a wee tribute

I came back from London in December sick and was relieved of my final responsibilities to my classes. I didn't renew my contract, and am therefore finished working for the school, and it deserves a little send-off.

My first lesson of the day on Thursdays was in Bicocca, a little "suburb" that has sprouted around one of the numerous university campuses here. The tram drops me on campus, and I walk through a series of buildings that are all the same, coloured a specific shade of burnt orange and really really square -- hey must have been built in the 70's; they have that look about them -- to a piazza that is literally an outdoor mall and food court, complete with escalators and picnic tables, "paved" with something that looks like tile, where my students live in a really nice 10-or-so-floor condo. The buildings are tall for Milano and rise up all around you. They are still constructing in this area -- it's soon to become even more of a hub, with its own metro line. It's a vibrant area, or at least has some life about it -- the students pour out of the buildings at lunchtime and line up for kebab or a slice of pizza, and sit all over the piazza. Part of the reason I love going here there and everywhere to teach is getting to discover these new areas of the city, not necessarily beautiful in the same sense as the Duomo is beautiful, or the Foro in Rome; but each face of the city lends it its own flavour and deepens my understanding of its people.
I taught the majority of my lessons in Piazza Aspromonte, a 15-minute walk from my apartment. My walk to work will be a nice memory, if banal. By now, the row of kebab shops, restaurants, knick-knack stores, and cafés is as familiar to me as the row of houses on the way to the corner store where I grew up. OK -- maybe not quite as familiar. But it only takes something as small as a daily walk or other mundane routine to instill a sense of home.
My students were all Italian. Some were children, and some of those children were insupportable, but I am going to miss the little girls who drew me pictures. I'll miss the determined university students working towards proficiency exams and the Spanish-speaking Italian businessman who went crazy for Dire Straits. I won't miss the many cancelled appointments and the students who didn't try; these taught me patience, though, and which things to get stressed about and which to let go.
As for working for an Italian school, I think the well-oiled machine that was my Toronto job spoiled me.

I'm done with the school now, my contract having expired as I said; I've chosen to not renew it and spend my last six or seven weeks travelling and focusing on my personal and artistic development, and enjoying myself. My itinerary is up in the air, and more on that will come later, but I am looking forward to an extremely productive couple of months.

apples and oranges

November 4, 2009



Furniture exhibit at the civic museums, Castello Sforzesco, Milano

It's not so much that there is a fresco hanging in a gallery near a furniture exhibit in a gallery.
It's that these frescoes are hanging everywhere. I would not be surprised to see frescoes hanging over the toilets and leaning against walls in closets in my apartment.
As I come from a country several centuries younger than most of these frescoes I don't have to explain why this is novel.

The image as microcosm of the city itself:
Italy is littered with 2,000-year-old stones, preserved saints' bodies, most of the wonders of the art world in full restored glory, and boasts an incredibly rich cultural and military history.
Cars whiz past the Colosseo in Rome. People on cell phones or headsets weave through tourists on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
The subway system in Milano houses several glassed-in ruins they found while digging the tunnels.
It's 1200 and 2009 in Italy right now.
Milano is an incredibly modern city. It's on the very edge of design and fashion, and the Milanesi strive to one-up each other with the latest in this technology, that runway trend, this car, that artist. There is some serious money here, which makes it all possible (there exists the other extreme, unfortunately, and I have yet to really define a middle class). Although like in other great Italian cities, the ancient presides silently over the progress and the velocity and chaos and traffic and noise of modern Milano, there seems to me here a tension between the old and the new.
This is really only speculation, but let's take Rome. It is really, really difficult to ignore the Colosseo and the Foro Romano, and the rocks strewn about the city, and eventually you make peace with the fact that your past will always haunt you, kind of like the old-fashioned stodgy uncle you really hate because he's always talking about how you should be more like he was at 20-whatever but you can't really hate him, because he's family and you can't choose your family.
Milano, on the other hand, has little ancient treasures hiding in unexpected places. I turned a corner yesterday and came face to face with an enormous Baroque church I had never noticed before, because it was obscured by a modern building housing a bank (Milano is the financial seat of Italy... let's call this symbolism).
I was a little shocked but in a pleasant way, as I am discovering the city as an outsider/tourist and everything is a little bit magical. But humour me and imagine I am a Milanese: I am a self-styled Modern European. I am on the cutting edge, always. I can't find the balance between where we came from and where we are, because I move forward, not in circles, contemplating, pondering. I like fast lunches and long work days like they have in America. Sometimes I eat McDonald's. Maybe I have an inferiority complex... maybe that's why I can't stand the backward, old-fashioned south.
It's hard to put a finger on it. But in my opinion, the table wasn't happy about being next to the old-fashioned uncle fresco.



