into the fevered eyes of the six suddenly ravenous vampires

Act I, Scene I Porta San Marco

A group of girls await their bus in a small park space just outside of Siena, Italy. All tend toward the sunlight on this cold morning, but for two girls, taking care to stand just inside the darkest shadow. . .

LAUREN: Hello, everyone.

EVERYONE: (a little weirded out by her formality) Um, hey.

CAILEY: Do you guys ever have that thing, where your skin feels bruised and all sensitive when you touch it? My foot's killing me, and I don't know what's wrong.

LAUREN: That is really weird, I have no idea.

ELIZABETH: Really? For someone with two graduate degrees in medicine, that should be easy.

SHARLIE: Wait, what's going on? Who are you?

LAUREN: Will you--

ELIZABETH: Yes.

LAUREN: But won't she---

ELIZABETH: Nope.

SHARLIE: Um, right. Hey, where's Kimberly?

LAUREN: Strange, she should be here by--

ELIZABETH: Don't worry about it. She'll be here in the next eleven seconds.

SHARLIE: Oh, I get it! You're magic eight balls. Right? You're totally magic eight balls.

LAUREN: (steps onto bus with a roll of the eyes as ELIZABETH laughs behind her. She leads the little group to the very back row, where they sit well away from all the others and watch them with disdain.) Hey, Can I see what's in your bag? (her arm touches SHARLIE's)Oh, sorry. My skin's a bit cold.

CAILEY: Your skin's cold? (laughing) What? I've never heard anyone use that apology before.

SHARLIE: So Cailey had this dream last night, that Alessandro gave Sydney a "J" in Humanities. You know, like worse than an "F".

CAILEY: Well, I'm worried about grades, okay? Not everybody can get an A.

ELIZABETH: That's true. You're getting an A-.

SHARLIE: Wait a minute, are you precog? Can you see the future? You guys, this is weird. You're being weird. Like you're not human.

LAUREN: (shrugs)

KIMBERLY: This is either going to be really fun, or really annoying.

ELIZABETH: Both. Sharlie will find it funny all day long, while you'll find us obnoxious within the next fifteen minutes. Either way, it will all culminate in catastrophe at the Piazza dei Priori.

SHARLIE: AH! You're Alice! You're vampires! Oh, you're vampires! Am I right, am I right?

LAUREN: I can't believe it took you this long. (pops a cracker into her mouth. ELIZABETH looks at her, skeptical) What? Gotta keep up appearances. Even if it does taste like cardboard.

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Who knew vampires could be such fun?---a good part of our morning was given to the game: ripping gummy bears to pieces when we felt hungry, using our super-secret superpowers to communicate when necessary, and pretending that the cold didn't affect us in the least. And the weather couldn't have been more helpful.

The sky darkened as the bus wound its way up to Volterra, clouds threatening rain. We arrived in the Piazza just as the bell struck one, an hour too late to have saved Edward. We set immediately to picture taking, our best vampire faces aided with a few pretzel fangs, reenacting a few key moments from the New Moon drama. Along an alley wall fans have left their undying love and devotion to Stephenie Meyer's universe, despite the fact that she has her setting all wrong. No alley near enough for Bella to have pushed Edward out of the sun. No sewer cover nearly big enough to fit a few dozen humans through. You guys, there's not even a fountain. No fountain. As if Meyer's writing needed one more thing to make it so much more the failure.

By the time we reached San Gimignano, the rain was falling in earnest. The cobblestone streets were slick with water, and though we took refuge in a church for a good half hour, eventually we had to face the weather. We wandered, arms linked against the storm, through several leather stores and finally up to the WORLD CHAMPION GELATERIA (this is a true story), where I had the most divine coconut ice cream in the history of all ice cream eating, alongside a rather beautifully tart mixed berries and completely unreal pear. Outside, the city was dark, the towers black against the clouds. We walked back to the bus happy, with British accents we were to keep up the entire hour's ride home (much to Alessandro's amusement, I'll have you know. What a love, that one.).

From Alice Cullen to Hermione Granger in a day. Couldn't possibly ask for more.

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Act V, Scene III San Gimignano

ELIZABETH: Oi, it's a bit nippy, you know. Wish I had a jumper.

LAUREN: I'm finkin' the same fing; a brolly would be nice too, eh?

SHARLIE: Jolly good, alert the corgies!

(or something like that)

mood swing, anyone?

Today I feel like jumping. Up and down and around and around and over and under and all over this town. That last sentence was actually not intended to rhyme in any way. That is how ridiculously joyous I feel.

I can't exactly pinpoint why. But I am feeling the influence of everything around me: the Prague door my mum sent me via email this morning. Dreaming about old friends and new, pulled together in a bizarre car chase through an Americanised Tuscany. Feeling that same Evviva! for all the CHANGE my lovely fellow bloggers are writing about. Being a vampire for today's trip to Volterra.

Last night we talked about letters, and robots, and the Nuova Vita that we feel so close, so near. They say Europe changes you--of course, I'm also swept up into this crazy week of emotions as well--and I'm a little surprised that I so agree. I feel ready to start over again, that I understand more of who I am and who I can become. I feel so full of friendships and family and just . . . well, so much happy.

And I think that's cause for a little jumping about.

needle in the haaaaaay

This day last year we dragged a fire pit around to the driveway at Meringue and burnt our fears and failures in the flames. There was caramel corn, and cider. I wore a yellow sweater and Elder M came with a British accent and A didn't drive away until the 5th was long over.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day! Only I am in Italy and today Jacq is Soeur Roberts and the world has spun another year of shattering change and growth. Today seems more a time for reflection than revelry, and Kate Walsh, so far, has been excellent company. Oh! The past. So complex, so heartbreakingly human. So very many memories we hold onto, never to have again.

