Delicata, spaghetti, acorn, butternut...

I rode my bike home today after a long, warm day of classes on campus. The second summer has arrived: in long jeans and with a sweater and scarf in my backpack, I was definitely unnecessarily loaded down.

Coming down from campus I feel like I'm part of the new wave of commuters, or I hope that's what it is. Often there's a fleet of four or five bikes that ride down Bay Street together when I leave campus around 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening, and it's like we have a microtraffic situation next to the two big lanes. We have to watch out for each other. Some fly by others, edging into the right lane of car traffic, donning little white earphones, dodging quickly through a red light if it seems safe enough.

There's nothing like the smells of Santa Cruz to make me remember how alive I am: just today I caught great whiffs of bay leaves, then strong coffee wafting out of a house below Mission followed by a cloud of marijuana that lasted half a block, then eucalyptus, and finally the wet salt of the ocean when I got home. Our house is full of different kinds of squash, and we're enjoying our veggies that we get weekly from the campus farm. We've made zucchini-crusted pizza, salsa with organic hot peppers, tomatoes, onions, and cilantro, delicata squash pasta with parmisan, and lots and lots of greens. We have too many onions to know what to do with them all, and hot peppers coming out our ears. Fall is so generous with its delicious veggies in coastal California. Recipe suggestions are welcome!

I really expected an anti-climax after getting back from my year abroad in Italy, but it's been quite the contrary. My daily life has accelerated into a blur of lectures and microwaved leftovers and dips into the pool, with occasional bouts of sleeping. I'm no longer a stranger in (such) a strange land, nor am I a rookie in college. I thinking learning how to use my elbows in Italy (that is, becoming pushy-er) and repeating the routine of classes at Santa Cruz for the third time have given birth to a new, often more self-assured me.

I'm evaluating all a manner of possible options for next year, including starting a masters somewhere in California in some interesting subject, taking an extension class from Santa Cruz while I find some direction, working on an organic farm temporarily (also known as WWOOF-ing), or trying to find some sort of job in the City for a year before I continue to grad school.

Despite the fact that I have two midterms Thursday, I am not yet waxing poetic this evening...I have so many ideas that strike me during all the lectures I sit through in class, and yet by the time I get home with eyelids drooping and fatigue in my brain, I am empty of all those thoughts. Somehow, I must perservere through the week, especially this one...I am on a mission to think of the best Halloween costume ever. Ideas are welcome. Alla prossima...

Santa Cruzing

Here I am in Santa Cruz again. I meant to write more immediately after my arrival in California but now is as good a time as ever. In fact, it's an ideal time, especially because I should be studying. So of course the impulse to write is back.

I think now that I'm here I have time to absorb all the things I thought about and learned and came across while abroad. And I'm realizing things that I didn't even know I learned, or that I always thought about but didn't think I was working on them, consciously or subconsciously. Maybe it's just seniorhood: all things fall into place when you are on top of the heap. But not necessarily. Not that anything is clear of course. Who knows whether this time next year I'll be in Ireland wiping down tables or at the Monterey Institute of Language or in Santa Cruz trudging on through the master's program or starting over with urban studies in some other university or going out into the real world "to get pissed off" to eventually come back to school.

I'm back to yoga, back to the redwoods, back to the OCEAN (not the sea!), and back to belonging where I am. Yes, I certainly enjoy the fake world right now. Here I have an ocean view and a social life and a purpose and a routine.

For now Italy is in my daily consciousness as fascist history and as Primo Levi and as my memories of the nooks and crannies of Bologna.

It's funny...here majoring in Italian Studies one could construct a whole identity based on being interested in a foreign culture. In Italy it's a bit strange to walk around on the street and major in that reality. How do you explain to people you're interested in what they live and eat and breathe? Just like the fish in water metaphor: could you tell a fish you major in water studies? Would it be able to conceptualize water? Certainly Italians can conceptualize Italian studies, but I wonder if they get the feeling they're being examined.

Until next time (I have a pressing assignment),
Robyn