Addio: Italian for 'a final good-bye'.

Addio Senator Kennedy, e, grazie.

Google: To use the Google search engine or MAP to look for information/locations on the World Wide Web.

today i took a walk down bleeker past macdougal and carmine and over to the west village. i tried to zoom in on magnolia bakery, hoping to catch a glimpse of my favourite vanilla cupcake with butter creme frosting. i used the up, down, left and right arrows on my laptop to stand across from the biography bookshop (and in my head I smelled the smell of used books and coffee) and then headed over to minetta park. as i crossed the avenue of americas i saw the take out where i used to get some damned good enchiladas and tacos. then i skillfully crossed houston street, taking a moment to pass le gamin, my cafe au lait bar and the angelica movie theatre marquee (where i saw some great films and some mediocre films) toward soho. i crossed the street toward the pet shop where martin picked out a nice squirrel toy and a miliner shop i photographed in honour of my mom who loves hats even more than me...walking past the spring street apartment where my friends lynn and marty live. on the way back i went out of my way to go into washington square park and the bench that hosted me many a morning, the dog run where mart lost a toenail and bled on the way to the vet in a nice, yellow new york taxi and over to the corner deli where einat and i used to buy yogurt for lunches together. the nyu student union and bookshop must be filled with kids now...i will be starting school myself in two weeks. last summer i was a thompson street girl with a book, a newspaper and a lot of glorious time on my hands. i slept surrounded by sara genn's paintings and relished the air from lupa, wafting up into the open windows looking out over the fire escape, past the sentinal water towers into the lovely mess that makes up new york/manhattan. i made friends (well, marty did, anyway) in the street and ate butterfinger candybars while window shopping. i had a crush on the guy who served us at the humas restaurant and when i ventured up north towards midtown and central park, i sat for hours on benches watching humanity and everything that makes humanity wonderful and horrible. the moma was where i wept in front of pollack and the hotdog stand right outside nourished me the way only a new york hotdog can. the upper east side wowed me, the upper west cradled me and riverside park was mart's favourite place to pee. a year ago today i was packin' up my stuff and hugging the walls of sara's apartment because i wanted to leave a part of myself imprinted on the crumbling old building and let it know how much I loved it- you can love a building, you know. and on my last afternoon i spent helping einy clean her apartment my belovedly old, old navy low ride boot cut jeans split up the back and i rode home on the subway trying to cover my butt... a google map walk isn't the real thing, but it seemed like a nice way to spend an hour today. and a nice way to remember and yeah, i cried a little. because the CITY gave me something: it gave me and mart its beating, buzzing, bellowing and beautiful self.

Abundance: Degree of plentifulness, fullness to overflowing.

Celebrating the abundance of the last days of August, of summer. I found an avocado!!! I am a Southern California girl and for me the avocado is like green gold...so, there will be guacamole for lunch...and humas and chickpea salad and a nice, cold Corona beer with a twist of lime because I FOUND LIMES, too! Limes and avocados come from Brazil and discovering them in the green grocer is like finding treasure! Happy end of summer everyone.

Conscious: Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts, aware.

I've been playing the Italian Superenalotto lottery over the past few weeks and yesterday the biggest win ever in Europe, around 143 million Euros, went to somebody in a small Tuscan village. They had a BIG party.

Yesterday while reading The New York Times I saw this:

'In the last 50 years, more girls have died for being girls than all the men who died in wars fought in the 20th Century.'

Maybe I did win the lottery. I mean, I was born 50 years ago to a middle class family, had enough to eat, clothes to wear, an education. I had the choice to have children, to work, to dream. And now I am going back to school.

The Chinese have a saying, 'Women hold up half the sky.' Many policy makers believe that by educating and empowering women we will secure a peaceful and prosperous future, focusing on women and girls to fight global poverty and extremism.

My friend Einat sent me the film, 'Paris Was A Woman', a documentary about the contributions made by a handful of women expatriates living on The Left Bank between the first two world wars, and as I was watching it I was reminded what a recent phenomenon it is that women should have the choice to go on to higher education. Once again, I feel incredibly lucky to be going back to school.

I have a photo of me standing in front of my dorm the morning my parents drove me three hours to Lawrence, Kansas for my first semester at K.U., which is amazing, because when I moved to Italy I threw away tons of pictures as there was no room to take them and no way to store them. I am barefoot, wearing Levis, my head tilted to the side, hands on hips. My mom and Dad unloaded my stuff and drove away.

I sat on the unmade bed of my dorm room looking at the light blue walls and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over my built-in drawers. I was lost.

At 18 I did not yet have the insight to understand what going to school (especially out of state) really meant. I was way too young...

When my old boyfriend went to school many years later he would comment on the much younger student body at U.C.S.D. (he was 33 at the time) commenting that they seemed oblivious to their good fortune- he, on the other hand knew how lucky he was. He was conscious of his good fortune. He felt like he had won a lottery.

And me, too.

Have a great Sunday, everybody.

Recurring: To happen, come up, or show up again or repeatedly.

