First off, I will not bore you with any excruciating details of my trip around Italy. Basically, I travelled to various cities in various provinces around Italy for a month, and it was truly an unforgettable experience. Because Mimi and I are art aficionados, about 70% of our trip was devoted to going to art museums and reveling at the sight of original artworks that we often see in art textbooks. I can’t necessarily speak for Mimi, but standing before, say the original Botticelli’s “Primavera” or walking around the Vatican in Rome or the Doges Palace in Venice, brought a consuming and surreal emotion in me that I still can’t quite describe. I guess, in part, I was mesmerized because I was in the presence of a delicate artwork that was created hundreds, even thousands of years ago. Another part was the actual aesthetic experience of looking at a painting / sculpture / monument. The size of the artwork, along with the details and luminosity that comes from recent restoration really appealed to my visual sense. Moreover, knowing a little bit about the back story to why the artwork was create and (to me most importantly) how it was created really taught me about Italian and European culture as well as appreciate the creative genius that was put into it.
The other 30% was spent on actually enjoying the city we were in. After long days of going around to different museums / historical sites, we would often take the time to explore the food and nightlife of the city. It was all good for the first half of the month, and then we realized two things. One: if you are a student and are considering traveling for over two weeks, be economical on food! Yes, it’s great to dine well while you’re on vacation, but a student like me is not made of money and food will take away your money really fast! We kind of figured this out half way through our trip so as a solution, we would try to find smaller places outside of touristy attractions (and I have had some of my best meals at these places!). There were also definitely nights when I ate cereal and milk or ramen for dinner. Yayyy :( Secondly, August is not necessarily the best month to find great nightlife…at least on the Italian peninsula. That’s because by the 2nd week of August the latest, a lot of business, including clubs and bars, are closed for the summer and everyone goes to places with beaches like Sardinia, which is ironically where we were coming from! So if you want to travel around Europe with good nightlife, consider traveling during June or July…or go to a coastal cities during August!
After getting back to America at the end of August, I was immediately occupied with the start of school. During this semester, I managed to move into an apartment with three other amazing girls in Central Square and find a job at a consulting firm that is well known in the healthcare and life science industries. Job in hand and senior year half way over, I can’t help but have mixed feelings. I am both extremely excited to start a new chapter in my life, but at the same time nostalgic and resistant for this current chapter to end. It’s funny how these two opposing motions come together, but when I am aware of an impending new milestone in my life, I can’t help but reflect back on the chapter I am on now. I reflect on all the ups and downs of my rollercoaster experiences at MIT, and I constantly question myself whether I made all the right decisions. Was there anything that I could have done better? I will never know, and honestly that’s the beauty and artistry of living life for me. Experiencing a moment is unpredictable. They can be influenced by the people you surround yourself with, the culture, and your own subjectivity; all these factors fuse together to create an organic, unpredictable experience. Because I think experiences are what shape me, I see myself as some organic, unpredictable work of art too. The fun about reflection is realizing that I am never really the same person with the same perspectives toward life. Recognizing this synthetic process that I am living through excites me about the future because I know that I will be a different person within the next two years, and I am really excited for how I will turn out.
Anyways, that’s a summary of what I’ve been going through for the last four months. Will (hopefully) rant more often now that I have more time! And as a visualization for my thoughts on "aesthetics in living life", I leave you with this amazing painting by Magritte called Empire of Light (which can be seen for your viewing pleasure at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice :D ).
No comments:
Post a Comment