29 Wednesday Mar 2017
Posted in Education
With a limited vocabulary, one is bound to be repetitive.
The same way, studying Italian, one is often competitive.
Luckily, my language lessons this spring are strictly one-on-one.
That still doesn’t mean I can fight my way off the bottom rung.
29 Wednesday Mar 2017
The kind, elderly gentleman spoke to us, quite naturally, in Italian.
“… il Centro? (“… the center city,” he inquired. As in a word of advice: if you’re trying to get to the cultural center, then you took the wrong turn back there at the divergent path.)
We had deliberately turned off before the Mobilita Alternativa, which carries you up the hill to the center city on a magic carpet ride.
We had taken the first left, the path less followed, to take the back way toward Torre dell’ Olio. (The tower of oil, aka in infamy or legend as the tower of Hannibal’s ignominious retreat from the gates of Spoleto.)
So now, it was our turn in Italian. Rebecca knew the infinitive for the verb “to go,” and quickly supplied the conjugation as she set out in her mind for the proper translation of “art store,” when I was prodded by a simple sign to supply a destination: “Torre dell’ Olio.”
A big smile from the nice man, along with well wishes for a good day.
28 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in Travel
The Ex-Pat is an archetype, I suppose.
Living within and yet apart, s/he knows
Customs & places, restaurants & faces,
The barriers that every tourist crosses.
A passport is stamped where it falls open
On lines of direction, planes of past time.
Visiting the same place, in a new season,
Invites pilgrims to explore life’s rhythms.
28 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in Education
Siri, take a dictation:
Dear Apple Genius,
Thanks again for checking out the AirBook
In Charlotte. Disk sweep, alas, didn’t work.
At least Siri, in good faith, knows my voice–
Saves me, or my thumbs, from screaming.
28 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in Travel
In a doorway more inviting than wide,
Talking back and forth with a beloved,
The body overlooks an arm outstretched.
In this way a back goes into spasms again.
28 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in Travel
Sleep when it comes looks like this:
(Selfies, as a genre rule, don’t irk me,
Yet I will spare everyone the mugshot &
Stipulate to a jailbreak in the flight-:)
But since then, that’s pretty much been it:
Snatching little bits of sleep if it comes,
A self-defeating strategy, experts insist,
How very hard it is, even so, to resist.
28 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in Travel
28 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in Education
What should be a simple conversation
Is, for me, a pick-up game: too one-sided.
Latugga, I heard.
Proscuitto, I said.
Oggi arrivato, Rebecca heard What was all Greek to me.
Just so much more I have to learn.
28 Tuesday Mar 2017
28 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in Education
To: Reb, my Excel Queen
From: Carlo, a courteous driver
Re: Whenever windy? = “Vento” (& not “pinto,” U backseat idiot)
Date: Morning, Day 1 in Spoleto
To: jt, the daft Memo King
From: Our Friendly Clerk, Anonymous Still
Re: Forever Clueless? = “Hurry Up, Please, It’s Time to Mind the Gap” (in other words, to drop the English references and get crackin’ on your Italian)
Date: Afternoon, Day 1 in Spoleto