Spa Day : QC Termetorino

I recently returned to Italy for spring break, my first time back since January.  The visit has sparked a dose of envy for a life that isn’t mine.  I love my little home in France, my roommates, my life.  But this crystalline apartment remains a bastion of peace.  It glows, as does my life here.  As always, a cloud surrounds me here, carrying me away to a simpler world.  

A taste of the terrace / An obsession with food porn {Photo Credit}

Friday night, walking home from a pub, I pulled Pepe into a corridor I had seen a hundred times before.  The building is imposing, old and impeccably kept.  QC Terme.  That was all that was written on the sign.

A Google search showed me my near future.  QC Terme was a day spa.  After watching their promotional video, I was hooked.

1. There were napping rooms.  Half a dozen of them, spread across the old bath house grounds.  There were rooms with water beds, rooms with swings, rooms with blob pillows dotted along the ground.
2. There were indoor and outdoor Jacuzzis and a waterfall.
3. Chocolate was included in the entrance price.  A chocolate experience.  Local hazelnuts mixed with dark chocolate.  Strawberries to by dipped, pineapple to be covered.  

Obviously, there was no option but to go.

Waking up early the day of, I pulled on cutoffs and a t-shirt and filled a borrowed bag with books and a bathing suit.  Out the door, I was skipping.  Inside the building, I began poking around.  My wrist was encircled by a wrist band and we wandered downstairs for our robes and flip flops.

Ensconced in a calf length (on me at least) swathing of white kimono and only slightly shocked by the brave regulars changing in the open air, I wandered out to the start of a wellness adventure.  We started by exploring, noting the reactive pool, the turkish bath, and presumably the reserved area for special treatments.  The next story led to the café, the massage room, and the terrace.  Up again were the aforementioned napping areas and higher still were saunas.

The warmth of the day called us outside, for an hour of relaxing jacuzzi time before a light lunch.  The magic of the water napping room lolled us to sleep on a rolling bed hidden in a dimmed room.

Somehow, eight, nine hours passed in a moment.  I devoured Perfume, an odiferous story that seemed proper considering the smells surrounding me.  I rubbed mud on my face, tingling cream on my legs, salt over my body.  I discovered that the reserved section wasn’t reserved at all, but a continuation of the experience.  I felt the force of water pressing into my shoulders, the cleansing heat of a sauna purging away my worries.  I forgot about the papers to write, the things to be accomplished, and realized the calm that shavasana normally brings.

Chocolate from QC Termetorino {Photo Credit}

A daze of comfort surrounded me, egged on by cups of sparkling wine and chocolate covered strawberries, by blood orange juice and bits of mozzarella.  As the sun set and the day disappeared, we made childish plans to never leave, to stay in the peaceful courtyard, stretched out over the grass next to the pools for days to come.

To QC Terme, I have a few simple words : Until Friday my friend.  Your perfumed oils are already carrying me back.

A Venetian Weekend: Part 2

Burgundy tapestries and gold-painted trim adorned the ebony skeleton of the gondola.  Four pillows made a perch at the front.  Two stools balanced next to the low sides.  The boat was sumptuous in colors, surprising in length, but touristic.  Ours nestled into the dock areas, next to dozens of others.  Together they bobbed in full sight of every group of attentive city goers that passed.  The visitors couldn’t see the boats over the insistence of the person shouting history and theatrically sighing in the direction of the Ponte dei Sospiri.

As lunch drew closer,  the gondoliers lost interest in attracting potential clients.  Instead, hats folded over eyes and the waves rocked the world into a doze.  When roused later, the men began talking.  They greeted each other by name as there boats stilled in the currents.  As they uncoiled ropes and pushed off, the murmuring voices became sharp whistles and hees that carried around sharp corners, announcing their arrival long before the bows could meet.  In all of the noise surrounding us as we tripped into the boat, there was no singing.

