Journal 4, Entry 1- Original Prompt: "Souvenirs in Assisi"

In a souvenir shop in Assisi, I bought my great grandmother a souvenir spoon. It's small and faux silver and on its handle there's the crest of the city with a small Tau of Saint Francis. 

She just turned 82 this past month. My Dad and I visited her this past spring break. In her small house with trash cans filled with still water in her yard and the facade being overgrown with wisteria blossoms, she sits and watches TV. Everyone calls her Big Mamma. Her dead husband was Big Daddy. He died in 2002 and she hasn't really left the house since. She has been to the hospital, had her knees replaced with plastic, had her cataracts operated upon, and she once visited my Great Aunt Tunni in Florida. 

She sits in her big felt chair and the house smells like cat piss, lilacs, and a fresh calf liver. It smells about the same in the shop except with less lilacs. The older shop lady stares me down and rolls her eyes when I pass her a fifty for a six euro spoon. Her cat was in a basket and it sat there and stared at the street outside the slender store. It was indifferent. It could have been a taxidermist's failed final exam if its tail wasn't counting out time. 

Big Mamma tells my Dad and me about how she prayed for my grandfather's recovery every day. She also prays for my uncle, she says. On her wall, she has souvenir spoons. She gets her children and grandchildren to go buy them for her. She has them for Vegas and Berlin, New York and Hot Springs, one from a rodeo and one from Niagara Falls. When Dad tells her about my trip to Italy, she tells me to buy her a spoon. And there I feel the same angry, bitter feelings towards that old lady rotting in her home that I had towards that cashier with the cat. 

And I know that when I leave, they will both stay in their spaces. One because she will always be visited by Catholics buying trinkets and the other will stay because she can't leave and is afraid of the outside. 

Masters: Don't Look Now

Class warfare seems to be the focus of both _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ and "Don't Look Now." Ripley in the film and novel is a lower-class con man who usurps himself into the aristocracy in order to rise in station. Him taking over the life of Dickie Greenleaf after murdering and falling in love with him shows Ripley as rising in station and prestige by merely being without personality. It's a mirror opposite in Du Maurier's "Don't Look Now" because while _Ripley_ focuses on a proletariat rising, "Don't Look Now" focuses on aristocracy falling. These two conflicting images show Italy as this place of tumultuous change and visceral response. "Don't Look Now" focuses on the haunting of a family by the vision of the husband's death. They are haunted by the death of their daughter and that shows them as their eventual flaw. While _Ripley_ can be seen as a Marxist critique, "Don't Look Now" focuses on the supernatural form of Marxism where all people are susceptible to hauntings.

Journal 3, Entry 7- Reportage: "Baby Talk"

Sitting in the patio once again. Santo Francesco of the Motley Clothes is talking to a woman with a baby carriage. His face lights up and he talks the little girl out of her seat and does the usual song and dance that people do around babies in order to get them to smile. He carried her over to where the bird cage is and he pointed them to her and whispered in her ear. The baby giggled. The person pretty much everyone on this trip hates or at least fantasizes about punching has a soft spot for babies and birds.

Journal 3, Entry 6- Recollection: "No Christmas"

A story my parents love to tell about me deals with a time we were in Mexico for Christmas. We were eating at a busy restaurant where the waiters weaves in and out between tables with Jenga towers of glass and silver ware. I was a lonely teenager and hated everything to a degree due to my suburban entitlement and sexual frustration. I got up too soon and a waiter collided with me and all the plates and glasses and butter knives hit the floor with a sound like a thunderstorm inside of a clay pot. My parents made the joke on my guilt and said it was because of me that the waiter would be fired. That he would return home to his family and tell them that Christmas wouldn't be coming this year. His little daughter would ask, "¿Dondé está Santa, Papá? ¿Es Navidad, verdad?" and the drunken bitter father would say, "Santa está muerto. Navidad es muerto."

Journal 3, Entry 5-Image Junkyard: "Garbage Day"

MacKenzie, Megan, and I carried bags full of bottles, pieces of rotten fruit, and the red sweater of the plumber who temporarily repaired the girl's toilet. I was tempted to put the garbage in the patio, but Willem DaFoe might have been disappointed. At home, I willingly recycle because I feel morally obligated. But here, I tend to not care and I can't explain why.