Emanuele Arciuli played a great solo piano program on Monday night. I sat above him in the gallery and watched his hands.

The Liszt and Schumann were played beautifully with a lot of sensitivity. Visually, they make so much sense to our well-conditioned brains. The keyboard is used in the ways we expect -- up and down and up and down go the hands, moving together or away from each other, moving in parallel lines from left to right and making broad strokes in one direction or the next. There is always a linear relationship between them. Tension grows and is resolved. Western music is so satisfyingly predictable.

The Carter he played, Night Fantasies, took linear relationships and said, "This crap is useless." I described Arciuli's hands to a friend as "robot spiders"; not only was the piece full of 64th and 128th notes (I don't know, it just seemed that way), it worked out musical ideas in circular, repetitious patterns that left the listener stewing over them even after the piece was done. There was cadence and discernible shape to the form, to be sure. But in terms of pitch content and for lack of a better word, musical "shapes", it resembled a scatter graph or an Etch-a-Sketch when realized. While Liszt and Schumann seem to muse out loud, Carter seems to need to brood introspectively over musical "problems" in order to develop and resolve them. In fact, I think this says a lot about the sociocultural "mood" in each relevant epoch. Extremely provocative; caused me to realize all over again that I think of music visually and how important that element of it is.




Today I went straight to the practice room following a particularly harrowing reading comprehension lesson with my class from hell.

Some things just don't feel like work. Some things make you forget anything that's bad in your life and obscure stress, worries, insecurity. They clarify priorities and put your life in perspective. Even a passive experience, like being a spectator, instills calm and replenishes what soul has been sucked that day.

Some things are a job that make you money while you pursue more lofty ambitions and don't deserve time or energy off the clock. This is taught to you by the enlightening experiences you have singing Verdi and Massenet, a clandestine locked away in the corner of the conservatory where no caretakers will find you and evict you from your not-booked, totally not-yours practice room, before a concert in which you hear the Brahms string sextet and Verklarte Nacht.
Or... I mean... other enlightening experiences.

(Aside: I see most of the concerts I go to alone and it's during this time I usually have weird abstracted brain experiences. I think it's why I have never been tempted to try drugs. Verklarte Nacht put me on another plane tonight; I had forgotten how much I love it.)
a wee taste.

To finish:
Further proof of Italy's schizophrenia follows in the form of two towns on the same lake (Como).


Colico in the north...

and Lecco in the south.

Things that currently annoy me

1. Screaming children. This is nothing new, but it has become a more persistent problem with the onset of flu season and the children I live with becoming ill.

2. Racism. I was privy to a confrontation on the subway platform between a black man and an Italian man, who was screaming at him and the whole subway platform, "YOU DON'T BELONG HERE! GO TO YOUR COUNTRY! GO TO AFRICA! YOU ARE AN EXTRACOMUNITARIO!!!"
An extracomunitario is basically a foreigner without papers; these days, with an active government campaign to get all the foreigners legal, it's considered a pretty rough insult.
Also, Africa is not a country.
What brought this on? Nothing, but noone stopped him. Noone except the girlfriend of the guy being yelled at. I wouldn't dare step up -- my Italian isn't rough enough to join a verbal battle -- but the Italians in the subway just laughed and made fun of the black man's accent. What the hell kind of country is this?

