Category: Life

This Time for Sure

Almost six years ago, before I graduated from high school, I thought I had a completed manuscript for my small child magician novel. I was wrong on so many levels—like it is embarrassing to even think of how wrong I was—but I didn’t know it then. I got a subscription to Writer’s Market and started querying agents. At first, it didn’t go all that well. But then a friend offered to put me in touch with their friend, who was a writer. This friend of a friend offered to take a look at my query letter, by which he meant ppass the query letter on to his agent, who not only gave me some good advice on the query itself, but also requested my manuscript and gave me advice that changed my book forever.

 

I revised throughout my first year of college, and then I resubmitted to her. Ultimately, she rejected the book, but she did say she would be happy to hear from me down the line. So I continued to revise. And revise. And revise.

 

Just before I graduated from college, my thesis advisor put me in touch with her agent for my thesis novella. This agent gave me some good feedback on that project, but we also talked a lot about how I only get one debut novel. In some ways, this was an obvious point. But in other ways, it was a question I really needed to consider. At the time, I had my thesis novel, my small child magician novel, and the first draft of my memory-wiping academy novel. In my opinion, none of them were ready to be submitted yet, but I’d been given this opportunity, so I thought I should take advantage of it. But the more I thought of it, the more I leaned towards the small child magician novel. It was the novel I’d been working on the longest. It was closest to being really done. And it was the first novel I was proud of. So I decided: it would be my debut novel.

 

I finished my revisions in Italy, and last spring, I sent it to the agent my creative writing professor had put me in touch with. And I put off doing anything else to prepare to submit it. A few weeks ago, though, I heard back from the agent. She gave me lots of good feedback, and she said she would be willing to look at a final draft, but she also said that ultimately she wasn’t sure this was the right project for her. Honestly, I’d suspected this would be the case for a while, but I was also studying for the LSAT and applying for law school and starting work at the Disabilities Rights Center, so I was fine letting it sit until I heard back from her. But then I heard back from her, and I kicked into gear.

 

I went through the book one more time, putting some of her comments into a revision. Then I read all the archives on Query Shark and drafted my own query. And rewrote it. And rewrote it. Seven drafts later, I have something I’m really happy with. I bought a copy of the 2016 Guide to Literary Agents and read it cover to cover. I took notes on over a hundred agents who I wanted to research further. I am really, really hoping I don’t need that many. Now I am delving deeper into these agents, narrowing my list, and ranking them based on some criteria I established and also my trusty gut feeling. I’ve found a bunch that look like really good options, and a few I am super excited about. I’m also working on writing my synopsis. In case you didn’t know, summarizing your entire 90,000 word novel, start to finish, in only 500 words, is really, really hard. But I wrote a draft today, and I shouldn’t have too much trouble condensing it so that it’s one quarter it’s current size. I’ve gotten really good at this. Finally, I have a couple more nitpicky edits for the manuscript itself, and then it’s ready to go.

 

It’s been a lot of work, but it’s also been a lot of fun, and the more I do, the more excited I get. I am doing this! My goal is to be ready to query starting in the beginning of March. I’ve had a couple false starts on this before, but I’m confident that this time, I’m ready.

 

So wish me luck, because here I go.

 

Favorite Fantasy and Science Fiction Books Before 2015

After I wrote my “Favorite Books of 2015”post, I realized I wanted to have explanations for why I chose the other books on the Book Recspage. So these are my favorite books before 2015 (really these are mostly from 2010 to 2014) and brief explanations of why I liked them enough to recommend them. I’m breaking this into two posts, because otherwise it might be a novel in its own right. These are just the fantasy and science fiction books. The rest will come.

 

Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling: Need I explain? I love these books! I will always love these books! I reread them all at least once a year. My favorites are 3, 4, and 7, but I will always love 1, 2, and 6, and 5 has definitely grown on me over the years. I’m also working on reading them in Italian, but that’s slow going.

 

Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce: Alanna switches places with her twin brother and trains to be a knight, all the while disguised as a boy. Great story, great characters, all around lots of fun while still being serious and important.

 

Immortals quartet by Tamora Pierce: Though they follow the Alanna books chronologically and even contain some of the same characters, these books are very different. This series is more about magic, animal magic, to be precise, than acts of swordsmanship and heroism. The first book, Wild Magic, is possibly my favorite in the series, but the rest are great as well.

 

Protector of the Small quartet by Tamora Pierce: Another girl goes off to be a knight story, but Kel doesn’t have to go in disguise, which means she has her own set of challenges to overcome. I really enjoy these books because of the differences between this series and The Song of the Lioness.

 

Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen by Tamora Pierce: I love everything Tamora Pierce writes, but these books will always hold a special place in my heart, because they were the first books I ever read by her. Also, I read them out of order and totally understood what was going on in the second one before I read the first, which I respect. Plus, spies.

 

The Legend of Beka Cooper trilogy by Tamora Pierce: These books take place 200 years before the Alanna books, and I love seeing the way the world has changed from then to now. It’s also really cool to see the origins of elements of the plots of the books that take place later come into play in these books. I will say, however, that even after a reread the ending of the trilogy doesn’t work that well for me. I won’t go as far as to say it’s total character derailment, but I feel like it could have been set up better.

 

The Circle of Magic quartet by Tamora Pierce: This is the first four-book series set in Tamora Pierce’s other universe, and this might also be my favorite series that she’s written. I love the Circle Universe, which is analogous to the medieval Silk Road. And let’s be totally honest here, the Circle of Magic books had a lot to do with the revisions to my small child magician novel that finally got it on the right track, so it will always have a special place in my heart.

 

The Circle Opens quartet by Tamora Pierce: I love these books, because it takes the four, inseparable kids from the first Circle series and separates them, sending them off on their own to have their own adventures. Each book is devoted to one of the four, and they are each unique and wonderful.

 

The Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce: After The Circle Opens, this book brings the four back together, with their separate, traumatic experiences, and really shows how they deal with who they were before they went away versus who they are now and how they react to each other. Not to mention political intrigue. It’s really great.

 

Melting Stones by Tamora Pierce: This is another Circle book which takes place at the same time as Will of the Empress, in another part of the world with different characters. Now, we’re getting the four’s students’ stories, or at least one here, though I hope more are in the works. This book is definitely aimed at a younger audience than Will of the Empress, which threw me for a loop a little bit, but it is still great. Also, this book was originally released only in audio—the print came next—which made me love it even more, because it was a little bit like vengeance against all those people who spoiled Harry Potters 4-6 for me because they got their print books before the Braille. But only a little like revenge, because the culprits didn’t all read Tamora Pierce, and they could also listen to the audio just as well as me.

