expect the unexpected

it's so funny how always the least expected thoughts and realizations are the most poignant, important, and from time to time, painful.

shortly after bill and i got engaged i remember realizing that certain things, marriage, children, settled domestic life, had never been certainties for me. that these kinds of steps in life are things that we consider wanting or not wanting, having or not having. what i mean is that getting married or having children or a particular type of career can be fantasies with fuzzy edges and indiscernible details, but it is only when you have already laid the groundwork for these dreams to become reality that you can truly visualize them.

so, back to the point, the full impact of what it meant to be engaged to someone, to know the name, face and love of the person who i was going to marry, also meant that i knew who would be the father of my children. it seems like a stupid obvious thing, but i can tell you, with certainty, that it was a significant moment for me.

so now, a little more than a year later, i'm trying to plan the next steps of my career that i can only barely visualize thus far. i can't help thinking that pete would be finishing his time in korea and doing the same planning and dreaming right about now. this is one of those blindsides of a realization that threatens to hurt the most.

the road to hell -

so clearly just when i thought that i would be a good little blogger, i breached faith in the most egregious way thus far. it's been quite a while people and to be completely honest i don't have the energy to catch you all up; furthermore i'm betting that you don't have the energy to read the tome of an entry that it would require.

it's july 28th. i go home a week from today and i've never been more ready in my life. it has been four months since i've seen bill and seven since sweet home chicago. i have actually been missing the city quite a bit lately - ah homesickness.

right now things are fairly quiet. i've been working on my field project with a group of three other women who i generally like although one of them has been driving me reasonably crazy on and off. i've basically reached fluency in italian, thank god. there's nothing that i detest worse in this life than feeling ill at ease, stupid, or unable to express myself (as those of you who know me well very well know) so having conquered the majority of that obstacle feels pretty good. it's interesting to be at this level with a language though because i often find myself thinking in parallel in english and italian. so far it has served me well.

anyway. for those of you in chicago: i hope to see you in the next four weeks. for those of you outside: i hope to see you too i just don't know when. vi voglio bene.

Save California higher education!

Save California higher education!

so much for good intentions

i suppose i shouldn't set such high standards for myself because i always seem to balk at the precipice if you know what i mean. i've been all over the place and back again lately, so as you can imagine, things have been pretty hectic. after napoli i went to paris and then a couple weeks later spent four days camping in the south (a bit south of salerno) and hanging around a music festival with friends. i had an amazing time.

ever since i got back it's been hard to concentrate and i've been exhausted. there's an expression in italian, non ho la faccia per...qualcosa which literally translates to, i don't have the face for...something. this is pretty much how i feel about school in general these days. i'm just trying to hold out for the next two weeks until we start our field projects at which point i'm hoping to get a second (or third) wind.

i've been thinking a lot about pete lately. i'm finding the idea that he's dead for my whole life incredibly difficult to accept. i'm not convinced that i will ever really be able to accept it. it seems more like a brutal reality that will confront me on a regular basis than something that i will get used to. i suppose time will tell really.

ugh.

oh wow -

- have i been blowing off the blog. but, in fairness to me, i've barely been in milan lately.

about a week after my last posting i went to napoli and spent four days messing about in the south which was really great actually. it's really a beautiful city that oddly enough reminds me a whole lot of san francisco. a friend of a friend lives down there and he was kind enough to organize some nightlife for me so basically i wandered around during the day senza programma and at night got together with people and experienced a bit of that. i stayed at a really cute hostel right in the center of town on the border of the centro storico. i was really impressed that the hostel was actually pretty true to the photos on the website, which seems to be something of a rarity. so, if you ever go to napoli i highly recommend. the historical center of the city is quite gorgeous actually and you wouldn't believe how many little pizza man magnets can be for sale in one place. it's actually a bit terrible really. i can't imagine how the napolitani must feel about selling this absurd italian stereotypes to the absurd american tourists...oh well, a euro's a euro. here are some photos:










i also had the chance to go to capri, which is ohmygod beautiful, although it's impossible not to get the distince sense of not belonging to the club there (and by club i mean the ultra rich residents/tourists of capri club). i promise i'll add photos soon, but at the moment i have to stop doing this and start doing work, actual work that is. xo

fuori salone, armani, manifestazioni

i just finished uploading the rest of my photos from design week onto my computer. this batch is actually from fuori salone from the zona tortona area, which is pretty close to my house. i saw some pretty great things, but the actual fair itself was pretty hard to beat.

