very simple

It’s officially been three full weeks since I left for Rome. Which, I would like to point out, is about the same amount of time that I actually got to live in my new apartment before I left on this trip.

I’m starting to feel like I’m missing things…sure, the only channels on the TV that I understand are CNN International and BBC World News, and I have relatively unfettered internet access, but something is, just, well, off.

I’m somewhat of a loner generally – there are times when there’s nothing I enjoy more than spending an entire weekend by myself, running errands, not making any "plans", just, generally, taking it easy, but I generally don’t go for three full weeks without seeing either friends or family. And I’m certainly speaking to them less on the phone because, well, it’s not exactly a local call, even if it is on a work-provided cellphone. That, and the relative alienation of not understanding anyone around me.

Maybe I’m just feeling out of it because my friend had her baby the other day (everyone’s doing great!), and I’m not going to get to see any of them for at least a few more weeks, and I know that if I was home I would at least be calling her every day to check in (as opposed to once a week) for at least the first little while…

And that’s not even taking into account the weird political shift that’s happening, like, all of a sudden in my home country…and again, I can read about it, but I can’t spend a half an hour in a co-worker’s office or on the phone with a friend just trying to wrap my head around the things that have been going on lately. When I asked my dad to send me my mail the other day, I had to tell him that I really needed my back issues of the New Yorker, and not just my bills, because I need some cultural touchstones. I almost cried when I read the cover story in this week’s NY Times magazine, and it was just a story about NY politics. But it so captured so much about why I love New York, the idea that everything that happens, happens in New York first (for good and bad), and that we’re one of the only places that was founded as specifically commercial, with no time to waste on petty puritan religious "stuff"…it’s a reason a lot of people hate New York, but it’s a reason why I love it. Ric Burns captured that essence really well in his documentary history of New York, and this article does the same thing…I know that I’m not the only one who gets sentimental when I hear phrases like "cathedrals of commerce"…

Wow, now I’m getting off track. Can you tell that I’m a little bit homesick? That, and it’s getting significantly colder and rainier around here, making it just a tad less "fun" on the rare days when I’m not working around the clock…

I so shouldn’t have had that last espresso…

Tags: current events, italy, politics and law, rome, travel