Monday, December 10, 2007

NYC:Take Two

It's impossible to just sit and write. There have been ten thousand things going on that deserve a good blog moment but the moments, they escape me. Even now, I continue to write this a good 3 hours after I started the first sentence. It's this frantic pace that has me in a state these days. Italy has it's dreamy aspects, no doubt but I am lucky enough to get my bacon from the states. Even with the dollar working it's way to toilet paper status, I still bring home the equivalent of 3 or 4 Italian households. At no point, will I be okay with working 40 hours a week for some pretentious Italian design house that will demote me back down to a designer level bc a director title would be beyond me (as mere common folk) and saved for some talentless family member. So, I exist in my home office bubble, working a job that is no longer the wonderful thing it was to me. I make my trips back to the states and do my meetings and office time, work with very painful personalities , still counting my blessings the whole way, bc I can have the best of both worlds.
I was actually in Florence for a full 3 months, the longest since I moved there over a year ago. I fell into a nice rhythm of morning walks, cooking lunch, simmering chicken stock, and tracking the next Sagra. I felt content, protected and even at peace. Yes, the post office still sucked, the yearing for thai food still crept up, but I did suddenly get this sense of maybe this is 'enough'.
Flash to me in NYC sitting in an office with women who wear diamonds the size of my face and have their assistants send christmas cards to their personal shoppers. A world where people around me are talking about how to furnish their second home and how I should just Fed Ex my luggage as it's such a hassle to deal with that baggage claim. Listening to how "my husband put 1000 dollars in my wallet on Weds. and it's gone (by Friday)" Knowing girl's who "work only for the clothing allowance" and lose their expense checks never to have one reissued (bc it's 'just a hassle to do that'). It's a bad teen movie staring adults. Obnoxious, awful and just plain ugly, right?
At the same time, in the past week: I have eaten too much, drank even more and bought about 4 bags full of cheap items that will inevitably end up as dust rags by the close of next summer. The days and dollars just seem to fall into this gaping, black, hole, that is never to be filled. Peace is an adjective that I have never found here. Fun, excitement,opportunity and worldly possessions, (clean hospitals with jacuzzi's for expecting mothers, I've been reading about you American pregnant women in Italy...) it's all here. Peace, not so much.
Yet, it is here that I can make a respectable living. It is also here that I have my mother, sisters and friends that could be my "village" when I have kids, yet it is here that I fear I will lose my life to that gaping, black, hole. I know, I KNOW...please, don't ask 'what about the suburbs?' I have great friends in the burbs, I went to a Christmas party this past weekend in the burbs, I am completely freaked out by The Burbs. So, as of today, I am consumed by the feeling of displacement. The lure of everything modern, fast and efficient seems like a dream....but the Hamptons and Jones beach just don't hold up to summers in Maremma...

3 comments:

Michellanea said...

Hmm, well then I think living in Milan is the worst of both worlds. Not too many sagre going on around here. I have the thankless job (though freelance from home at least - I guess) with bad Italian pay. There is ethnic food here, but it's not the same. I crave NYC ethnic food. I have no Jacuzzi tub to give birth in. I'll be happy just to have a bed in an actual room and not be out in the hall on a gurney. I open my shutters to see...smog. And there are plenty of "banale" people here whose paychecks go to buying Prada. Though they most likely have to live at home with their parents into their 40s to afford to live that way...

Dodina said...

i hear you. it's like being caught between the devil you know and the devil you knew....

Michellanea said...

There are PLENTY of ridiculous fashion people to be found here. I worked at a big-name international fashion magazine here for almost five years (still work with them freelance) and, oh, the stories I could tell. I actually think I have more stress and see more ridiculousness here than I ever did in New York. I'm obviously living in the wrong Italian city for any kind of bella vita...