 

Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce: Finally, this Circle book takes place before Will of the Empress, but it came out afterwords (hence why it’s below it on the list, though really this order is arbitrary). It details the events that led to one of the character’s serious PTSD in Will of the Empress. It’s great. And also, can I just mention how much I appreciate that trauma is a thing that is bboth a big deal in these books but also taken entirely seriously by the culture.

 

The Books of Bayern series by Shannon Hale: I absolutely loved the first book in this series, The Goose Girl, which is based on the fairytale of the same name. The writing was beautiful, the story was compelling, and I loved watching the heroine grow into herself. I was less enthusiastic about the sequels, but I still enjoyed seeing more of the world. After the first book, the fourth and final book, Forest Born, is probably my favorite of the series.

 

The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins: I really loved the first book of this series, especially the very very ending. It just struck this perfect chord in me. And then the second book as just okay. It was a really interesting direction to take a book for which I honestly couldn’t see a sequel making sense, but it felt slow in the beginning and then rushed at the end. And then there was Mockingjay, which ruined the whole series for me. I prefer to pretend that it doesn’t exist, though I will say that the movies actually did a good job making me accept that ending.

 

Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth: This is here because I like to use it as a study of what not to do. I admit, I enjoyed the first and second books, and even parts of the third book, but the ending made me want to throw things across the room. And if I haven’t mentioned this already, it’s really not a good idea for a blind person to throw stuff in anger. You can’t find it after, and then you have to confess to someone that you chucked it somewhere and now you need help finding it. Anyway, I like to use these books as a study of what not to do because I am working on a series in which the whole world is not revealed until the second book, and even then some pieces are still held back until the third. It’s a cool idea, but I think the problem with the Divergent books is that the world building in the first and second books just didn’t make sense, and the villain of those books seems way too evil given the situation that’s presented. It makes more sense once all is revealed, but it takes too long for everything to be revealed—I personally know people who weren’t willing to stick with it after the first book. So as I’m working on my own project, I’m making sure not to make the same mistakes. My characters are actively trying to discover the truth from the beginning, so it’s clear from the start that things are not as they appear. So while in the end the Divergent books are not my favorite books by any means, I still think they’re valuable.

 

The Healing Wars trilogy by Janice Hardy: I don’t even know where to start with this series. I read it immediately after coming off a binge of young adult dystopian trilogies with disappointing endings, and it was so refreshing. I loved seeing the magic of healing taken to its dark and creepy conclusions—when people are magically healed, where does the pain go? It was also fantasy, which I tend to prefer over science fiction (though I’ve learned recently that I do like some sci fi). Finally, all the characters were really people, even the little sister the protagonist is fighting to save. And it has a great ending. Really, I can’t say enough good things about these books.

 

The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare: These books were just super fun. I read the first one because I wanted to see the movie (which in no way did it justice, by the way). I loved the first three books. Not only was the plot great, but it also had the best love triangle I’ve ever seen. I also loved the last book. The fourth and fifth books weren’t as good as the others, but it’s obvious that they needed to happen in order for the sixth book to be more awesome.

 

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine: I read this book in a day. I was in Turin, Italy, and everyone else in my study abroad program had gone off to Switzerland for the weekend. So I went to the park and read Ella Enchanted, and I have no regrets. This was one of those retold fairytales that totally fixed all the problems I always had with the Cinderella story, and I highly recommend.

 

Team Human by Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier: Okay, I admit it. In high school, I was a little bit obsessed with Twilight. Maybe a lot obsessed. So when this book was recommended to me, I instinctively shied away from another vampire romance, but I’m glad I picked it up anyway, because it was so, so much fun! It’s about the best friend of the girl who falls in love with the vampire, and she spends the whole book trying to convince her not to turn into a vampire herself. It made me cry.

 

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and sequels by Catherynne Valente: These books are so much fun. I actually met Cat Valente when she tought at Alpha in 2012, and I picked up the first book in this series immediately after. I love the writing, the lengthy, rhythmic sentences, the vivid description, everything. Also, you know, the stories are great too. I can’t wait for the fifth one to come out next month!

 

Deathless by Catherynne Valente: This is also a great read, though definitely more adult than Fairyland. It’s a retold Russian fairytale set in Leningrad in World War II. Definitely worth a read.

 

Graceling and sequels by Kristin Cashore: I also read these books in Turin (I did a lot of reading in the park in Turin). Graceling was fabulous. I was really intrigued by the idea that you could have powers but not know what those powers are exactly. I also loved the third book, Bitterblue. The middle book wasn’t quite as strong for me, but I still enjoyed it. I’ve actually been meaning to reread these books for a while, because I want to dive back into that world and experience it all again.

 

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke: I talked a little about this book in my post about Venice last June. At the risk of being redundant, I’ll just say that I loved this book so much that I wanted to go to Venice for years and years, and it also played a huge part in me choosing to study Italian.

 

2016, Here I Come

2016 did not start as expected.

 

My story “Dissonance” was supposed to be published on January 1, but it wasn’t (in case you hadn’t noticed). I had been anticipating this for so long that it was a major let-down—not to mention the blog posts I had already written. So instead of spending the day reading and sharing my story, I spent the day worrying. I worked for a literary magazine for four years, so I knew that they probably just had to move things around. But this story has been through the mill to reach this point, and there was something deeply symbolic for me about starting 2016 with the publication of this story. And what if they never received my contract? What if they changed their mind and they don’t want to publish my story after all?

 

Don’t worry, though. Abyss and Apex got back to me right away. They did have to move things around at the last minute. “Dissonance” will be coming out April 1.

 

So my first goal for 2016 is not to spend the next three months worrying that this is a giant April Fools joke.

 

Just kidding.

 

Side note: I did put up some of the things I was planning to post alongside “Dissonance.” I added a section on the stories behind my stories to this site, and I posted The story behind “The Collector” there. Check it out, and I hope you enjoy. I will add the story behind “Dissonance” when it’s published.

 

But my week wasn’t over. On Tuesday morning, I woke up to find a good chunk of my vision in my left eye extremely dark and blurry. I have aniridia glaucoma, which meansI don’t have irises and the pressure in my eyes is higher than normal. Two years ago, the pressure in my right eye skyrocketed, and my retina detached. I lost my vision in that eye, spent two months in incredible pain, and finally had the eye removed. I have been experiencing some pain in my left eye for the past several weeks, and I was already taking eyedrops. When I opened my eyes Tuesday morning and could barely see, I was really, really scared. It looked like what I could see out of my right eye right before I lost that vision. I am the first one to admit that I use my vision a lot, and not only for everyday tasks. I enjoy watching television and drawing. I don’t know how to be totally blind, and I do not want to find out.

