Realism is in the Eye of the Beholder

Yes, that’s my opinion. Realism is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps your philosophical juices are already flowing and you are thinking, “That’s an oxymoron. Isn’t realism about seeing things as they really are? Reality is about what is beheld, not about who is beholding it.”

My answer is this: any person claiming a completely objective view of reality is the oxymoron. Everyone sees the universe, history, eternity and “reality” through the lens of their own values, worldview and experience.

That aside, what I really wanted to discuss is the prevalence of these so-called ‘realists’ in society today; and especially in my own generation (Generation X, that is).

Some people call me an optimist because I think that non-violent social change is possible, and because I think that selfishness, exploitation and oppression can be overcome by breaking vicious cycles with creativity and courage. Why am I labelled an unrealistic optimist while the nay-sayers shake their heads dismissively and accept the status quo?

It seems to me that the favourite pastime of pessimists is to masquerade as realists. “The world sux and I see it as it is. I agree with your ideals in theory, but I know better – they will never work.”

Why is it acceptable for the pessimists to brand themselves 'realists' and everyone else ignorant optimists? (Don't forget to say the word 'optimist' with your best injection of sarcasm). Or, is there really no such thing as realism since reality is always interpreted by subjective beings?

I find it interesting that a generation, which, by and large, does not believe in absolute truths, (let’s face it, we live in a pluralistic society) is so quick to claim absolute knowledge of reality and the state of the universe. Perhaps it is necessary to make this claim in order to justify their proliferation of hopelessness and despair. Or perhaps it is nothing more than a violent reaction to the disappointing maxims of modernity which promised to fix the world, and didn't deliver. Whatever the cause, it is certain that self-professed realism is frequently used as a license to complain without censure.

My generation is particularly guilty of this. Tori Amos (a GenX singer) put it like this:

“Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time, it loves to complain and not really change; because if it does change, then it won’t have anything to complain about.”

Harsh but true, I think.

People called Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi incurable optimists when they campaigned for the liberation of their respective oppressed people groups. That is, until they succeeded. Then, all of a sudden, their optimistic “pipedreams” were a reality. African-Americans gradually gained equal rights in the U.S. and India regained its independence Ghandi’s way: non-violently. Who had ever heard of a country kicking out its oppressors without a war?!

So what is reality? I'll leave it for you to decide, but I think realism is the ability to understand the state of affairs, imagine a better reality and employ creative strategies to realise it. Realism must lead to practical response, otherwise, in my opinion, it is nothing more than self-indulgent pessimism.

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” (William Arthur Ward)

I don’t really care what term gets applied to my life in the end: Pessimist, Optimist, Realist. I just want to be someone who adjusted the sails while everyone else was busy discussing the contrary wind.

Hair Review

Yep. I cried.

A Lap Full of Cornflakes

"What's with today, today?"

- Lucas, in Empire Records

Today seemed like an average day to begin with…

I had a shower, did my hair, put on my bathrobe and sat at my desk with a bowl of cornflakes to do my homework. So far, so good. It’s nice and serene at 8am in Siena. The clear morning sunlight streams into my room through the open window. The streets outside are quiet (once the daily cleaning truck has done its round!) and all you can hear are the sounds of people starting their day. Shoes tap on the gothic pavement as they make their way to work, school or the nearest bar to grab a coffee and some breakfast.

It’s quite warm in Tuscany these days so I decided to get up and move my fan a little closer. Then suddenly, BANG! CRASH! SPLASH!

Serenity: gone.

For a second I had no idea what I had knocked over, but the milk soaking through my robe and the cornflakes toppling into my pockets and onto the floor soon brought home the infuriating realisation.

My breakfast was in my lap.

Oh, and did I mention that I like to have HONEY on top of my cornflakes? Yep. That’s right. The sticky, soggy mess that should have been the morning shift for my stomach acids, was instead meeting its demise on the floor or on me.

After disposing of the flakes and mopping up the milk, I headed straight for the bathroom only to discover my roommate was having a shower. There was milk soaking into my skin and honey-lathered cornflakes decorating my robe – the last thing I felt like doing was WAITING. But alas – what else could I do?