I had imagined singing, as I always do when I am confronted with Italy.  A kitsch “When the moon hits your eye” bellowing deep from the belly of the striped man dancing with his pole would have sufficed.  My normal preference for “O Sole Mio" was too heavy to balance here.  Pizza pie was an easier thought, more palpable than an opera.

As we passed others like us, I thought of the sexism of gondoliers.  There must be hundreds of them in Venice, weaving around as the canals narrow, floating up and down with the tide, scraping against barnacles— but not a single woman was to be found on the back of the boat.  Men texted as they pushed.  Men wore Northface.  Men shouted at each other over the water.  But women were non-existant.  Was the work so arduous?  It couldn’t be.  I chalked it up to the stereotypical Italian sexism.  Only, stereotype is the four-letter word of academics.

Leaning back on the cushion, I tried to forget the word.  A boat passed to the left of ours.  The striped man was there, a mirror of our own, but there was another as well.  A man tapping at his accordion with vigor and singing to the six tourists squished along the edges.  We glided by too quickly to hear what song was playing.  It wasn’t the one I had imagined.  It wasn’t “In the Jungle” either, which I had heard earlier from a rowdy group of Americans overflowing to boats.  Like always, the accordion sounded like Paris.  Like metro rides and quayside walks.  Like full-sized cups of espresso and open space.

A Venetian Weekend: Part 1

Every time I enter a new city, I expect the glamour to be immediate.  I imagine an artist waiting for me at Charles de Gaulle a pastel-covered canvas under her left arm, her right extended toward me, beckoning.  In Rio, an entire a samba school dances toward me, quivering their feathers as they pull me into the melee.  In this world, my first steps into the city are straight from the concourse to the quais and beaches.  

Only, it is never like this.  I fly into a city and see the poverty of the surrounding areas, then the pseudo-location of the airport itself surrounds me.  I am in a queue with hundreds of others as I wait for my baggage to make an appearance on the slowly turning belt.

No matter where the final destination is, the transit between airplane and city drains the imagination.   As the graffiti thickens and the potholes widen, the allure of the city disappears, and I become cynical of the very idea of traveling.

Venice was the same.  I arrived after an hour bus ride to the Lyon airport, an hour wait (and delayed boarding), an 80 minute flight, then a twenty minute bus ride.  The limbo of between was overwhelming, more so than the terrestrial change from mountains to seaside.  Before I could lose myself in the wandering streets, I saw the industrial power plants, canal covered farmland, and crawling barges.  Before I experienced a gondola, I became car sick in a bus as it wound around the suburbs.    

   

Then though, then I was met by the city, more welcoming than any artist.  The first bridge engulfed me and the canals began to flow.  Despite the press of others, the footpaths became mine.  The people took wider paths, as my own narrowed until outstretched fingers brushed the walls of two embracing buildings, forever leaning closer to each other.  In the sinking sunlight, the cobblestones shone.  Pheasants sang from inside the cloistered churchyard gardens.

As the sacred bells began to ring, I stood enthralled.  Venice came alive, as one tower then another beckoned in the coming evening in a cacophonous medley of different times.  Five minutes separated the first note from the last one.  

Time there, was a notion different than in other places.  It was fluid.  Exactitude is of no import in a city of tides.  Dinner reservations could bend and morning plans change.  The bells would continue in their own way, without acknowledging the seeming certitude of the hour.

As the final noises faded, I crossed the last bridge of the afternoon and I entered into my two day home, another pseudo-place I could have found in any quaint city the world over.  I was greeted in English.  A British couple was next to me.  The warmth and glass doors separated me from the closeness of Venice.  Fifteen minutes later, when the bells should have begun again, I couldn’t hear through the thick walls of the hotel foyer.  Inside, you couldn’t see the disappearing gold of the sun either.

"I miss the way I took pleasure in small things..."

The quote is Neil Gaiman's, but also mine.

