Letters in the Wind

Or in the Dust?

Just a little thought as I was reminded recently of a feeling long gone, and of how much I miss it sometimes!  In this day and age of technology and instant communication, I think we forget what it used to be like to hand-write a letter to a friend.

Don't get me wrong, instant communication has its place in our world today. Businesses need it, law firms and many others. Without the ability to "know right now", we would be lost.

But...do you remember what it was like? The choice of just the right pen, the stationery, getting comfortable and beginning ... Dear friend ... we would use our words to tell of all that had happened recently, describing in great detail the scenes, the people, using our imagination to make them feel they were here with us, a part of our life. Page after page ... sealing the big envelope and putting it in the mail box. Bye...fly off to my friend!

As the receiver, remember the anticipation of checking the mailbox, full of hope ... until one day you see an envelope with a handwritten address? Oh the excitement! You can't wait to get comfortable, maybe a drink or snack beside you, as you open the envelope. There inside, a long handwritten letter ... the feel of the paper in your hands ... it is as if you are holding your friend close to you.

Dear you ... it was so good to hear from you and receive your letter!  As you read, you laugh, smile, frown, see changes in the writing as a mood shifts.  You are transported, as if reading a good book, to a time when you were together. You can see the smiles, hear the laughter, feel perhaps the sadness.

You put the letter away, maybe in a shoebox and when you want to be transported again, take it out and hold those words close to you again. Turning on the computer, finding an email in the midst of all others and reading typed words on a screen just isn't the same, is it? Time differences give us a small sense of the anticipation of a response, but curling up with a computer or laptop just doesn't feel right.  Emoticons can't take the place of words and well-thought-out imaginative descriptions and feelings. The emoticon of arms in a hug just can't evoke the smile of "feel my arms wrapped around you, giving you a huge warm hug..."

I so enjoyed the long email letter I received, but it made me think of how fast paced and hurried our lives have become.  Why do we no longer allow ourselves even this one small slice of anticipation ... excitement ... joy ... and a little slice of quiet peace?

But in the meantime, don't stop emailing me ;-)

Zeros and Ones

If I could take your pain away, I would. I would shoulder it myself so that I could see your smile again, and see the light shining in your eyes without the veil of sadness covering it up. I don't like to see your tears.


I've been reminded recently, in various ways, about how the advent of technology has been not only wonderful, but can be the cause of misunderstandings, pain and hurt feelings. And I have seen how the written word in this "safety behind a technological wall" can shatter dreams.

Innocence is lost here.  Or is it that the word has taken on an entirely different meaning in these modern times?  A fine, thin line is all that remains, and is too easily crossed.

The tie that binds gets stretched taut, until it is hanging together by nothing more than a thread.  If it breaks, then you had better know how to tie the strongest knot possible if it is ever to be bound again.

There is danger deep within these bits and bytes, these zeros and ones.  Unfortunately, we don't always see it.  When did the bits and bytes become a free-for-all that we see as our own "plastic bubble"?  

When I brought up my mail website this morning, I saw an article about how Facebook had yanked the account of some girl who had posted a photo of herself in a bathtub -- they yanked it because her elbow "looked like a nipple".  Really.  How very noble and protective of you to be so concerned about my sensibilities to prevent me from seeing something that may look like a nipple.  Awww, why thank you!  So I then open my Facebook and there on the righthand side is a feed of "suggested friends, chosen just for (me)!"  People I may be interested in sending a friend request to!  Isn't that nice of them to hand-pick these people for me?

The problem is, of course, that the one listed had as her photo of herself with this skimpy little shirt on, huuuuuge boobs popping out, hands cradling them and pushing them out, mouth open in an "o" ... hmmmm obviously Facebook feels we have much in common.  Perhaps she plays the one game I do, Disney's Animal Kingdom?  Perhaps she's interested in travel and cooking ... yes, that must be it!  That *must* be why Facebook is suggesting we should be friends.