To cut a long and tedious story short, I eventually got out the door (late!) and clandestinely finished my homework at the start of class while the teacher was introducing the new students. Yes, I’m a survivor.

If that were the only thing that went wrong today, I would be stretching it to call it a bad day. However, when I tell you what occurred this afternoon, those of you who know me well, will be text messaging me to make sure I haven’t tossed myself out of a window.

Generally speaking, I aspire to be a person of depth and conviction. I care about social justice, human rights and ethics. However, when it comes to one thing, I admit to being completely and unashamedly superficial. The thing to which I refer is, of course, my hair. I adhere to my three-monthly haircuts religiously and have a very congenial relationship with my hairdresser, Olivia, in Melbourne. She knows exactly what I want and she executes it with all the precision of a surgeon. I’m not exaggerating when I say, I love her!

Anyway, it has now been four months since my last haircut and I was getting desperate. A local Italian lady whom I have befriended, advised me to see her friend; a “very good” hairdresser.

I should mention, at this point, that the last time I had a terrible haircut, I cried. It’s pathetic, I know. It’s shallow. It’s infantile. It’s idiotic. BUT I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU SAY! It’s my hair and I’ll cry if I want to!

So, I suppose you have guessed it by now – the haircut did not go well. She chopped WAAAAAY too much off and I’m not convinced about the layers. I do hold out a small beacon of hope for the fact that your hair is always better when you style it yourself the next day. However, the fact remains… I am shattered! I didn’t cry, but I confess, I came close to shedding a tear when I came home and inspected it in the mirror. The icing on the cake was when I reached in to my handbag and found that much of the hair she had lopped off had stowed itself away amongst my things. You know... just in case I wanted to glue it back on later.

Hmph.

Anyway, I guess you all think I’m a big baby now, but at least having this little vent has helped! There are other frustrating realities associated with sharing an apartment with two 20-year-olds, but I am trying to remain positive! I won’t go there.

Tomorrow I’m going to Firenze (Florence) for the day to see my good friends Cass and Neil, from Melbourne. I also have a couple of interesting things lined up for Friday and Saturday so things are looking up!

I’ll let you know how tomorrow's hair review goes. If I don’t post another blog for the next few months, you can assume that I am busy rocking back and forth in a corner, waiting for it to grow back!

Il Palio di Siena

As promised, I am here to give you my account of the Palio. Unfortunately it is more than a week after the fact because I had a few connection issues; but nevertheless, we are here now! My apologies for the late post. For those of you that have no idea what the heck a Palio is, here is a quick run down…

The actual Palio (apart from referring to the event itself) is a giant banner with a few ornamental medieval flourishes. It is presented to the winner of a bareback horserace held in the main square (Piazza del Campo) in Siena.

Siena is broken up into seventeen areas within the city walls. Each area (or contrada) has it’s own flag depicting their symbol and colours. For example, the contrada in which I live is il nicchio (the shell), represented by the colours blue, red and yellow.

There are two Palio events each year (July 2 and August 16), and for each, only ten of the seventeen contrade can compete. The seven that did not get to compete in last year’s July Palio were a given for this year’s, and to make up the ten they draw lots to determine which will gain entry to the race.

The race itself is planned and executed with the utmost care and strict adherence to its eight-hundred-year-old traditions. The Palio is more than a horse race to the Sienese. Not only does it extract from the locals a level of passion rarely seen elsewhere – or never seen in countries like Australia! – but victory is coveted for a more significant reason than the mere euphoria of winning.

The Palio is extraordinarily meaningful to the Sienese because they have such a deeply ingrained sense of belonging to their contrada (for life) and because they believe that they will live under a promise of favour, protection and prosperity in the year to come if they win. It is also strangely associated with their brand of Catholicism, which is the justification given for the strange practice of having the horse and jockey ‘blessed’ by a priest in the contrada’s local church!

This is serious business! Husbands and wives who come from different contrade separate and return to their respective areas for the pivotal four day period leading up to the race. Loyalty to one's contrada comes before any other allegiance!