*******

The tea party is in a wooded cove to the right of the dirt road, to the left of jasmine-covered lattice.  A plastic table is strewn with pierogies and sugared strawberries, arranged over a yellow lace tablecloth.  Couch pillows spill over the garden chairs.  I am six and the paradise is mine.  I made it.  I made my dress too, out of silk scarves.  I tied the collection onto myself, finding comfort in the cold.  There is a road, somewhere.  A big road with fast cars.  I do not care.  I cannot hear their roar.  I take my teapot in pudge-hands and pour the liquid into flowers.  Their petals open to the warmth.  The ceramic burns, hotter and hotter.  I drop the pot.  It shatters into blaring horns.

Each shard transforms into a “sanspur,” hidden in the soil, burying into my foot.  It is Sunday.  I’m wearing the straight A dress and pantyhose and no shoes.  There are so many.  The burrs are a terrifying itch I cannot escape.  If I fall to the dirt, my body will be covered, if I stay still, they will dig deeper.  Shrieks spurt from my one-tooth-missing mouth; I hear boots pounding.  Daddy carries me to tarp-covered ground, rips the hose off my feet.  Each “sanspur” leaves a spot of blood.

The pain forces fingers to dig deep into the sand of Angel’s grave.  Mama says the eulogy.  A neighbor made the hole with “post-diggers.”  It’s my fault, the emptiness in the ground, the dirt in a pile.  I didn’t feed her, didn’t notice her stop.  She froze in a cage, stashed on a bookshelf.  When I found the dead potato, I wrapped her in the scarves that once made a dress, on a foggy morning far removed.  I cry, knowing she is still there, next to the well, feeding a tree.  I’ll unbury her soon, reclaim the silk, pull back my hair, buy a capybara.  He’ll grow old, visit the vet, die white-haired and happy, gnawing on the wood that Angel made. 

Forward

My whole life is waiting right there, on the edge of this year.  For the fourth year in a row, I will be in Europe, but this time, I don’t see myself coming back.  I am preparing to leave my home, and it is hard.  Every time I think about it, I feel so young.  I am a child, not ready to leave.  But I’m not ready to stay here either.  I want to see.  I want to fly. 

I’ve decided I will have a cat, for my birthday next year.  At that point, I will have been accepted to teach in France (confidence is key?).  My cat and I will live a blissful life fueled by baguette and fresh milk. 

Tomorrow, the first step in this process.  Not really the first, rather a long line of steps come to completion.  I will go to Atlanta to acquire my student visa and file for my long stay permit.  Then, two months from now when I am back in France, back in Grenoble, I will continue the process.

I have a job application to finish, that I am confident of.  I have a cover letter and resumes to send out to other schools, and I see everything hiding just behind the new year.

Ramblings from Rio

The night I wrote the following was a blur of emotions. I'd had an argument earlier in the day.  It still resonated in my ears.

I tried to sleep, but couldn't.  When this happens, the only thing to do is curl up in bed and rewatch "Breakfast at Tiffany's".  Yet I had exhausted it, watching the film twice in as many months.  On to the other option to cure the mean reds, "Midnight in Paris".

The opening scene of this movie is perfection.  It is idealized in the way that memories are.  The rain and the streets swept me back to traveling.  To being in Paris for the first time.  To the writing I hadn't been doing.

I rolled over and wrote the first thoughts that came to my mind.   It was a confusion of emotions, with my anger breaking through at times.  The things I didn't understand are evident, though not exactly articulated.  I tried to make sense of the confusion of group travel that I had never before experienced.

*****

Group adventures are different than solo ones. You are bound by those around you. Conversation is dictated, yes, but also the method of transportation and the activities. Instead of the glorious stumbling I am used to the surprise glances that show la Tour Eiffel and the Louvre, things here are planned in advance. Spontaneity doesn't exist, even the hour of dining is restricted by the desires of others.

I can't say I hate this.  My time here is an undeserved gift and I am here, in a glorious city I never imagine visiting. I have seen, up close, vistas I had never imagined. Walked in sand in a country impossible to me two years ago. Yet I am here. Longing to explore. But kept from it.

