My first Roman Catholic mass (San Giovanni's Cathedral)

4 drops of holy water are still clutching onto my forehead, slowly evaporating into the nave of San Giovanni’s Cathedral. I’ve been sitting here for about fifteen minutes, waiting for my turn to speak with the priest.

I’m not catholic. I’m not even Christian. Yet I’m sitting in the pope’s own church, waiting near a confession booth. I’m not here to confess (some things are best kept between me and God), but I do have a question I’d like to get his perspective on.

“How do you know if something is true?”

“As in… ree-sahrch? A thei-sis?” His Irish accent catches me off guard.

“No… how do you know if something is… true?” I emphasize words in an attempt to get past our semantic barrier. But I was having a lot of trouble putting it in words.

“The Bible is the truth,” he finally says.

“What about the things the Bible doesn’t cover?” I’m trying to be extremely careful in not offending him, I’m not here to pick a fight, just curious.

“We can interpret what we see and experience from the word of God…”

Interpret the text to cater to changing times… Scalia wouldn’t like him. Just when I begin to question whether I’m speaking to an automated machine, he surprises me.

“…but perspectives are important, is that why you’re here?”

“Yeah”

“You seem to be paving your own way to the lord, but if you want to see how the Roman Catholics see it, you could consider attending mass a few times.”

How do you know if something is true? I mull it over and let the thought go when I can’t figure it out. I wish I had more time to just talk to him, but the line behind me for confession was growing longer and longer, so I thought it’d be best to leave.

He blessed me, and I joined the others already sitting in the pews listening to the mass. I listened carefully to what the priest was saying and was having trouble being able to tell whether it was in Latin or Italian. This being my first experience at a Roman Catholic mass, I just followed what I saw others doing. Next thing I know, I’m in a line and approaching another priest.

“Il corpo Christi” the priest says, pushing a wafer into my mouth. il… so that makes this Italian? But Christi seems genitive… though I suppose Christus isn’t a word… But Italian doesn’t even decline their nouns, so this has to be Latin… but why would he use an article?

I mull it over and let the thought go when I can’t figure it out.

Just couldn’t figure anything out today…

Harry Potter 7, World Premiere

July 5^th

I arrive at Trafalgar Square at night and my name is placed on a list of people who are arriving early (so that, I am told, Warner Brothers will let us go into the actual red carpet area first, in order of longest-camp-out to shortest-camp-out). I am told that the list was actually organized by the Canadian fans who have been camping out for the entire week, and that Warner Brothers isn’t even here yet. I am told that Warner Brothers likes their idea and will be using it instead of whatever they had planned earlier. I sleep in a small tent with 2 friends, around others who are in similar circumstances. This is what I imagine a refugee camp feels like. I have a blanket, but the heavy rain manages to seep into the tent somehow anyway, leaving me damp, cold, and with a mild fever in the morning.

July 6^th

I leave the camp to go get Bianca from the hostel in the morning, and come back to find that everyone has been herded into a pen like animals. There is little to no room to sit, and I am told that wristbands will be handed out “soon”. 5 hours later, someone starts calling out names from The List, in an attempt to let those who were here longer get into the area sooner. The man doesn’t have a microphone, and it’s hard to hear my name. After a few minutes of trying to listen, I just go get my wristband and go inside to find a camping spot. We end up about 5 people away from the railing in front of the red carpet, so it’s a pretty good spot, I might not be able to see them but I might get their autographs. It rains throughout the day and night, off and on, but the excitement pulls us through.

July 7^th

Anyone who likes anarchy is a fool.

At 5 am, I feel feet stepping on and around me, people from the back were already starting to push forward. With no regard to the people who actually slept here in the rain for 2 (or more) nights, people who arrived this morning are just stepping over and rushing the red carpet at 5 am. The premiere doesn’t start until 5pm, do they expect to just stand here for 12 hours? We power through a few hours, but standing and struggling in a crowd that will not think twice before punching and kicking their way past me (which they spared me from, but others were not so lucky) is not how I wanted to spend the day.

At noon, I realize that the only way I’m going to get closer to the carpet and past this human wall is by being just like them—violent and just rude. When I was a child, I was taught that cutting in line is bad. I was taught that kicking and shoving to get what I want is bad. These, along with other components, constructed what my parents called ‘manners’ and ‘politeness’, neither of which I planned on losing today. And as much as I love Harry Potter, people I’ve never met who live thousands of miles away don’t have that much control over me. Besides, if it was Harry Potter I had a chance to see, then I might pull through, but it’s not. It’s Daniel Radcliffe, a person just like any other person who happens to play a part in one of the best stories ever told.