The night before the race, the locals of each contrada have dinner together and it is common to see the streets filled with tables and chairs to accommodate the entire community. Forget sleeping peacefully around Palio time! You will be kept up at night by singing and woken up in the morning by drummers in medieval costumes!

The race itself is over in less than two minutes, but all the pageantry leading up to it takes HOURS. All the costumes and props (down to the six oxen pulling a cart filled with some older, official looking men) are as authentic as they can be.

July 2 was a burning hot day and 30-40,000 people filled the main square awaiting the race; which finally commenced at around 8pm. Jockeys hit the ground, horses bled, the crowds went wild and IL NICCHIO…

… came second!

This is even worse than coming last!

The winning contrada was Selva (the Woods), which is represented by a tree and rhinoceros. Why? I have no idea; there are neither woods nor rhinoceroses in Siena. However, this absurdity did not prevent them from waving their orange, green and white flags high and proudly for… well… they’re still waving them. They still hang over houses and around the necks of Selva residents a week later.

It is an event like no other and I highly recommend seeing the spectacular at least once in your life. As for me – yes, I will be at the August one also. Il nicchio is running again, so here’s hoping for a winner next time!

What Do I Call This Syndrome?

“I know I shall be homesick for you, even in Heaven,” said Beth to Jo as she lay on her deathbed in Little Women (the movie).

Homesickness is a strange and powerful phenomenon associated with travel in this world, and apparently the next as well, according to Beth. I won’t endeavour to address the theological controversies raised by her poetic sentiment, but I will stop to ponder homesickness for a moment. I must admit that it’s not a condition I have been afflicted with much in my life. Well… at least not since I was very young. My parents separated before I was three-years-old, so I had to learn pretty early on to get over being homesick for people and places because it was too torturous to feel that way all the time.

Though it started out in a pretty negative way, I think that over the years this aspect of my story has turned out to be a positive trait in my personality. It’s not that I don’t miss the people I love, it’s that I realise life sometimes takes us in different directions, but it doesn’t mean that we are not still connected. Also, in this day and age where technology is so multi-faceted, it hardly seems like I am out of the loop when there is email, skype, facebook, sms and of course the classic means of communication for travellers everywhere– the postcard!

Anyway, the reason I raise this topic is that, while I was in Bologna (the weekend before last), and also while I was in Slovenia for the past 5 days, I developed a mutated form of the homesickness virus. I’ve only been away from Melbourne for two months, and don’t feel homesick for it yet, however during my last few short trips I experienced something completely unexpected…

I was homesick for Siena!

This is new and unusual for me, not only because I haven’t felt homesick since I was a kid, but because Siena isn’t even really my hometown! I mean, I am living here for four months, but still… Even though I really enjoyed myself in Slovenia, I could not wait to get back ‘home’. When I awoke on my return train, and was greeted by both daylight and the familiar Italian landscape, I felt myself breath a little sigh of relief.

I still can’t explain it, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that I love this place and I am dreading leaving at the end of August. I remember the first time I sat at this desk, where I am sitting now, and looking out the window at the sun-bathed roof tops, I just knew that Siena was seeping into a little portion of my heart which, for the rest of my life, will feel at home… here.

Now I am totally at ease. I have cleaned the house and given – especially my room – the mopping it needed; my fantastic roommate is watching lame Italian game shows in the next room; and the streets below are alive with the sounds of locals singing traditional songs and merrily anticipating the Palio which takes place the day after tomorrow. Bliss.

What’s the Palio, you ask? Google it. If you can’t be bothered doing that, just wait a couple of days and I’m sure I’ll have something to say about it. For now, all you need to know is that il nicchio is the contrada you should be barracking for because that’s where I live. For the short time that I live here, I may as well be as patriotic as I can! Viva il nicchio!

Giant Sock

It’s a strange little community I’ve been mingling with the last couple of weeks. I’m talking about the community of language students that have come from all over the world to study Italian here in Siena.

I’ve been hanging mostly with Swiss people and our conversations flow with a mixture of German, English and Italian! I’m so glad I did German at school! I think that learning Italian has helped to cement something in the language-learning part of my brain because I’m able to keep up with the German conversations too (even though it has been ten years since I last studied it). Of course, this is good for practical reasons (i.e. being able to participate in the conversation) but it is also necessary for a more important purpose.