*sigh*

Social media.  It's a wonderful concept, in and of itself.  It has so many good points to it.  Over my many years of traveling, it has enabled me to stay in touch with the people in my life, a great way to let them know where I am, what I'm seeing.  It has also enabled me to renew old friendships with people I went to high school with so very, very many years ago, and those I have met at other times in my life and over my years of travel.  Some have even rebuffed my invitation to "get back in touch after all these years".  And that's okay, too.  I remember when you would meet someone and exchange physical addresses -- now we exchange email addresses and say "are you on (facebook/any other social media)?"  We share our lives, our hopes, our cherished memories.  So yes, it can be a very good thing.

It's an extension of this thing we call technology.  

Feeling bored one evening with nothing much to do?  Go to Wikipedia and type in the search term "physical" and start following links.  Physical will take you to physic which will take you to physics which will take you to ... well, a few hours later and you are deep into the laws of physics and then reading about black holes in space and ... what, you were hoping to do a couple searches before going to sleep?  It's now 3 a.m. and you are wide awake because you clicked a couple links and trying to wrap your head around the concept of wormholes or some such thing.

Or you searched for where to find some ingredient and a few hours later you are waking everyone in the house up with the noise of your cooking some strange dish you happened upon after ten link clicks and all the recipes and photos were making you hungry!  And you thought you were just going to do a simple search ;-)

Technology...the Internet...social media.  

The absolute wealth of information that is out there, just waiting to be discovered.  Learn a new language, or how to solve a complex mathematical problem, or drive yourself crazy counting the number of squares.  Learn the latest medical, psychological, sociological advancements; become a hypochondriac and worry yourself by reading about medical symptoms.  Happen upon a video of past or present citizen protests against this, that or the other thing, standing against their government and making a change -- it makes us cheer them on, and gives us hope.  Look at photos, watch videos of plane crashes before you're about to take a flight ... oh, wait, maybe that's not the greatest of ideas ... okay we'll skip those.  Back to the videos of animals doing silly things, puppies and kittens making us smile and laugh and feel all gooey inside and melting our hearts.  Click on any of the "free hug" videos and restore our faith in humanity's basic goodness.

Wait, what's this?  How to make a bomb and where to get the stuff you need to do so. Hmm.

Such a double-edged sword is this thing called technology.  A place where such wonderful and good things are embedded among the bad.  The ability is here to hide, to lock ourselves into this invisibility and anonymity and, indeed, innocence.

But be careful of the barbed wire fence surrounding this space.  Contained within is a world covered in landmines.  I wonder if these bits and bytes should come with a warning label ... beware of landmines.  Do we know what is hidden inside?  We think we do.  We say that we are grown-up and "not stupid".  But how easy it is to get sucked in -- to say "there is no mine here" and then we take a step.  And, unknowingly to us in our innocence, unaware of the unexploded mine buried deep within, we exert the pressure ... just enough pressure ... to blow the solid into bits that rise into the air and rain down onto our heads.  And all of a sudden we are standing in the midst of an elaborate puzzle -- one we hope to be able to put back together again.

We have to enter this realm remembering that we are all, in the end, human -- with the same basic needs, thoughts and desires and, most of all, feelings.  We can allow this wonderful medium to enrich our lives, increase our intelligence, make us stronger emotionally -- but we have to try to not allow ourselves to get snagged on that barbed wire, to watch where we step, and to not fall victim to the emotional dangers that lie hidden within.  Enjoy the wonders, but remember all those around us.

Brava Milly -- whoever you are

In the past couple days, many of us have seen our news feeds flooded with disturbing photos of battered women under the heading International Domestic Violence Awareness Day, or something to that effect, with the subheadings "Stop", "Basta", "Enough is Enough". We all know what it signifies -- that this "awareness" will somehow make it stop.

But the problem is, it is not a new phenomenon. It is the year 2012 ... TWO THOUSAND TWELVE. "Awareness" has been alive since ... well, for a long damn time.  Back in the day, though, as early (or late) as the mid-1980s, women were still being told to "go home", "be a better wife", "clean the house better and he won't (or feel the need to) do this". Then along came Tracy Thurman, whose story became headlines and a movie.  Her lawsuit against the police started not a trend, but an awareness.

