uni
| My Universities is about my experience of studying in Florence and i have always thought about the book by Maxim Gorkij | ||||
A lot of people should read this book by Maxim Gorky. I read it a long time ago when i was in my
teens and i thought it was very exciting and perhaps that was one of the
reasons why i wanted to go to university rather than accept to work in a
proper job. Some people thought I was in competition with my mother who
was the first girl in the family to have a BA. She went on to study and
achieved a Masters in English lit. and she was very proud of her
intellectual abilities. I didn’t want to be like her at all because i
believed in "intuitive intelligence" rather than a
degree. while studying at university myself I
found the idea of “ L’Elan vital “ (it had
already been discovered by the French philosopher Bergson ) All i wanted was to go through a student's life, which can be adictive.
Some people said that you really didn't need to get a degree and
that they "had been to the university of Life" ! That was true; i found successful people who hadn't ever read a book. Even my uncle who
had worked as a teacher for many years and had then gone back to study for his degree as an accountant had told me that
i didn't need to study further. Women in his opinion could survive without
having a degree and he said that without any malice. He was in love with teaching and his students were of utmost importance to
him. I dont know if he said this because he
thought i wasn’t capable of getting through university. Perhaps because i was a traditional girl
and had an air of loyalty and dedication about me and i fell into what he called the
"pram pushing" type category. He had something against people
having children and the world being overpopulated!
My cousins had started to go to university and i wanted to be like them. I felt i needed
structure, because i was interested in too many things at the same
time. I loved to fish into my subconscious for designs and unexpected creativity
made me take up pen and paper and all sorts of things would appear and shape
themselves which didn’t make sense, and i liked theater and literature as well . A
lot of feelings and opinions were on my chest and weighing me down and i needed
to put them somewhere safe, because they belonged to a certain period in
time. Infact i started to write diaries when i was about
eighteen. I go back to read some of them and i cant believe the person
who wrote is me .... there are different voices , some of them are not recognized
by who i am now !
I am even grateful for having lost some of my diaries. One of
these diaries was taken from me at the airport control in 1981 in the UK and then some years
later another two books were taken out of my bag when i
was visiting my friend Marina's apartment in via Cernaia in Florence.
The question is ;"why would any one want those books written in English"?
Marina and Angela were the two Italian girlfriends i had found in 1984
when we started the university year in September. Marina was from
Puglia and had just come back from living in Germany where she had a good
job. She had returned to her
homeland but wanted to get a degree in German literature and Angela had
lived in Quebeque but she was from Sardinia and was studying to get a degree
in education. I was living in a flat in via delle Cinque Giornate in
Florence. I was sharing the flat with Jurgen who was finishing his PHD
. Previously Jurgen had taken an apartment on rent in via Bolognese and i had
gone there and shared with a group of young people. I was working as a
sales woman at the time and there were two other women there who were working
like myself. Sonia was a Greek American girl who was about to get
married and we became fast friends, It wasn’t only because we were the same
age, but probably because we were both in love with her cat
Arthuro.
Sonia had a generous mentality but she couldn’t understand my decision
to put myself through the BA in Literature which was a five year
course. When i told her about it she sighed and said "Oh boy!" deep sigh "five
years!" As if she had to go through it herself! I can still remember the expression of futility in those
words .... what she was really saying was "why don't you get a
life like every other 25 year old woman?". When she got married to a Calabrese she was
entering a universe of family birthday parties for all the kids of her
relatives. Her days of having free time for herself were over.
Even when she went for a walk on her own, her husband would ask her :"
should i be worrying about you ? Are you Ok?" He was probably thinking that she may get fed up and run away from him and their married life.
I liked Marina very much because she was seemingly positive and sweet tempered and was a sort of idealist. She was emotionally mature. It seemed incredible that she had chosen to give
up a good life in Germany; she had moved back to Italy to live with her
family. Her younger brother too who was working as a police officer was
accompanying her in this new phase in her life. Marina and Angela were
sharing an apartment on the top floor in the street next to via delle Cinque
Giornate, where Jurgen had found an apartment
on the ground floor . They had a terrace which looked over all the
roofs of the neighbourhood . They used to sun bade outside on the
terrace when the weather was good. This was one of the reasons Carlo a
man who had a tower on his roof and
his friends saw them and contacted the girls. Carlo and his family had
an apartment a few streets away and in his watch tower was a sign of distinction which only some of
the old buildings in the area possessed. His mother who was a pianist had
inherited it and later on we found out that even if her husband had a
business in town, it was she who wore
the pants in that household.
