This may come as a surprise to many of my tens of dear readers, but: I am alive and well and although I haven’t posted on here for over a year (SORRY MOM) I have been working super hard, which has kept me in pasta and wine, so it’s all good.
But my big news is that for the first time since September 11, 2001 I am going on vacation.
“Mr. Bourne, your luggage is waiting for you in Baggage Claim.”
Last December, WikiLeaks did one of its notorious document dumps and revealed some information that frankly thrilled me. The WikiLeaks document release included two reports from the CIA whose titles sound like pitches for summer blockbusters: “CIA Assessment on Surviving Secondary Screening at Airports While Maintaining Cover” (dated September 2011) and, even more up my alley, “CIA Advice for Operatives Infiltrating Schengen” (dated January 2012).
I went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. My curriculum involved a grueling schedule of “studio” classes, eight hours a day, three days a week, on Manhattan’s Theater Row. In between classes the various studio groups would gather in a kind of green room to eat or rehearse or whatever people did in the late ’80s before everyone started looking at their phones. My sophomore year I noticed there was one particular guy whom people would gather around in that moldy carpeted room. He wasn’t loud or attention seeking, like so many of my classmates; he simply sat on the floor and received guests in a kind of regal way. One day I went over to him and said, “Hello. I’m Christine. I’d like for us to be friends.” He said, “Well then, I guess we’ll be friends” and from that moment on, we were. Continue reading
Ed. Note: Hi! I’m reposting this while I’m getting ready for a massive post. Enjoy!
I just realized that in my heated fervor surrounding an epic day trip to Levanzo last year, I forgot all about poor Favignana. It’s one of the three Egadi Islands accessible by boat from Trapani, Sicily (the third being Marettimo). If you’ll recall, last year during a visit by my friend Mr. Pants, we got a 10-euro round-trip flight to Trapani from Rome and then randomly hopped on boats to venture farther out into the Mediterranean.
This is the story of our trip to Favignana.
Arguably my first public speaking engagement.
October has been a month of anniversaries and milestones, and I’m not sure why they feel connected to me. Which means that the universe is telling me to write about them. So, here we go. Let’s see where we end up!
YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR
Did you know that I went to Berlin two years ago? I did. I spent a little over two weeks there, on the cusp of winter. It was unbearably cold, and dark; it looked like 9:30am all day until night fell in mid-afternoon.
I arrived in darkness after an 11-hour train ride, during which I tried and failed miserably to commit to memory the incomprehensible combination of letters that is basic German vocabulary. From the magnificent wall of windows of the Berlin Hauptbahnhof I saw the lit dome of the Reichstag, and for the first of many times throughout my stay I said under my breath, “Holy shit, Berlin.”
Continue reading
Ed. note: I’m reposting this after a wave of recent homesickness, but it was originally posted on June 28, 2011.
There are these weeds in Rome – I’m sure they’re in other places too, but I’ve only ever seen them in Rome – that have long stems that look furry, but they’re prickly. If you grab them without thick gloves it feels like your hand was dipped in acid for about two minutes, which is a long time when your hand feels like it’s been dipped in acid. During those two minutes you’re running to wash your hands and then you’re washing your hands and you can’t think of anything else except the blinding pain. And then the pain subsides and it’s hard to remember how badly it hurt.
This is what homesickness feels like, except the blinding pain is inside you so there’s no washing it out; you’ve got to ride it out until it subsides. Continue reading
