Alma Mater Studiorum

Walking through the streets of Cambridge, through the winding streets lined with great stone buildings with dizzying spires and stained glass windows, and signs like “Corpus Christi College: Closed to All Visitors,” there is obviously a sense of propriety and entitlement. Though the iron gratings and fences are covered with flyers and posters, they are all announcing lofty music concerts and high-powered lectures such as the one I am going to tonight on the Higgs Boson and the Large Hadron Collider.

On the train from King’s Cross in London, a young woman was on her cell phone, talking to someone about how one of her friends would be in Cambridge that afternoon and that she might run into her at the library. There was a pause, as the interlocutor on the other end must have responded, to which she rejoined, slightly louder, “I don’t know, I guess there are some books at Cambridge that Oxford doesn’t have." A wave of smugness filled the air that was palpable, and I heard a few self-assuring chortles from the fellow passengers.

This summer, in a series of random events, I ended up being an “hono(u)rary” player on the Oxford University Water Polo team at a tournament in Antwerp. As a thank you to the team, I took them on a tour of Antwerp. Time and time again, jabs at Cambridge would come up from the players, and then ultimately it came out that the absolute, and I mean absolute, worst insult you could ever levy upon someone from Oxford would be to mistake him or her for someone from Cambridge. The Horror, the Horror…talk of splitting hairs and atoms on a pin head...

So, with my own silent smugness, since I have never been part of Ox-Bridge outside of this honorarium, as I walk through the streets, I think to myself, well, I once taught at L’Università di Bologna, the OLDEST universities in the modern world. Its motto, in fact is Alma Mater Studiorium, which loosely translates as “the mother of all universities.” Established in 1088, it trumps Ox-Bridge by a bit over a century. A few years ago, there was a major, and highly unpopular agreement amongst European universities to be more accommodating to each other’s curricula and encourage more exchange program without losing credit hours, and as it was a conclave of all the Rectors of the major universities in Bologna, it became known as “The Bologna Accord.” So, some people only associate the words Bologna and University in a negative connotation as a result. Hardly what has happened with the names of Oxford and Cambridge.

Moreover, the physical aspects as well could not be more of a dramatic contrast. Whereas Cambridge is a clean, tidy, probably nearly crime-free (aside from intellectual theft (and since I first wrote this post, also bicycle theft)), town, Bologna around the university is gritty, grimy with lots of crime, drugs and no beautiful Backs to walk along admiring the grandiosity of the Colleges, even from their “backsides.” There are very few original Aule Grande left on Bologna’s “campus,” which is a very loose word as there is no central courtyard, or even cluster to distinguish it as a coherent University. Like much of Italy, it is chaos that somehow works.

But, unlike walking down Trumpington Street from my hotel, hitting the staggering Corpus Christi and King’s Colleges, walking down Via Zamboni, one sees an endless array of dreadlocks, tattoos, piercings, dingy and wild student cafes, spilling over with smoking Italian students (and mostly Italian students, unlike the highly international make-up that one sees here), dodging used needles and dog shit, not to mention the dogs making said shit. One of our friends was bitten by such a dog and was very ill for quite some time.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Bologna, for so many reasons and would move back there in a heartbeat, and I believe that I would rather live there again than be here. Not that I actually liked seeing people shoot up heroin next to dumpsters on a regular basis, but for the most part, I loved Bologna. Hard to explain if you have not been there. The rest of Bologna is not like that at all, but rather is a beautiful treasure with the greatest unfinished Cathedral façade in Europe and a wonderful Piazza Magiore, where all of Bologna comes together for various events and music and film and celebrating the city of Bologna.

But, the University is truly a bohemian mecca of sorts, and it is interesting to think of what it would have been like in Medieval times. I think that probably much more like what the Cambridge of today is like. Austere, but also a place where the world came to visit. L’Università di Bologna still commands great respect, and the world still does go there, but on a different scale: in ways, a more “human” one, whereas here, it feels untouchable at times, unless you are a member of the club. But, again, so as not to be hypocritical, I do admit to being able to break out my L’Università di Bologna tie, with its logo and the 1088 date on it, on special occasions, knowing that I did not just merely buy it at a gift shop to say I had “been there.” 

Witch Mountain

Today, while waiting for my ex-wife to come by to pick up some things for our daughter for a play date, I was waiting in the foyer of my apartment complex, and I was leaning my arm against the wall, stretching it out as I had come from a good swim earlier and I was starting to feel the muscles talk to me.

I was almost taken aback about how smooth and cool it was. Not that this was the first time I have touched marble of course, but it was just a jolt of consciousness to suddenly feel that surface, and it felt good to be pressing my arm against it.