 

After several hours at the Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary and my eye doctor’s office, we determined that there was nothing obviously wrong with my eye. My pressure is low and pretty stable. My retina is not detaching. And my eye is not hemorrhaging. We don’t know what happened to my vision, but it has been steadily returning since Tuesday, so I’ll take it. Right now, the plan is to keep a closer eye on things (pun intended).

 

When I started this post, I meant to talk about my goals for 2016, like I did last year, but everything I thought of seemed small faced with what happened this week and what could happen next. There are definitely things I want to accomplish this year. I want to revise two novels by the end of the year: my honors novel and my first memory wiping academy novel. I want to get back to something I tried a couple years ago and write blog posts from Mopsy’s point of view. I have a challenge on Goodreads to read a hundred new books this year.

 

But my biggest goal is that I don’t want to be afraid anymore. When I was in Italy, every time I stepped out the door I was terrified that I would be hit by a car and injured or killed, and that fear has stuck with me, attaching itself to anything it can. I am facing a huge transition in my life later this year—going back to school to study something I have never studied before. I do not want to be afraid that I won’t make friends, or I won’t have time to write or play the clarinet, or I’ll fail everything, or I’ll discover that I actually hate law. I do not want to live in fear that I will lose my vision. I do not want to be afraid.

 

So I won’t be afraid. Instead, I will take steps to ensure that these things don’t happen. I will make friends. I will make time for myself to write and play clarinet. I will study hard, which will not eliminate the possibility that I fail everything, but it will certainly minimize it. And I already know I enjoy law, so where did that even come from? I will go to my eye doctor more frequently, and I will continue to use and enjoy the vision I have.

 

This week has been emotionally exhausting, and I am determined that this whole year does not follow suit. Yes, I am coming up on some big changes, and change can be scary, but I will not let that intimidate me into stopping. I will not be afraid. So get ready, 2016, because here I come.

Favorite Books of 2015

There are only hours left in 2015. At this time last year, I was in Florence with my family, dodging literal bombs in the streets (a New Year’s Eve tradition in Italy, I’m told) and watching fireworks from the roof of the apartment we’d rented. But I already talked about all that’s happened to me since then. Now, I want to talk about all the books I’ve read this year. There were a lot of them. I read my way through Italy, and then I read my way through the summer and fall. I read some books that were interesting but just all right, and I read some books that I wanted to throw across the room because I hated them so much, but I’m a completionist, so I had to finish them anyway. But I also read a bunch of books that I absolutely loved. I have already updated my Book Recs page with my favorites from 2015, but I wanted to share with you why they are my favorites.

 

Beauty by Robin McKinley: This was the perfect book for reading in front of a warm fire during the winter, when the bitter wind from the mountains to the north seemed to make all of Assisi shiver. The writing is beautiful, and the story is both familiar and unique. Also, I really love retold fairy tales.

 

The Boy Who Lost Fairyland by Catherynne Valente: This is the fourth book in Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series, and it was an excellent next installment. I really enjoyed seeing different aspects of Fairyland, and it took the series in a direction I was not expecting. I loved the paralells between the characters’ stories, though it did feel a bit awkward to me to see September in someone else’s story, even though we really haven’t finished September’s story yet. Can’t wait for the fifth book!

 

Howl’s Moving Castle and sequels by Diana Wynne Jones: I can’t believe I haven’t read these before! I just loved Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air. House of Many Ways was also good, but it didn’t sweep me off my feet like the first two books did.

 

A Glory of Unicorns edited by Bruce Coville: I read this when I was working on a middle grade story for a contest. I found the stories aimed at a younger audience than I like to write for (I prefer upper middle grade personally), but there were still a lot of really great stories, and I had a lot of fun reading them.

 

Sunshine by Robin McKinley: I picked up this book with no idea what it was about and literally read it in a day. It was fabulous and intense and made me really, really want baked goods. It’s about vampires, by the way.

 

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline: This book was on my wishlist for a really long time. My mother read it over Christmas and said that the minute she finished it, she turned back to the beginning to read it again. So I read it over Easter break, when we were visiting Matera, and I couldn’t put it down either. I really admire how Kline weaves the two stories together. They really don’t feel like separate stories at all, by the end of the book, because each story has influenced the other so profoundly, but at the same time they are both complete stories in their own right. This is the sort of layered storytelling I’m aiming for with my honors novel, and reading Orphan Train actually gave me some ideas for how I want to revise it. Now, I just have to do that.

 

The Bloody Jack Adventure series by L. A. Meyer: There were like three weeks when I just blew through these books and no one heard from me. I really enjoyed the history in them, and I loved traveling with Jacky all over the world. In retrospect, though, I do have some reservations about the series. After the seventh book (the series has twelve books), I started to look for an end to the story, because it just started feeling like it was going on too long and why can’t they defeat the bad guys already? Also, there was a lot of Jacky being rescued by other people, and in every single book, someone attempts to rape her. Every single book. Not only did it get a bit old as a threat, but the image of a female character as being nothing but a sex object and also the image of men as only being able to think of having sex with her was troubling to me. Guys I finally understand what can make fiction problematic! But I still had fun reading them, and I would recommend the first seven books of the series, if not the whole thing, with a clear warning about what you might be getting into.

 

The Colors of Madeleine series by Jaclyn Moriarty: A Corner of White, the first book, was interesting but not my favorite thing in the world, but the second book, The Cracks in the Kingdom, was fabulous. The third book isn’t out yet, but I’m really looking forward to it. Madeleine, in London, starts communicating with Elliot, in the fantastic world of Cello. For Madeleine, it’s fantastic, but if Elliot is caught having contact with Earth, he could be killed. And both of their fathers are missing. Cello is really unique, and it also makes me want to eat lots of baked goods. I’m noticing a trend in the books I was reading last spring.

 

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: If you haven’t read this book, go do it now. Right now. It’s beautiful and epic, spread over something like thirty years and at least two continents, and it has the best romantic subplot I’ve ever seen. Because the romantic subplot is integral to the plot, and it isn’t even a romance. Also, for audiobook fans, the audio version of this book is narrated by Jim Dale.