3. Sidewalk etiquette, or lack thereof. There are really really small sidewalks here, and a fun game to play is to guess who the foreigners are -- you can pick them out because they are the ones weaving in and out, dodging old ladies' shopping carts, and looking annoyed at how damn slow everyone is moving. Sometimes, I can saunter along with the best of 'em, but not when I am late for work... and not when I am behind two nonne having their afternoon stroll, stopping to gesticulate relatively wildly every two or three miniscule steps -- it's like the fear of God. You just don't challenge the nonnas. You also don't see people walking on the right side of the sidewalk -- I mean, that's crazy, right.
Sidewalk etiquette also encompasses umbrella etiquette. It rains so much here that everyone carries one on a grey day.
Because Italians like rules (so that they can disregard them) I offer the following as Umbrella Etiquette.
1. Umbrellas of the curved-handle variety may be carried in the hand if the carrier adheres to the following: the umbrella is carried vertically, is not swung wildly with each step, is not used as a cane, does not impede traffic flow on the sidewalks by sticking out at various angles.
2. Open umbrellas may be carried only above the head. Half-open umbrellas, for example a half-retracted umbrella carried in the hand at knee height and dripping wet, is inadmissible.
3. Umbrellas must be lifted above the head of the person passing the carrier on the sidewalk, especially if this person is umbrellaless. If both are carrying an umbrella, the taller person must yield. Avoid dripping onto the person's shoulder.
4. Umbrellas purchased in the subway must not exceed 4 euro even when it is raining cats and dogs.

With the rain come the umbrella vendors, like worms, crawling out to profit in their way from the rainfall. On Sunday my umbrella broke and I was a bit desperate; I talked one vendor down from 8 euro to 4. Just because it's raining, your umbrella doubles in value? He did look pretty devastated to be selling me the umbrella for 4 euro, though - it's a rather nice one, with a curved handle and a huge circumference, and I'm pretty sure it's been treated with something becuase it is impermeability itself. I am happy with my purchase.

4. University application fees. Why are these so high? Why do they get higher with each dehree level? Does it take more brainpower to process my transcript, reference letters and contact info than it does to process Joe Undergrad's transcript, reference letters and contact info?

5. The fact that just about everyone I know chose the year I moved away to move to Toronto. It's like they were just waiting for me to leave...

Today's moment is brought to you by the Duomo's roof.

I had an "I live here!!!!!?!?!?!?" moment today.

I have them sometimes. They come in two forms.

One form is the type that is accompanied by a contorted grimace of revulsion or sadness and usually occurs in response to one of the following:

1. Berlusconi is on TV saying something incriminating, or having laws made to protect his dealings (actually they rules against his random law-making recently, not that it will change much).

2. I see old ladies curled up on the sidewalk with their hands outstretched. OLD LADIES. They aren't using it for drugs, that's for sure. Why are they so poor? Or, I see desperate buskers board subway trains and begin to play, badly, on a broken violin or a crap accordion, smiling in vain at the obviously annoyed passengers, as their malnourished child goes around and holds out a duct-taped coffee cup.

3. I read stuff like this. Italy's right-wing government doesn't give a ... about gay rights, until three days ago? How many young gay Italians have to conceal their physical injuries and refuse to go to hospitals when they are beaten, because they haven't come out to their parents? How many clubs have to be raided, how many have to emigrate with their partners, how may have to die before this country realizes it's living in a really warped, religion-steeped vacuum?? There was another beating in Rome this week, the homicide rate is way up, and Berlusconi is under fire for a lot of other things, so maybe it's an opportunity to score some points by pouring some of his hard-earned money into a subway ad campaign that will just get defaced by the belligerent youth for whom it is too late, who have learned too early and too well what's right and wrong. Not that I'm proposing a solution. It's a deep-seeded problem. But you might be able to tell I think it's an important one.

4. I try to do things that are green and fail because the facilities don't exist (eg, must take elevators or escalators, must throw out paper or plastic, must use 1290843 sheets of paper to properly document coursework for teaching because everything is so complicated here, must take receipt for every single purchase made because otherwise the police will question whether you stole it, nowhere to compost, too dangerous to bike here, list goes on). Stay tuned for when I try a No-Impact challenge in one of the self-admittedly least green places on earth.

Sometimes, these moments are accompanied by absolute awe and wonder, amusement, reverence, and any combination of these and other similar emotions. Today's was like this and happened on the roof of a building, which, if you're going to have an epiphany, is just as good a spot as any, really. They happen on occasions such as the following:

1. I wander around an ENORMOUS church on a Monday afternoon when I have nothing better to do, see the preserved body of a dead archbishop and numerous very lovely paintings, and then take an elevator to wander around on the ROOF of said Duomo, from which you can see the ALPS and also all the little people and pigeons in the square below, and all the cranes and church spires and wee skyscrapers of Milano around you and all the saints presiding over the cities from their perches on the church spires are at eye level. The gargoyles are fantastic close up. ANd the Madonnina really is a wee little Mary made of gold perched on the topmost spire. THe spires are backlit by the sun and everything looks cream-coloured.
I sometimes have a really hard time getting over the fact that there is so much history just strewn about the cities here, and people go about their daily modern lives as if nothing were amiss, with no air of reverence, no eggshells underfoot, no neck-craning and google eyes. It's amazing to me that I can rush across a square in a hurry to get somewhere and not even notice that the square, and its subway stop, is named after the tenth-century church that is smack in the middle of it.