I was then reminded of three marble things that have made the most impression in my life. One of them was the sheer amount of marble that the Taj Mahal is made of, so much that it is staggering to comprehend. The second are the statues of Bernini, which if you have ever seen them in real life, you would swear that they are soft and malleable if you touched them.

The big one though, was not the product, but the source. One of the eeriest places I have been in is Carrara marble quarries of Northern Tuscany. It is a haunting feeling to drive up this mountain that is a sheer cliff of un-mined marble. Not only is the looming façade of marble daunting, it is the ethereal white dust everywhere in the air from the extraction tools of the rock. I just remember driving up in near silence, as if we were going to the castle of some White Witch or Elven palace high up in the mountains, and the wisps of marble dusts were the guardians.

I had forgotten about that drive until today, when thinking about that marble on the wall, and how it got there. Though Belgium is known for its own opulent marble supply, I will never forget the specters of the Carrara quarries, even if I have to be reminded of them.

Masks we wear

There is one image of Venice, or Venezia, that will never leave my mind.  I have been to Venice a half a dozen or so times, but there was one time that left an indelible mark on my mental mindset.

Going to Venice in the summer is probably the worst possible thing I could wish upon someone, yet, that is when the Americans go. If you are reading this, and have had bad memories of Venice, go in February or November. You will leave enchanted.

So, for my memory of Carnaval, it was nothing short of mysterious, magical and even somewhat mesmerizing.

My Ex-wife and I went to Venice on almost a whim, but turned out to be one the best memories I have of Italy.

After a less than great dinner of apparently “local” food, we headed out to catch the last train back to Bologna..

In that short journey, we saw the most amazing ensembles of characters. Unlike Mardi Gras in New Orleans, of which I have another story to tell, Carnaval in Venice is nothing short of austere.  Groups will go around in silent  pageantry, not drunken idiocity like in NO.

So, the image, which is imprinted upon my mind was a formidable man dressed like the father from the movie “Amadeus” emerging from the fog, mind you  with true vapor trails of mist emanating from his long tails.  I remember him coming through the fog, as if he was floating. The only other spectacle  I can compare it to was an owl, with no less than a 6 foot wingspan once I saw in New Mexico, which did not make a sound, as nor did this man.

Why do the masks make us so surreal? They do. We all wear masks,  every day. For some reason we seem to value the physical mask more than the metaphysical one.

The Things We Carry

I will be packing up my books again, which is the bulk of my material possessions, so I mention them as a part for the whole, the synecdoche of my worldly existence. So, I will be packing up the books for a move across town.

It reminds me of the move that we made in Italy, but for all intents and purposes, it was a move I made across Italy. It was a huge transition from the limelight of being a visiting Joycean under the auspices of the esteemed Madame of Joycean Studies, Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli, a woman whom I hold in the highest regards and with whom I was humbled to be able teach with at L’Università di Bologna, to the study abroad program in Castiglione Fiorentino, where the now deceased Paolo Barucchieri led Italart, a consortium of universities established to explore and convey the Beauty and Art that Italy has to offer. It was a change. A transition.

We were living in Piazza Aldrovandi, in the best part of Bologna, in a fourth-story apartment overlooking the reddish, clay-tiled rooftops of a city that is forever deeply rooted in my heart and soul. A town I would move back to in a heartbeat, given the chance. It is a town with a Soul, deeply embedded in culture, cuisine, literature, philosophy, pride, and family. It, like Antwerp, Santa Fe, Austin, and Madurai, is a city different. It lives.

I was sad to leave Bologna, but equally excited to move to the hilltop town of CF, an original Etruscan settlement with equally rooted history and a highlight of a piazza designed by Vasari himself apparently, so this was no move downwards, but sideways, as is my current one, and ones I have engineered in the past. I live where I live, so it is paramount to me where I live, I love.

I loved Bologna and I loved Castiglione Fiorentino. I guess you could say that I am romanced by cities (though nature—Maine Coast, New Mexican back roads, American West, the Dolimites—move me just as much). I love a sense of place, a sense of Space.

When moving, my ex-wife was settled in Rome for the month for research purposes, so it was up to me to make the move from Bologna to CF, which was the norm. Being on the 4^th floor, with no lift/elevator, and about forty trips up and down to load the Furgone by myself, with the notion that it was parked illegally and I had to keep moving it to keep it “legal,” which in Italy is a loose term.

But, in addition to scaling Le Scale multiple times in the matter of an hour or two, meanwhile abating the howls and concerns of our two cats I had locked in the bathroom, soon, said two felines and myself were on the road in a rented furgone and on the way to a new chapter in my life, one that was both definitive in many positive and negative ways alike. It was the balance of the life we live.