I recently hung a detail of this Klimt reproduction in my house. The title, I discovered today, is 'Wasserschlangen II', 1904/07, Water Snakes II.

I have been having a recurring dream since the first time I visited Venice several years ago. I dreamt that I was taking a walk from canal to canal, crossing over floating bridges and sitting on stepways that disappeared into the green-grey waters, waters that were swallowing up her magesty, Venezia. At one point I slipped down those steps into the water and swam with white serpents, unafraid. They were unmistakably female, dancing upward from the undulating surfaces reflecting the splendor of two worlds, east and west, and the ochre, pink and orange buildings became liquid, too, the real buildings melting into their water counterparts and it was difficult to tell what was solid and what was not. (!) At one point, right before I woke up, I reached out to touch the wall of one palace, my hand passing through to another place...

Now the water snakes have returned but I am not in Venice anymore. The snakes are emerging from the screen of my mini laptop, the colour of hilighter pens- acid green and yellow- they are saavy and slick and unwavering.

Now these ladies are hanging in my house. Water snakes. My recurring serpents, revisiting, replying to my fears? My fears about school? About entering a world through the computer screen? Holding a hilighter pen to the page of a textbook?

I don't mind the serpents. I don't mind any of my recurring dreams.
Here is a list:

• I rise up and fly around the room, my back just next to the ceiling. I have to walk myself down the wall to return to earth.

• I am holding a kitten in my hand. But the kitten is the size of a thimble, cleaning its face with a tiny black and white paw.
• I am on a cloud, sitting, and the light from the world below is shining up through the mist that surrounds me. The cloud is edible. It tastes like cotton candy. It always smells like cotton candy when I wake up. I can smell it when I wake up.

The air is thick and the humidity is stifling today. Perfect weather for water snakes...

Time: A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

This is the 15th of August and a national holiday in Italy; most everyone has gone to the beach, the mountains or country to escape the heat and all the routines that await us as we move into September.

Summer. Last summer I was living (for two months) in The Village in New York City and I can say that it was the most magical summer of my life. It was SO GOOD that when I left the apartment I had exchanged with artist, singer and composer Sara Genn, I didn't even feel ripped off. I felt FILLED UP and so buzzed from my experience, I was ready to come home and see where that juice I got from the City would take me in 2009!
I rode that wave of energy and set the goal to return to school in fall 2009 and here I am.

I've been thinking a lot about time over the last few days and am trying to picture myself juggling my work schedule with the hours I will have to dedicate to school all the while taking care of my body, soul and mind.
This August I have been able to teach one day a week leaving six other GLORIOUS days to rest, practice yoga morning and evening, walk the dog, study, read and write (I am writing a book) and see a few friends for a chat or day trip here and there.
This morning I am in bed blogging and feeling lazy, Martin snoozing at my side, trying to picture the cold mornings in November before the heater goes on, getting out of bed early enough to do yoga, take the dog for a long walk and write as I usually do while studying three or four hours a day and working as much as I need to/can. (And I will try to do all of this while keeping my sacred Sundays completely and utterly free!)
I am a freelance teacher and work contract to contract. This is fabulous because I don't have to go to the same place every day and I can set some of my schedule to meet my needs or preferences... but the truth is, I pretty much work from morning to night- professional people want to study English in the evenings, kids after school, exam prep students are going to university so they come in the mornings and lots of my consulting and business English courses are done over lunch. I am a busy girl and I like it that way. (Oh, and I need 8 hours of sleep per night.) The question is- when am I going to study?
This blog entry is a challenge to myself to set my goals, tell the universe what I need/want, and, see if I can achieve a little more balance in my life this year to make room for my commitment to school.

WHAT A TIMELY TIME FOR ME TO BE STUDYING Reading Graphs and Tables IN MyReadingLab. HERE IS THE PIECHART EXAMPLE (Figure 4: A typical day for a college student) REPRODUCED TO THE RIGHT.
IN ITALIAN WE SAY, magari, or, 'I should be so lucky...' or 'from your mouth to God's ear!' Ah, there's the rub...

Here is how it works: I write my perfect schedule and let's see if I can make it happen! (...with you, the reader, as my witness!) Let's test the 'name it and claim it' philosophy together!

I intend to work more with my training agency as an instructor in business English (I earn more per hour in these courses) AND I intend to work near home (=less commuting by bus to companies outside my immediate neighbourhood). This means I will take less private students, sending the overflow to a new American teacher who has recently moved here, thus boosting her earning power at the same time!
Ok, so that's the challenge. The first week of September I will go to my training agency to see how our new courses are going and see if I can help with marketing and planning.
I have a good private client base, and the privates who start in September will be the ones I take; the ones who sometimes drag their feet starting later in October I hope to pass on to other teachers.

Tick-tock. A nonspatial continuum, indeed.

Focus.
Work hard...
and don't forget to BREATHE.

Prize: Something worth striving for; a highly desirable possession.

Keep your eyes on the prize. Don't be afraid. Everything is gonna be alright...