Tuscany, Italy -- Our Eastern friends teach that of the Five Shortcomings -- distractions of the mind leading us astray from the True Path -- lust is usually foremost. Since sex with Angelina Jolie is being expertly handled by Brad Pitt and off the table for me, travel is the second great distraction, one I've avoided while living in a hermitage in Vermont's Green Mountains.

I was coaxed from the mountaintop into samsara (the world of illusion) by some friends--a group of retiring high school teachers intent on partying their dupas off (pronounced, doo-pahs, Polish slang for posteriors) in Tuscany. They sought to celebrate their freedom not from the world of passion, attachment, multiplicity, and differentiation, but from the futility of educating know-it-all punk adolescent little dicks and dickettes. Well, they didn't state it that way exactly; I felt it was implied.

Ordinarily, celebrating the good fortune of others isn't foremost on my list of reasons to get down while I continue to labor in the fields of the Lord, so to speak. Especially since the Lord isn't paying the field hands very well these days. And, generally, I don't frequent lottery headquarters watching the newly minted rich smile themselves to orgasm to get myself in a good mood. I'm having a hard time keeping body and hermitage together.

Yet, my friends, henceforth called The Teachers, knew I was on a specific path to Enlightenment our beloved Eastern friends (there I've mentioned them twice) call the Crazy Wisdom characterized by ribald humor and outrageous radical behavior ... never straying into mere frivolity or licentiousness, but effectively functioning to break the spell of worldly illusion. In other words, they needed a guy who flunked out of clown school to stir things up. Teachers (I hate to generalize, but...) as a group tend to be ... well, staid. Years of setting a good example for Ritalin-addled youts makes them decidedly tight-assed (or decidedly tight-dupaed, if you prefer) regardless of their dissolute intentions.

A Digression to Prove a Point

New Year's Eve 1999. Partying at a funky bar in Montpelier called Charlie O's. (Actually, it was the only bar open in the smallest capital city in the U.S.A that Millennium Eve.) Good Drinks and Bad Company Since the War Between the States is the bar's motto. The new millennium arrived with little hoopla. The crowd was too cool and indifferent to celebrate such a banality.

I took The (Intoxicated) Teacher outside to torch a celebratory dubcek. I wanted to kick off the next 1,000 years right. It hit the spot. (I momentarily drifted off thinking about Alexander D's attempt to reform the Czechoslovakian Communist party in 1968 and give totalitarian socialism a human face. He failed.) The following day when The (Hungover) Teacher realized what he had done, openly and brazenly taken illegal drugs in the company of suspect individuals directly across the street from the Montpelier, VT police station while in the official position of providing Vermont's tattooed, pierced, punked-out, pimpled, post-pubescent youth with instruction and personal example befitting a professional educator, he gave up drinking for three years for the lapse of good judgment. See what I mean? One teensy lapse (hardly a lapse in my opinion, by the way) and The (Remorseful) Teacher devolved into a multi-year guilt fit.

This could be trouble.

Is It Really Travel?

To travel means to travel alone. Period. If you can't travel alone, stay home. Why bother? The biggest mistake you can make when planning an adventure (as if you can actually plan an adventure) is to plan it with others. Whether you are going to Italy with your very own Beatrice or with The (Party Animal) Teachers, it's a mistake. You end up bringing the society you are trying to leave behind right along with you. The bigger the group, the bigger the society. And society, as Freud expertly observed in Civilization and Its Discontents, makes extremely repressive demands on the individual that cause all kinds of sick and twisted neuroses leading to some serious unhappiness usually requiring the administration of selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI, a.k.a. Prozac) resulting in a significantly reduced libido.

As the libido swan dives, diplomatic accords rear their ugly heads. If you are traveling with your wife/SO, there she is staring at you over your morning cappuccino planning your day. "First we're going shopping, then we're going to this fabulous handbag museum ..." "But, hon, I thought I'd drink all day long with the elderly Italian gents at the corner espresso bar and lust after the beautiful Italian signorine who happen to pass by in their haute couture." "Are you high?" You will have to compromise. Alone there is no compromise. Lack of compromise equals bliss. It's Sinatra all the way, baby--my way.