Journal 3, Entry 4- Image Junkyard: "Sala Frau"

We sat in a small theatre with red curtains and small seats. I put a coin in a bucket before I walked in. There was a speech and clapping in the pauses between sentences.
It reminded me of when I went to a Catholic wedding in Spanish. I bowed when everyone else bowed, I repeated whatever everyone else without understanding the oaths I was giving, and I laughed at the jokes because everyone joined in.
I took the sacrament without knowing about transubstantiation and how God would be in my stomach and my heart like she offal of fresh sheep.

Masters: Roman Fever

The use of the old world as toxic to that off the new is shown in Daisy Miller. The Roman fever and the predatorial Englishmen in the form of Mr Winterborn show that the naive can't survive in the jaded European continent. The question I have though is why in the European reflections on Italy (in works such as this and _Death in Venice_) it is always an expatriate in Italy falling in love with a vacationing family? Like in Highsmith's _The Talented Mr. Ripley_, it's always a vacation gone awry and this journey into the heart of the ancient always find something dreadfully wrong, but the Italains are hardly the villains. The sense of place here shows to corrupt the mild-mannered and cool-calm sen

Journal 3, Entry 3- Reportage: "The Spoletosphere"

On the road near the town square by the Post Office, there is a French boulevard. It's a wide street, paved in brick-colored cobbles. My mother has taken two hundred pictures of it in the past three days. It's line with oak trees on either side of it. Their bark is cracked and twisted and the city has tagged it with numbers. To the left, an ochre abandoned house stands surrounded by lights that were fashionable in the 1980s. Westeria moves in on its front and the main window has a hole in it. On the right, a field full of weeds and thistles taller than toddlers. They count out time in the breeze and they cover the valley. Next to these is a metal cage full of tall benches behind two shining elevators. When I asked for directions to the Alburnoz Hotel from a mairte'd he used it as a reference. "Go past that ugly jungle gym, take a left, and you're there." In the tunnel beneath the Papal Palace, pictures line the walls to celebrate the Spoleto festival. An older man stands in front of a shining version of the jungle gym installation. He smiles. It's tag-lined "The Spoletosphere."

Journal 3, Entry 2- Image Junkyard: "Sad Child"

At the Hotel Clitunno lobby, there's a toddler girl crying in a corner chair with a magic marker in her hand. There's the usual Saturday night saturnalia going on in the bar and I'm touristing up the wifi. House music plays and the kid's parents are on the couch next to me drinking Proseco. A drawing of what appears to be bumble bees on white card stock sits on the coffee table.

Journal 3, Entry 1- Image Junkyard: "Darkness on the Edge of the Papal Castle"

I went with my parents to the Papal castle. The frescoes were peeling and the subterranean bathrooms were darkened. I thought to myself, maybe this is why the pope left this place.

Masters: Poe in Italy

In Poe's "Cask of Amontillado," the setting of Italy is almost unnecessary. The only thing that could be seen in the text as signature Italian is the carnivale. It situated the setting as being that as Catholic, but the idea of catacombs in Venice really wouldn't work in a city that is constantly flooding. Also, it is not an Italian catacomb but Poe situates the catacombs as being Parisian. Poe here uses the idea of Italy as being carnal and hedonistic place (represented by Fortunato) where the figure of hyper-rationality is the only thing that can take on this grotesque version of Italian culture.

Journal 2, Entry 8-Reportage "Carting Up a Body"

Yesterday, I carted up my bag of laundry from Dr Davidson's apartment. I was wobbly drunk so carrying a heavy bag filled with wet clothes through town was made more interesting with the fact that I couldn't see straight. I passed by Vincenzo and thought if I would ruin Jenna's chance with her beau barista by carting in a wet sack, setting it on the counter above the pastries and booze, and ordering a caffé correcto with sambuco like my asshole of a subconscious so desperately wanted me to do. I walked on down the avenue, near the darned alley and apartment complex where the costume museum resides. There were two teenage Italian boys walking in front of me. I saw that they were walking bow-legged and were making Anglo-Saxon grunts. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that they were doing an impersonation of my drunken bonobo waltz. I would have told them to eat shit and die, but I didn't know that much Italian so I just mumbled to myself and walked on towards the apartment.