When in dilemmas like these, a good rule of thumb is this—act with grace, and you’ll never be disappointed in your actions.

Instead of “doing what it takes” to get to the front-ish area (with over 7 hours left until the premiere starts), Bianca and I peeled ourselves out from the wall and examined from afar. We sneaked around on the red carpet and took photos around the area.

20 minutes later we found ourselves at Pret, an incubator of good coversation.

“J.K. Rowling is seriously such a genius,” I say, taking a sip of my mocha, “the amount of time and effort that she put into creating a whole new world that ties everything together so seamlessly… gah I love Harry Potter so much!”

Bianca nods, and the conversation moves to other brilliant people we like. I bring up Titian, the painter who painted one of my favorite paintings (Bacchus and Ariadne), and then realize that the National Gallery was right there. As we walk past the growing herd of people slowly shoving into Trafalgar Square, girls screaming, people crying, people shoving and kicking and punching their way past each other, I'm reminded once again--

“All this for people who play characters that are cool?” Bianca says. 

We don’t go into Trafalgar Square, instead, we go to the National Gallery.

After 2 brutal nights of sleeping on concrete in frigid rain, I ended up leaving before the premiere ever started because I didn't want to have a miserable time fighting people over silly things. I took a few moments to watch the premiere while walking through some rooms with large windows (Emma Watson’s dress was just as pretty in person), knowing that I might not have gotten to see anything if I was still down there in the hovel.

Today, I chose to value Monet over Tom Felton, Van Gogh over Daniel Radcliffe, Da Vinci over Rupert Grint. And I regret nothing.

The Last Night in Florence

Imagine the movie Quarantine (or Rec, if you’re a horror movie connoisseur, live in Spain, or a hipster). Imagine that apartment building, where crazy-zombie-virus was set loose and infected the residents of the upper floor.

Remember that little girl? The one who (extremely graphically) attacked her mother? Imagine her.

Now imagine sitting in near-pitch-blackness in the stairwell at the top floor of that apartment building. Yeah, the floor where the crazy guy did all his genetic experiments and where the most ferocious zombies were. The floor where the camera woman was dragged to a mysterious and presumably gruesome death.

That’s where I’ve spent the past 90 minutes. Well, there’s no zombies here (that I know of), but every noise is terrifying. Despite the darkness, I can make out the silhouette of a cat, which has been staring at me the entire time I’ve been here. Does it smell panic? Does it know how close I am to entering into a fear-induced coma? Can cats catch zombie-viruses? Are my wives here in spirit, the cat-lovers they are, and guarding me?

Ben finally comes back (to my absolute relief), and I leave to take a walk and shake off my tension. 

As I meander through the narrow roads, I find a side of Florence I didn’t know existed. Florence had its glory days as a major producer of art long ago, but tonight, I saw more than ever how art never left Florence.

In the piazza near the Uffizi Gallery, there are statues from the Renaissance scattered around shops and fountains. Tonight, there was a stage, loud music, and dancing like I’ve never seen. I caught the latter half of the performance, and couldn’t take my eyes off of the stage. It was dramatic, powerful, and thoroughly captivating.

Eventually, night melted into morning, and as I walked towards the train station at 4am, the wheels from my suitcase steadily clicking against the cobblestone streets, Florence gave me her goodbye present. She tucked in the herds of tourists, the traffic, everyone, and let me see the city as someone would see a museum or basilica if they were the only ones there. The initial awe soon wears off, as I realize that I’m looking at nothing more than a skeleton. What I see is a shell, there is no context to this place. Without people, the city looks like a movie set, or a peculiarly large section at Epcot. It was while walking through these streets for the last time, when I had spent the past week thinking about how much I wish it wasn’t “peak tourist season” (as if I’m not a tourist myself, right?) that I realized that the tourists were as much a part of this city as the locals.

If I lived here, perhaps I’d converse with my neighbors as such:

“Buongiorno, Francesco,” I’d say, grabbing my morning newspaper off the urine-streaked streets, “Ci sono molti turisti recentemente. che spettacolo...”

We’d laugh and discuss their funny accents; it would become a yearly tradition. June and July, I think, would belong to the tourists.