I had rented a room from Jurgen before in the via Bolognese apartment
in 1983 while I was working on the old bridge. Andrew an English boy who was
leaving had the notice up at the university to rent out his room because
he was leaving. I found via Bolognese a paradise comparing to where i had
spent all of 1983. I had been very lucky to find Emily my flat mate and this
apartment on via Maggio, but it was a very busy street full of traffic
and i was happy to go somewhere which i could live with students because that
was what i wanted to do for the next few years. Jurgen and Andrew had
the same attitude as my cousin who was trying to achieve a PHD . They
seemed to have the world open up to them, while other people who weren’t on
their level ie people like me, we were missing out on all of the
panoramic view (which they were enjoying). I noticed that people who
made it to the top level of education had a certain
"attitude".
Marina and Angela didn’t know about my ideas of "grandeur".
Marina seemed to study for the joy of the knowledge and not for getting the
degree. She had found a job at the Auto service club similar to the AA and
was working full time. She was amazing! How could she
concentrate on her books while she was
working?
Another Italian girlfriend was Francesca. I met her at the English lit
classes. She was only eighteen when i was almost 28 and i felt a lot of
sympathy for her because she looked so lost.
Even if she was living on her own in her father’s apartment in via della Pergola in front of
the Theater (of the same name). In the summer Francesca and i used to
go gallivanting about town and until late at night.
Her parents were living in Terni so she had that accent which was
different and closer to Romanesco .... and gave the impression of the
down to earth "peoples language". I had met Guido before
meeting her, and I adored her accent. Guido
who was from Rome and worked in
dubbing films, had supported my idea
of going to university. At times when Francesca and Guido met through
me they would exchange a very knowing look and i would be thinking "what
is this all about ? I just introduced these two people and they already
share some secret between them !" Later on when i asked Guido ; he
said " Italiani si capiscano al volo" meaning Italians have a
special connection with each other .... but he didn’t have the same reaction
with my other friends from other parts of Italy.
Francesca and i used to go to an Arty film Cinema called
Spazio Uno (via del Sole). This was the place where i spent many hours
watching three or four films at a time. It was like reading books and i
loved it. this cinema was like my second home. When i had my
first exhibition here Alessia’s American mother Mrs Mascherini (a New Yorker
married to an Italian) bought the first watercolour from me and i was
overjoyed. Alessia was another friend studying English lit. She had a
sunny character inherited from her mother and was very enthusiastic about
starting university. They were very hospitable and invited me several times
for dinner at Thanks giving and for
Xmas.
Surprisingly Francesca (who seemed to be very much alone) took me to a friend’s house one evening for
dinner. Looking back I see this
was to be destiny calling .... Gigi
was a university prof teaching politics and he had his apartment on number 34
in via Fiesolana. We were invited for a dinner which was very much
appreciated by the locals, because Gigi had prepared Baccala al Livornese
which was fish in tomato sauce. A very memorable dinner, perhaps
because I felt Gigi to be sympathetic and not judging me because i was from the middle
east. Funnily enough some years later, in the summer of 1998 i
found a shop front which was attatched to his place and was for rent. This was a space where a shoe maker had
made boots during the second world war. The
shop had been part of the big
apartment where we had had dinner . I always think about Gigi when i
see this door. As a pensioner he went off to live in a boat in Livorno
.
My friendship with Francesca was a real God send in those years.
She was very creative and i had met a lot of people through her. Once i
met Philippe and Faramarz who were her acquaintances. We met in the Spazio
Uno . Faramarz was a 25 year old Iranian who accompanied Philippe who was 32
and said he was from Provence. I was in love, a love at first sight for
the wrong person as usual. I had a
thing for polite and well brought up middle class boys and Guido had fitted the bill. He was ambitious to a fault and probably would
have wanted to be like Berlusconi the rich and famous politician we all
know. We could talk for hours
discussing various topics and he had a beautiful and healthy sense of
idealism. He had told me that he had
dropped out for one whole year from his high school because he was showing
solidarity for his friend. As a
socialist he also believed in Marco Panella and Ema Bonino of the the
Radicali Party.
Philippe was not political at
all, he had an air of intimate friendship and he was a bit decadent because
he spent a lot of money on drinking and his night life. He was polite and
caring when he had his wits about him, but once he said that I was “the
idiot” and there was a bell going off
in my head.
