I went to see Charlie Wilson’s War at the Odeon, a cinema that shows films in their original languages: The seats were covered in a gorgeous gold velvet, the floor was spotless, the concession stand looked like a counter at a posh café, the theater itself had a balcony reminiscent of those in Lincoln Center, and there was even a five-minute intermission! And, best of all, the film started on time sans previews at the beginning. It was cinematic bliss.
* * *
After several weeks of perfecting, reshaping and carving my clay version of the Degas dancer, it was time to pour on the plaster. At the end of class one day Dario gave us a step-by-step explanation of our task at hand using a PowerPoint slideshow that visually depicted how to make a waste mold. The general rundown is this: first the sculptor pours a coat of dyed plaster on the clay, then a white coat, then you scrape the clay out of the hardened plaster shell, then you fill the mold with yet more plaster and then, after that’s dry, you use a chisel and hammer to carefully break apart the waste mold leaving a lovely plaster rendition of your original clay model.
While some members of my class incredulously pondered why we didn’t just fire our clay pieces in a kiln, I was having far too much fun making a tornado-esque mess. As someone who believes there is no better way to spend the afternoon than rolling around in mud flats with friends, I was unable understand the disgust that played upon the faces of some of my classmates when they were mixing plaster and cold water by hand.
Chiseling the final sculpture out of its shell proved to be much easier than I thought. Thanks to the media we applied between each layer of plaster, the whole process went smooth like butta’, save a few minor nicks here and there. I felt like something of an archeologist, unearthing an artifact preserved by sediment for thousands of years (or, in my case, for a couple of days).
I’m quite proud of my piece. But I cannot say I’m too jazzed about transporting it across the Atlantic.
* * *
Last Thursday, my photography class went on a field trip to the Casine Parco, which essentially means Central Park Firenze. And yet it’s in the farthest west section of the city. Go figure.
On Tuesday, Jacopo had mentioned that we would be going somewhere as a class, and another student asked if we needed to bring our cameras. The rest of the class laughed at this, but, of course, I left my camera in my apartment on Thursday morning. In my defense, I never heard him say on which day this outing was to occur. Thankfully, I hadn’t laughed when she asked the question; otherwise I’d be a retroactive hypocrite.
At 8:45 a.m., I spent several minutes making sure my light-sensitive photo paper and negative binder were safely secured to the back of my bike. When I got to school, I locked my bike up, went inside and, several minutes later, flew back out and sped home. Thoroughly pleased with how the morning was going, I ran up the stairs of 14 Via Castellani, grabbed my camera, gulped down a glass of peach juice, and took a quick glance my pink-tinged visage in the mirror.
Firenze was clearly never meant to be anything but a city for pedestrians. And chariots, I suppose. Whoever tried to make this city mechanized-transportation-friendly did a fantastically poor job. Which becomes especially irritating when I’m trying to bike somewhere and suddenly, out of nowhere, the street on the opposite side of the intersection is sporting a no entry sign. These befuddling intersections are all over the place. One evening I spent fifteen minutes trying to find a route home even though I was only about five blocks away. Since the streets are so narrow here, it’s inadvisable to try and bike against the flow of traffic, although many Florentines do. I, however, have no intention of meeting my death head-on.
Having been here for a little over a month, I have all my regular routes planned out in a way that ensures expediency and efficiency. Unfortunately my daily activities have never taken me to far west Firenze. So I’m on my own, peddling along unpredictable roads, with only a hazy mental image of the route Jacopo showed me on the map back in the photography classroom. I decide to stick to the bike path along the Arno, thinking that would be the most consistent way to go. And yet, several minutes down the road from my apartment, the path suddenly veers off towards the left and over the bridge to Firenze Sud. Then, after finding my way to the point where the bike path restarts, I’m faced with the choice between heading left into town and joining the cars on a freeway of sorts. Naturally I chose to dip and dodge among the cars. I’m totally kidding, Mom; I went into town.
After rather a lot of frustration and rerouting, I finally wound up at the Casine Parco, although only after swallowing my pride and asking several people for directions in broken Italian. Then I had to find the rest of my photography class. On the phone Jacopo vaguely informed me that they were all spread out, taking pictures in “the garden” (for the record, the Casine is just a whole lot of trees; no recognizable garden was to be found).
A few (okay, many) wrong turns later, I found myself on a path akin to that which had been described to me on the cellular. I decided not to wait until I bumped into one of my fellow photographers and whipped out my camera and started snapping photos right away. Several hundred meters of walking and 36 frames later, my film was still advancing. There was no film inside. The vivid memory of loading my camera a couple days beforehand was probably just a replay of one of the many other times I’ve done so over the past four years.
Could this day get any worse? Thankfully, that was the last of the really great errors made on my part. With only about an hour or so left, I took one and a half rolls of film in the Casine (I am, if anything, an expeditious photographer) including some really excellent ones of a closed carnival.
And now the hour is late, and since I have photography at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, I believe it is time andare a letto (to go to bed). In case you were wondering, yes, I do have an Italian quiz tomorrow.
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