about this blog

"earth's cramm'd with heaven, and every common bush afire with God" - from elizabeth barrett browning's 'aurora leigh'

these are my reflections about divine manifestations in both the queer and the mundane occurrences of our world, the ordinary and the extra-ordinary, the monumental and the everyday. i invite all of you flaming shrubs to find some kindling here and to keep up the slow and steady burn for justice, that aching longing within.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

i+alia a to z :: uzzzzzzz - urbano zanzara

as is her way, my friend [i like to call her an american curmudgeon abroad] points out the obvious in a way that makes it more obvious [she is a scientist after all]. and then we laugh.

we were waiting for a bus from certosa di pavia [beautiful! but out of the way. definitely worth a visit if you're ever in milan], trying to catch some shade in the heat. i started going over the letters that i have left in the alphabet - u, v, t, z, k, n...i... to which my friend begins listing italian words that start with these letters. it dawned on me that this is an alphabet, implying a discursive landscape. my friend assumed that i was doing an alphabet in italian, whereas i had approached this thing spatially, experientially but not necessarily linguistically.

so i thought it was about time i supplied some vocabulary.

urbano - adj. translates to urban.

zanzara - noun. translates to mosquito.

milano รจ piena di zanzare in estate, so make sure you buy some bug repellant. i really like the sc johnson stuff i found over here: autan. it smells great and isn't sticky.

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