Do you know in the movie Hitch, when Will Smith (Hitch) says “No woman wakes up and thinks, ‘I don’t want to be swept off my feet today?” He is wrong. I am that woman. I do not want to be swept off my feet today. I didn’t want to be swept off my feet yesterday. I probably won’t want to be swept off my feet tomorrow. Why? Because I know that I fall as easily out of love as I do into it. Furthermore, I’ve learned from experience that I will wreck more havoc and cause more pain in the lives of others than my own existence incurs. This begins to make one feel guilty. But think about the use of the phrase ‘to fall’. I paraphrase someone here (I think Carver) when I remind you that we also we use ‘to fall’ when it comes to sleep. Sure, we can lie down in bed. We can chose when we will crawl under the sheets and wrap ourselves in the blankets. We can decide to put our heads on the pillow and close our eyes. But we do not choose the blissful, terrifying moment that we loose sense of our surroundings and fall uncontrollably to sleep. In the same way, we fall in love - uncontrollably, beautifully, terrifyingly.

This was the foundation of a recent conversation with Alessandro. He argues that within two weeks time one can know if they will fall in love with someone or not. I reflect on the great loves of my still-quite-short life and question if his two-week paradigm works… No. It is lust at first sight kindled by enduring friendship that presents one the opportunity to fall in love, I think. Nevertheless, I am the woman who does not want to fall in love today, so it is of no importance to me when or how it happens.

The Mediterranean hosts an emotional culture. From Italy to Greece to the shores of Egypt to the narrow streets of Morocco, emotions seem to conduct electricity between people. There is one stark difference, however, between those cultures in the northern Mediterranean (I speak of Italy, to be specific) and those in the southern Mediterranean (I speak, of course, of Egypt). That difference being the realm and means for this emotion to surface. In Egypt, it manifests itself in traffic jams and sexually-deprived-hopelessly-romantic-text-messaging-hand-holding-relationships that end the world and render one’s life meaningless when they’re finished. In Italy, it manifests itself in couples making out on street corners and kissing in cafes, in people singing one of what is probably dozens of ways to say ‘I love you’, ‘I desire you’, ‘I adore you strongly’, ‘I want you deeply’, ‘I need you by me’. There is a reason we refer to Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish and whatever other language it is…Romanian, maybe? as ‘romance languages’.

I find that with every language I dabble in there are certain phrases that simply do translate effectively. For example: The convenience of keda, ya3ni, and momkin truly cannot be underestimated. Prendre la vie comme il vient is not quite as carefree and optimistic as ‘take life as it comes’ in another other language. Ti voglio bene lacks the abyss of emotion it throws the recipient into in any language other than Italian. I search for a similar example English but realize that the job is already done for me…consider all the Anglicisms that other languages adopt: pop music, sex, workaholic, internet… Initially these words might seem superficial, consumerist or vain but the truth is they are just as meaningful as any other concept we employ. Pop music stands alone. Some Americans might hear the word ‘pop music’, organize an understanding of the latest Top 20 Countdown or catchy-soon-to-be-overplayed-tune-written-by-a-team-of-over-paid-assholes-and-performed-by-an-underdressed-twentysomething in their minds, and then dismiss it as meaningless. I, however, hold – and I chose that verb carefully after considering revere – everything those two little words mean. There is a reason that Britney Spears kissing Madonna to the tune of Me Against the Music could remedy any homesickness deep in the heart of Cairo. There is a reason our skin tingles – literally tingles – with nostalgia when we hear a song that was once ‘our song’ with a significant other. There is reason that every Beatles song every played carries with it an immeasurable empathy with thousands of people between the ages of 17 and 57 (they probably all got high to it beneath a black light or in a VW beetle…). There is a reason that some Italians that can barely utter a grammatically correct sentence in English yet can flawlessly sing entire ballads of American pop music. We are a shameless people, but Americans certainly are honest. In fact, it is our shamelessness that permits us the freedom to be so. That’s why I love – I hold dearly, I almost revere - pop music: It’s freedom. It’s honesty. No matter how crass, unattractive, or intoxicating that maybe, that is the most beautiful thing in the world. Listening to a pop song, one is guaranteed three minutes and sixteen seconds of pure, shameless, catchy truth.

