islanded in a stream of stars

Thanks so much for all of the birthday wishes - I feel so lucky to have such a thoughtful f-list :) I'm writing bunches and bunches of letters and am slowly getting around to mailing them out, but it'll be a while as I have over two dozen people to whom I'm writing. If you want a postcard, though, leave a comment here (all comments are screened for privacy). horosha, yes, I'll accept the raincheck :)

Last Saturday I started off the third decade of my life in Venice, living out a dream that many older than I fantasize of experiencing. My roommate India - the most perfect traveling companion I've ever had who isn't eyepiece_simile - and I trekked from one end of the city to the other, through endless calles (alleyways) and across countless bridges big and small. We visited numerous cathedrals with Maria and Marco featured in the title and the highlights of the Piazza San Marco, although sadly. Boiling our visit down to these set points, though, misses out on what you actually experience as a visitor to the city.

As I wrote in something that I'm currently working on: Venice allowed him to find refuge in eternal beauty and the allure of intrigues past, to hide away in the shadowy calles and the ebb and flow of glass green canals. The city restored his faith that even when besieged by change and decay, human achievement could stand against time and still rejuvenate the spirit. It wasn’t the ubiquitous presence of churches, as awe-inspiring as they were, but the grace of cultures melding, the serene congruity of centuries in architectural form simply existing that instilled such wonder. Il Palazzo Ducale exemplifies the tranquil riot of contrasts that is this city, the imposing paneled, gilded and frescoed splendor of the legislative and judiciary quarters juxtaposed with the cool dark jails for criminals of all stripes just behind the walls.

And this rarefied world is slowly sinking into the lagoon that had shielded its initial development and growing pains as a city, lending just the right touch of romantic melancholy amidst the tourist kitsch.

( More musings about being in Italy )

On a completely unrelated note, lilbabiangel888 tagged me for the following meme:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening.

Technically, these aren't all songs because as an unabashed soundtrack geek, I still find the whole concept of music with vocals and words rather nifty. I'm more of a spirit rather than the letter of the law kind of person, anyway. You can download these if you click on them.

Songs to listen to when leaving Venice:

This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home: Doctor Who Series 3 (Murray Gold)
Ratatouille Main Theme (Michael Giacchino)
Theme from the Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Paul Cantelon)
Broken Hearted Melody: Sarah Vaughan (taken from Infamous)
Same Mistake: James Blunt (taken from P.S. I Love You)
Suzanne: Noel Harrison (courtesy of the ever-generous wiccagirl24)
Kissing Through Glass: A Very Long Engagement (Angelo Badalamenti)


Meme 2, snagged from swashbuckler332 and lehah:

Post a reply and I will:

A) tell you why I friended you,
B) associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.,
C) tell you something I like about you,
D) tell you a memory I have of you,
E) ask something I've always wanted to know about you,
F) tell you my favorite user pic of yours,
G) in return, you must post this in your LJ. (More like highly recommended, because I don't like coercing people.)

It was a decadent sort of weekend, luxurious in its relative idleness. Blessed be the professor who gave us all an extension on that paper! Still, I can't really afford to be this lazy when there's less than a month of the semester left.

I guess what's stressing me out most right now is research and the perpetual sense that I have unfinished business to take home. With my old position in the social psych lab, I'd go into the lab for a certain number of hours and be done. Now there's a weekly team meeting and other random meetings with my supervisors to make sure I'm getting stuff done correctly and then actually evaluating the tapes and/or revising the evaluations so that they can be critiqued at the next group meeting. Being dumb, I always find myself procrastinating because I'm terrified of realizing how much further behind I am than anyone else. I know that it's a dysfunctional way of handling things, but it's hard to break out of the cycle. No point in ruminating about it at this hour, though, when I have a midterm at 10 this morning and an admissions panel afterwards.

In a little more than a month I'll be Verona, away from all this madness before another couple of years of who knows what. All the scholarship paperwork's officially taken care of, and I've finally figured out my transportation arrangements. Though we're going on a number of day and multi-day trips throughout Italy (Firenze, Padova, Milano, Mantova and Roma) as a group, there are definitely a number of other places I'd like to see - Venice, for one. Hopefully Vienna as well as I've always wanted to go there after seeing The Third Man, though I swear I've heard that Prater Park is closed now. If all goes well I'll be meeting my mother's Swiss half-siblings, who probably compromise the entire Chinese population of Lausanne, as well. I'm not really sure what other cities/countries are feasible to visit during my two extended weekends, so if anyone has any suggestions I'd be more than appreciative. I'd love to meet up with eyepiece_simile and zedhaus and anyone else who might be around the area.

( Generation meme )