[ITALY] Writing Task: Character Piece 1.0

This was an assignment on a character piece based on a work of art. I honestly can't remember what piece of art it was.

That aside, I used it as I use most writing exercise: as a reflexive piece of autobiographical musings. This was apparently not what my teacher had in mind, and I would later have to rewrite it.

Florence in the American Imagination/Professor Lisa Cesarini
5/28/06
“Assignment #1: Character Sketch on Art Piece” by Tara Rose Stromberg

Is it possible for a man to think too much? The question itself, of course, would (and has) only arose at a time when I am doing just that. Or rather, when I think I am doing such.

And there’s the deplorable word again.

I suppose it seems a bit silly for the “writer” (as I am so self-entitled, for better or worse) to be asking such an odd question, as it is quite normal for most writers to be thinking something at least some part of the time; in fact, it seems to be that the way in which one’s mind processes the world is a personal quality that sets men apart in their livelihoods. I doubt very much that a financial advisor would find it productive to sit and muse over the myriad of emotions that a single rose petal brings to light, or to ponder the curious lives of the critters that scamper through the floorboards and walls of his city office. A man of such trade would be more apt to the subject of numbers and figures, and other such logical tasks. At least, such has been the case with all financial men I have known.

Perhaps I am not giving enough credit to those men who find themselves with the misfortune to be stuck within a career they are dispassionate towards. I’m sure there are a great many poets building bridges and counting digits, all the while secretly wishing to become the next Shakespeare. And maybe I am one of them. For who is to say how a writer should think? All I can say for sure, is that when I’m not doing anything else particularly productive, I am either writing or contemplating in that deep, philosophical (and sometimes bewildering) way that I do. And since one can’t be talking, or running errands, or paying bills, or washing, or sleeping, or writing all day long, I believe that most of my day-to-day time is spent thinking.

Ah! But even during my sleep I am thinking. Though it be somewhat unconscious thoughts, they still occur, and sometimes if I’m lucky, I remember them as well. My mind cannot rest even when at rest. It’s as if my brain has brought out all those thoughts that were considered insignificant or unworthy of pondering during my conscious state. Probably all of those rather important emotions and ideas that would seem so very pertinent as a child, but now, in the midst of adulthood, are so easily forgotten.

Now I am finding that these are most frequent when I am traveling, since I have found myself wondering back and forth across the Tuscan countryside for what seems like my entire life. In actuality, it’s only been a number of weeks. But oh what effect a small amount of time can have on a man’s mind! Being in a foreign land, away from the familiarities and comforts of home, it’s as if your thoughts could only turn to matters of the unknown and the often forgotten. You are out of your element, helpless and unequipped to deal with a society you are so unaccustomed to surviving in. Some of us haven’t even begun to live comfortably within our native cultures, let alone another. In my experiences, living the life of such a quiet and contemplative person leaves me alienated by others. I communicate better through written rather than spoken word. And so coming to a place where the spoken word is ultimately foreign, the desire to communicate is all but lost, in a hopeless breath.

It may be my own fault really. Even those times as a young boy when I wished so desperately to be accepted by my other schoolmates, my actions ultimately failed. But what actions did I take? Maybe I was just too afraid to act upon those thoughts, and instead was left to ponder them for the rest of my childhood, without ever knowing what may have been. And here I sit, nearly thirty years later, still wondering the same thing...

Yet, I seemed so content to be on my own most of the time. Though there was a part of me that still longed for companionship, it was my ability to imagine that became the source of all my enjoyment. I thought that by thinking so deeply about the things around me (the people, nature, the inner-workings of things; everything that others my age could easily ignore) I was more in touch with the world. The trees were my companions, the grass my support, the animals my teachers. Who needed human interaction when nature was speaking to you from the very depths of your soul? Better to sit and listen, and wonder, and write about all that you knew, and all that you would ever need.

Then how is it that I am still in need of more? I can sit under a tree in a Florentine valley, listening to the wind as it cascades down the field of tall grass, befriend a curious snake as it wanders up my arm and through my sleeve, absorb the colors of the different shadows as they crawl over the mountains, and can think even further about how these smells, sights and sounds feel inside of me, where I am suddenly at peace with everything around me but myself. And as soon as I leave this place, and return to my villa on the hill, and dine with the many interesting visitors that have decided to stay, I will still do the same. Observe and ponder, always alert to the emotions and feelings and ideas of the moment: that the chambermaid’s hair resembles the curl of baobab branches, that the real estate man and his wife both laugh as if they are trying to forget something from long ago, that the soup tastes oddly of ripe basil and the first day of school in the fall of my college years, and where has the young lady’s dress a tear in the fold of her apron, for perhaps it was caught on the wooden fence by the bridge where she met her Italian lover, a bread boy, who was late for a delivery because they couldn’t meet in public, and met secretly where he could give her letter he wrote on a napkin as he was sweating next to a large, hot brick oven, while the baker was arguing with a customer over the wrong amount of change, and why is it that people are so moved to argue about a penny lost during a transaction, but pay no mind to the countless pennies that lay on the street and ripe for the taking?...is it a matter of principle or cleanliness, or do people just like to argue?...maybe the customer was angry about something before...

This string of thoughts could continue long after dinner, and even into the night, or into my dreams of being a small boy and climbing that baobab tree and finding a penny, or a stack of pennies, and using it to buy bread...and all this time I would be lost in my own thoughts, unable to concentrate on what the pretty young lady was inquiring about my day, and what story the real estate man was trying to explain to me, or even realizing how the chambermaid winked when she brought me my soup. I am thinking so very hard that my present mind begins to slow down and I am oblivious to the surface of things. I can’t talk as a normal person would, for I am hardly interested in what the young lady wants to know, because I am too busy trying to figure out where she and her would-be lover could elope and how many discarded pennies were hidden on the slopes of Italy, and if it would be enough for them to live on until they found a home.

My mind is always interested in the story and life of the people and places that could be, instead of the things that are. And while I am thinking up these fantastic fantasies, though it is giving me more material than a writer could possibly ask for, I worry that it is also tearing me away from the world I’m in now. What if it is passing by, just like my childhood has long since passed, just like the dreams that appear and disappear, what if this life will seem like a passing dream as well? Will Italy only be a distant memory in the future? Even if a writer does preserve the moment, how can he absorb the moment within the moment. Am I missing something or simply taking in everything?

Already too much thinking and not enough doing. Why it would be so useful to simply use the toilet right this second, just for the sake of actually undertaking something.