 

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah: I’ve read a lot of World War II books. And I mean a lot. One of the pitfalls I’ve noticed in many of them is that they try to cover too much. World War II was massive in scope, both in time and place, but it can’t all be contained in one story. That’s what I thought until I read The Nightingale. Kristin Hannah managed to tell a story that was very broad in scope, covering many aspects of the French experience in World War II from the point of view of two sisters: one with a German officer billeted at her house; the other fighting with the French resistance. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in World War II history or anyone just looking for a good story.

 

The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer: Again, if you haven’t read these books, stop what you’re doing and go read them now. They are amazing, possibly my favorite of my favorite books of this year. Retold fairytales set in a vivid science fiction world. Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White team up to fight an evil dictator. Need I say more?

 

A Series of Unfortunate Events: I read the first three books a long time ago, but this year I finally sat down and read the whole series. I actually had the opposite reaction that I had to the Bloody Jack series, because I felt the books got so much better after the seventh book, when the Baudelaires stopped simply letting themselves be shepherded from one awful guardian to another where they were forced to foil Count Olaf’s latest crazy scheme, and instead took it into their own hands to solve their own mysteries. And even though I’d heard the ending was disappointing, I actually really liked it.

 

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor: This was my first ever alien invasion book, so I can’t really compare it to anything, but I enjoyed this book a lot. It was very different from what I normally read, and I appreciated the diversity of the setting and the characters.

 

Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien: It took me more than two years to do it, but I finally finished Lord of the Rings, and now that I have, I can definitely say it was worth the ride. There were certainly some very slow parts, and now I understand why people object to including songs in novels, but on the whole it was a great experience to read.

 

The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland – For a Little While by Catherynne Valente: This novella on Tor.com was lots of fun and added a lot of insight into the Fairyland books. (I love the Green Wind!) You could probably read it at any time after you’ve read the first book, but I personally think it’s better having read all four books that are out so far. If you enjoyed the Fairyland books, you will enjoy this.

 

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson: Honestly, when I read the description of this book, I was not sure it was something I would enjoy, but I know the author (Seth was a staff member both years I attended Alpha), and I know he’s a really great writer, so I read it. And it was fabulous. The fantasy world was incredibly rich, and the plot was complex, but not so complex that I couldn’t follow it, and Baru was a fascinating protagonist whom I both cared about but also was someone I was a little wary of. I highly recommend this book.

 

So that has been my literary year. I doubt I’ll be able to read as much next year–law school is coming, after all–but if you have recommendations for books that should be on my list, let me know. Happy New Year, everyone. Here’s to all the fabulous stories of 2015, those we read and those we created ourselves, and here’s to all the stories to come in 2016!

2015 the Year

2015 is coming to a close. It has been an absolutely crazy year. When I look back at where I was a year ago (and Facebook has been kind enough to remind me that a year ago today I was touring the Vatican with my family), I cannot believe how far I’ve come.

 

I was in Italy until June, finishing my Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Assisi. Parts of those six months were really difficult. I was lonely and more afraid than I have ever been ever, not to mention that I had no idea what I was going to do next. But despite all this, I persevered, and I still had some wonderful experiences (I can say this now because perspective is a great thing). After Christmas, I visited Rome, Florence, and Pisa with my family. I returned to Rome in February for the Fulbright midyear meeting. In March, my mother and I visited Bari and Matera. In May, I visited Narni—the village that inspired The Chronicles of Narnia—with some Kenyon friends who were studying in England for the year. In June, before I came home, I went to see the Museo Omero in Ancona and the Flower Festival in Spello. We visited Spoletto and Venice, the wineries at Montefalco in Umbria, and Lake Trasimeno on the border between Umbria and Tuscany. And when I wasn’t traveling, I was teaching everything from English, literature and creative writing to history, sociology, and chemistry (I claim very little proficiency in those last two). I improved my Italian (though I haven’t practiced much since), and I made some wonderful friends.

 

At the same time, the difficulties I was facing in Italy, including a lot of discrimination, helped me decide that I want to attend law school. I’ve said this a few times already, but though I feel that I might have come to this decision without my experiences in Italy, those experiences gave me the passion and the empathy that I hope to bring to disability law in school and beyond. So when I came home, I spent the summer studying hard for the LSAT. I took the LSAT in October and claimed victory. Then I filled out all my law school applications. Now I’m back to playing the waiting game. And everyone knows I’m really bad at that. On the other hand, I have already been accepted to three law schools, so it’s much less stressful. I know I am going to law school. Now it’s just a question of where.

 

Since I took the LSAT, I have also been volunteering at the New Hampshire Disability Rights Center, which has been a blast. I have learned a lot about disability rights in just two months, but most of all, I am sure now that this is what I want to do.

 

Finally, I had some writing successes as well. My story “Naming Angelo” was the second runner-up for the Dell Award, and “Dissonance” was accepted for publication by Abyss and Apex in October. And it’s coming out Friday, guys! Be excited!

 

So I did a lot of stuff this year. Last January, when I set out my goals for the year, I had no idea what was coming. Now… I have no idea what those goals were and if I actually achieved them. So let’s take a look:

 

  1. By the time I return from Italy at the end of June, one of my novels will be edited and ready to start submitting:

 

Victory!

 

From January to March, I worked pretty much nonstop to revise my small child wizard novel and get it down to a reasonable length. And I did it! I was having a really hard time then, and my father suggested that I reorient my goals: take this time and use it to write or read or draw. Set goals for yourself that you can accomplish and use this time for that. So I wrote, and I’m positive that having this project was the only thing that kept me going through February. I even started to get to the submitting part. More news on that soon, I hope.

 

As for the honors novel, which I also thought I might revise, that didn’t happen at all. But I have a plan for that, and my goal was only to edit one of the three novels on my computer.

 

Onward!

 

2. Keep this website updated on a semi-regular basis:

 

Victory again!

 

Okay, I slacked a bit from July to October, but it’s a far cry better than I was doing before, when I was posting only like once every four months. So I count it a win. Also, I’ve gotten more than 2000 hits this year, so thank you all for sticking with me and my ramblings this year.

 

3. Use Twitter:

 

So, about that…

 

Unless you count that I tweet every time I write a new blog post (and I don’t, because WordPress does it for me), I have pretty much utterly failed at this. I just can’t seem to get the hang of Twitter. Can someone teach me?

 

4. Continue writing and submitting short stories:

 

Done and done. And it’s paying off.

