My apartment has a smell

After seven nights in hotels, I have come to recognize the distinct scent of my Florentine home. If I were to describe the odor, I would say it smells like overripe fruit. But not in a disconcerting way, like there's something rotting somewhere, its just an oddly sweet yet natural smell.

Now that I have identified this scent, whenever my nose catches a whiff of it, I will think of Via Doni. Just like I can recognize that St. George-y smell of my Grandma Jodie's house.

At last, a very rudimentary translation

Translation, especially of poetry, truly is an art...one that I can't say I've mastered. Do you preserve the syntax, do you adapt it to a more colloquial tone, or does that rob the poeticness? Gah. But here's a go:


Vita by Davide Ceccione

Have you haver seen how fleeting is the life
of a droplet?
Has one ever told you with how much love and joy it battles for
its independence? It forces with divinity to liberate itself
from the yoke of the edge.
It falls and rejoices, dying.
Have you never seen and understood this?
And don't come to me to speak of life.

I may have taken slight liberties, and I'm not 100% sure of the best way to translate the last line, but I love the droplet; it sort of causes me to reflect on the eternities and how are lives are short and precious. But I won't elaborate on all my musings about the poem and enter into a lengthy and self-indulgent memoir-style composition on why I love this poem. You can enjoy it and take from it what you will.

Vita
Hai mai visto quanto breve e'
la vita di una goccia?
Ti ha mai detto con quanto amore e gioia lotta per
l'indipendenza? Sforzo divino il
suo, per liberarsi dal giogo del bordo.
Cade e gioisce morendo.
Hai mai visto e capito cio'?
E non venirmi a parlare di vita

Davide Ceccione

when i have time, i'll translate it.

La Cucina Italiana...Roni Style.

I thought I looked like a pretty classy cook, so I took a picture of what has become my typical fare: a handful of some cheap pasta (I get a 500 gram bag for 37 cents) and some red onion, garlic, and basil (fresh basil in this pic...I stole some off of Angela's basil plant on the terazza. Oh, no. I'm the moochy roommmate) sauteed over olive oil and then mixed with some tomato sauce and spiced up with a little pepperoncino. Sounds tasty, and it is incredibly cheap to make. But after months of this entree, pasta in tomato sauce has become almost as unappetizing as mushrooms smothered in bleu cheese dressing (that is about the grossest sounding thing I can personally think of). So, I've been venturing beyond.
Tonight, I made a little stir fry thing! Mmmm, looking at this picure makes me want to whip-up another helping.

Just for the world's information: I can cook rice! I remember hearing my Aunt Cindy lamenting the sad state of domesticity by complaining that girls these days don't even know how to cook rice. I thought to myself, "Pshaw, I can cook that non-glutenous grain. You just read the directions on the MinuteRice box." Ha! overconfident past-self, it's not so easy! I've scalded rice to the bottom of the pan many times here in Italy (and still do occasionally) but through trial and error I have become a rice-cooking woman. (Marry me!) In fact, rice pudding is my new favorite treat.

Today, I ventured out into entirely new terrain and tried some cupcakes from scratch. I've actually never made a cake without a Betty Crocker mix, so this really was trail-blazing for me. You can tell from the pics above I was less-than pleased with the result. Aestetically, these cupcakes are not appealing, but I assure you they taste delicious. It's just hard to cook things here because the ingredients have different names, I don't have the appropriate measuring tools, and, the big one, my oven does not have any markings to tell me how hot it is. So I just guess where 350 degrees Fahrenheit (or 180 degrees Celcius) and I think I guessed to high because my cupcake tops were browning while the inside was still a very gelatinous mass.

And besides cooking and eating, I do go to school, but who wants to hear about that?