I’m tempted her to dissect the lyrics of several pop favorites but now that I can bowl with the bottles of doppio malto I’ve lined up (three, ya3ni 6) it’s probably best I stop tackling concepts like truth and love in this evening’s writing. On a different note: I’m turning 22 soon. This is exciting for two reasons: First, 22 is my lucky number. I’ve told my closest friends multiple times already that I have ‘a feeling’ about 2008, that 2008 is going to be the craziest, most unbelievable, mind-blowingly fictional year of my life thus far. 22 will be a benchmark, I have no doubt. Second, I’ve been told several times in the last week that it is unbelievable that I am 22. I’ve been told that once that I seem more like a thirtysomething coming out of a bad relationship and another time that that I am wiser than a 20something is capable of and by someone else that I have decades more experience than my age suggests. James Kingstone wrote in my quarterly comments senior year of high school that I engage with people and literature like someone ten years my senior. Conveniently, my life and the people I encounter resemble literature more than existence. The point is I think I’ll be 22 turning 34. I think, however naively this may be, that after this crazy-ass year of hijinx and wandering, I will actually be ready for something serious. Something real and routine and committal and important. I wouldn’t dare to define this yet but I am deeply and inexhaustibly happy for a sense of calm normalcy and satisfied grounded-ness to overcome me about a year from now. We’ll see.

In the mean time, Milano is offering me exactly what I need, research is coming along, and my life is cluttered with possibility. The program I’m directing in Egypt (www.learningenterprises.org) this summer is shaping up and I’ve got my heart set on a language program in Oman or Jordan (???,com)… I miss DC but appreciate the distance between me and people I care about since it makes me realize that their sweet and quirky importance in my life. Family is, as always, closer to my heart than a mailing address could ever suggest.

I live at the end of Via Giovanni Antoinio AMADEO and the door to my apartment building is red. Tram Cinque of the rickety old, bright-but-dirty-orange trolley system stops right in front. When I don’t take the tram, I passby the Pharmacy Department of the Universita Studi degli Milani en route home. My fridgerator is stocked with fresh pasta, cheese, yogurt and olives. My roommate brews a doppio espresso before leaving in the morning. My landlord’s name is Izzidoro and he smoke endlessly, even in the shower. He owns a café and spents only minutes at the house each day except for a few hours sleeping. It is generally overcast but when the sun comes out (once so far), the city is beautiful. I listen to classical music quite frequently. Bach and Vivaldi are particularly fitting to the city and her dwellers.

Every time I find myself in a new city, I think of the scene in l’Auberge Espagnol when the protagonist first arrives in Barcelona and says something about how strange it is to think that in a few months the streets will all be familiar, that he will pass the same places and same people hundreds of times, and that this foreign city will somehow become a home, even if for only for a few months. I arrived in Milano and shortly thereafter was overcome by a paralyzing sense of doubt about why I had actually come. There are several reasons that I am in Milano.

First and foremost, I’ve got this pesky honors capstone project that I’ve opted to fufil as ethnographic research with immigrants in Milano.

Next, of course, is the plain fact that I basically graduated and I’m not sure exactly what I want to do next. A fellowship I was applying for fell thru and grad school just doesn’t seem like ‘the next big thing’ anyway..,I know I want to start working, but the terrific palette of options available in DC makes me feel lost and undecided. I’m here because I’d rather jump full-heartedly into something I want later this summer than drag my feet into something I’m ambivalent about now.

And dancing, as always, in the background is a third reason I am here: to become more myself. If the twenties are a time of self-discovery, self-improvement, and goal-setting then something deep inside me tells me that I’m going to need to spend the first bit of my twenties wandering and somewhat lost. Which is just about all I’ve done so far in Milano, except there’s one amazing thing about this city – I can’t manage to get lost…sure, I manage to walk in circles, but I seem to wind up exactly where I need to be at the end of it. Wandering, however, definitely describes what I’m doing best: I don’t seem to have anything other than a vague objective in mind when I set off with my dinky map and my dozen or so well-rehearsed Italian phrases. Nevertheless I managed to find an apartment already. My ability to find an apartment so quickly was courtesy of the beautiful Spanish girl that shares a room with me at the hostel. Her name is Laura (pronounced Loawra) and she is taking an intensive course in fashion design. She has patterns for clothes and all her little fashion-design-tools scattered across the room, wears really funky clothing that she made herself, and speaks in a thick Spanish accent. I like it.

The apartment I will be living in is in an area of town called Ortica and I take a fabulous convenient, rickety old trolley car to get there. I share the apartment with two Italian women from Siciliy – Valeria e Maria. They are 30something and work in Milano. Valeria, dressed in a stripped mini-dress with sparkly tights and chunky boots when I met her, is a blonde-ish young woman who works in a hotel and dreams of traveling. Maria – very typically Sicilian in her beauty, darker with a salient nose – speaks with harshly rolled R's and is desperately in love with a man from Ecuador.

Other general observations: The city is old and dirty and I like it. There’s a slight lack of benches and I think it’s entirely unjustifiable to pay for public toilets, but the food is delicious and italiano is coming very easily. Also, I’ve already confirmed the stereotype that Italian men are endlessly romantic shitheads: They walk down the street with a beautiful girlfriend on their arm and yet their whole head turns as another beautiful woman walks by.

Nevertheless, I am tucked at a table in the corner of a little room on Viale Tunsia with no clue how all of this is going to work out, but secure and comfortable about it anway. As my twenty-second birthday approaches in the next week something about my current life just feels ‘right’.