Tag: I’ve told these stories before

My personal take on Libras (nope this is not about astrology – read on…)

Published on by Grace10 Comments

 I don’t know if this is an original thought, probably not because I don’t have original thoughts, but I’ve always said give me (a Libra) a blank piece of paper (or room or just about any blank thing) and leave me alone for an hour and when you come back the paper (space or whatever blank thing is involved) and it will still be blank BUT put one dot on that paper (or one thing in that blank space of whatever) and an hour later the blankness will have been filled with something wild and creative (or useful or, just filled up). 

Today Ashley had a post “How has your blog changed over time?”. I quickly started formulating a response but didn’t post it as a comment. It wasn’t relevant but it made me think. I’ve actually written about that recently. I was even thinking about it this morning – of perhaps changing my blog name to “Miscellaneous Mishegoss” because that’s what I usually write about. My blog hasn’t really changed much (aside from the name and the URL) tho I do believe the content used to be a lot better – deep thoughts on many occasions, just all round better content and writing. Plus, of course, lots of kitty pics and videos. 

Then Peggy just posted on a variety of topics but the one that caught my attention was a paragraph about her feeling homesick for Northern Virginia (which is where I live now but no we never lived in remotely near one another). She recently retired and moved further south and she is not feeling at home just yet. 

It got me to thinking that I have moved approximately 21 times (probably a few more than that especially if you count temporary housing while looking for permanent housing) – and it was sometime ago that I wrote about being unconnected and home-less. I still feel that way. 

She talked about missing her “tribe” and I often talk about finding my tribe – I think she meant her neighbors and friends and I mean people like me but then I don’t think I have ever had a tribe which goes to my being unconnected. 

(All of a sudden I got a picture in my head of me floating in space in one of those space suits – unconnected to anything.) 

Life is so temporary, so ephemeral. So floaty and gauzy. Or that’s how I’m seeing it at this moment. 

Again with the comics

Published on by Grace8 Comments

 

I’m pretty sure I’ve told this story before – 

In 6th grade there was a girl named Marguerite, an Italian-American girl like me (and like our teacher, Mrs. Forlano). Marguerite talked with her hands. So much so that, and I’m projecting here, it annoyed Mrs. Forlano. One day Mrs. Forlano held Marguerite’s hands down on her desk, asked her a question, and that poor girl could not utter a comprehensible word! She stuttered and err’ed and um’ed until her hands were released and the words came tumbling out in a rush.

In college I took Italian and most of the students were Italian-American. The professor was British and had been in British Intelligence during World War II. One of his assignments had been interrogating Italian POW’s. 

First day of class he had each of us stand, introduce ourselves and say why we were taking Italian. He then, correctly, identified which part of Italy our families came from.

According to the professor, he didn’t really need to know Italian to understand what the captive soldiers were saying – the hand gestures were enough. And, it seems, different parts of Italy generated different gestures. He allowed as Southern Italians were more ‘fluent’ in hand gestures than Northern Italians. I guess dialects applied to non-spoken Italian as well as spoken. 

Writing this made me wonder if mime differed from country to country. Turns out mime goes back to ancient Greece but became an art form in, wait for it, Italy in the 16th century, known as Commedia dell’arte. It was co-opted by the French in 1816 and now is thought of as being distinctly French. 

Mime aside, we Italians do talk with our hands, which is why I am way more funny and expressive in real life than I am writing or doing an audio-only. It’s why my blog Today’s Conversation went into decline. After so many years together the conversations between my husband and I were conducted in a sort of shorthand – he used words I used gestures – hard to write them down.

(A LINK to the history of mime, if you are interested, subtitled ‘…the most oh-so-French-of-art forms.)