Driving across Italy, with now two semi-docile cats and the feeling of change in the air, it was a bit daunting to drive into a very small, secluded, hill-top Tuscan hamlet to a dead-end street in which the van I had rented only fit with bring the mirrors in and a wing a prayer. I had only been in a tighter squeeze in Limone, Italy with a rental car in which literally I had about a ½ inch on each side of the car not to repeat a Chevy Chase “European Vacation” moment. That is not an exaggeration. It may have been a ¼ of an inch…

But, I and the kitties made the journey through beautiful back roads of Emilia Romagna and Tuscany, pulled into town with an entourage of village rugrats in train behind us, waiting to see if lo straniero could pull it off.  I did, and did not displace a single flowerpot of the flowerpot-lined lane.

I have moved quite a bit in my life, and even when married, I usually managed the majority of the move. I have packed boxes, lugged them and furniture up and down many stairs, hired many vans, and have seen my life parceled into boxes, enough to know that it is not the material, but the things we carry with us, to paraphrase Tim O’Brien, which make us who we are.

My life is changing, as it did there in Italy, from Emilia Romagna to Tuscany, but, when we remember the core of who we are, change is irrelevant.

Isola dei Santi e dei Savi

Joyce became known, for amongst other things, being a perennial exile from his home country of Ireland, an island that served as his greatest nemesis and mentor at the the same time. He could not have been who he was if it were not for Ireland, but because of Ireland, he felt that he could not be what he was meant to be. He was at an impasse and decided to leave his home country, and except for very brief returns early on, he never returned, though he also claimed to have "never left" the Emerald Isle.

One of the places that was a second home for Joyce, was Italy, though a very different Italy than most imagine, thinking usually of being pampered under a Tuscan sun or on Vespa-riddled Roman holidays.

Joyce was in Rome for a spell, working as a bank teller, and had a miserable time, never cottoning to the Roman way, leaving with a very bad taste in his mouth for Rome and Romans. It, unlike Paris and Zürich, would never really become his home.

However, the Austro-Hungarian bastion of Trieste would be where the young artist forged in the smithy of his soul his Irish story, and would remain an inextricable part of Joyce, leading him to name both of his children with Italian names, Giorgio and Lucia, and with whom he communicated in Italian for much of their lives, even when in Paris and environs.

Italian was part of Joyce, leading him to use his own Italianate name of Giacomo Joyce for the only "auto-biographical" work of sorts that shed some insight into the troubled soul of the artist as a young man.

When in Trieste, as a young man, working as an English-language teacher, Joyce gave lectures to a lifelong learning-type of seminar series, highlighting the political, religious, and literary history of Ireland that would both haunt him and be a perpetual fountain of inspiration for the rest of his life. Ireland, as Joyce called it for his Trieste audience, was the "Isola die Santi e dei Savi," (The Isle of Saints and Sages).

For me, what is interesting is the effect of exile, whether imposed externally or by choice, that it has on one's perception of a home country. For me, I have had a love-hate relationship with my own home country, at times never wanted to live there again, at other times realizing that for some things, America really is the greatest country on Earth. Strange how that push and pull can become so strong for some and not others.

One of the biggest reasons that I ended up in Italy, was in fact, James Joyce and the legacy he left there. I was invited by Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli at the time to be a visiting professor at the center for the Studi Interdisciplinari su Traduzione, Lingue e Cutlure. Many years ago Bernard Benstock donated an amazing library to the department there as a good friend of Rosa Maria, and since then, with her influence as well as the presence of Umberto Eco, also a prominent Joycean, Bologna and Forlì have been Italian strongholds of Joycean studies over the years.

While in Forlì, I did teach a class on the literature of exile to Italian students and then the following year I taught one to American students studying in Italy as an autobiographical "self-exile" examination. In both instances it was fascinating to see the Italians becoming more "Italian," while many of the Americans embraced Italy as a new home to a certain extent. However, when all was said and done, most people will revert to their home country, even if they have not been there. It is an amazing psychological pull that has caused much discomfort and troubled Souls over the millennia.

Like Joyce (and that is about as far as I can compare myself with him), I have found an interesting dilemma with living in various countries, at times regaling America, at times being repulsed by it. I went to a Fulbright reception here in Brussels on Bloomsday, which was indirectly and directly responsible for me being in yet another country as a result of Joyce, and it was interesting to hear about stories from foreigners who had gone to the States and those from the States being here in Belgium as a result of the Fulbright program, which stressed that intercultural ties were paramount to better understanding of cultures with the aid of so-called cultural ambassadors. Joyce was one such cultural ambassador as he delivered his lectures in Italian no less, (incidentally one of the reasons I began Italian, that is, to read his lectures in the original), and he painted a picture of Ireland that would be come the backdrop to all of his consequent works as an exiled Irishman.

Italy and Joyce and now Belgium and India have helped shaped and refine, sculpt and revise my visions of America and being American, so for this Joycean moment this year, I am reminded of what it means to be of and from a place, even when one is no longer there.