 

5. Make decisions about what I want to do with my life:

 

Mission accomplished, at least for the near future. But let me tell you, these were some tough decisions—not to pursue a doctorate in comparative literature or an MFA in creative writing—and in some ways they were disappointing decisions. If I think about it, I’m honestly not that surprised that teaching wasn’t my favorite thing in the world. But I always expected that I would almost exclusively go the writing route, which isn’t to say I’m going to stop writing, obviously. It’s just not the only thing I’m going to do. And after I’ve been telling my family my whole life that no way would I ever become a lawyer, well, you can guess how that felt. But now I’m confident that I’m on the right path, and if I change my mind down the road, I know myself enough to accept that.

 

But I’m not going to change my mind.

 

So that’s 2015. It’s been an incredible year. Looking back on where I was a year ago, I’m overwhelmed with feelings I can’t quite pick apart. Nostalgia, probably. Happiness at all I’ve done, definitely. Shock and wonder at how far I’ve come—both figuratively and literally—there’s a lot of distance between January 2015 Jameyanne and December 2015 Jameyanne. But all the changes have been good, and I’m excited for what comes next.

My Life as a Legal Intern

After I took the LSAT in October, I started work at the New Hampshire Disability Rights Center. I am having a blast. I am learning so much about disability rights, and I am having fun doing it.

 

In the two months I have been volunteering here, I have mostly been researching and writing. My first week, I researched and wrote a memo concerning problems and best practice policies surrounding mental health in higher education. I then got to watch the attorneys use my research to give testimony in front of the National Council on Disability. It was a crazy feeling. I also got to draft a Right to Know letter (the state equivalent of a Freedom of Information Act request), requesting information for a possible class action suit. I have been observing the intake meetings, where the attorneys go over the cases that have come into the office each week and decide how to handle them. I was astounded by how many different types of cases there are. Finally, I learned how to do basic legal research (really, really basic). I read the Air Carrier Access Act, and then I wrote this brochureon the rights of individuals with service animals when traveling by air. I have also written an article for the Brain Injury Association of New Hampshire’s newsletter about the rights of students with brain injuries to reasonable accommodations in higher education, and I helped verify information and make edits to a pamphlet on how to create an accessible campaign which will be mailed to all the presidential campaigns.

 

I have been working four days a week, and when I haven’t been working, I have finished all my law school applications and visited four law schools. And I have already been accepted to three schools!

 

I have also been writing a lot, and writing about writing on this blog. One thing I’ve discovered that makes me very happy is legal writing is not having an effect on my other writing. At least not yet. In the spring, I read all the archives of Query Sharkin preparation for writing a query letter for my novel (which I never actually did), and every time someone said they were an attorney, the Shark went “Oh no!” and then proceeded to explain how law school beats intuition out of your writing. In legal writing, everything is explained, and I mean everything, but in fiction, you want the reader to be able to skate smoothly from one idea to another. The idea that becoming an attorney could hurt my writing has been really disturbing to me, but so far it’s been more like two different modes of working. I can flip a switch and change from legal writing to fiction and then back again. At least, I can right now. I’m not doing a ton of legal writing at this internship, and when I really get into it in law school, things might change. So if I ever use the words “pursuant,” “furtherance,” or “hereinafter” in a story, you have permission to whack me upside the head.

 

I love being back on the student side of things. There is something both humbling and exhilarating in not knowing very much about what I’m doing: there is still much left to learn. I am learning it now, and I will continue to learn it over the next three and a half years.

 

The best thing about this internship, for me, is that it has really affirmed my plan to go to law school. My decision to go to law school was based on my experiences in Italy and my desire to make a difference for people with disabilities, but it was also driven by my feelings that nothing else I wanted to do (or thought I wanted to do) was working out. I really didn’t have any idea what I was getting into by applying to law school, and I was terrified that I would put all this work into it and then try it and hate it. Then I started this internship. I am having so much fun. I am fascinated by everything I’m learning. Now I have a better idea of the career I’m pursuing. I am confident it is the right one. And knowing I have made the right decision is the best feeling.

Home Sweet Home

Last weekend, I finally watched The Assisi Underground, the movie adaptation of one of the books I read while researching my honors thesis at Kenyon and then again just before I left for Assisi last year. It was a very good adaptation, but more than that, it was really interesting to watch the movie, which was filmed in Assisi, and say, over and over again, “I’ve been there. And there. And there. Wow! That’s where my favorite restaurant is now.” Granted, I made a point of going all over Assisi in search of the important places in the book, but I still didn’t expect the movie to strike me quite in this way.

 

I have been home from Italy for about two and a half months now. I’ve tried several times to write new posts for this blog about various writing topics, but obviously I wasn’t all that successful, so I decided to talk instead about what I’ve been up to this summer.

 

I spent most of July catching up on the doctor and dentist appointments I’d been neglecting, which was a good thing, because I also managed to get every kind of sick I can possibly think of that month. I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo as well, trying to get myself back in the groove of writing, and though I got pretty behind thanks to being sick, I caught up and completed my goal. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that surge of energy that comes with some real momentum on a writing project, but unfortunately I didn’t keep that momentum up in August because I have also been studying hard for the LSAT. I’ve been improving steadily, and I’m feeling pretty confident about the test at this point. I’m taking the test in the beginning of October, and in the meantime I’m going to keep doing practice tests, refining my list of prospective schools, and starting the application process.

 

I’ve also been talking a lot about my experiences in Italy. I wrote this Facebook post for the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Administration for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I gave a presentation at the New Hampshire Association for the Blind about living independently and self-advocacy abroad. And last week, I was interviewed by Mobility International USA (I’ll post the link to the article once I have it). And, of course, I’ve been catching up with friends and family and talking with them about my year.

 

One of the questions I have been asked most often is, “So, are you glad to be home?”

 

And yes, I really am glad to be home. Reliable air conditioning and hot showers and internet are still amazing to me, and I definitely don’t miss feeling like cars are chasing me down the sidewalk.

 

But watching The Assisi Underground and seeing the city where I lived for nine months made me realize there are some things I definitely do miss about Italy. I miss being five minutes walk from the center of Santa Maria debli Angeli, and I miss how active that town center is. It’s so rare to see people in America walking downtown just for the sake of walking, and the couple of squares downtown where I live are virtually unused, unlike the main piazza in front of the basilica. On nice days, I would sit in the piazza with a book, and there would be people sitting talking all around me. Kids played soccer in the center of the piazza or rode bikes in great loops around everybody else.

 

I miss the food, especially the gelato. And even though I said I wasn’t going to eat pasta again for a long time because I had so much of it in Italy, that resolution lasted all of a week. I’ve been trying out some recipes my Italian friends have given me, with some success. I’ve gotten pretty good at the gnocchi with black truffel sauce, mostly because I brought a lot of truffle sauce back with me. Other recipes I’m trying I feel like something is missing.