Journal 2, Entry 7- Comment on Tyler's "Junkyard 4"

Naturally, I expect this to go into 1950s teen melodrama territory. Frankie has to do something at the aqueduct or the J Boys are gonna rough him up. Would there be an Italian Clint Eastwood here to make this Gran Torino? Maybe you can connect this to a remembrance. Maybe the cow-splosion story that I so desperately want you to write? If nothing else, it's a good way to find a connection back home through something here in Spoleto.

Journal 2, Entry 6- Image Junkyard: "Willem DaFoe"

MacKenzie just had a Willem DaFoe sighting, there's a GQ magazine with a feature about the actor, and we most famously saw him the first day we were here. But why Willem DaFoe? What does the constant sighting of a vastly talented and critically acclaimed actor who doesn't really have massive popular appeal mean in a story? It's a great obscure fact, but what can I do with it besides have a good many movie references--start with Antichrist, end with Platoon--in the piece? Bad junkyard idea.

Masters: The Italian

Italy in Anne Radcliffe's _The Italian_ is shown as this Immortally gothic place. Vivaldi is shown with intense romantic thoughts and feelings--in the way that his heart yearns and palpitating for Ellena after just seeing her at mass with her older mother--and the city of Naples itself reflects these emotions. The city space is shown as this bleak space filled with darkened corridors, overcast days, and filled with conspiracy. While this is signature to gothicism as a whole, the reason this text is set in Italy and reflects on Italy as a place and space is because of the reflection of the ancient, as we have said before. Mentions and reflections back to Naples as a kingdom and a power are constant, but the city itself is depicted as decrepit and stagnant. Once again, Italy is not shown as a space for the new and the kinetic, but one for the old and decrepit.

Journal 1, Entry 5- Original Prompt: "Fuck This Hill"

I wrote this in my mind last night, when I walked to the apartments from the train station. It's tentivly titled "Fuck This Hill."

Fuck this hill.
And the train station next to it frescoed with "Fuck Offs" in the shape of broken
Fingers pointed toward the Papal castle turned prison turned rally point for German hikers.

Fuck this hill.
And all the dancing Italians in the square.
Their Ice Ice Baby faces and haircuts pogoing in the breeze as I carry my records to my apartment.

Fuck this hill.
And fuck the Etruscans who paved it and all the Romans who layered it like sandstone spongecake
and the layers of blood and bodily fluid from my broken blisters and sweating ass.

Fuck this hill.
I contemplate suicide by the lion that was once a fountain. Just like my Uncle did in that federal pin in Texas. Now he's being watched on 12 hour shifts while I breath heavily and lean against a shoe store.

Fuck this hill.
And the Spoletian arch. The reason Hannibal didn't sack this town was because he didn't want to cart
Those elephants up this hill and here they're complaints through peanuts.


Fuck this hill.
And the Orc woman at caffé Callicola. Sorry. I don't mean that. I apologize for breaking your pot
But there's no way it cost 28 euro unless your dead husband made it before he left for the front.

Fuck this hill.
And the American tourists drinking gin or Budweiser in the neon lit patio.
Will I be like you when I'm older? Will I trade my 'wild, fucking American' label for penny loafers and conversations about Madonna?

Fuck this hill.
I'm out of tune with the cars and can't count out time anymore.
I feel lucky that I'm not carting up a candle that sits giant and stout on my back.

Fuck this hill.
And the old man with the birds. They sing inside during the rain and feeds them seeds and berries
While his sons look angrily when I talk.

Fuck that hill.
I'm wet and cold and old and sad.
I sit down in a chair. I look out and down.

Journal 2, Entry 4- Reportage: "Griffins and Dogs"

Jenna and I went to Perugia on Friday to Lewis and Clark the city for a larger group coming on Friday.
It's a fiercely anti-Papal city and it's art shows that. Compared to the classically Roman architecture and decoration in Spoleto, Perugia is more sharp angles and gothic arches. It's symbol, which adorns most of the classic buildings and city spaces, is that of a griffin attacking a small calf.
We went into an open doorway and saw what was known as the royal court. We had a free tour as a guide and his jean-shorted followers were in there as well. Apparently, a former prince of Perugia tried to unite the provinces and principates of Italy under his flag in the middle ages and was actually very successful.
The royal hall had artwork unlike anything else I've seen. On it's walls we're family seals and symbols and on the ceiling little stars were painted on each tile. There was one family seal that caught my eye. It was that of a grey hound with a chevalier's helmet. The helmet was adorned with the head of a unicorn and ribbons flown out the back. The dog also held a shield at it's front.