2. I have chocolate for breakfast, and that's not only OK, it's advised.

3. I sit on the tram or the subway and look around, and there are Italians, Africans, probably Brits and Canadians and Americans, Filipinos, Chinese and Japanese, and I know we all have at least one thing in common: we all speak great Italian. At home I don't take it as a given that you speak English, although most people do speak it. Some speak French, and some don't have a great level of English at all. Sure, in other parts of the world, it's probably the same- in South Korea, I imagine the dominant language is Korean, for example. But this is Europe, where languages mix a lot more easily, and in Italy, the 4 big ones (French, English, German, Italian) are taught in high school. In countries like Germany, the default fall-back is English; France I would imagine too. In Sweden they practically all speak fluent English, as far as my experiences with Swedes demonstrate. Here, you can't really get by -- as a resident -- without a perfect understanding of Italian and a really good ability to speak. Most Italians have very little to no English, ditto French and German. So there is that one thing that each and every one of us on that tram has struggled with and achieved. In a weird way, it's unifying and comforting.

4. Cities are circular and orbit around a main piazza. Life takes place in outdoor open spaces. They are always crowded with people walking, talking, sitting, eating, taking pictures, on cell phones, hanging out. I love piazzas. Why don't we have enormous open public spaces in the middle of downtown where you can set up runways for outdoor fashion shows and rock concerts, and that house enormous artifacts of history called Duomo's, EVERYWHERE?
To me this is indicative of a major cultural difference. It isn't just the church thing. Intersection after intersection in Toronto or New York, laid out in grids that really go nowhere; streets in parallel, angled bunches converging periodically in hubs with bars, banks, street markets, PEOPLE, that help define neighbourhoods and city zones, help drivers easily navigate between zones via roundabouts, and provide a mental and physical resting place from GOING. Which would you rather?
Having these points of arrival along your journey makes it meaningful and somehow, easier. At home I go from point A to point B. Here I go from point A to say, G or H with all the letters in between. I see more and experience more along the way. And resting points are built in. Just like siesta. Yes, that does happen in Milano, too.

5. People have met other opera singers before and they are familiar with the major works in the canon. Most have been to see at least one, usually in their hometown's theatre, and they probably liked it. They might even know someone who could help me, or their mom is a voice teacher. Opera happens everywhere. It's on TV, it's in small towns and it's relatively cheap. Your average Joe knows the words to La donna è mobile, Largo al Factotum, Una Voce poco fa, every soprano aria written by Puccini, and of course Va Pensiero. Entire blocks of streets are named after composers.
My point is... well, do I have to make it? I still haven't gotten over the novelty that I am not a novelty.

I never said it would all be roses, and Italy is a backwards country in a lot of ways. But there are some serious payoffs.

two heads are better than one, I think.

