la affamata vita

This was originally my secret space where I sought to turn longing into belonging - both the light and dark sides of a sole traveler seeking connections in other languages.

Where Will I Work still resonates even today, rooted deep in love and home, an allegory to how our subjective realities fit into a ever-shifting subjective mirror world. Where can I feel home away from home? Do I travel to watch people not-me as one would visit a zoo? Or do I try on cities like I try on clothing, of parallel selves and the myriad lives I could have lived?

I'm writing from someone else's life in Rome - the airbnb that isn't built for tourists, full of personality and energy and thoughtfulness without 1000 thread count sheets and without a balcony view of the Colosseum. Our neighborhood is blissfully empty of people like me - the hordes of the slow-moving free-spending map-obsessed. I don't seek out to be anti-American when I cross the border, but being seated next to the worst kind of me makes me thankful to be on this voyage with my spiritual kin in exploration.

We landed hard in Venice, the 9 hour flight with the 4 hour layover and barely half an hour of sleep - our voices turning quiet, then silent as we gave in to muscle memory to get us to a bed (any bed). Research always helps in this sort of blurred travel, where your checklist of this-thens give much needed specificity in processing vast amounts of new data. Our Venice flat was old beams and faint wallpaper, a loft of yore with a wonderful rooftop terrace. I took pride in my maze solving skills through the tricky alleyways, relishing in the gastronomic rewards at the end of every run. My first bite was mozzarella en carrozza, a stupid and/or luxurious deep fried sandwich washed down with wine on tap amidst the lunch rush of the Venetian locals.



Eventually, though, Venice began to evoke Vegas - packed tight in narrow streets filled with shit souvenirs and day-drinking mirror images. Appreciation for the canals-as-labyrinth-as-architecture never faded, but it's hard to feel free and romantic amidst cruise ships dumping their shipping containers of cargo shorts (with the legs still in them) hour after hour after hour. Three days was plenty here, the end punctuated by a delightful lunch at the vegetarian-friendly La Zucca. The oddball reprieve from meat with meat on it was welcome, the vegetable plate reminded me of southern cooking (of greens and green beans). Chatting with a fellow anti-American at our shared table had me thankful I have working internet maps ("it took me an hour to find the place") and her snide pride around saving a shelter dog in response to missing our doodle was promptly followed by her third course of meat with meat on it ("i just have to have meat!"). The dissonance in the things we tell ourselves arbitrarily separating saving from slaughter has resonated with me since.

Objectification of the dinner plate is so very real when it doesn't lick your face after a long day at work.