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full moon enlightenment When I made my nightly trip to the grocery store it was under a full moon. Everything within my sight was completely still and it made me happy. For that moment in time, I had achieved a feeling of zen like confidence. Without a doubt in my mind, I could have easily answered any question that was given to me. There were would have been no hesitation whatsoever on my part. Suddenly I was some odd prophet from folklore legend ready to share my wisdom with any and all that sought me. It wasn't some kind of drug induced euphoria, it was more a sense of well being. The cliche of not having a care in the world definitely applied to me. The only trouble is that the feeling fades much too quickly for me. Maybe I've been working third shift for too long, but there are times when I do truly feel my best at three in the morning. There is something calming about that time of the day, which is in direct contrast to the odd combination of lethargy and anxiety that I feel at three in the afternoon. No matter how hard I try to be productive at that time of the day, it still feels like a lull to me. My mind nearly goes into reverse and I am next to useless. ... I've made three attempts at describing why I want to go to Italy and what I hope to see there. After giving it some more thought I've decided to approach Italy city by city with my reasons. In some ways this makes sense, because the concept of Italy as a country is fairly new in the history of Europe anyway. For centuries it was one city state versus another city state. The famous Italian cities weren't thought of as a whole country yet. Now having just said that thought, I can still think of a few things that do cover Italy as a whole. For example, in my mind the landscape of Italy is hill after rolling hill dotted with carefully pruned trees here and there. Maybe this comes from all of the Renaissance paintings that I have seen over the years, but none of the trees seem to be the bushy kind that we have in America. None of them seems to have what I would call a full crown of leaves. All of the foliage is kept very compact, cyclindrical and close to the trunk of the tree and I have no idea why this is so. To make my mental image even more simple, modern Italy is just like what I saw in the movie Stealing Beauty, where Liv Tyler plays yet another young virgin. This image of the country made not be too far from the truth since the director was in fact Italian. ... Italy for me is the Renaissance. It was there that Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo did their work and changed the way that we saw the world. Being able to see just a small part of what they did is what I hope to see when I go to Italy. I want to see the Madonna with child paintings, the frescoes and sculptures. Quite simply I want to see as much high art as I can. For semester after semester I sat through art history classes where the professor would say that if we ever got to Italy we had to see such and such a painting in person to fully appreciate it. Now I am finally going to get that chance. Instead of staring at slides projected on a wall, I'll get to see them for real. Soon I'll get to see what he meant by Mediterranean light with my own two eyes. ... Nicole and I talked some more like we always do on Friday nights and it certainly helps to pass the time when things are getting slow. With each new conversation, I grow to like her more and more and I think that she knows it. Her style of banter is very familiar to me and makes me smile. Its something that I haven't found in a woman for a long time and that makes her even more important to me. Without getting too specific there is a certain charm that she has that really appeals to me and she is quickly becoming a close female friend of mine. At one time I used to have more of them, but over time they either got married or drifted away. Lately another coworker of ours has been spreading rumors about her and after hearing her side of the story and how she feels about what was said, I am convinced that they are false. I truly feel for her and as silly as it sounds am ready to defend her. I also feel bad for having given the rumor a second thought. She is a fun person to be around and the person hurting her needs to stop. Like she said, it really is immature behavior that should have been left back in junior high. The person that is spreading the rumors quite often acts juvenile and freely admits that he likes to antagonize people just to see what will happen. I think that he needs a new hobby. ... If there is anything that I do not understand about European countries it would have to be their obsession with soccer. To me this is just an excuse for the rival countries to still beat the hell out of one another without actually going to war with weapons. The only reason that I mention this trait is that it seems to be making the world news more and more lately. I am also hoping that this doesn't cause a problem for me when I get there.
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