Rio is dangerous, you know. The favelas, they are armed. They have grenade and ground to air missiles..,  but actually, let's drive through Rocinho. You should, after all visit the favelas while here.

Let's go on a walk by the beach... Only you can't. It's dark. It's not a matter of being robbed, it's a matter of murder.  Though this rate is at the lowest it's been in years.

Don't you want to go to the beach. No, not really. I'd rather go shopping. But Rio isn't for that. If not for exploring different barrios, what is a city for. You can't stay cooped up, in a hotel with the view of a white washed wall. You can't keep looking from behind tinted windows. It's oppressive, only traveling in a group of 9 or 11. The freedom is gone, as you suffocate under a language that isn't
yours.

Yet still, from the snapshot I've seen, I love it here. More than any other place. It's not just the summer, it's the grown up beach, the international community you see, the transient quality that doesn't rely on Americans. It is unique, as lunch today tells.

A Marley enthusiast sang us bossa nova, while explaining world peace.  Children offered us gum, while we gave them food. A family of Dutch sat across from us. Their 11 blondes tempered by our array of Brazilians, Argentinians and myself. French walked by, babbling away.  Rich men in suits strolled by ripped and dirty street vendors. The clash was beautiful. Integrated and respectful.

Each monument shows a view. This is what the city is about.  Going to Cristo Redentor is not about the statue, it's about seeing Copacabana and Ipanema from afar, while marveling at the stadium and noticing the stables and horses trotting in the middle of the city.

The view from Cristo Redentor.

Pão de Açucar wasn't about the hills. It is walking along unlit paths, marveling at the lights, the expanse of the favela pouring over a mountain.

Pão de Açucar from the plane.

From every point in Rio, you look out, and you see the rest.  In a way that other places cannot compare.

The smallest one was Madeline...

This past month has been wonderfully full.  Days have been packed with French meetings and internship meetings, coffee and classes.  I had forgotten how beautiful a full schedule is, how refreshing it is to fall asleep exhausted.

On Friday I met with the directors of Impact and Launch, two scholarship programs unique to Wofford.  As we discussed the possibility of a photo shoot and how to convince 60 students to engage in bio-writing activities, I felt like an adult.  I was contributing in a new way.

I have worked with adults before, but it has always been as an assistant.  Me, being told what to do, when to do it.  As I collaborated on ideas, my position changed from one of a doer to that of a contributor.  As part of a team, words were bounced back at me, made better by their stint in another’s brain.

I came to the meeting with a task.  I needed 60 bios from busy students who are tired of answering emails and taking surveys.  There was no way that SurveyMonkey would give us what we wanted from the students.  How do we get students engaged?  What question needs to be asked.  We stumbled upon it.  How did you get from infancy to here?  It is open enough that students can read in to it. 

“For gypsies do not like to stay -
They only come to go away.” 
 Ludwig Bemelmans, Madeline and the Gypsies

Here as in, this room, on this day?  Here as in my emotional state?  Here as in my major?  The possibilities are endless, and the responses promise to be varied. 

As a member of Impact, I am now asking myself this question.  My bio will be next to all the others.  How did I get here?

I owe my love of adventure and baguettes to Madeline.  As the smallest in my class, Madeline’s own height appealed to me— as did her adventures.  She explored a beautiful city, one full of cafés and mishaps.  My child-mind saw the streets of Paris and never again considered the sidewalks of Jacksonville.  Since the age of 3, I have tried to find Paris.  Not just Paris the place, though I have come to love this, but Paris the idea.  Madeline’s Paris was a maze of streets melding into each other.  I try to find this, wherever I go.  Paris remains an idea, an idea I find every day hiding just behind the words of “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” and just behind the bell tower of Wofford.   

Trying to find Paris.

There is a first attempt.  I think it is what we are looking for.  This is me in a paragraph.  It says more than the words.