It's a darn good thing I'm so sure of the future.

I don't know who started it. But there we were, dinner over, only homework awaiting us upstairs, and there was the magic eight ball. Problem solved. Life solved.

Because now we know that Kendis will be married by January 2010 (sicuramente si). Alyssa will find the love of her life in Italy (senz'alcun dubbio). Lauren will just have to ask later about serving a mission. With Luigia in on the fun, there's a visit to America coming, too (è proprio cosi). Only Schizzo has to stay behind (oh yes, she asked).

And no matter how grey the day, a bit of love and laughter (plus a prayer or two) will turn it all around.

today is a really rather quite sad sort of day

This morning I walked to school in the rain (this is not the sad part), thinking about the influence of the printing press on the modern world until I reached the classroom and found the room abuzz. Transfers are in—and we’re losing Anziano Welch to Rome.

Which shouldn’t be so completely world-changing, seeing as these things happen all the time on missions (note to self: work on your fear of sudden change). But as our Branch President, we truly believed he’d be in Siena for his last five months, and most certainly for our last two weeks here (selfish, much?). The news is only hours old and I’m still caught up in memories as if he’s already gone.

Then Peter has to go around philosophizing about dead baby bird paintings, as if we weren’t beat up enough. And at the end of his lecture he took stabs at our own art attempts, offering his “advice” for our final projects. Mostly this means one of three things: try again, push it further, or start over completely. With two weeks left, that’s a little depressing, too.

In the meantime, I was already feeling un po’ triste because Elder Garfield wrote me yesterday, wondering if I were still well/alive. Turns out not a single one of my four letters has reached him, which is also the case over in Brazil, where Elder M hasn’t received any word from me since Portsmouth. How my letters can reach the deep jungles of Africa and not north Atlanta is beyond me.

At this point, it’s so entirely sad that I’m almost devoid of any emotional reaction.

So now Lauren sits in the grey light of an open window, strumming the blues while Sharlie so obediently scribbles out the improv lyrics at her side, lyrics that probably do a better job of capturing today’s spirit than these paragraphs ever could:

Woke up today and life didn’t seem too bad but
Birds are dead
Aliens look like balls of string
Bad grades
I’m so confused and hurt
I know the ABCs
PETER!!He’s a tyrant
I’m sad because I’m flying
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

You see? It’s enough to make anyone cry.

this is what I know about the mafia

Last week I had a little history lesson in Italian, after attempting to delineate the various characteristics of the North and South of Italy. I actually did well enough, earning points for important dates (1861) and names (Garibaldi)—but lost everything when it came to the Mafia.

“You don’t know anything about the Mafia?!” Muzzi exclaimed.

I half-laughed. Of all Italy’s attractions, this wasn’t of any particular importance to me. Caravaggio, or Cosa Nostra? Pontormo or Palermo? Easy enough—but Muzzi was looking horrified. “Erm. . .no,” I stammered under her gaze. “Not really. I mean, what there is in movies and television, sure. But it doesn’t really interest me.”

Wrong answer.

“Doesn’t interest you?! Elizabetta. This is Italian history. This is a very major problem for Italy today. This is a stereotype that must be eradicated. How does this not interest you?”

By this point she was practically banging her fists on the table. Which is how I came to write a one-page report on Italy’s most infamous men of organized crime. And now I know that

:: the original Sicilian Cosa Nostra is now made up of about one hundred families, or cosche, who each rule and defend their own territories in all sorts of violent and illegal ways.

:: no one actually knows where the term “mafia” comes from, though the most fun (and most widely discredited) tells a tale of Sicilian rebels attacking with the cry Morta alla Francia, Italia anela and then adopting the acronym ever after.

and

::once retired or having earned senior status, Mafiosi are called Capo di Capi Re, which literally translated means King Boss of Bosses. I find this a lot more funny than it probably actually is.

At any rate, Muzzi and I had a nice little chat this morning about her southern neighbors, after which we took a good while discussing What Should Be Done. And while we never came to any solid sort of conclusion, I did learn that numero verde means it's a toll-free number. Ten years from now, that is what I will remember from this exercise.

fear

hey look! an art card post without an art card!




[insert photo here]

Friday I trick-or-treated as Contemporary Art or, more specifically, Untitled (portrait of the artist in a point of turmoil as she questions her relationship to practicality while trying for truth) Mixed Media, 2008. Wore some high chroma color, stuck a few spiraling sticks in my sideways hair. Super fun. And with a garlic at my side? Unbeatable. But for the title’s part, actually true.

My greatest fear is that I have not/am not/will not live this life fully. That I will take days for granted, that I will forget to be grateful. I am afraid I can’t live up to the person I know I can be—because (oh, dear Brooke!) my comfort would prefer for me to be numb/and avoid the impending birth of who I was born to become.

I don’t think I will overcome this fear anytime soon. And I think many of us deal with the exact same anxiety. But I do know there are moments, spare seconds, where it evaporates, momentarily replaced by an otherworldly joy. You remember who you are, and you love who you are. You are in the right place, doing the right thing. And that, right there, is worth all the worry of any day.

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*ps:::last month's art cards have all been filed on their respective Sundays; clickety-click the colored pencils in the sidebar if you are so inclined.

here we go

November is oh-so-good for a lot of reasons. The bonfires of Guy Fawkes day. The quiet contemplation of the eleventh.The Thanksgiving rush of family and friends.

Also, National Blog Posting Month.

Back with more tomorrow (and the next day, and the next day, and the day after that . . .).