Feeling restless and tired...

It's been a long strange road... This week has brought about lots of mixed feelings and confusion with alot of things.

I'm feeling restless without a sense of place. Been feeling like that over the past few years, to be honest. I just want a place to call home and gather things I like around me. But at the same time I haven't really found a place to call home yet. And that makes me restless. I know that the next few years will be a period of transition for me: possibly going back to school for a PhD (either UK, NYC, or San Francisco...), finding a job that will allow me to use my unique skills, my relationship with Libor, finding a home where I can have all of this... it's almost daunting when I think about it. I know that it's important to take things one day at a time, but doesn't help when I can't really have some peace of mind in my home, because of this and that.

My best sense of home was in Santa Fe when I was living in that studio apartment on Canyon Road... I had fixed up the place just for myself - the bed was in the kitchen nook, I replaced the fridgidaire (serious! it was from the 60s) with a small fridge so I had more counter space, I set up shelves on the walls for my things, had a fireplace, flagstone floors and adobe walls... the place was so beautiful and very much MINE. But the landlord was just wacky so I had to leave. However I think it was since then I've been itching for a place of my own like that again. Who knows when that will be!

Anyway, yesterday I spent the day in Milano. Was supposed to go to workshops yesterday and today but was tired from Verona last week so I came home last night to have a day to myself today (and what a nice day it is so far! sleeping in, reading, updating my blog...). The workshop was "I hear you with my eyes, I talk to you with my hands: A journey into the Deaf's World between poetry, music and the artistic expression." Some of the presenters were very interesting, and others left me wondering how their topics were related to deafness and through deaf eyes. :-/ The presenter I really enjoyed the most was a professor from Gallaudet whose presentation was entitled, "Sign language/film language: experiments in cinematic Poetics." He talked about classifiers in ASL in terms of storytelling, and converting that story into film - complete with angles, perspective (where to focus the camera), distance, speed, motion, everything. Just fascinating. He showed examples of film clips of a deaf poet in I THINK the Netherlands. It was so beautiful - he would sign a poem in his sign language (Flemish?) and the camera would focus on him from different angles. Closeups of his hands as "roots", looking down from the top as he signed "grow" looking from the bottom, sides, etc. Just beautiful. :-)

Spent the afternoon talking with Katie and Julie online - definitely nice to spend time talking with them! I have some work to do translating my PPT for tomorrow's presentation so I can send it to Daniele to proof-read tonight. I hope tomorrow's workshop goes better than last week. Last week was pure hell. Wish me luck.