Journal 5, Entry 7- Image Junkyard: "Heineken Ad"

I was coming home from the movies with my father. It was raining and I had been back in the states for about three hours. On a billboard next to my parents' house in College Park, a Heineken ad says "When in Rome. Or London. Or Shanghai. Trust the star bottle."

Journal 5, Entry 6- Image Junkyard: "The Portrait in the Duty Free Shop"

At Rome airport, there was a portrait of the Madonna and the Christ child behind the counter of the duty free shop. The mother was nursing and the child Christ was staring forward and pointing towards the breast. It was like the portrait in the mayor's office in Spoleto except without any fades or tears.

Journal 5, Entry 5-Image Junkyard: "Circle of Death"

Samuelle, Jenna, Sydney, Tyler, Josh, Thomas and I were playing circle of death on the old stained carpet in our apartment. For some reason, I felt a sense of calm as we all took cards and drank our booze in small, clear plastic cups. We were all on the same level.

Journal 5, Entry 4- Original Prompt: "Bad Poem Numberr 3"

While sleeping in a hostel in Florence with a 105 degree fever, I became a motorcycle. 

The German couple above me whispered even though no one spoke their language. 

The Japanese boy about my age with the darkened eyes, the bubble vest, and the slit-like lips stared at his computer for the night and cried in the morning.

The man on my left stripped down to his cock and balls and lathered himself in a oil of camomile and humility. 

Journal 5, Entry 3- Original Prompt: "Bad Poem Number 2"

Do you think Jesus had an Oedipus complex? 

I think this at 4 in the Rome airport. Hungover, sweat yellow. 

The messiah sprawled and suckling from a tapestry teet

behind the head of the cashier of the duty free shop. 

The Madonna giving the accepting and complacent look of a second grade teacher.

Journal 5, Entry 2- Original Prompt: "Bad Poem Number 1"

The landlady piles my last bit of cash. 

She asked me in cornet Spanish if I were a virgin or a lion. I thought she wanted something more personal than astrology and my place in the stars. 

The psychotherapist next door could probably answer that question better than I could and solve it with the red, green, and blues they offered my uncle. 

He is in Texas behind wired glass and making rosaries out of crucified trashbags. They're traded for cigarettes and minutes on a cell phone to call a lawyer or some girlfriend that works at a diner or as a dental hygienist.

I'm in Bologna peeled off a seat on the Florentine high speed and standing on a balcony watching sparrows hop like kangaroos from window to window. I don't pray and I can't smoke so my uncle have nothing to say.  

The landlady, with her benign tumors beneath her lilly blouse, tells me about the blind men in the other room and how she leads them out every evening. 

She must read them their horoscopes. 

 

Journal 5, Post 1-Image Junkyard: "Caves"

The Pidgeon holes in the underground city of Orvieto sit as a well-preserved fad of the rich and in power. I wonder if the same will happen to the Gucci stores on every corner.

Masters: Gommorah 1

The influence of American culture on Italian culture is shown in Salviano's _Gommorah_. After a couple of centuries of European and Americans writing about the presence of Italy corrupting expatriates, America itself is rooting itself in Italy itself. With half of the gangsters named in the novel are named after characters from tv shows, Angelina Jolie being the recipient of a handsewn masterpiece of a dress from a disfranchised worker, and Coca Cola products being injested by everyone, America's influence and demand for products and exports from Italy has caused the country and people to become and live in a post-capitalist wasteland where the old criminalia has mixed and tranmorphed into an amalgamation of old world warlords with the glamorous depiction of criminals in American films such as _Goodfellas_, _The Godfather_, or (ironically) Brian De Palma's _Scarface_ which features an Italian American actor playing a Cuban in a remake of a film about an Italian American monster.

Journal 4, Entry 7- Reportage: "The Leather Market"

The leather market has more American voices speaking in it than Italians. It's a hypocritical thing to say, but I wish they weren't there. I looked for the special stand that was just put of reach, the one in the corner that wasn't selling a Doors t-shirt, highlighter yellow headbands, or the cheap wallets with the Florentine fleur de les on it with a pun about marijuana or sex. As soon as I found that shop, someone else did as well and they asked about what kind of animal the leather came from and if it was killed humanely. I eventually bought a jacket the next day. It sits on my skin in the summer sun, but I would have felt empty without one which is the sentiment that all the study abroad kids from the other universities share with me, I assume.

Journal 4, Entry 6- Image Junkyard: "Laundramat"

I bought groceries and made a sandwich with Josh when we washed clothes in the washateria. I had a play idea about two foreigners in a washateria dealing with their alienation. I tried writing it when I got back to the place, but I couldn't think of the names of any characters.

Journal 4, Entry5-Image Junkyard: "Carnival"

Red flags were being waved in the Piazza di Neptuno. While the Roman god stood with his back turned with his trident pointed downwards towards his fountain, the Communist party was rallying with their flags and their speeches in front of the main building there. It's hard to be a demagogue now, as the semi-quiet leader with the bull horn could attest. He bunny-sloped through his demeands for an economically independent Italy and a culture where the workers could be stronger and more respected. He said something about America as a young blonde boy handed me a newsletter with the hammer and sickle. I tried to translate it with Tyler as we ate at the Burger King two blocks over.

Journal 4, Entry 4-Reportage: "It's Hard to Be a Saint in Assisi"

The small church, surrounded by marble versions of prophets and gold crammed like caps on teeth, sits in the center. It's made of crude brick and is small enough to fit about eight people if they're not afraid of touching one another so they can hear the word of God. Outside of it in the cathedral that acts as a baroque lantern for the candle inside, there are rows of pews where people can sit as far away from each other as possible. Thomas and I were looking at the relics around us, he pointed out a guy in a windbreaker who was checking his phone. Windbreaker was looking at pictures of centerfolds.

Journal 4, Entry 3-Image Junkyard: "The First Round"

In the square in Bologna, there was the smell of bad marijuana and the Caribineri stood by their jeeps. The college kids sat in circles and drank. I met a kid named Lucas who I found mildly attractive. But I wondered if in the off chance that we ended up together, would I technically be fucking myself?

Journal 4, Entry 2- Image Junkyard: "Bed and Breakfast Astrology"

We were at a bed and breakfast in Bologna. It was next to a doctor who specialized in mental malities. The landlady was covered in moles and had a Spanish accent. She was taking down my passport information. She saw that my  orthodoxy was August 24 (the same day Vesuvius ash-coated by the way) and she told me that hers was the 22. She asked me if I were a virgin or a lion. I thought she was asking something more intimate than my astrology.

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.