And this was good.

Slowly, ever so slowly, people -- normal, regular, everyday people (and at that moment, this included the police, clergy, courts, etc.) -- began to understand what was happening, not only the physical aspects, but the psychological and emotional ones.  These were the hardest for anyone to grasp.  Why would she let this happen?? What the hell is the matter with her?! If *I* were her ... ahhh but you are not.  And unless you have been in her shoes and felt the emotions, the psychological torment, you are doing her a disservice and disrespect to say those words.

She knows.  Believe me, she knows.  She feels your looks, feels your disgust at her "lack of a backbone", her "lack of any self-respect".  She should leave!  Of course she should.  But she also needs you to understand what has been, and is being, done to her emotionally.

She loves -- or loved -- this man.  She remembers the happiness of their courtship, their wedding, and even the days following.  She remembers looking into his eyes and seeing love, and of trusting him with her very life.  Otherwise, she wouldn't have said "yes".  And so, when he kneels before her, crying, face full of pain, begging for forgiveness, promising ... *promising* it will never happen again, she believes him.  Why?  Because she not only wants to, she needs to.  Excuses will be found, be it work, stress, alcohol or even drugs, a driver who cut him off at the end of a long, hard day.

Ah ... the excuses.

She hears and reads every day of the excuses made for people like him.  Psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists and everyone else, will find excuses -- he had a hard life, his childhood was difficult, he wasn't in his right frame of mind, he is "ill" or has some "mental imbalance" that would work itself out with therapy, or anger management, or any other of the hundred ways.

She is made to feel worthless, not only by him but by society.
She is made to feel less than intelligent, not only by him but by society.
She is made to feel embarrassed, not only by him but by society.

She is made to feel that she should have "fought back", by a society who says "If I was you, I would have picked up the nearest frying pan or anything else I could get my hands on..." But if you had been her, can you be so sure of that?  To know what it is like to be in the middle of it?  She is being overpowered, and is thinking of nothing more than surviving the assault, of doing what she must to possibly protect others.  Maybe she is learning what "Russian Roulette" is with a pistol pointed at her head by someone professing to love her, and is not thinking of much past surviving that moment.

We must stop making her feel this way.  She already knows it, but she feels she has no choice.  She may be being threatened while it is happening or after it has happened.

"If you tell anyone at all, I will kill you. Mark my words."
"You will self-heal here at home, because a doctor/hospital will ask questions."
"If you tell anyone, remember that I know where your family lives ... and your niece(s)/nephew(s)."

How do I know this? Why would you believe me or even tell me I'm full of shit?  Because in the early 1980s, I lived it, I survived it, and I heard every single one of those lines, especially the last one.  I could not fight back in the middle of it -- he was too strong.  I lived with the continued fear of more "games" of Russian Roulette played at my temple.  I heard all the excuses.  I was told over and over to go back, be a better wife, be ... well, be anything but who I was.  Shelters? I was half-dead and taken to a "shelter", in a horrid and violent part of Chicago, where the "shelter" was a no-tell-motel with drug deals going on in the lobby, the smell of alcohol everywhere, and left on my own in a dingy room.  Not everyone has "somewhere/someone to turn to".

We must stop doing this to women, we must stop saying "if I were you", we must be there for her, even quietly, without making her feel worse.  We must understand that there may be other underlying reasons why she is not leaving, or afraid to leave -- possibly children and even animals.  She wants to protect the innocent ones, because what will happen to them?  I had no children, but two dogs for whom I "took it" to intervene when he approached them.

Every single day we make excuses for violence, whether it is against women, children or animals. It is time for it to stop.  We need to have not a day for awareness of violence against women, but a *lifetime* of awareness against violence in all its forms.

We must stand against violence itself.  And we must understand and stop being so self-righteous and "holier than thou" (for lack of a better term).