I was thirty and I was looking for a partner. Guido
left me after seven years for another
woman who was living in Florence too. She was a cleaning lady who
looked after him, he probably didn’t like intellectual women. However he
didn’t want to marry the woman he said he loved because of her social status. That was a pity, we used to be friends and
I told him that he was wrong in being such a snob. Even though he had written
a letter to my parents, he had then changed his mind. I was not
worrying about the future. It was only
after the year 2000 that living in Europe legally became a
privilege of the few. As a
student I felt I could make it on my own. He was sparing me from telling me
truth. He had probably gotten bored with me being at my books and
having to study all the time. And he was living in Rome, he had wanted
me to go and live with him and his mother in their lovely apartment ... but i
prefered to continue living in Florence.
Francesca used to invite people to stay at her place ... she had two
rooms and a hall. It was a luxury to have a place in the centre of town
and she wasn’t aware of this. She told me once that she felt lonely and that
she hadn’t spoken to any one for two days. I suppose we were good for
each other, until she found people who were younger and closer to her own age.
I had been to her family home in Terni and had met her parents. I felt as if
i was her elder sister and had to look after her. That was why i couldn’t
keep the friend ship we had. On
one of our walk around the city she
had met a group of theatrical artists and had invited them home . They were a
jolly group of people but they smoked a lot of dope and once when i was
visiting i saw that they had the shutters down on a lovely sunny morning and the air in the rooms was heavy and thick with smoke. They
had started smoking early.
I guess Francesca's brother was right to tell her that he recognized
my voice when i called her parents. They were grateful about me telling
them what was going on .... i hoped i was being a good friend and doing
my job, because i didn’t want her to get distracted from her exams .... after
all i used to study together with her and on her books . I needed her.
I did one of the paintings that i loved in this period and got the poem from
her book. The poem says ; "jallais me donner .... ( I was going to
say that i loved you but then i realized that i couldn’t because i didn’t
belong to myself) ! This was by T.S.Eliott She had read me a poem
by him when we had gone on a walk in the countryside around Carreggi :
"the women went to and fro , quoting from Michelangelo".
What is poetry for? If it
is good it is uplifting ….. takes you
to a higher level and you feel you are flying as high as a kite in the
sky. Many years later i read somewhere that chairman Mao had read and consumed
huge amounts of Poetry .... why on earth would he do that ? At any rate
I wasn’t a fan of his.
That year we were finishing off the classes at university . I was going to the History of Art Library in via della Pergola and dreaming of Philippe night and day. My cat Mooshie who could read my mind , got fed up of me because she felt for me and was telling me off ! Had she been my mother she would say : "cut the crap and get on with real life! " ..... She was right because i totally lost my grip on reality. I was surviving thanks to friends like Patrizia who offered to help me by allowing me to go to her house to write my thesis on her computer. She had an apartment on via San Gallo. This street had brought me luck before. In the 1982 when i arrived in Florence i was going to an Art school here and doing engravings.
Some other students here were
from an American university programme and learning to do engravings in this
school. A girl who looked like Lisa
Simpson, with blond curly hair asked me where i lived
because one of her friends was leaving and was looking for some one to fill
up her place. Thats how i got to know Emily Miller who was doing photographs.
Emily was from New york and she met Mario one evening when she was having an
evening out with her friends. Later on
i was the translator when they had
their arguments and misunderstandings. .... Italian girls like Patrizia were very traditional and different from
the American girls i had known during the first years of my stay.
Patrizia was generous in a different way and she was following her star and
role model which was a famous Italian
journalist. She had just
finished University and was living on her own in her lovely apartment on the
top floor in via San Gallo. She probably
owned one of the first PC’s in town. She
believed in family because she came from a small town in Versiglia and she invited me to her home in Forte dei
Marmi to meet her mother and sister.
She had a collection of blue bottles and glasses. she had already
finished her dissitation /book on the feminist writer Angela Carter and i was
writing about the same writer but from a different angle.
I met less of Francesca now and more of Patrizia .... i missed Francesca, she was some one i
could play with like a child but the only way i could finish university
was by using dicipline on myself and the private PC which was available
at Patrizia's place. Pcs were expensive items in 92 and the universitiy
had a few of them and a lot of people were after them. Through
Francesca i learnt about a magazine called "internationale" which
would speak to my heart .... and i got to know Marco Panella and Emma
Bonino even tho i had heard about them through Guido because his
parents got seperated thanks to the new laws .
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le mie universita 1
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Fri,
Aug 3, 2018, 3:03 PM
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