while on my way over there i met a couple of kids from the netherlands, eindhoven actually. apparently this city is not only the location of a very famous design school but apparently is the center of the design universe in the netherlands. i hear they'd like to give milan a run for the title vis a vis organizations like brainport they were here with a group of students and alumni exhibiting at fuorisalone. their space was called jewels and joules . it was one of the best things i saw over the entire week. the two people that i met were the "food designers" which is a totally new concept to me. basically they experiment with different flavors of food and design dishes. as chefs have been doing this since the dawn of time, it's not a particularly revolutionary concept. the twist in this case is that the people doing it are not chefs so they come to it with a different perspective on how food mixes and functions socially - interesting indeed. in this particular project they were using foods that are typical of south-eastern holland such as white asparagus, purple potatoes and smoked eel (totally delicious i swear to god). the eel is hanging above the table in this photo, along with bundles of asparagus.

the following photo is of a lamp that is currently in production that is made up of small foam oil drums. the number of oil drums that make up the lamp when the customer receives it depends on the price of oil at the time of purchase: the higher the price the fewer drums and thus the smaller the lamp, the lower the price the more drums and the bigger it is.

much of the show was about sustainability, gardening and food. here is my absolute favorite thing that i saw at the salone del mobile. it's a cultivation cabinet in which one can germinate seeds and grow small plants. it could comfortably live inside of the house and is a really beautiful structure. i'm going to ask bill to build me one.

here are some other assorted photographic highlights from zona tortona:

all of the preceding fuorisalone business happened last saturday. i had had all kinds of grandiose plans for sunday, but ended up doing basically nothing because i was exhausted and the weather was rainy and shitty. the weather remained rainy and shitty through wednesday. ugh. milan. wednesday night some girls from my program invited me out to an aperitivo and then we went to armani prive. i know it sounds super exclusive, but it's basically just like an other club, except it really is guest list/table only and the drinks are 20 euro! wtf man?! i did really have a good time, drunkenly dancing all over the place and being appalled by all of the incredibly scantily clad women bouncing about. i definitely can't see going there regularly, but every once in a while it's fun as evidenced below.

i know that this is the longest post in history, but it's mostly images! i'm trying not to tax all of your brains too intensely with lots of reading, just visual stimulation - yeah!

today, may 1st, is a holiday in italy. i honestly have no idea why and i don't really feel like researching it (but conveniently you're already on the internet and can if you feel so inclined). i went to my friend yael's house to interview her for a project and ended up staying and having lunch. we went out to meet up with a friend of hers and decided to go to the center, since it's the only part of the city that's open on holidays - if you're lucky. our tram driver made an announcement that it couldn't reach the center due to a manifestazione. we decided to walk since it wasn't really that far. about two blocks closer to the duomo, we found ourselves in the middle of this:

in case you were wondering, yes, that huge black thing is a wall of speakers that was blasting out fantastic reggae music and all of those people around us were dancing up the street behind it as it drove towards the center of the city. it was truly fantastic, particularly in a country with no open bottle laws. we were drinking beers and dancing up the street and the weather was amazing!

salone del mobile

the inauguration of salone del mobile, which is probably the most important design fair in the world, was a few nights ago. the trade show is accompanied by fuorisalone, literally translates to outside the salon, all over milano, during which time showrooms, galleries, studios and stores and open until all hours of the night and the city teems with designers, industry people and enthusiasts from all over the globe. i've been looking forward to this week since i arrived in italy and thus far i have not been disappointed.

my school scheduled our class on management of design-based companies to coincide with design week, which was quite brilliant on its part. tuesday night, after an abysmal attempt to go out with some friends to check out opening cocktail events, i ran into anna, a friend whom i've been thinking about for some time. a friend from the mafed and i ended up hanging out with anna, her boyfriend and some fantastic friends of theirs until late. one of the best things about italy (or really the world outside of the united states) is that there are no open bottle laws here, so i went to the kebab shop, spent 3 euro on a large bottle of beck's, and enjoyed it outdoors in the company of about 500 other people. it was fantastic, really.



last night (thursday) after taking it easy wednesday, read: going-out-light, i went to an aperitivo at strafbar with a couple of friends from school and friends of friends. then we went to the kartell store, drank a couple glasses of free prosecco and then to g lounge, where i danced the night away surrounded by (mostly) gay men. i scored ten additional points when i spilled someone's drink straight into one of my favorite ankle boots - yes, my foot was in it at the time. another excellent night.

today really kicked ass.

woke up hung over, sleep deprived and shall we say, slightly disoriented. i managed to break through the hangover by the time i was in the shower and got myself out the door on time, dry hair, looking decent (save your applause please). after a few minor hiccups and a very crowded metro, i arrived at the rho fiera complex where the salone del mobile is held. words cannot describe how incredibly, unbelievably, amazingly ridiculous this show is. it is chock-full of the most important design companies in the entire world. i was awestruck.



you would've been too...i promise. this afternoon we went on a couple of tours of the showrooms of some pretty amazing companies: b&b italia and boffi which were utterly amazing. so, at the end of a long long LONG week, i'm happy - and lying in bed. here are some photos for your viewing pleasure.