jaw reminds me of pillow folds and comforter sets--soft and down. The train makes another stop and moments later a man pulls through: tall, skinny, and a body that bends when he walks. He glances across the empty seats and spots us, me and my friend, and seems to momentarily debate the idea of taking a seat beside us. Instead he chooses the row directly across from us and plops uncomfortably close to a man with three other seats available. He stares, unabashed, into our sleepy faces, seemingly interested in the concept of slumber, as if naps on a train ride are foreign to him. He catches my eye and looks away, instead taking to sidelong glances, the lines along his face creased with curiosity.

Memory 1, Week 4

I had been asking for a dog for a while. Renting a room from a middle aged spinster, whose redeeming qualities were her bipolar meltdowns and unnatural clinginess, I thought a dog would be that perfect anchor of sanity, something that would keep me from reaching that pinnacle of the too far beyond that I tiptoed near every time I woke up in that house. It was almost 1am when she called me. She worked with me and I had just gotten off the late shift myself. Still in my uniform, I made it back home in time to unload my groceries before my phone sang out from my work pants pocket. I answered it and she asked me, amused, if I wanted a puppy.

I cannot begin to explain how quickly I returned to the store. A ten minute drive, no more than a minute or two in the hot-red speed of my sport Escort. I pulled through the parking lot and dashed to the front door, where she stood with a puppy in her arms. The dog was small--smaller than I had ever seen any puppy and when I held her she nibbled my fingers, the triangular collar of my work shirt. We called her Chewy, paraded her through the store as I bought her shampoo and dog kibble. When I got home I fed her in the bathroom and bathed her in the sink. When we slept, she crawled into the corner of my neck and stayed huddled there the entire night.

I've always grown up with dogs. My mother, gushing after we bought our pure white German Shepard, told me she loved the puppy smell--something like hot milk and the sweetness of a new coat, at least, from what I could tell of it. I never understood until I had that puppy climbing on my shoulder during car rides, panting the moist mist of her breath into my face.

Image Junkyard 1-4, Week 4

Thick rolls of noodles whose dips and ridges give from the press of my tongue. Oil, the nutty, faintly salty taste, hesitant to the sharp crisp of peppers and onions. Ceramic bowl glazed with gold, the translucent glow of sauce that catches the streetlights and reflects like sweat.

Rows of bottles, the tops: piano keys, some pressed, some poised--a kaleidoscope of liquid and glass, the shrug of their labels and names that cradle and slosh in the mouth--Malibu, Dartwin, Montefalco. Twin shades of brown, green, white--like rolling the mountains flat with a pin.

The lopsided pack of his hair--a brittle mesh of black and gray, that hangs tight, brash curls, too far on his right ear but just far enough to wrap him in something ethereal--the alien fold and flow of hair.

A basket of citrus--lemons and oranges, swollen, bursting with possibility, the idea of juice--the blood-tinted pulp and the fragments of seeded fruit floating and swirling in the glass. The sharp hint of scent, pins of the familiar, faint and brushing as if brimming from the pores of their thick and rubbery skin.