 

I miss speaking Italian. I’ve pretty much switched from speaking a lot of Italian but not writing to only writing Italian and not speaking it at all. Except with Mopsy.

 

Most of all, I miss all the people I became friends with in Italy. I’m keeping in touch with a lot of them, but the time zone makes it difficult—I’m not sure if it’s harder being here or there—and it’s just not the same.

 

When I was in Italy, it was hard. There were plenty of times when I was lonely or angry or een I just wanted to turn around and go home. I haven’t forgotten that. But I also gained some perspective—something everyone told me I would do—something I even told others I would do. Because there were a lot of good things about this past year, and on the whole, it really was a valuable experience.

 

So yes, I’m glad to be home. I’m very glad to be home. But I’m also glad that I have this perspective and that I am now truly able to appreciate the incredible year I just had. And I am glad there are things that I miss.

Arrivederci Italia

February was a rough month for me. I’d placed in the Dell Awards, which I was really happy about, but I couldn’t go to ICFA because it would be too hard on Mopsy, which meant I couldn’t go home for a bit. I’d just finished revising a novel, which was also wonderful, but now what was I going to do? I was being rejected from one graduate school after another. A lot of my classes were being canceled because of festivals and work placements for the students, so I had way too much free time on my hands to dwell. And June just seemed so far away. I’d reached a point where I’d realized that I had gotten something out of this time in Italy, so now that I’d done that, could I go home? Well, no, I couldn’t. I’d started this, I was halfway through this, and I was going to finish it. So I sat down and said, “Okay, Jameyanne, if you’ve learned so much, then what did you learn?” And I wrote this post. It turned out pretty flippant, actually, and at the time it really helped me get some perspective on the first half of my time in Italy and face the second with more confidence.

 

I was also pretty sure, at the time, that I could just use this post wholesale when I was getting ready to finally leave in June. And I can, but I’m adding to it. Because now it’s June, and I’m getting on a plane tomorrow, and I am overwhelmed with all the feelings I did not expect I would have and all the things I have learned in these last months.

 

Last October, I arrived in Italy, filled with hope and shiny new dreams. I’d graduated summa cum laude from Kenyon College with high honors in English. An agent was looking at my thesis novel. And I was going to Italy—a dream come true. I was going to revise my thesis novel and research another novel that I wanted to set in Assisi in the 1950s. I was going to make a ton of Italian friends, become fluent in Italian, maybe even fall in love (deep down, underneath all the horrible things I do to my characters, I’m a hopeless romantic, and there’s no getting around it). And, did I mention I was going to Italy?

 

Now, nine months later, I’m going home. I didn’t fall in love. I didn’t even make that many friends my own age, really, though I was pretty much adopted by some of the most wonderful people I have ever met. I traveled all over Italy, visiting Rome, Florence, Pisa, Venice, Ancona, Bari, Matera, Gubbio, Narni, Spoleto, Spello, Canara, Montefalco, Bevagna, and Lake Trasimeno. I saw the big tourist spots, but also all the beautiful little towns around Assisi. And Assisi, too, of course. I taught English in two high schools, and I tried to organize a volunteer project with the school for the blind in Assisi that ultimately fell through.

 

Revising my honors thesis? Didn’t happen. Researching another novel set in Assisi in the 1950s? Maybe subconsciously, but I didn’t put real effort into it. And if anything, for a while I actually fell out of love—out of love with a country, out of love with a dream, out of love with some of my own goals and ideas. Looking back at myself boarding that plane in Boston, I’m not sure who I was then. I’m not sure who I am now, either, but I know I’m different. And I know what changed.

 

So here it is, what I’ve learned in Italy, the big things and the small, the flippant and the serious.

 

  1. Things like dryers, ziplock baggies, traffic laws that people follow, window screens, showers that stay hot for more than five minutes, grocery bags you don’t have to pay for, real wifi (not the kind on a stick), fresh milk that keeps more than four days, and salty snacks are glorious and should not be taken for granted. Ever. Ever!

 

2.  It really is possible to have too much of a good thing. I might never eat pasta again.

 

3.  Being an adult is hard.

 

4. Grammar is not as important as you might think. What matters is understanding, and if that means you’re speaking only in infinitives or playing charades while your jetlagged brain frantically tries to catch up, that’s okay.

 

5. I do not like boiled food. Potatoes, apples, greens, chicken, what have you. If it’s boiled and that’s it, I don’t like it. (Actually, I already knew this, but I thought it bore repeating.)

 

6. While there were definitely times when I really enjoyed teaching, there were also times when I honestly found it kind of boring, which sounds terrible, but I have to be honest here. And on the whole, I don’t think it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.

 

7. I have fabulous family and friends. I definitely would have lost my mind a dozen times over this year if I didn’t know they were all standing behind me—six hours and several thousand miles behind me, to be precise, but ready to listen to me and be a virtual shoulder I could cry on and cheer me on. (Did I mention the internet should never be taken for granted?) My parents came to visit me at Christmas for a family vacation, and then they came back again in March, when it became clear how hard a time I was having. If they hadn’t come back, I would have given up and gone home, and if I’d done that, I would have missed so much. I couldn’t have done this without them.

 

8. I have an incredible Seeing Eye dog. I don’t know how many times Mopsy has literally saved my life (I lost count the first week), what with the traffic laws being only suggestions and the drivers who I swear are out for blood. But more than that, she stood by me this whole year, when I was excited and when I was miserable, when I was dancing around my apartment singing Disney songs at the top of my voice or when I was curled up in bed feeling like I would never be able to get up again. When I felt like it was all too much, like I just wasn’t brave enough to get up and keep going, like I just wanted to turn around and go home, Mopsy was the one who forced her head under my arm and wagged her tail: “Come on. We can do it. We’ve come this far.” She deserves a blog post all her own, and so much more.

 

9. I love writing. I always will love writing. But writing all the time can be very lonely. Maybe if I was in the same time zone as all my writing friends, it would be better. I don’t know. But I’m not sure being a full-time writer is what I want to do with my life either. Of course I’ll keep writing and keep trying to get published, but I’ve been doing that my whole life while I was in school, so why can’t I keep doing that while I’m doing something else too?

 

10. There is no shame in crying over Disney movies when you’re twenty-four. (I already knew this too, but again, I felt it deserved to be repeated.)

