http://www.serenutu.com/index.htmlStories from Italyenstories@serenutu.comCopyright 2006 Serenutu2010-01-07T16:54:50+01:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:22:50 +0100stories@serenutu.comNone2010-01-07T16:54:50+01:00http://www.serenutu.com/index.html#unique-entry-id-62http://www.serenutu.com/index.html#unique-entry-id-62stories@serenutu.comNone2009-12-30T06:41:49+01:00http://www.serenutu.com/index.html#unique-entry-id-61http://www.serenutu.com/index.html#unique-entry-id-61http://www.flickr.com/photos/xrrr/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 I recently travelled to Virginia on the spur of the moment and a dirt-cheap plane ticket. The original purpose was to see my mother Cynthia, but as plans blossomed, it became a Thanksgiving pilgrimage which then spilled into a shopping expedition the proportions of which tested my newly acquired serenity and anti-materialistic philosophy. Though it may have just been a period of severe superficiality, I am blaming it all on the mall. Because Luciano and I are normally in the US only in the summer, this posed an unusual opportunity to not only find winter type items, but also sales like no other. I collected a list of requests from friends, Luciano suggested I wear a helmet, my sister and I planned strategy, and I fantasized of retail opportunities of which dreams are made. I planned to arrive at my mother’s door with two empty suitcases, wearing nothing but a sturdy pair of walking shoes. In the end, it was of course not so dramatic. We arrived on Friday morning at the mall leisurely hour of ten and discovered none of the promised no, threatened, crowds. There was a moment of manufactured mania at the Ann Taylor where the staff was handing out coupons at the door promising an additional forty percent discount until noon only. Inside we joined a lot of tall, upwardly mobile women fighting over ugly suits. For some reason it all looked more interesting with forty percent off. Less so when at 3:30 we passed the store again to see the staff person still handing out those coupons. ...The floor in Old Navy was littered with trampled t-shirts and pajamas, detritus from the early morning rush. As the staff gamely folded the endless piles around them, I imagined a shopper reaching down to pick up an item from underfoot after having been ground into the linoleum and actually consider buying it. Six hours later my sister and I emerged to discover the parking lot in chaos. It seems that the crowds had decided to arrive after the rush and thus created their own. We smugly left the waiting cars to fight over our spot and drove past the miles of traffic waiting to get in. Had I not been feeling just a bit queasy from all the shopping, it would have been quite triumphant. One might imagine that this would be enough for me, but it was not. I found myself desperately hunting for such disparate purchases as kitchen scissors, a left contact lens, a set of books for a literature class (bargain price, short, classic) Cholula hot sauce, copies of Dwell Magazine for Luciano and something to keep the neighbor’s cat out of my garden. ...Having revealed how I feel about cats, I quickly escaped the store with a one pound bag of cat repellant which went into my suddenly very full suitcase. The lowest point in my retail madness was a twenty minute dash into a Target on the way to the airport. I found myself rushing the aisles, like a woman who is being sent to the moon, grabbing at items that I felt I really needed…liquid whiteout, little bottles of hand sanitizers, Sharpie pens, a Martha Stewart magazine…only to find all here later. ... The point is that but for a few bright spots in my visit: Thanksgiving dinner, a family Christmas tree expedition, a walk at Great Falls park, the entire trip was awash in this unexplainable urgency to buy stuff. I had become the worst kind of tourist: the kind who travels to acquire objects as trophies, rather than experiences. ...Perhaps I still had my head down looking for the most expeditious way to get from point A to point B. Perhaps it was some sort of artificiality that had rubbed off on me. I don’t know, but while on my commute to Treviso I ran into a herd of sheep, commuting the other way. Almost literally, as a group of donkeys leading the flock came right at me and swerved to the left only at the last minute as the rest of the herd parted around my car Topo. I was furious to be stopped in my tracks like that, on a major road, on my way to work, and began snapping photos with my phone. ... Hundreds of sheep bleated past my window, brushing up and knocking against Topo’s flanks as I muttered to myself and fumbled with the camera. The dogs and then the sheepherders finally approached, whereupon I rolled down my window and snapped, “This just isn’t done!” I got the expected dismissive wave of the hand, but I shocked myself. All the way to Treviso I mulled over my reaction. Had I become so petty that during a simple timeless event such as getting in a sheep jam I could only focus on the fact that they were in my way? I wished I had spent more time watching the river of animals pass by my window while thinking, yet again, how different my life is now, instead of having my head down cursing my telephone camera. The sheep were not even trampling my garden…why had I been so angry? Saddened over my sudden loss of patience and observational skills, I thought this over all day. ... Was the fact that I recognized my condition enough to make a difference? ...The annual radicchio festival was going on; an odd celebration for which hundreds of the truly depressing plants are trucked in and placed in the square for what seems to be about 24 hours. The elderly gentlemen who gather at the square every day for a morning glass of prosecco were admiring the beds of limp purple vegetables. ... As she passed me her heel jammed a bit in the cobblestones and she almost went down, but maintained her equilibrium and composure as she swept by. ...That evening as I was driving home, head down, point a, point b, I caught out of the corner of my left eye the tip of a snow-covered mountain in the nearby range, blazing hot pink at its icy peak. It was just a glimpse, but I pulled over next to an open field to see it again. And just like that I looked up, caught my breath…and put my head back to take in a glorious sunset. The Dolomites were on fire and the sky to the sea boiled in reds, golds and yellows over the stubbled corn fields. Houses glowed as if ignited, like so many bonfires scattered across the farmland…and then suddenly it was all gone. Cars sped past me in the gathering dusk, in a hurry to get somewhere. Quietly I got back into Topo and drove home. ]]>stories@serenutu.comNone2009-12-14T06:22:46+01:00http://www.serenutu.com/index.html#unique-entry-id-60http://www.serenutu.com/index.html#unique-entry-id-60