all-knowing

On one of those pretty streets in Italy where the apartment buildings were sandwiched between large 3 story houses, a woman brought her bicycle out along with a huge plastic bag stuffed with clothes and boxes of electronics. The house from which she emerged was large and grand but not too grand, a proud large house but not pompous. She looked tired after a hard day's work, but of course we had no idea who she was or what she was doing, perhaps it belonged to her? She was a filipina, so why did I instantly assume she as a housekeeper?

As we walked by she stared at me with x-ray eyes. When people are examining you time seems to slow down. I gave her a smile, and she returned it uneasily, then rode away on the bicycle.

"They always do that, they always know," my husband remarked. "All the Filipino people here always look at you like that. They don't think you are Japanese." That made me a little happier for some reason. He has never been to Asia, so I suppose he has never been the sore thumb sticking out, and I am pretty used to that by now, which is why my trips to California and New York are always a welcome relief, a return to the privacy of annonymity among the crowds that I never find in Europe.

The last time I was in Italy was a few years ago, and I was walking back to my hostel with a heavy, heavy hangover when a woman x-ray eyed me and we just started talking out of the blue. I had a severe headache, but a strange compulsion to show respect took over me, and I hoped I looked presentable to her because she looked like she was old enough to be my mother. Her friendliness was so quick, and she bragged that she had been living in Italy for 12 years and knew the ropes and if I ever needed a place to stay (for a few euros) and help moving there she could hook me up, and it was nice knowing I could find an instant place where they had adobo and rice and san miguel beer. There are some things I will never understand, like the obsession with Gucci and Prada purses, and the lack of desire for privacy, but nobody is perfect.

bumblebee men

Late at night in our hotel, we tried to fall asleep... On the Italian tv show there was some kind of bizarre dating system and a brunette woman who looked a lot like a retro prostitute (say, circa 1988), and she was kept on the other side of a wall as three really scary men went through all sorts of humiliations to win a romantic date with her. The woman had a serious overdose of make-up, but she had this bright happiness and effervescence that I miss, and I understood everything perfectly even though the language was a barrier. The humiliations were carried out by a short man with a mustache who appeared on the stage in various costumes: a superman outfit, a bee outfit with a large prong on its crotch, and so on... the three men clearly had no chance of a date with the woman--well if they had a great deal of money they would've gotten a date and a great deal of oral satisfaction, but let's suspend belief for a moment--and they were laughed at and made to sacrifice their dignity.

In perhaps the most amazing trial the men had to take off their clothes then crawl into tubs full of red balloons and somehow change into these strange g-string outfits as the taunting jester poked the balloons with his sword penis bee costume and hundreds of audience members jeered and screamed. The beautiful prostitute looked on with an expression of horror and amusement. My husband could not understand why I found all of this so great. At the end of the show he had succeeded in falling asleep. The winner joined the hooker and the bee man wrapped them both in a giant roll of saran wrap, then proceeded to wrap himself in with them so that they formed a really ridiculous threesome, and confetti fell from the air, and I was laughing and crying.

I guess I just never feel the cultural divides as much as times like this. Why is something like that funny? he asked me later. I couldn't say why. It brought back a rush of memories of Univision and the Spanish bumblebee, and then all the filipino variety shows my parents had me watch. One of my best friends, the few people who ever gave me consistently good advice, always asked me why I bothered torturing myself by choosing to live north of the Alps. "You are clearly not made to live in Northern Europe," he said, and he was right. And my Brazilian friend wondered if it was even a form of masochism. "Choosing to live so far north, I can see that it really hurts you."



I went downstairs to get a drink: there was some kind of really intense country party going on, and everyone was drinking and dancing and the music was too loud. A guy in a suit kept yelling at a two-year old sitting on the stairs, talking to him about something very intense--and a very long-legged woman in polyester white pants and black thigh high boots passed by me, a faceless woman with a head of very long and black hair. The young people standing outside in the darkness smoking made sense to me, the adults asking children for psychological advice, children acting as prophets and looking intot he future, everything made total sense.

In the museums the student girls with political buttons went out of their way to give me discounts. The old men working in the cafes got to know us and greeted us the second time we came for coffee, and smiled and waved every time we departed. Lesbians flirted with me at gelato stands and people in bars persisted to know if we were doing fine and if all was well. Why was everything so easy? Had I indeed made a fatal mistake by choosing Teutonia? Maybe living in Spain, the south of France, or Italy, or even moving to Istanbul, making that serious decision differently many years ago, would have made my time in Europe too much of a party and not enough of a challenge. You don't really push yourself when you are in your comfort zone.



I feel like I have people crowding around me always demanding to know if I feel liberated living where I do. And these questions are not so easy to answer: how can I feel more comfortable in places that seem more overtly sexist, and how can I enjoy television shows about bumblebees and still be a person of the letters and arts? Why do I feel more liberated on a busy American street than in places with parliamentary democracies? How can I be so fascinated by religion but consider myself an atheist and a sometimes weekend Buddhist? I guess the world is not a simple place, and neither am I. Maybe I am also growing weary of having to express myself directly and literally and to hold my emotions in check which does not come so naturally.

My husband woke up the next morning, later than I, as he usually does, and he asked groggily, "What the hell was that last night on TV?" He was a little horrified that I could remember everything in such gory detail, and that I even bothered standing up to simulate the saran wrap incident, turning around in circle and wrapping my arms around myself to simulate the union of the hooker, the desperate bachelor, and the bumblebee. "That's so weiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd," he said at the end of my small performance in a valley girl American accent.

blue woman

Berlin manhole

woman in bloom & dog girl