 

11. Things don’t always work out as you plan, but they do work out, and they might be just as good.

 

12. I want to go to law school and become a disabilities rights lawyer. I might have come to this decision without Italy. I wasn’t sure even before I graduated that I wanted to get a Ph.D in comparative literature. I loved Italian literature, but I could read it without a doctorate, couldn’t I? So I might have realized that I had something else I could give, that so many people had fought for me and my rights all my life, and I could give back by fighting for someone else. But without Italy, without having to really fight for myself and my rights, without feeling discriminated and judged, I don’t think I would have had the same compassion and empathy that I have now, not only for people with disabilities, but for other groups as well.

 

There’s more, so much more, but it’s harder to put into words. There were times when I didn’t feel like I was really independent, but in fact, I have been more independent this year than ever before. True, I couldn’t cook myself—you had to start the stove by turning on the gas and then using a lighter, and in case I haven’t mentioned it, I have no aim—and I couldn’t even get to the store by myself without risking getting squished because the cars in Assisi think the sidewalk is at best a parking lot and at worst an extra lane. But I was taking care of myself and my dog. I had my own apartment and my own finances to handle. I was traveling to and from work every day by myself—stay tuned for the “Whacky Adventures of Mopsy and Jameyanne Trying to Get to School Without Getting Killed.” And I wouldn’t trade the ability to go to the store and cook myself for all the wonderful meals I had with Stefania and Bruno—my landlady and landlord—and the friendship we formed over those meals.

 

Stefania and Bruno basically adopted me, and I cannot put into words what kind, caring, loving, wonderful people they are. They took me for who I was, from the minute I walked in the door. They didn’t help me because I was blind, but because I was a young girl far from home. They welcomed me with open arms and hearts, and the love and friendship they showed me, from the start, has changed my ideas about what is most important to me. Thanks to them, I value my friends and family—and I count them family now—more highly than ever. When I come back to Italy, I know that I always have a home.

 

And finally, I saw that I can make a difference, even if it is one person at a time. When I first arrived in Italy, people were always giving me strange, if not downright hostile, looks. I was told that it was practically taboo for someone with a disability to be living, working, and traveling independently. Most Italians have never seen a service dog. What I was doing, living and working by myself in a foreign country thousands of miles from home, was unheard of. When I proposed volunteering at the school for the blind in Assisi to teach the kids some basic independent living skills–tying their own shoes, pouring a drink without spilling, putting toothpaste on a toothbrush without making a mess, that sort of thing–I was told, “They can’t do that.” I was told I couldn’t enter stores. Bus drivers forgot I had asked them to tell me when we were at my stop or forgot to mention I was on the completely wrong bus (if the buses are color coded, why are three orange buses going three different places?). Once, a woman started yelling at me on the bus because she was afraid of dogs and what business did I have bringing such a fierce dog on a public bus? People applauded when I poured myself a glass of water, operated a vending machine, or cut up my own food. I was not allowed to climb the tower of Pisa with Mopsy, and they refused to refund my ticket. I had to fight for every inch I gained. But I gained a whole lot of inches. After a while, people started saying hello to me as I walked down the street. A waiter at my favorite café started asking me how I did things myself. The next time someone threw a fit about Mopsy being on the bus, the bus driver started yelling right back at them before I could. How did I do this? I pushed. Yes, I am legally allowed to enter your store. Yes, my dog is getting on this bus. People started recognizing me. People started respecting me.

 

I will tell one quick story to really illustrate this. A few weeks after I first arrived in Italy, I went to the supermarket with Stefania and Bruno to buy cereal and milk, and the cashier didn’t want to let me in with Mopsy. Stefania and Bruno offered to go buy my cereal and milk while I waited for them, but I insisted that I was going with them and that I was legally allowed to. The cashier gave in, possibly just to shut me up, but hey, whatever works. But nine months later, just two weeks ago, when we went to the hermitage where Saint Francis communed with the animals, a nun didn’t want to let me into the church with Mopsy, and before I could even object, Stefania said, “First, she’s a guide dog and she’s allowed everywhere. Second, think where we are. Would Saint Francis really not let such a beautiful, good dog come into his church?” (Only an Italian would talk back to a nun like that.) Stefania’s growth, from taking my inability to enter a store at face value, to facing down a nun on my behalf, really drove home to me not just how much I have changed, but how much I have changed others around me this year.

 

And so here I am. Tomorrow, I’m flying back to America. I’m really glad to be going home, but leaving all the wonderful people I have met, even leaving this country that sometimes seems like an alternate universe where things just aren’t quite right, is so much harder than I ever imagined it would be. I know that when I get home, everyone is going to ask me, “So, how was Italy?” And I’m not sure what to say. I’ve had better years, but I’ve also certainly had worse (the year of the exploding eye chief among them). At times, it was really hard. But that doesn’t mean it was a bad experience. In fact, looking back on it even now, it has been a pretty incredible year, in every sense of that word, and I’m sure that I’m going to look back on this year and everything that I learned as a difficult but also a wonderful time, and really, as the beginning of something new.

 

So, arrivederci Italia. Until we meet again. And grazie.

City of Dreams

When I was in middle school, I read The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. It was about a group of runaway children living in Venice. It was so beautiful, so magical, so vivid, that I read it again and again. It is one of the most concrete things I can use to account for my obsession with all things Italian—that and growing up hearing stories of Italy from my mother’s family. The first complete sentence I remember speaking in Italian on my own—not part of an exercise or group activity—was “Io voglio andare in Italia” (“I want to go to Italy”), followed closely by “Io voglio andare a Venezia” (prepositions in Italian are hard, guys). This was my dream. In high school, I wrote a short story set in Venice that later became a chapter of my honors thesis novel. There wasn’t enough time to go when I studied abroad in Torino three years ago, so this year in Italy, I was going. I had nine months in Italy, so I was going. And Italy might have been rough, but I’d been dreaming of going to Venice for half my life, and nothing was going to stop me. I. Was. Going.

 

But here’s the thing. Italy was my dream too, and for a whole lot of reasons, it didn’t go as planned. So what if Venice wasn’t everything I’d dreamed? What if it wasn’t magical at all? What if it was so crowded with tourists we couldn’t move? What if—and here’s where it started to get irrational—what if a car snuck in and managed to run me over even there? You get the point. When I stepped out of the train station with Mopsy and my mom, I was painfully excited, and at the same time, terrified that it would not be real, that this last dream that I had clung to all year would fall apart in my hands.

 

But it didn’t. Because from the moment we stepped out of the train station, it was magical. The light glittered off the Grand Canal. The gondolieri sang as they rowed. The breeze was cool and smelled of salt and fresh fish. There were no cars attempting to run me over (this was a big deal to me), and I didn’t even fall into a canal.

