I hear Italy singing

I haven't written anything about the political situation in Italy--that of bunga bunga fame-- and I don't have much excuse for avoiding it. The events of the past months, with Berlusconi at their center, are scandalous, outrageous, and at times incredibly depressing. Rather than get into it now, though, I thought I would share some of my students' (indirect) words about it.

A few weeks ago, I tortured my 5th year kids by making them write (gasp) poetry! We had just read Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing," the full-throated song to the joy of hardworking former-colonists, and so I assigned them an Italian version for homework, "I Hear Italy Singing." There was a delightful chorus of groans and moans. I told them to be as playful or sarcastic or patriotic as they wanted to be, and a few of them did a really nice job. Many were very pessimistic, a majority of the poems mentioned corrupt politicians and the mafia. A few stuck to the classics, citing Italian food and beautiful monuments and singing gondoliers. Many brought up football in some way, and playing children. Here are two of my favorites by two students N and A:

"I Hear Italy Singing"
I hear Italy singing, his mediterranean vibes I hear
The vibes of the greengrocer yelling through his loudspeaker,
How red his tomatoes are and how mellow the grape
I hear the jangle of the steel rails, crossed by their streetcars.
The gondolier singing, about Santa Lucia,
The businessman singing, the joy of the contract,
Just signed with the mobster, more joyful than him.
The streetwalker singing, what's on her own menu,
Thinking about the time when Italy's song was her only hope
I hear Italy singing, his melancholic vibes I hear.

"I Hear Italy Singing"
I hear people singing only when the national football team wins
I hear the corruptors and the corrupted singing together
I hear the pope and the priests singing about morality
I hear the politicians singing about nothing while talking too much
I hear the premier singing about the importance of family while paying for sex
I hear the Mafia's criminals singing while they get richer making business with mayors
But then I hear other songs
Those of my friends and my family who don't accept Italy as it is
Those of the honest workers
Those of all the Italians that believe in good before anything else
I hear Italy singing while I'm quiet.

the brain of the Italian adolescent male

[Setting: A fifth year lesson on the Road in the poetry of Walt Whitman.]
Me: A, what do you think about the Whitman poetry we've read?
A: Boh.
[I smile at him expectantly, waiting for him to elaborate.]
A: Non mi dice niente.
Me: Can you try to say that in English?
A: Erhhmm...
Girl sitting near to A, whispering: It doesn't give you emotion.
A: Eh, I don't know, it doesn't give me emotion. It doesn't say nothing to me.
Me: Mhmm. It doesn't speak to you. And what does speak to you?
A: What?
Me: What does speak to you? Other poetry, songs, hip hop?
A, sitting back in his seat with a smirk: L'Inter.
Me: Inter, the soccer team?
A: Yes. È ovvio. Obviously.
Me: Thank you, A.

The Characters

A compelling story without compelling characters is a rare thing. My story may not be compelling, it might be kinda normal, but I can at least include some kinda normal characters as well. (My roommates, I can say for certain, are less than normal).

RACHEL: 22 years old, native tongue assistant, teacher, tutor, English language gigolo (gigola?). Intrepid bike-rider, book-reader, and Italian-speaker. A little fuzzy about the next step, or The Future.

THE OTHER PROFESSORS:

GIOVANNA: Generous and sweet professor who guides Rachel through the delights of the Italian school system and its bureaucracy (speaking of which, when will Rachel ever get paid?). Before class, a little scattered and tends to drop things, but during class she's totally in gear. Frequently talks about her son, who apparently has little passion for English.

ANGELA: In gamba professor with a beautiful British accent. She doesn't yell or scold the students, and together they do their best to encourage and teach them. Gave Rachel bedsheets and one day even took her to the Virgin Fitness Center (fashamancy) to try out their vibrating pedestals and sauna. Oddly insists on translating simple Italian phrases into English for Rachel.

ELENA: The second of the two blonde, in gamba professors. Sweet and confiding, bonds with Rachel because they are both southerners (Elena from Ischia, near Napoli). Invited Rachel to lunch at her house, where she taught her a delicious fresh zucchini recipe, and frequently heaps advice upon her (which pesto to buy, which alleyway to take to school, where to get a mattress/umbrella/pastries/mozzarella di bufala). Has an adorable and embarrassed son in one of Rachel's former classes, plus two other boys. Is frequently exhausted.