So why the title to this?  Because today I read a wonderful "letter to the editor" from an Italian woman who said some of the same things I have been saying, but about a different subject.  She was addressing this "day of awareness" and asked "how are we supposed to fight this, when every day on the tv and in ads we see women barely dressed, being used as puppets and playthings to be used, portrayed as unintelligent and in a position subordinate to men? In the minds of men who see this, he sees women as objects. Violence and this mentality will only end when he is only being shown on tv and in ads women dressed intelligently and professionally."

She went on to say "The problem is US -- women who continue to go on tv/in ads barely dressed, the objects, the puppets, the showgirls (ed.note: one woman stated to me "as a Berlusconi girl") who refuse to do anything else because it is 'easier' and the only way to 'get ahead'.  These women give and enforce the wrong image of women. To change the violent mentality of tomorrow's men, the women of today must stop this aspect."

Many will say "women should be able to dress however they wish, it is the problem of the man."  I agree to an extent, of course, but it is this portrayal of women -- by women! -- that is a part of the problem.  Turn on a tv here, and even the female newscasters and weather forecasters are popping out of their shirts and micro-minis, all the while saying "why won't anyone take me seriously so that I can get a real job?"

So.  Milly, I applaud you for standing up and saying what many of us are thinking.

Enough is enough.  With all that we as humans have been able to accomplish and are still accomplishing technologically (and all other ways), why are we still making excuses?

No one said there were RULES!

When I got off the plane to come here, they only asked for my passport. They never gave me the sheet of paper with the "Rules for Living in Italy" to sign, study and learn! Which left me to have to learn them on my own ... 

1 -- If you live in an apartment, all expats must be quiet after 11 p.m. (23:00 for those of you who live life by a 24-hour clock) and before 8:00 a.m. ... even if your Italian neighbors let their children stay up until 2 a.m. screaming, yelling, crying, running up and down the stairs and generally being a nuisance -- It's an expat thang, don'cha know ;-)

2 -- If you double-park your car and block someone in, you need to listen for a honking horn -- or the long, laying-on of a horn -- or risk being screamed at with a slew of fun words for being a jerk...at 6 a.m.! If you're sleeping and you're being "called" in this manner, don't waste time getting dressed -- just get out there even in your pj's!

3 -- This one's important, too: old people (especially women) and pregnant ladies get precedence in supermarket lines (and always on a bus or metro), even if there is no sign stating this. Watch for the evil eye and listen for the not-so-quiet muttering you will hear if you don't respect this!

4 -- Those little copper "pennies" (centessimi) will come in handy on your end. 
Cashiers will expect you to have change to even out your payment, and will even give you "the face" and a sigh to go along with it if you don't produce! Be prepared for the long, drawn-out, dramatic search in the cash machine while people in line are beginning to sigh and mumble about "the foreigner". Don't question it if you are given a centessimo more or less -- it's all good!  Banks don't give their customers rolls of coins, so shops like to get rid of them ;-)

5 -- Italians are social creatures, so don't think you're going to be able to say "this is my space, this is yours" because your neighbors will come and introduce themselves to you -- which is why you should always have the coffee handy and some sweets available.  They're just being social and not nosy ... well, okay, yes they're being nosy because they'll need something to talk about and "the stranieri" make for perfect fodder! But they really are being social.  In this vein, around Christmas and Easter always have some extra panettone ready to give out to the portiere of your building and for anyone who may drop by!

6 -- Remember to take a number in the deli at the supermarket. You'll be hanging around all day if you don't, and you won't be cut any slack because you're "a foreigner".

7 -- When you go to the big markets, be prepared to be bumped (a not-so-subtle hint) by old women with their little roller-carts. They are on missions!  If you want to learn which is the best stand, or how to negotiate the best price (even a few centessimi difference), then follow those carts! But remember to get out of the way, and soon you'll be jumping and weaving with the best of them ;-)

Any more you can think of? What rules have you learned?