I have weekly Friday afternoon dates with myself.
The Castello Sforzesco Museums, or Musei Civici, are free on Friday afternoons, and they are glorious. You can walk through room after room of ancient Lombardian ruins, Lombardian Renaissance sculpture, and finish at the last sculpture Michelangelo ever worked on, the Rondanini Pietà; you can wander the art gallery and take in the view of the courtyard from the windows; and right now, you can ogle photographs and prints from the original produciton of Madama Butterfly in an exhibit devoted to the opera and guarded by a 400-foot-tall, weeping Cio-Cio San (picture coming).
Or, if the mood strikes and the weather is good, you can just wander the grounds and take in the castle as a sight in itself. It is rather majestic; it's laid out in a large square and fronted by an enormous piazza. In back, Parco Sempione stretches far into the northeast of Milan; previously all that land belonged to the Sforze, who, I suppose, were rich on a Medici scale. The buildings themselves encircle a spacious courtyard and comrise several turrets, a fortress, and a large, imposing central tower.
One of these days I will post pictures. The camera saga ended with me picking up my camera and getting my dad to scour Walmart for an extremely cheap alternative. Consumerism, obsolescence and The Man: one. Danielle's social consciousness: zero.
Anyway, this particular day, I was at the museum in the art gallery alone.
Alone is something I never thought I minded until I came here. I really only mind it sometimes. In fact, I only mind it when I think too much about it.
I really enjoy being alone, so much so that I feared I wouldn't even bother trying to achieve any sort of social life while I was here; I love living alone (I don't here) and eating alone (at home), and I love going to concert, movies, and cafes by myself, and I actively seek out places like libraries and museums where I can move amongst the fixtures and lose myself in my thoughts. Sure, I look at the stuff, but it's like knitting: you occupy your mind with something gross-motor-ish to do so it can abstract itself from reality and figure crap out.
Not that that is why I go to museums -- in fact, I am an avid learner and I like to read all the panels. I really appreciate well-curated collections. But sometimes art or carpets or dead people's stuff can be useful in this way as well. I could never go to a museum and brain-knit with a companion.
Anyway, I, who normally do not mind being alone, mind it here. It's the extremely social aspect of the culture that is a painful reminder of my solitary status. Itlaians travel in packs, and tourists tend to travel in two's, usually lovey-dovey two's; I look twice when I see someone else silently wandering around, because it is so rare. I am still shy about sitting down for a coffee alone here; at home, I have no problem getting my drink at the counter and disappearing into a chair at Second Cup for an hour or two. Maybe it is the lack of anonymity in general that makes it impossible to escape from scrutiny. You have to own up to being alone, because interactions are more personal. But isn't that a good thing? Isn't that what I wanted, or at least part of it?
Also, there are no benches. Because I am too shy to plop down at a table by myself for a coffee, when I have a half hour to kill before a meeting or a concert I am forced to keep walking, walking, walking, until I find a park (few and far between) or enough time has passed. I miss roadside benches.
But you know, sometimes it's nice to be alone. I had a rough day at work and I came to the museum searching for something to evoke a reaction in me, to help the bad mood pass. I guess I wasn't too open to that today. But there is always next Friday.

Young'un Yelping

OK.

If going off my hypoallergenic diet and being attacked by hives didn't kill me, maybe living with two small children and a cat would. If that didn't kill me, maybe having the ordeal of a lifetime trying to get a 39-euro phone fixed on warranty would. If the phone war didn't kill me, maybe getting a job with a shady company and breaking my non-existent contract for a better offer and not getting paid would. Nope, that didn't either, so maybe running out of supplements and searching out viable alternatives and praying I don't have reactions to the new products would? Nope.. Not that either. OK, maybe then having about half the amount of stuff to do in a day than I am used to, and a significantly lower number of friends in Italy than at home would. Not yet but we're getting close.

Nope.

It was the 5 devil children from Hell... I mean.. uh, the class I taught at the Educandato today.
The Educandato, as it is familiarly known, is the city's foremost Italian-language private school (there are international schools as well) and they have a reputation as such. The children are rich and privileged and they know it, and it is impossible to ignore this fact when they are basically doing whatever the hell they want in your class while you try not to swear at them in English.

To make matters worse, the Director of my school decided to sit in and observe, which she did for the other classes too, but she didn't observe -- she micromanaged. She somehow failed to realize that by talking to me and giving me extremely valuable advice on my lesson plan, she was taking my attention away from them and they were wreaking more havoc than was really necessary.

So... What exactly is it that is so important to tell me while I try to control the beasts, lady? Tell me all about how they need to speak more English, please. As if I didn't know.

I don't know how people do it -- all of you out there teaching children, I salute you.

I never want kids.

Incominciamo!

Seeing as the one-month anniversary of the beginning of my sojourn in Italy has come and gone and nary a blog entry is in sight, I have decided to bite the bullet and post something -- anything. When you put something off for so long because you are waiting for the perfect circumstances, it tends to build in import until you can never find it in you to live up to your now obscenely out-of-proportion expectations. To avoid such an imbroglio I humbly present Blog the First.

Where to begin? Because I am beginning mid-journey I will begin where I am and fill in the gaps as the drift of the discourse allows. I am currently in Milano, living happily in a small room in a family's apartment. (If I had a camera right now, I'd post a picture of it, but I don't-- and that's another blog entry altogether...) There are five of us -- Valentina, Ilario and their two daughters Emma and Bianca who are rather cute, but tend to be up pretty early in the morning, doing as children do... Valentina and Ilario couldn't be nicer people, though. I am very happy to be living with a built-in family; it makes me feel like if I needed it, someone has my back. For instance, Vale' took a morning to go with me to get a certain form for which we thought she would also need to sign -- she didn't but it was no problem for her to put that time aside to do me the favour. I like people like that.