LUCA: Passionate and intelligent literature teacher. Needs to discuss all lesson plans at length, but in the end they usually come up with nifty ideas together. For example: Everything Rachel --> the South --> Civil Rights and Obama's victory speech --> American ideals --> Romantic ideals --> Whitman --> Emerson --> Dead Poet's Society. Now that they are working together in the 4th year, he seems a little less enthusiastic.

MS. B (first name unknown): warm and competent professor, with the philosophy that a little bit of strictness at the beginning doesn't hurt. Laughs a lot. Rachel would be really happy to be in her classes more, if she ever let her, but there always seems to be an exam or grade to prepare for. Still, when they are together they make a cheerful team. Rachel misses her 3rd year class with Ms. B.

ROBERTA: Über competent teacher big on intimate discussion. Rachel is working on "the open road" as a concept in her class.

MS. R: Very strict but very curious about the United States. Gives Rachel a candy after every class because she has to "talk so much".

MS. G: Called her class "donkeys" on the Rachel's first day. This has colored their relationship ever since.

FABRIZIO: Former Alitalia employee now teaches. Suave and tall. Happy for Rachel to teach pretty much anything, and to teach that anything to both his second-year classes.

MARINA: Professor at the fancy classics high school who hired Rachel. Small and sweet, refers to herself as a nanna, gnome. Candid about her personal life. Thought Rachel was English, almost kissed her when she found out she was, in fact, American. She loves Americans.

Then there are the professors I am getting to know little by little, mostly by smiling and speaking Italian competently. There is the Siciliana that confided in me how incredibly difficult teaching can be, especially when a student tells you to your face she doesn't give a fuck. There is the gym teacher that starts awkward conversations while I am working. There are my wonderful "students" of my conversations class: the French teacher who considers herself timid but says her personality is red, the scientist who declared the life of the punctual man (his life) a lonely one, the hyperactive vice principal who invited me to her house for dinner and introduced me to her lovely daughter (female friend! working on it...), the professor who brought in Pink Floyd to learn from the lyrics...

Other characters to follow...

Life path English lessons

I've been rediscovering my nerdiness here, and it seems to fit well with my work with the kids, especially the 5th year students. Unfortunately, I'm not sure even the most enthusiastic gesticulating about Walt Whitman and Thoreau conveys their awesomeness. I mean, I understand when the adolescents start to nod off and drool on their desks, I've been there too. But now I've seen the light! The Romantics! The idealism! Nature! Simplicity! Isn't it just great kids?
Part of the problem, the source of my enthusiasm, is that every Romantic we read seems to be speaking to me. A little bit like how in 10th grade I thought every emo singer with a swoosh hair cut was speaking to me. Same deal, only now it's Whitman.

For example, let's start with something ridiculously well-known that I just now appreciate:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...
-Henry David Thoreau, beginning of Walden (obviously)

Oh my god Henry, did you just peer into my soul? Or was it the literature workbook that read my mind in deciding to include your brief excerpt? I've been worried in these months (years?) that I've been too distracted to think, let alone create or decide what I want to do next. I too must go into the woods to clear my mind, I just need to figure out where/what my woods are. I think I have narrowed it down to somewhere within two countries.

(The kids did not seem so psyched about this passage, but they're an especially quiet group. Next time we meet we will get to discuss it more, and I will find out whether they are at all as impressed as I am.)

Next, Whitman:

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)
-Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road"

I've been carrying this little piece of poem around with me for awhile now, pretty much since I left the States. I hadn't really read any Whitman until I found an old edition of Leaves of Grass in the basement of my parents' house, given to my mom by an old boyfriend (A+ on the present, boyfriend). I found "Song of the Open Road" before any of the others, it comforted me then and it still does.