Journal 2, Entry 3- Original Prompt: "Gondoliers"

The prompt in class was about what came to mind when we thought of Italy as a child. Due to my obsessive interest in Bugs Bunny as a child, I thought of gondoliers.
I imagined the entire country was a series of canals, waterways, and aqueducts and that the gondoliers were the one true gamers of this wild, watery landscape, like Kevin Costner in _Waterworld_ or cowboys in the old west.
I thought of them like the paid and semi-starving actors who sang love-ballads in a Mario Brothers accent at the Venice-themed hotel in Las Vegas. They would sing and cart around fat tourists with a painted blue and partly cloudy sky above them and blue and chlorine-saturated water beneath them.

Journal 2, Entry 2- Image Junkyard: "Movies and the Dark"

The other night after everyone had left the boy's apartment, Josh, Thomas, and I stayed up and watched television. We flipped through the channels and saw Latino music videos (which are all about infidelity in some sort of form), Japanese cartoons which seem even more frightening and surreal in Italian than in English, and we finally landed on a screening of Quentin Tarantino's _Reservoir Dogs_. I have seen it a thousand times and loved it each screening. We sat and waited to see if it would be in Italian or English. It was the scene where Mr. Orange (now revealed to be an undercover cop) is walking around his apartment before he meets up with the rest of the robbers. He puts on his wedding ring, he messes up his hair, he turns off the television, and exits the door. He then comes back in and syches himself up in front of the mirror. In Italian he says the lines I know by heart, "They don't know nothing. They don't know shit. You're fucking cool."
We heard the Italian. We changed the channel.

Masters: An Italian Affair

Fraser's use of the second person makes this seem like a giant joke. As this is the first novel I've had to read ironically for class, I tried to find some artistry in the piece. The "you" image is interesting and in doses is very effective to place yourself in the character's mindset, but eventually you realize that "you" are the most shallow and banal person who needs validation through the nice words of the "peasantry" and sexual gratification outside of your failed and short lived marriage. The "you" makes this novel a little introspective and it could be seen as a way for Fraser to make the women reading this fodder realize that they crave the most simplistic and idiotic things in a space that does not over either. But Fraser does not seem to be either Forster or Nabokov, so I kind of doubt that.

Journal 2, Entry 1-Image Junkyard: "We're Alone Now Cousi

I'm sitting at Bar Duelle now. There's a group of thin, German hikers to my left. I think they're talking about Monteluco and that just makes my sore hamstrings sing. To my right is an older Italian couple drinking proseco and I contemplate stealing their glass and drinking it in front of them, victoriously. 

I am also listening to The Who's _Tommy_.

Earlier, I looked up and saw a wedding party walking through the crosswalk. They were in their full regalia and three of the bridesmaids were trying to keep the white dress' train from touching the street.

I was listening to the song "Cousin Kevin," which is the most inappropriate song for a wedding by The Who, other than the ones about masturbation or the ones filled with Pete Townsend's bad sex jokes (I love it when you say my name/ especially when you say yes-clearly a great poet).

The drivers honked the horns and the party waved back as they walked down the path towards Arte Lingua. 

Journal 1, Entry 8-Comment: MacKenzie's "Junkyard 4, Week 1"

Kinda wanna steal this image really hard. 
This could be see in a longer piece of course because it's just a great image. I would like to see you write a hypothetical (thus epic) situation about the two lovers being seen by drunk Americans. Would I like to see the girl on tottering heels fall? Yes. Yes I would. You could also write about the emotional impact of seeing a couple in their intimacy while you were also drunk (which could be used as a variation of intimacy albeit with a group of other peoples). It's just got a lot of possibilities and I'm jealous of you finding it and unearthing this, just to be perfectly honest.

Journal 1, Entry 7-Comment: Megan's "Memory 1, Week 1"

Even though you don't like your CNF-and i think you're crazy for thinking that by the way, I think you could develop this into a larger piece or equate it to an even greater level. Like what are the similarities between breaking into the Chatanooga Tennis Courts and you and I exploring the apartment complex where we found the black cat and the bamboo forest? 
Why do these images make you reflect on that specific moment? 
And you're sitting across from me now, so I could tell you in person, but I am not. And you're just gonna have to deal with that.