I also like people who are sympathetic to foreigners' plight here in Italy. Italy has a reputation for being rather closed to foreigners -- it is notoriously difficult to obtain any sort of documentation you may need to stay legally in the country, thus rendering it impossible to do so; the language is Italian and too bad if you need me to speak slower; political parties like the Lega Nord are spoken of in foreign media in a light which implies racism and extreme patriotism in the North of Italy. On one hand, Italy boasts something like 8,000 km of coastline (don't quote me) and is easy to use as a gateway to the rest of Europe; it is therefore home to a lot of illegal immigrants (and the displeasure at this is vocalized pretty freely; graffiti like Tutti i clandestini a casa (All clandestines go home) is not uncommon). I get it. It's hard enough to find work, let alone that pays (more on that as well); leave the jobs to the residents. Not that I espouse that viewpoint, or any, for that matter. But there are so many people here that completely debunk the stereotype. Of course, the expat community is strong; every job interview I have gone to has also been a session of legal counsel, friendly advice, or simply socializing. But store owners, railway employees, Tabacchi cashiers (where you get your phone card to add credit, or your cigarettes if you're into that), hotel owners, doormen, parents of children I teach, strangers at the bus stop -- everyone is happy to smile and repeat what it is they are trying to communicate to me, or to share advice on the cheaper grocery stores, or to make sure I know to be careful walking through the area I am in, or just to make small talk or regale me with the stories of their lives. It's nice to know advice is dispensable here, that people are not hostile or closed on an individual basis.

I make it seem like Italy has this awful reputation. In fact, it is a wonderful place and most Italians are very outgoing people. I have made some friends and rather quickly; one of the first things I did was attend a masterclass held by Mirella Freni (I audited) and a couple of the singers there have kept in touch. I went to see Olga Borodina at La Scala tonight and made fast friends with the Japanese girl beside me (hilarious that she's from Japan, I'm from Canada, and we are speaking Italian) and we are going to go out soon with some of her friends. It is true, however, that Milano has a reputation in the rest of Italy for being a miserable, grey, un-Italian wasteland; one lady at the bus stop put it like this: "We only leave our houses to work and we only go home to sleep. And we earn nothing. We live badly here." Strong words indeed! What they don't know is that that is how it is in North America, and that in fact, Milano is as Italian as it gets next to Toronto or New York. I can't imagine a typical Milanese in New York! Good luck! Everything closes on Sundays here, and at lunch a lot of places will close as well; that's typical of the rest of Italy but with Milano's reputation I thought it would be different. I was shocked and amused to discover that the Milanesi don't realize they should just count their blessings!

Speaking of feeling different, my first transformation into a true Milanese has occurred. Usually I am not one to care too much about what you think of my clothes, but I have become painfully aware of my appearance, and that most of the time, I feel terribly underdressed and undercoiffed. They use the expression tirato here which comes from the verb tirare, to pull -- someone who is tirato is therefore pulled together, with no loose ends. I, on the other hand, feel like I am trailing threads and flyaways all over the city. This week, my fixation is shoes. It rained the first few days I was here, and I had some interviews to go to. I needed some nice shoes but not anything too warm, and not the sandals I had brought; I didn't want to spend too much because soon I need to buy some shoes for the colder months (I won't say winter, it only gets to be about 5) so I picked up a pair of faux leather pumps for 15 euro. Biggest mistake of my life in recent memory. Right now the back of my right heel looks like I took a pair of scissors and removed the first 9 layers of skin; my left isn't much better. I am limited to my flats, and they are so painful to wear that I can't picture another day with them on my feet. I have therefore carefully noted the types of shoes of every woman I see on the metro and come to the conclusion that my sandals are now considered unseasonal, and I should be wearing either a ballet flat, an ankle boot, or a sharp pair of black sneakers, think Skecher or Steve Madden, or even Puma, preferably with some bling. I am going to a discount shoe store I know of tomorrow and hopefully, I'll be able to face another day a piedi.
Next up: the eighth wonder of Danielle World, La Scala, and its array of interesting ticket-procurement procedures...