Of Men, Women, And Italian Escapades, Part 3:

Women:
The Feminine Mystique:

In my Women in 20th Century Fiction class, we've recently been assigned reading material with a common theme: the idea of the central female character being "witchy" or "otherworldly" in some aspect.

As a woman, I can tell you that there is nothing that I hold more dear at my core than the idea that there lies within me something that even thousands of years into our being, has not yet been figured out or fully understood.

It can be the tangible that changes us: a new pair of boots, sexy underwear, a different haircut. It can be the intangible: love. Feelings and emotions and someone special in our lives, the novelty still there, the phone calls and butterflies still frequent. These things put a spring in our step and a sparkle in our eye, a feeling that we are not quite who we were yesterday, or even just a few hours ago. Women are constantly in flux. We are fluid and mercurial and we never quite feel the same way about something twice. We are made of leather and lace and contrasting actions and opinions. That’s the beauty to us: we are always new, always fresh, and ever exciting.

According to ancient philosophers, it worked something like this: "You see a woman. (Or a man.) You love her (or his) beauty. What you really love is the reflection of the beauty given to her (him) from above." But what does it mean to love beautiful things like this? Is it shallow? To what extent does my love of "pretty, smart things" reflect on me? Pausanias speaks of "vulgar love" in demeaning tones. Ficino speaks of "vulgar love" very matter-of-factly; as a way of life and natural human action that is to be accepted, or even applauded (i.e-- I see; I like; I get). Renaissance philosophers thought that one could achieve sanctity by their love for beautiful (i.e-- beauty given from above) things. If this is the case, if there is a higher level of being after death, I am all up in there. Often I have been known to say that if someone wasn't so beautiful, I wouldn't let them get away with half the shit I dismiss and decide not to pick a fight about.

The Audacity of Doing Nothing:

Speaking of not picking fights...one of my really good friends here in Florence has been with her boyfriend for two years. He's an active member of the Air Force, and was deployed for eight months to Afghanistan last year. They got to spend three weeks together, and then she left for Italy for 3 months. They're planning on staying together, and he's considering joining active duty, which means that she'll be following him around the world, moving every three years. As she said, "If he goes active duty, it means I go active duty, too." Over dinner after our Women in 20th Century Fiction class the other night, I asked her how she dealt with the distance and the fear and the worry and the missing him. She slowly pushed her penne around her plate before answering. "It's really hard, it is. I don't tell him a lot of what I think or what bothers me, because if he only has one 15 minute phone call to me a week, I don't want to spend it fighting with him, you know? So I try to be as supportive as I can be."

This is something that I have been struggling with lately. As women, we are taught that the best possible thing that we can do is ride a situation or argument out. But women operate on emotions more than men do. It’s true. While I shut down, close down quickly, I do feel harder than I’m sure most do. I hope for more. I want more. Things affect me deeper than I’d like to admit to. But even in cases such as these, I fall back on the same logic that my friend does: if you have limited time, you don’t want to rock the boat. It’s better to smooth things over, look the other way, or not bring it up in the first place. She just wants her boyfriend to not multitask doing his homework when he gets time to Skype with her. But will she make that demand? No. I want to say “I don’t like it.” But I won’t. I want to say “Stop,” but I don’t. Making demands appears to be something that we just are comfortable with. Being able to see things from both sides of the equation, as women can be good at, tends to make making ultimatums harder, or, in some cases, a moot point.

Women tend to be inherently self-less. We want to do more for others, especially those we love, than we would do for ourselves. And so we find ourselves avoiding the hard subjects; not asking the questions; not demanding the answers or courtesies. I was almost ready to give this trip up. I was ready to leave it up to Fate to decide if I was staying, or if I was going. I ended up going. For myself, I know it’s the best possible outcome. Already, I am discovering aspects of myself that I never knew existed. I can be fearless, opening cab doors and talking to strangers, not sure if I’ll be able to receive the outcome I engaged in the conversation for in the first place. I can walk into a store or market or classroom, and fight it out with finesse until I get through what I want, English or not. I will walk home alone at night, and feel confident enough in myself that I am not scared totally shitless. I am traveling to expand what I know, and how sure I am that I know it. I cannot hold on to who I was, because for that, I will always remain in the same place and be emotionally stunted. I should be feeling everything.

Not for myself, I worry about the repercussions that leaving had. I reached the conclusion last night that as far as I know, I am now the Other Woman. I am not dumb. I am not blind. And while I may not want to rock the boat and ask those questions, I can reach my own conclusions. Strangely, I felt better about this then I did when the roles in my mind were reversed. Perverse.

How horrendous is it that women will not stand up for what they want when they feel as if they’re stepping on someone else’s toes, or if we’re afraid of losing what we do have? Men, certainly, do not display this same characteristic. As I have noted, there seems to be a lot of having cake and eating it, too, in the men’s camp. And what are the women doing? Making those cakes.

Fucking stop baking and enabling. There is a place and a time to do nothing. You can play cool and wait it out, but only to a certain extent.

Doing nothing can be both good and bad. At home, doing nothing is no big deal. Burlington is Burlington. I’ve been there for awhile; I’m going to continue being there for awhile. I know what it is I like to do, and for the most part, I’ve done it all. I’ve settled into the sort of ambiguously lethargic relationship with the place that you have with something that you know will always be there. I can sleep the day away, wake up and sit in front of the TV or computer for the rest of the day, smoke myself silly, go back to bed, and rinse and repeat for days before I feel like I need to actually accomplish something. Here in Florence, temporarily (hopefully!) laid up by my knees that after years of cartilage wear from thousands of hours spent riding and galloping in two-point position and jumping decided to go on strike, limiting my amount of walking per day allowed, doing nothing is like wearing a hair shirt. It itches and irks me, knowing that there is a city out there that that Robin and I have already mapped out, but not yet explored, and it is only mine for a short amount of time. And I am sleeping until after noon so that my knees will hopefully let me get around Ultrarno before giving out again.

But there is a little-known side to the Audacity of Doing Nothing. It is the Beauty of Doing Nothing. Even just doing nothing here in Florence, making their strong café and going out onto the balcony to read and smoke a cigarette or two is better than doing nothing at home. Every night, I go out there and look over the city and clear sky at night, floodlights on main attractions, ancient chapels, churches, towers, and fortresses, full moon and familiar constellations, and am hit with the same overwhelming feeling: I am here. Even just doing nothing, I am existing here. And that alone makes it special.

XOXO