Journal 1, Entry 6-Original Prompt: A Bull in the China Shop of the World

The last bit of advice my mother gave me before I left the continent was to not do anything stupid or get myself hurt.
In the past week and a half, I have basically told my mother to shove that advice up her ass.
List of things that have broken beneath the _Of Mice and Men_ hands of Lucas Jonathan Chance:
1) The pull out couch bed. I now sleep in the divot that my bed has created because on the slats in it has come loose. I find it comfortable so I don't really complain.
2) A chair. I sat in it and started telling a story (more than likely one about my childhood or a horrible story from my love life) when the chair caved under me.
3) My ass. I have fell on it, busted it, and creased and grazed so many times that it now looks like Marlon Brando's face after a bar brawl.
4) My pride. After the second or third fall and the payment of euros, I'm starting to see the money as a reminder of my terrible, terrible sense of balance. Luckily, my falls tend to happen at the climatic moment of my hubris ("I can beat everyone to that door," "I know so much about movies," "These steps aren't that slippery, I don't know what everyone is bitching about," etc) so I kind of deserve it.
5) The clay pot of some poor little old lady. I tried to solve this problem myself and threw my money at her as a form of imperialist penance, but she said everything was fine in very fast and very advanced Italian.
6) The metal chain outside the apartments. I didn't actually break that, but I'm sure that it was pretty rattle emotionally.
I don't want to break Italy bit by bit, like some conquering Visigoth or a Polyphemus throwing mountains at Odysseus. It's not intentional. I just...yeah...

Masters: A Room with a View

Forster asserts through the romance between George Emerson and Lucy Honeychurch that the country of Italy is not really a place for Italians. Throughout the first section of the novel, there are thoughts directed towards the Italians labeling the native people as "illbred" and "bestial."
The fact that the speaking characters in this novel are, in fact, English vacationers into Italy following a travel guide in order to have the perfect Italian vacation shows an irony within Forster's writing that exposes the shallowness of the characters and the futility of British imperialism in the turn of the century. While he would go more in depth with this theme in his other novels--_A Passage to India_ for example--, Forster here shows that the image of an Italy that can be commodified and souvenired  is idiotic.

Journal 1, Entry 5-Image Junkyard: The Infamous Parakeets

The two parakeets that the old man who owns Clitunno seem to be a part of his daily routine. That is both endearing and somewhat tragically sad.
The ownership and management of this hotel could easily become a really crappy family drama.
The father is the broken patriarch who built this hotel out of nothing and since the death of his wife he has put all his energy into his business and into the care of his birds.
Then you have the sons. The one with the tight pants (Francesco?) is the party animal who is slowly eating up the family profits with his excessive partying and his flashiness. He's the Fredo of the group.
Then there's the other brother with the thick glasses who kind of looks like Marc Maron. He's embezzling from the hotel or he's into something else nefarious. Or he's the entitled shit head who runs the place like a dictator when his father isn't looking. Kind of stealing from King Lear and Tennessee Williams on that one, but eh.
Then the third brother (that I'm adding just to make this as over the top as possible) is the man behind the desk at night. He's mousy and the one who should be in charge or the hotel, but his father doesn't like him for some reason.
Hopefully we won't be here for the bloody third act, but if we are then I could use it to refine this journal entry.

Journal 1, Entry 4-Image Junkyard: Elephant Man

I was eating masala at New Point kebab, where the angels make the food and like it when I say ciao in every sentence.
I sat afterwards and watched The Elephant Man, because I haven't seen it in awhile. The image I had in my mind is that of an American in a kebab stand (kebabery?) surrounded by Indians and Italians watching a movie about Great Britain directed by another American. It was just an interesting image. Doubt I will really use it anywhere outside of an internal chuckle.

