I'm thinking that I probably won't post here any more.  I'm just so tired all the time and it seems like I don't have enough hours in the day to get everything done.  Honestly, I'm really surprised that I managed to keep it going for as long as I did (even though it slowed quite a bit at the end).

Anyway, I thought I'd go out with a bang and post some pictures from Italy.  Some of you have already seen these, but for those of you who haven't:

I was at the beach with my mother, my sister and her friend.  People lay on the sand, lazily soaking up the sun's rays.  The green-gray waves reared back like an army of stallions and plunged across the sand.  In fact, they were much higher and stronger than usual. 

Abigail, her friend and I waded out into the water, hoping to reach the point where the waves break.  We were quickly covered in saltiness, so much so that our lips and our noses burned.  The waves, sparing none of their fury, knocked us every which way.

I became nervous.  The water was now too deep and the waves too high.  I turned to head back to the shore.  I felt myself being pulled out to sea.  I struggled, flailing my arms and kicking my legs till my toes touched the bottom.  I thought of the headlines I had seen before on newspapers about people being swept out to sea; some were saved and some had drowned.

Finally, I thrust myself into a tumbling wave and rode it towards the shore.  I looked behind me.  Abigail and her friend had done the same.  Though the danger had passed, pulses of fear still ran up and down my spine.

Water is not the only thing that can overcome us.  I find myself wading in the oceans of those other things far too often.

Okay, after much begging from certain individuals, I've decided to start up my blog again.  My last post was while I was in Italy, before my five day camping trip in Rome even.  There has been waaaaay too much for me to try to fill you in on what has been going on in the time between then and now, so I'm not even going to try.

I guess I'll try to give a nutshell version of what my life is looking like at the moment.  My new roommate, Scott, moves in tomorrow.  I don't know how I feel about it since I have no idea what it will be like living with him.

I started working for Harris Teeter, I'll be bagging for a week or two and then become a cashier if all goes well.  I'm still working as an office aid for the heart failure program as well.

Class starts Tuesday, with everything that's going on, I'm really nervous.  I'm wondering if I've bitten off more than I'll be able to chew.

It's cool to see my fellow college students again (at least the ones who haven't graduated).  It was great to see Eric again.  He got me a t-shirt while he was in Wyoming, now I really wish I had gotten him something from Italy.

Well there's much more that I could write as well, but here are the main things going on, just so I can get this thing started back up.

with love,
Luke

In Italy, 17 is unlucky rather than 13.  And after my experience on the 17th of July, I'm inclined to agree.  I made a trip to Venice that weekend.  I was hoping to go with a group of people, but as usual, I ended up going by myself. 

Venice is so lovely that I'm inclined to believe it fell from the clouds and landed in Italy.  It's filled with ancient pastel houses, windows with scalloped arches, churches with bubble-shaped domes, and of course five thousand canals.  Walking along the Canale della Giudecca, past classy restaurants inside weathered building with the lagoon breeze sweeping across my forehead was perhaps one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.

I stopped by Verona on the way back to Florence.  Yes, Juliet's balcony is really there and yes, it's a total tourest trap.  Anyway, my camera fell out of my backpack and the lens broke.  I was pretty upset, but little did I know that July 17th was just toying with me at this point.  Next I get off to switch trains in Bologna (that's Bolonia to you English speakers).  Shortly after I got off the train, I realized that I left my camera on it.  I searched through the whole train and could not find it.  I just learned today after a lengthy corresponce through my Italian teacher and Daniele with the railway, that one of the porters probably stole it.

I waited in the waiting room as the stopover was two hours long.  There was a list with the names and ages of people who died in a Fascist terrorist attack in 1980.  I was overcome thinking about the names, mostly Italians and a few foreigners, children, adults, the ederly.  How many people lost loved ones.  How many people would never wait in this waiting room because they could not bare to remember.

After a walk around Bologna, it was finally time to board the next train.  Well, I don't understand much Italian so when the announcement ran that the train I was waiting for was ariving at a different binary dock, I didn't move, I just kept standing there waiting for a train that would never come.  I went to the office along with a few other people that didn't speak Italian and had missed the train.  The next train bound for Florence wasn't coming till 5:09 the next morning.  I ended up on a taxi with another American student and two Japenese tourists.  It was 1:00am.  We were tearing through the Italian mountains.  My brain was so overloaded, I'm surprised it didn't shut down.  Seventeen is most definitely an unlucky number.

So many people talk about self discovery, it's become a  sort catch phrase.  The truth is people don't really want to discover who they are; they want to creat a myth about who they are.  They want to create a nice warm fuzzy quasi-spiritual bit of fiction that they can live out on a day-to-day basis.  True self discovery is painful.

Another catch phrase we seem to love is:  multifaceted personality.  But even if you subtract all the scars and bruses from your psychologic résumé, you're still left with all sorts of odd and ugly facets.  No one's a completely polished diamond; we're all still unhewn here and there.

I'm learning more and more that I'm a natural loner and I'm not sure why that is.  I'm friendly and social, at least I try to be, but the more I soul search, the more I realize how much I just want to be left alone.  I used to think that no one wanted to hang around with me, but ironically, I find that I subconsciously tend to exclude myself from social circles.  In fact, I didn't even realize that fully till last night when Sal, the guy that lives next door to me here in Florence, asked why I don't hang out with the group that's formed in our apartment.

I could ramble on about all that I know and am still wondering about myself, but such ponderings are often doomed to incoherency.  I'll simply say that it's strange how clueless we are about ourselves.