Oral Hygiene

One of the biggest surprises, and ultimately disappointing factors of teaching in Italy was the undue emphasis placed upon the oral component of the student's exam, and consequent passing or lack thereof.

What was most troubling, and it was rehearsed again while teaching in Belgium some years later, is that this aspect is so hard to criticize and therefor feels almost watertight, yet is so porous and disastrous to actually learning. But, as I learned myself, if you are going to teach in Europe, you better be prepared for the ritual of the orals.

Hmmm...it sounded kinky at best, perverted at worst. As an educational tool, this is one of the most controversial in my mind, but the Italian system is absolutely grounded upon it. The problem? They are all so well coached that they can make you believe that they actually are answering the question.

I taught in Forli for the most part, a sub-section of the University of Bologna, and every day that I would walk from the train station to the the campus building, I would pass several buildings from the Fascist era, and which were hardly veiled or re-configured because Forlì was a place where Mussolini was still highly revered with black t-shirt clad youths going to his grave every Sunday in the nearby cemetery to mourn Italy's loss. It goes on today.

So,  I would walk the mile or so from the train station and pass at least three of four major Fascist works of architecture and then go teach. The strange part of it is that the Oral, to me, at least, was the remnant of such times because you are encouraged to reproduce a coded (linguistically charged) message that is congruent with your comrades, in this case, your fellow students.

This, as an a American, was weird for me to say the least. In a very short time, I became both pariah and savior because of my approach to the orals. After the spiel that was delivered that every student had memorized, I then asked a different question to each student, in order to "go further" with the conversation. About a third just met me with a blank stare and left. Another third seemed offended that their perfectly rehearsed answer about Hemingway's time in Paris or Eliot's poetry was not acceptable to me for granting them the laurel wreaths of literature, and then there was the final third, of which was likewise broken down to thirds, more or less.

One third was offended and pissed off and threatened me with going to the "higher powers" to make sure there were no deviations from the norm.

Another third was intrigued, but sadly, soon enough exposed themselves to know so very little beyond their rehearsed answers that it was painful to give them lower marks, though I did, to merely say, thanks for playing the game.

The final third, which can always be rarefied into another tri-fold division ad infinitum, were the kids that realized, okay, I passed by the simpleton American that I can memorize, but then they were intrigued and we actually had a good conversation about the works, or about their own station in life, or whatnot. As I say, fractally speaking, we can always take it a further step, to break it down one more level. The coast of Britain shall never be measured if you take each stone and pebble and grain of sand, one by one, but you will get a good approximation. For me, taking those kids to a level beyond mere regurgitation was the key.

I Miss the Details

I miss Italy.

I have a rather stock answer to the question of "What did you love about Italy the most?"

My answer, "The details."

This was before living in India, where details are likewise what I miss most, but with Italy, it was the first time that I had been exposed to such minutiae of detail. It rocked my world, to be crude.

I miss the details of everyday life being important.

Now, is Italy the only place on the planet where this is possible, being some pseudo-Hegelian dreamland of hyper-Self-consciousness? No. I am not so naive, nor romantic, (though I am both), as to think that Italy and Italians have cornered the market on details and the appreciation of the finer things in life, but it is impossible to deny there.

On a daily basis, I would find myself wondering and wandering through virtual and literal labyrinths of details, details, details that if noticed, would enhance my daily walk through life exponentially. A turn of the phrase, or the turn of the Jamesian screw of finding the patterns in the carpet, the carvings of the wooden molding, the door handle, the figure of a plaster-caste Madonna peering out the window over an abandoned piazza in Todi, or a Turkish figure on Bologna's piazza San Stefano who looks suspiciously like my Yoga guru, Bekir, there is always something in Italy that grabs the attention, stimulates the imagination, and makes one realize how important an attention to details can be.

Do I miss the details?

No, not necessarily, but it is the awareness of them that I miss. This, again, is not to say that Italians stroll arm in arm through the day pointing out the details of everything around them, yet, at some level they do, or at least, their culture lends itself to that. Like India, there is a difference of Time and Space in Italy that forces one to stop, take notice, and to observe. You can react, or you can enjoy.

For me, Italy was a perennial celebration of the details in life. Living in northern Europe now, however, I find that people have no patience for the detail. As in America, (again, a gross generalization, and there is much about America I respect, miss, and appreciate, though patience is not one of them), here, one needs to have something yesterday. But, the appreciation of the process, the bringing about and the becoming is no longer, if it ever was.

Life is a process.

Life is details.

I miss that on a cultural level.

What is the Here and Now if we are steeped in the Elsewhere and Next?

I praise and curse Italy for this. Ignorance is sometimes bliss, but it is also hollow, and hollow men are already dead.

Non lo so...