The second half of summer

...and when everyone in the States starts up school that's when I know it's time to start my summer homework-- I mean, I only have one more month!  Where did the summer go?  Apart from the US, the Alps, Florence, Perugia...

Anyway, about a week ago we ordered my textbooks for the next year but I had been trying to ignore the signs that summer was coming to an end-- friends staying at home to study, people talking in hushed voices about the year to come (5th year of high school is supposed to be hell), kids bringing summer reading on the train with them, and everyone-- everyone-- posting the sort of status on Facebook that pretends to be complaining but actually exists just to tell everyone like me that I should be studying too.

So I finally got up the courage to pick up some of my summer reading books (a five-minute trip, start to finish) and opened them.  I have to say that although I dislike the idea of studying, once I get started I really do enjoy it.  That goes for all of my subjects, but especially literature-- summer reading is great because I get to be lazy under the pretext of doing something useful.  "Oh drat... today I have to stay in bed reading this romance... life is pretty hard sometimes..."  For English I read The Picture of Dorian Gray in one day and really enjoyed it-- despite the dark theme-- especially for the psychological depth.

So far my favorite part of my homework has been an Italian literature book, Le città invisibili or Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.  It's a collection of prose poems arranged into chapters, each of which is framed by a dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan.  The poems are narrated by Polo and describe the wonders of various cities (all fantastical), from Valdrada (which was built by a lake that reflects the occupants' every movement, for better or for worse) to Eutropia (a series of identical cities, only one of which is ever occupied at a time-- as the occupants weary of their lives they move Mad Hatter-esque to the next city and start fresh with new houses, new families, new friends) to Pirra (which could never have been anything but that which it is) to Perinzia (which was constructed to mirror the heavens and the divine order, but which must have had some mistake, for no one is born quite right there).  They discuss death, illusions, memories, relationships, eternities, wishes... 

The real beauty of the book unfortunately can't be captured in translations (Italian is such a beautiful language that it's bound to lose something anyway), but it is the sense of awe that the poetry transmits as Marco Polo describes all these wonders... for two days I was a traveler hand-in-hand with Kublai Khan, sitting there, just listening.  It was really my first true experience with Italian literature, and I have to say it was extremely enjoyable-- I can't wait to start Il fu Mattia Pascal!