Language is such a vital and profound feature of the human experience. I have always been in awe of linguistics and the use of words, sounds, and tones to convey even the most deep and intangible concepts. It’s truly beautiful.

Here in this little community, I have perceived another side to the faculty of speech. My Swiss friend, Sandy, speaks Swiss-German and German fluently, but can also have a decent conversation in English, Italian and a little French. One day she expressed the feeling that she could not be completely herself unless she was speaking Swiss-German or German.

I think I get the essence of who she is pretty well, but the more I reflected on it, the more I realised that when you can’t fully express everything you think and feel, you can’t convey the entirety of who you are. Our opinions, thoughts, desires, and humour are all suffocated by the absence of words with which to express them. People who are unable to communicate with those around them – for whatever reason – must feel so unbelievably isolated.

A confirmation of this concept came while I was walking and talking with one of my Italian teachers, Claudio. He was telling me (in Italian) all these profound and meaningful things about his perspectives on life and travel and mortality. I understood everything he was saying, but I could not properly express all the responses that filled my mind. I felt that I couldn’t share the part of myself that had been activated by this discourse; I could not be fully myself. It was like having a giant sock stuffed in my mouth, only it wasn’t a sock – it was my lack of Italian vocabulary.

There’s no real point to this particular entry. I just wanted to put it out there because I’ve been thinking a lot about this during the past week. For me there is nothing like the feeling when you are able to find exactly the right words to express some nebulous feeling in your gut or thought in your mind. It’s so liberating. That’s what I love about words. They take the sock out of your mouth and replace it with a beautiful stream of expression that gushes out of you and flows into someone else.

Whelmed

Chastity: "I know that you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"

Bianca: "I think you can in Europe..."

- From 10 Things I Hate About You

I love that scene from 10 Things I Hate About You - two ditzy rich girls aspiring to a metaphysical conversation. It's hilarious. I always laugh derisively and think they are complete twits.

However...

Yesterday I was reflecting on this present phase of my life - living in Europe - and I was searching for a way to describe how I feel about it. I am living in Siena - one of the most beautiful cities in Italy - and I'm living exactly the life that I want to be living in this moment. I'm studying a language I've always wanted to learn, I'm hanging out with fantastic people, I'm experiencing so many new and foreign things every day. I'm in Italy! I'm not working for six months and I am far away from all the usual stresses and obligations of daily life back home.

I am not bored, scared, sad or "underwhelmed". Nor am I stressed, busy, nervous or "overwhelmed". I feel like I am in a perfectly tranquil state of just being. I feel completely... whelmed.

Oh no! Maybe the air-head was right! Maybe you CAN be whelmed in Europe! It's a whole new experience for me to be quoting a "Bianca", but it's the best way to describe my emotional and mental state right now. I feel just right. Life is good and I'm happy with the choices I have made in order to get here.

It reminds me of another story that struck me once. In the book of Genesis there is a story about Jacob and Esau - two brothers who had a terrible falling out. Jacob ripped off Esau and Esau swore he would kill him if he ever saw him again. Many years down the track, Jacob was forced by circumstances to meet with Esau again, so he sent herds of several kinds of animals as a peace offering prior to their meeting.

When Jacob saw Esau approaching, he bowed seven times as a sign of respect and penitence, but he was surprised by his brother's gracious greeting. Esau embraced him, wept and asked what he meant by sending such an over-the-top gift. Jacob confessed that he was seeking to pacify the anger which he imagined still remained. Then Esau said something that I think is really beautiful (you might think I'm crazy, but try to see what I mean).

Various translations of the bible state it differently, but Genesis 33:9 contains, for me, a beautiful concept. Many versions (e.g. NIV, NLT and the Message) record Esau's response as: "I have plenty" (therefore keep the herds for yourself). However, other versions, like the New King James, translate it like this:

"I have enough".

Not copious and excessive amounts, and not a small amount that he stretched and spread thin in order to get by. No, he was at the right amount of fullness. He had enough. Just enough.

That's how I feel right now.

I have enough.