I Feel at Home in Italy August 10, 2008

[I wrote this shortly before I discovered Damanhur and became fluent in Italian. After that, everything changed, and it all made sense. ]

I feel very much at home now that I’m back in Italy. I feel at home in the glowing, verdant heat of the Mediterranean sun, walking past red clay hued houses with omnipresent green window shutters. I feel at home when I hear the lyrical language rolling our in a river from Italian mouths. I feel at home amongst the crowds of fashionistas and famiglias, clamoring onto metros and slipping past each other along narrow, medieval back streets.

In most ways, it makes no sense that I feel at home in Italy. Italians and I, we are different creatures.

Italians seem to speak Italian in an endless stream of passionate, often complaining, coffee-fueled conversation. I speak words with a slow even tone, and my speech is meticulously sparse. In the order of familiarity with languages, Italian ranks a distant fifth after English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and French.

The Italian women seem to wear tightly fitting, newly purchased, seasonally fashionable designer clothing and insensible shoes. They stress their ankles while balancing on heels raised to sharp points, and they squeeze their toes and the balls of their feet into constricting elfin tips, strapping them in with wire-thin straps that slice red lines into compressed flesh. I wear a pair of black, clunky, ergonomically sound sandals with fat supportive straps and curved soles, and I have been wearing the same two sets of traveling clothes for over a month.

The Italian men seem to sport short, closely-clipped haircuts, and they demonstrate little variation on the clothing theme of designer suits and tight pastel T-shirts with form-fitting jeans. I am usually drawn to shaggier types with goatees and eyebrow piercings, roaming around shirtless through the woods and dancing with bare feet.

The Italians seem to wear expensive sunglasses and carry fancy designer handbags. I carry a twig of dried sage and a rose quartz pendulum with me in a more functional than fashionable traveler backpack.

The Italians seem to eat a steady diet of bready and cheesey foods with generous portions of meat and gelato. Most of their vegetable intake appears to have been heated for days and stirred into soups and creamy sauces. I only eat raw things that grow on trees, nibbling on organic fruits and sprouted almonds and the occasional bowl of lettuce leaves and tomato slices drizzled with lemon and olive oil. I eat bananas instead of ice cream. I turn down chocolate pieces and tiramisu in favor of baskets of fresh figs.

The Italians seem to drink plentiful bottles of wine and café all day and dessert liqueurs made from walnut and artichoke after dinnertime. I see them feeding their children liters of brown, syrupy cola. Invece, I drink clear, clean acqua minerale in a steady stream from dawn to dusk, and I delight in wheatgrass, goji berry juice, fruit smoothies and freshly pressed vegetable juices, which I have not found anywhere in Italy. I feel like I’m the only fire dancer and raw foodist in the entire country.

The Italians seem to eat first thing in the morning and sit down for huge dinners late at night. I fast for fifteen hours a day. After drinking water for many hours after awakening, I break my fast with dates and fruits, and at lunchtime, eat a generous salad. For dinner, a peach or two – well before sundown – will usually suffice.

Smiling, dancing, yoga and silent meditation do not seem to be priorities for the Italians, who tend to display a cool, disinterested gaze while sitting around for hours in cafés and on public steps, talking with each other fast and nonstop. The Italians seem to be eternally occupied with their cell phones. I abandoned mine in America months ago.

The Italians seem pretty attached to Roman Catholicism, whereas, I take what I like from a grab bag of esoteric mysticism, Buddhist traditions, and pagan naturalism.

The Italians pride themselves on their cars, while I am only interested in hybrid cars and biodiesels and favor vintage bicycles. The Italians love film and opera; I prefer handmade books, acoustic music and live drumming. We find common ground on the inherent value of the Vespa.

In a few ways, the Italians and I do happen to agree. We adore paintings and mosaics and delight in open piazzas and public spaces. We may be eating entirely different things, although we honor the divineness of fine, organic cuisine and love to cultivate, prepare and eat it slowly, lingering in the magical theatrics of each meal. Italians and I, we value generous stretches of leisure time and afternoon napping, and I find many of them still close up shop between the hours of 13,00 and 16,00. We all enjoy public nudity, and I’m happy to see that throwing off clothes outside happens casually here, if only at the beaches. Italians love life. They adore amorousness and form warm connections and immerse in delicious beauty, like me. Viva Italia!