My Friends,
After enduring the inefficiency of the Italian Postal (dis)Service (zing!) for near a fortnight, I gots my passport, gots my flight to Istanbul booked, and gots some final impressions of my stay in Italy to share.
After enduring the inefficiency of the Italian Postal (dis)Service (zing!) for near a fortnight, I gots my passport, gots my flight to Istanbul booked, and gots some final impressions of my stay in Italy to share.
THE WEATHER:
In the very second line of “In Another Country,” Ernest Hemingway writes, “It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early.” Well, he wasn’t lying and I therefore should not have been surprised by the seemingly perpetual fog that has blanketed the GMA (Greater Milano Area) in which I have been residing for the last few days. And the cold! Thankfully I had some sweaters and scarves to borrow from my cousin. That, coupled with the fact that I have been sleeping indoors, has meant that I have weathered the low temperatures just fine. However, as we are heading into the wintertime I will make no movements further north of my current latitude of N 45° 35′ 39.537 until this weather decides to unfuck itself and get warmer. Til that day, its south and east in this bitch, where “this bitch” = the world.
THE BUGS:
Almost paradoxically, in spite of this cold weather, mosquitos have manifested their presence in summer-esque numbers, and spiders have manifested theirs in sizes and levels of aggression reminiscent of the movies. I mean look at this shit:
“I SAID ‘LOOK AT IT’!!”
That’s a spider-bite I received whilst asleep at the beginning of my stay here. In two weeks, the size has not diminished pereceptibly. Even the scorpion sting I got in Australia disappeared quicker than this. Sadly, this spider does not seem to have been radioactive as my body has not begun producing any new white sticky substances (I realize that making a semen/webbing joke negates any points I got for leading off with a Hemingway quotation, but I couldn’t resist).
So as it is, I am stuck for the time being with this blemish on my bloated, distended belly. Speaking of which…
MY BLOATED, DISTENDED BELLY:
Having lived on my own for years now, I had forgotten what it was like to live in the Italian-Canadian household I grew up in, and the heavy, albeit delicious, food that was always available. As I mentioned in a previous entry (One Night in the Big City: Part 1, 18 August 2011), this caused me to be something of a fat kid. And although my condition has been in remission for the last few years, thanks to regular meals, a surfeit of cheese and bread, and a very liberal definition of which parts of the pig constitute food (hint: everything) I am going through a relapse. Perhaps a practical example is called for:
Did you know that in Italy they eat something called Lardo? As the name implies, its pure fat, what a rational human being who was not trying to bulk up for winter hibernation might consider an off-cut. But this fat is taken and seasoned, thinly sliced and enjoyed as a delicacy. Even worse/better, my cousin informed me that it is best enjoyed on warm bread with cheese and honey; the warmth of the bread melts both cheese and fat ever so slightly and the flavours become simply sublime. Its sticky, slippery, aromatic and warm.
It’s like this, but in your mouth
And even when you are not eating straight-up pork fat, that are as many ways here to fat (sic) as there are to die. Olive oil for example, is used so liberally that it drips off my fork as I eat my pasta, and it flows down my mustache and beard coating my whiskers as if it were afro sheen; cookies are considered breakfast food; if it can be baked well it can be deep-fried better; nutella makes everything awesome, etc. Essentially, in the quest to make food more delicious and decadent, pussy concerns like fibre-intake and cholesterol are not given a thought. Italians were basically the first to do Epic Meal Time.
THE DANGEROUS CARNIVAL PRIZES:
Taking some air last night my cousin and I stumbled upon a fair. Though not much of a gamester I couldn’t resist dropping 5 euros at the shooting gallery. I gripped the mock-up 9mm Beretta expertly, and my lip curled into a smile knowing that I carried 15 men’s lives BB’s in the magazine. I adopted a firing position with both eyes open and verified the zero of the laser-sight by checking it against my point-of-aim using the iron sights. With my zero verified I checked the trigger pull and saw it had a lot of slack. This didn’t sit well with me as I like a sensitive pull. However I reasoned that the carnies had to weigh the comfort & convenience of a trained killer like myself against the danger of giving guns with hair-triggers to the POGs and civvies frequenting the carnival. They erred on the side of caution and I can’t fault them that. Still, when I was given the word, I unleashed a fury rarely seen by men. I shot those beer cans like they were Mexi-cans.
And do you know how they rewarded my proficiency in killin’? A slingshot.
Dennis the Menace Lives!!
They gave me the means to keep on killing. There is something poetic about that. It’s like, “Hey, you seem dangerous with projectile weapons so do let’s (sic) give you more!” Then, as if to fuck with me, they had set up the fair on a lot filled with pebbles and had polizia municipale roaming around. I swear its a miracle there was no “1-8-7 on a motherfuckin’ cop” last night.
This pic is one of the front-runners in contention for the cover of my upcoming rap album
So yeah, I guess my experience in Italy hasn’t been your typical one of ruins, canals and leaning towers. But I lived as an Italian with Italians and that has been an experience which I found more valuable and enlightening than any all-inclusive, guided vacation package. I love the grassroots experience and it has been just as rewarding now as it ever is. I have learned that Italians are just people like us Canadians except with more corruption and less work-ethic (Sorry, still mad at Italian postal service).
Stay Thirsty,
-Andre Guantanamo
Write-Errantry 