I found a day or so ago a group of sources that I had been waiting and waiting to find and worried that I might never see, so that's good. After sorting through 3 or 4 books of collected documents I began to think that the things I wished to see either (a) didn't happen (inconceivable) (b) didn't leave a record (exceedingly unlikely) or (c) had the records destroyed (neither inconceivable nor exceedingly unlikely). So, huzzah! History! Also, I have gotten on "good morning" terms with one of the other graduate students I see nearly every day in the study room in the archive. And one of the women who works security at the archive took me out for coffee this week. Progress.

I continue to think about the experience of being here. The more that I think about it, the more that I feel like what I've written here about cultural differences is only a part of the story as far as feeling somewhat rudderless (or perhaps anchorless?) when I'm not in the archive, at least.

Italy is not, for example, nearly as different a place from home as, say, China. So culturally, I would be exaggerating to say that I am like a visitor from another planet here. Plus, I speak the language, at least well enough to survive on my own. Yes, Italy is strange, but people here wear the same clothes (only tighter) , eat mostly the same foods (only less of them), and do intelligibly infuriating (rather than incomprehensibly infuriating) things. I am not on Mars.

However, where I am is in a place where everything I do I do for myself and no one else. I think the cultural differences only exacerbate the total independence of life here. From my perspective, it's independence. From everyone else's a better word is probably 'irrelevance.' There are days (today) when I feel like the best I can hope for is to be irrelevant rather than actively irritating to everyone around me. Luckily I have patient (and generous) roommates who invited me to have lunch with them and then put up with my moodiness. On the other hand, eating part of their lunch didn't exactly make me feel like less of a charity case. But tomorrow is a new day and perhaps then I can figure out something to do to get my karmic account out of the red, or at least closer to even.

A man can only say 'grazie' so many times.