And then, in class, we read:

The Open Road. The great home of the Soul is the open road. Not heaven, not paradise. Not 'above'. Not even 'within'. The soul is neither 'above' nor 'within'. It is a wayfarer down the open road[...]
Only by taking the open road.
Not through charity. Not through sacrifice. Not even through love. Not through good works. Not through these does the soul accomplish herself.
Only through the journey down the open road.
The journey itself, down the open road. Exposed to full contact. On two slow feet. Meeting whatever comes down the open road. In company with those that drift in the same measure along the same way. Towards no goal. Always the open road.
Having no known direction even. Only the soul remaining true to herself in her going.
Meeting all the other wayfarers along the road. And how? How meet them, and how pass ? With sympathy, says Whit- man. Sympathy. He does not say love. He says sympathy. Feeling with. Feel with them as they feel with themselves. Catching the vibration of their soul and flesh as we pass.
It is a new great doctrine. A doctrine of life. A new great morality. A morality of actual living, not of salvation. Europe has never got beyond the morality of salvation. America to this day is deathly sick with saviourism. But Whitman, the greatest and the first and the only American teacher, was no Saviour. His morality was no morality of salvation. His was a morality of the soul living her life, not saving herself. Accepting the contact with other souls along the open way, as they lived their lives. Never trying to save them. As lief try to arrest them and throw them in gaol. The soul living her life along the incarnate mystery of the open road.
This was Whitman. And the true rhythm of the American continent speaking out in him. He is the first white aboriginal.
-D.H. Lawrence, on Whitman

I thought of myself as being on the road in the beginning of my stay in Milan, some sort of vagabond traveler, but it's not so true. I live in an apartment in a very cosmopolitan city (at least Firenze was a little bit commie). I have a job (several jobs). I am settled. I'm a little bit deluding myself with all this identification with the open road...

And yet, I am very far from home. I am uncertain and doubtful, and I am always moving. I'm still working on my Soul. Hopefully my high school students can help me out with that, as I maybe can help them. As soon as they finish making sex jokes.

Would you rather...

At the end of my stay with the October and November classes, I decided to have a little fun. In my fifth year class (high school is five years long in Italy), where we had studied American Romanticism, we watched the Dead Poets' Society. The teacher and I agreed that putting a poet like Whitman ("I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world") into the context of school life would be fun and helpful for the students. I brought snacks and soda for them, as a way of saying goodbye. When they saw the chips, they asked me to stay their English teacher forever.

In my other classes, we played a conversation game called "Would you rather..." I played this game in high school and college with friends and heard from some other assistants that it could work in the classroom. You give two options and ask them to choose one and to explain why. I think of it as a sort of frat boy time waster. Often it's risque, but with the kids I cleaned it up a little bit. It was a hilarious experience for everyone involved. Here are some of the questions and responses:

Would you rather...

find true love or 1 million euros?
"If I find 1 million euros, I can buy true love."

be able to fly or read people's minds?
"I would rather be able to read people's minds so I could know the answers to the tests."

overthrow a dictatorship or be a dictator?
"I would rather overthrow a dictatorship and then become the dictator."

overthrow a dictatorship and then establish a democracy or be a dictator?
"Be a dictator. Democracy doesn't exist."

always speak everything on your mind or never speak at all?
For this one, the kids almost always said speak everything on your mind. One of the professors lectured them that they should all choose "never speak at all" because otherwise they would risk being impolite. The horror!

be stranded on an island alone or with someone you hate?
"With someone I hate so I could talk to him. I do not want to be crazy and talk to a football."
"With someone I hate because I can kill him and eat him."
(A boy) "Is the someone I hate a girl or a boy?"

be a werewolf or a vampire?
"Be a vampire so I could kill all the girls who like Twilight."

be the smartest person in the world or be spectacularly beautiful?
"If I am the smartest person in the world, I can invent something to make me beautiful."
"Be beautiful because then I will marry a smart woman and she will teach me things."

always smell like onions or always taste onions?
"Always taste onions. I like onions."

The gender differences were very interesting in this game. For example, more girls picked find true love over 1 million euros than boys, but many still chose the money. A few boys opted for finding true love, and more boys than girls chose beauty over brains. It was a girl who said she would kill and eat someone trapped on the island, and it was a girl who said she would be a dictator because democracy didn't exist. I was happy to hear from many girls that they would rather be the smartest person in the world than very beautiful. Thank goodness that we can bend gender stereotypes even in Italy.