Yet, duo-detente is child's play compared to moshing in the seething pit of group consensus-making. Reaching an accord in a group can be catastrophic and make enemies for life. If you value your friends, don't travel with them. You can end up never speaking to them again. How do eight people agree on an agenda for the day when there's only two rental cars, etc? Even agreeing on a restaurant can set off a twenty minute harangue with ensuing loss of appetite for several of the discontents. The very words "agree on an agenda" should be enough to send you screaming back to your mountaintop hermitage. Alone, the word agree is meaningless. A beautiful thing.

So I had to decide. I'd never been to Tuscany. The allure was as palpable and compelling as a Caravaggio Magdalen (or Baptist depending on your persuasion) come to life. I forgot to mention The Teachers were donating frequent flyer miles so I could make the trip. I was being semi-subsidized. I decided to compromise. Hello, Alitalia ...

Italian Road Signs

A cultural phenomenon I've always privately derided is the personal Global Positioning System (GPS). There are so many of these miniaturized personal locator units sold every year to lost and disoriented Americans as to make me think we all must be descended from the mythical Fugawi Tribe (where the fug-a-wi). The gadgets are ubiquitous. It seems as if everyone has one in his (actually, this is mostly a male phenomenon) pocket or vehicle. Any person now can tell you to the second their exact longitudinal/latitudinal position anywhere on planet Earth (I hear a Moon version will be available for download soon). Do you know right now we are at 44n11, 72w50? Now that's a big help. They're great for driving ...

Now I'm as typical as typical gets, and I'll tell you I haven't been lost in decades. I did sort of get lost in the woods by a lake in New Hampshire when I was 5 or 6 years old. I was returning from my little friend's (Andrea's) house and following the shoreline home. The woods crowded on the lakeshore making a very narrow path on which to walk. I remember that detail very distinctly. But all I had to do was continue walking along the shore to my parents' cottage which was the very next one. For some reason, as dusk fell and the lake darkened, I suddenly felt lost. I started to cry. Go figure. Afterwards, I recall Andrea chuckling over the incident, but overall she was very understanding and sympathetic. That's why I loved her.

Other than that passing incident of childhood woods hoodoo, I can navigate terra firma quite easily. Like most of my fellow Pilgrims, I drive the same route to work every day; I return the same route from work every night ... well, sometimes I take an alternate just to mix things up and add a little wild adventure to the commute. But , never once have I stopped to gaze up at the star-strewn cloud-dust of the Milky Way and thought, "Oh, satellite, my satellite--actually three satellites are required for triangulation, you're welcome for that info-snack-- where the fugawi?" (With the exception of a few infrequent episodes of existentialist dread ... similar to the one at the end of Fellini's La Strada when Zampano [Anthony Quinn] is on the beach and, anguished and despairing over having destroyed and discarded the only love he will ever know--Gelsomina [Giulietta Masina]--looks up at the incomprehensibly vast blinking expanse of utter, icy indifference [a.k.a. the Universe  although now we suspect it's probably a Multiverse] and realizes he is totally, absolutely, and forever alone ... ).

Now these GPS gizmos certainly have their application, say, if you're a rugged outdoorsman sailing your newly purchased C&C yacht paid for with cashed-out dot com money from Boston to Anchorage, or if you simply enjoy getting blind on Black Fly Stout and wandering aimlessly in the vast forested wilderness of northern Maine and hope to find your way home before hypothermia sets in. But, how many people like that do you actually know? They account for a tiny fraction of total GPS sales annually. How do you account for an entire industry supported by millions of Americans yearning to be oriented? It must be a psychological metaphor. I've done the research, and Freud has nothing to say on the subject. Neither does Jung (an anti-semite, by the way) as far as I can determine. And, having devoted most of my life to the pursuit of disorientation, I can't use the compass (pardon) of personal experience to explain the phenomenon. It also might have something to do with possessing a gadget that puts you in contact with the stars or something way out there in space akin to a star that's watching over you, protecting you from harm. Something very Trekish to which you can appeal, "Beam me the fuck outta here."

I've digressed with a meandering preamble from the topic of Italian road signs and getting around in Italy. Getting to the Tuscan farmhouse meant following the road signs from the Pisa airport. This is when I seriously recanted my disparagement of GPS receivers and would have sold my first born for one. If you plan to travel in Italy, invest in a good one. Italian highway engineers (and I have great affection for the Italians since all my grandparents emigrated from Italy), in their infinite capacity for confusion, have all but eliminated the route number in favor of labeling by place name.

Next time... 

Agriturismo, Ristorante Mario, the Festival Sagra della Valdarbia, Italian girls and grandmothers, the sad horrors of Firenze, and more!