Journal 1, Entry 3-Memory: Clowning

I was born the son of clowns.
It's kind of a new party line and I honestly forget that i was half of the time. Like "You mean, you weren't? Weirdo."
A good many people I tell that backstory too think 1) that it's either the most 'darling' thing that they've ever heard or 2) that it was the most traumatic even of my life.
It's really neither.
The reason I mention this is because tonight is because Megan, Josh, and I were talking about it and it just got me to thinking about the oddly surreal aspect of going to school on weekdays and dressing up and entertaining other kids my age on the weekends. It's odd now especially, since I vomit every time I have to do any form of public speaking. Not during thankfully. It's usually before and there seems to always be a man in the restroom asking me if i'm alright. It isn't a party until someone is genuinely concerned for my health.
I digress, the clowning aspect always felt natural to me and I guess it's influence can be seen on me now with the way I present my self. If I had giant shoes and a small car, I would rock them like a hurricane.
I could tie this into my travel piece because I'm doing research on Pagliacci and the history of the opera in general. The bad part about this is that I haven't killed my wife and her lover on stage. Fiddlesticks. i may have to get on that right away.

Journal 1, Entry 2-Image Junkyard: Nicholas Sparks

When we rode the train back from Rome, I sat next to these Italian University students and who I assumed to be their professor. The professor was reading an Italian translation of The Barbary Coast by Norman Mailer. I wanted to tell that there are better American authors out there, but he was already 200 pages into the thing, so he probably already knew.
A couple of stops later, the students gather their stuff and get off the train. One girl's bag opened and I saw a translation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. You can never escape them. I didn't see the name of the book, but does it really matter? Nights of the Lucky Notebook Song Letters. Just someone dies and the other person has to deal with it. The first thought that came to my head was that, translating is as hard as writing a novel, arguably harder. Why would a translator waste his time on that? I know, money. And then I thought, what if the translator is really good? What if Italians think that Nicholas Sparks is the next American God of writing and that the movie adaptations are just smudging his oeuvre?

Journal 1, Entry 1-Image Junkyard: Graffiti

I was walking in the rain because I was trying to be adventurous. I was walking around the Bar Duelle and I came to this place where the graffiti was just unique and the images hit me.
There was a B-2 bomber dropping a payload of Valentine Hearts. It was the typical stop war message that most artistic graffiti has and it may have just been jet lag, but I fell in love with the image honestly. I actually became pretentious a good bit and thought that "Man...this could be like...the epiphany that my character comes across. I'll make him a fascist or a part of some other paramilitary group and he'll see this and he'll repent his ways and become a flower child." I now know that it could be a really funny story making fun of something, but I was taking it seriously then.
As I kept walking down the street and as I kept patting my back, I saw another piece of graffiti on the wall of what used to be a theater. It was 'Fuck Off" and that's when my bubble burst and I realized that I was just being an asshole.
So thank you, graffiti-man. May your spray can flow ever over.

Masters: Romantic Readings

The Romantics may not have started the idea of using Italy as a place where foreigners come for self-discovery and self-pleasure (more about the pursuits of the soul or the corporeal pleasure of bliss as compared to carnal pleasure or some form of hedonism, which is president in other texts about Italy), but the Romantics may have introduced this idea to British and, therefore, American authors and audiences.
Browning and Shelly both celebrate the pursuits of the body here. Browning brings forth the concept of the landscape being tied in with the conceptual feelings that the Romantics became so entranced with. In "Companea", Browning talks about this one moment of bliss that he had while observing the surrounding landscape and how this moment cannot be recreated, even though he is doing so through recollection. The poem speaks on how this recollection tarnishes the memory itself and how this is the paradox.

First Impressions

    

Italy is a place of strong emotion and abstract thoughts. While we were hearing the place’s history and touring the archaic space filled with modern oddities—places that either stick out like proverbial sore thumbs or the spots inhabiting places that were there before their business and will be their long after they’re gone—words like “love,” “anger,” and “passion” came up all across the board.

When I walked through the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta and heard the bels ring for the morning mass, I felt so shocked by overwhelming emotion that I was struck deaf and dumb for some minutes—which would explain why I seemed to walk aimlessly for agood bit of time. The grandeur of the place—ranging from the precious stones and metals used to adorn icons and statues and the mosaics, to the marble work, and the original letter of Saint Francis—made me feel happy. That’s all I could do was feel. I told Tyler that I was happy that I was—for once—not in a place that is genuine in it’s awe-inspiring imagery and not post-modern and ironic or simply kitschy beyond the point of melodrama.

In short, I am enjoying this place alot so far and I plan to gush and wax poetic more as the weeks pass by.