 

Yes, there were a ton of tourists, especially around the Rialto Bridge and the Piazza San Marco, but it’s Venice, and I actually found that the Italians were more friendly to me speaking Italian than they were in Rome and Florence. In Rome and Florence, they would continue speaking English, despite me repeatedly speaking in Italian. In Venice, they almost all exclaimed, “You speak Italian so well!” and then switched to Italian themselves. I also had absolutely no trouble bringing Mopsy in anywhere, which I think is a first. In fact, people were always really helpful, bringing Mopsy bowls of cool water without me even asking (it was 90 degrees every day).

 

Despite the heat, we stayed outside mostly, avoiding the big indoor tourist attractions, walking around and experiencing the city. We took a private tour, where we learned all about the history of Venice—how it was built in the sixth century when the people on the Italian mainland fled invading barbarians, how they later cut down the forests on the mainland and sank the trunks in the lagoon to support the city, how Venice is really an archipelago of something like a hundred fifty islands. Our guide took us to the parts of Venice where the real people lived, and we sampled traditional Venetian snacks—called cicchetti—with the traditional Venetian drink, the aperol spritz. In particular, she showed us all around the old Jewish ghetto, which I was really interested in because of my research into World War II in Italy my senior year of college. Not only did she tell us all about the history of the quarter and the city at large, but the tour also really helped to orient us in the city, which is something we desperately needed, what with all the canals and rios and campos and piazzas and alleyways so narrow your shoulders brushed the sides. They say getting lost in Venice is to be expected, and even part of the romance of the city, but it’s one thing to get lost in the light of day when you’re wandering towards something and don’t mind experiencing the city like that, but quite another to get lost at night, when you’re tired after a long day of travel, and just want to find your way back to the hotel, which is what happened to us our first night. So finding our “tiggerings and bearings” in the city with the tour guide was really helpful, and made us much more confident finding our way around the rest of the time.

 

The main city of Venice is divided into six sections, called sestieri, and we walked around all of them, through the tiny alleyways, across the narrow rios, up and over bridges, along the fondamentas beside the water. We ate gelato and listened to music in the Piazza San Marco. We took the vaporetto out to the islands and explored Murano and Burano. We did it all, and Venice is definitely on my list of places I want to come back to when I return to Italy.

 

Notice I didn’t say “if I return to Italy.”

 

Because even though this year has been rough at times, I have grown and changed so much, and I have met some truly amazing people and done some truly amazing things. And one day, I will come back. Because if I learned one thing from going to Venice, it’s that even if some dreams change and some don’t work out the way you wanted, some come true.

“I See!” Said the Blind Man

I’ve talked a lot about the struggles I’ve had here in Italy because I am blind, but now I want to talk about something really wonderful I discovered, something that I have never experienced before, not even in America.

 

There was no school last Tuesday because of the holiday for the founding of the Italian republic, so my mother and I went to Ancona to meet my Italian professor from Kenyon. Professor Dubrovic took us to the Museo Omero—an art museum for the blind.

 

Here’s the thing: I rate art museums below bookstores on things that are useful for me. At least in bookstores, I’m interested in the stuff I can’t see. In art museums, I have virtually no concept of what is interesting about anything. There’s a painting. So what? And why is everyone making such a big deal over a sculpture of a naked guy? Sometimes, if I can get close enough to paintings, I can see the colors, but in Italy, where the art museums are packed with people and you’re being herded from one exhibit to the next, I couldn’t take the time to try to see anything. And even with people describing the paintings to me, there’s only so long I can stand there before I’m bored out of my mind. So, yes, I’ve been to the Vatican and the Uffizi and the Accademia in Florence and the Egyptian museum in Turin, but all I can really say about them is that I’ve been.

 

But this was different. The Museo Omero is an entirely tactile art museum, filled with models made from plaster casts of famous sculptures. It’s funded by the European Union, not by Italy, and it takes its name from Homer, who apart from writing the Odyssey and the Iliad, was also blind. When I was first applying for the Fulbright and planning my volunteer project to work with blind children and explore the differences between American and Italian society’s treatment of people who are blind, my Italian professor told me about this museum, and I knew if I was accepted to the Fulbright and came to Italy, I wanted to go see it. And I was accepted to the Fulbright, so here I was.

 

The museum was small, but the collection ranged from ancient Greek and Roman art, to Renaissance, Romantic, and Baroque art, to contemporary sculptures and modern art, and I could feel all of it. All of it!

 

I have never experienced anything like this, and I’m not sure how I can explain it. Suddenly, what everyone was looking at made sense to me, took on a whole new meaning, even. I never imagined there was so much movement, so much kinetic energy, so much life bound up in these statues.

 

For example, I just thought Michelangelo’s David was a naked guy standing there. I didn’t understand what the big deal was, unless it was that he was naked. But I had no idea that his left hand is cocked back over his shoulder, gripping a sling, and that there’s a stone clutched in his right hand. It made sense—he is, after all, the David from the story of David and Goliath—but I never really appreciated that until I felt the sling and the stone in his hands.

 

I had a similar experience, though not quite as drastic, with the Pieta. Feeling the Blessed Mother holding Jesus in her arms moved me. I could finally appreciate the complexity and intricacy of the statue. So that’s why it’s so famous.

 

There was more. Sculptures of people playing musical instruments, dancing, walking, gazing at their reflections in bowls of water—their reflections were sculpted too. I felt some of Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures, and it was like the people were walking out of the stone, just like that idea that the statue already exists within the block of marble and the sculptor just has to chip away the excess. And, of course, we can’t forget the tactile representation of modern art—a pair of gloves, a towel, aluminum foil, a sponge, a brush, a cheese grater. I have no idea what the point was, beyond representing modern art in a tactile form. Perhaps something to do with common household items and what they mean. Whatever it is supposed to mean, it was certainly cool to feel.

 

We were the only people in the museum, so we could take our time exploring everything. Professor Dubrovic knew all about the history of the pieces, as well as the artists, and that made it even more special. We spent the rest of the day in Ancona with Professor Dubrovic, eating a delicious seafood lunch, visiting the cathedral, walking along the port and through the historic center, but for me, the Museo Omero was the highlight of the day. It was one of the most interesting things I have done in Italy—and I’ve done some really neat things—and it completely changed how I perceive visual art. It’s hard to describe, but something that I did not—could not—understand, even with the help of Jameyanne Feeling a model of Michelangelo's David, her hands on David's hands, feeling the sling iin his left hand and the stone in his rightdescriptions from friends and family, suddenly had real meaning for me. I saw.