Today started out blandly ;) I had the hostel breakfast, showered and checked out, and spent a couple hours waiting–my train was at 12:25 from Milano Centrale. I read Slate Star Codex ;) Should have been working on my Italian but totally spaced.
Decided to get the bla out of my system by walking to the station. As usual, despite waiting for 2+ hours, I gave myself just enough time to catch the train and speedwalked most of the way there. It was a picturesque walk and the air barely hinted of rain.
Hopped the train. It was odd, they checked my ticket at the station, before granting me access to a whole set of platforms, vs. on the train. Definitely cheaper but IMHO more exploitable.
The train ride was nice :D I liked riding in the daylight. I finished my Asimov novel End of Eternity–mother of all plot twists at the end, would HIGHLY recommend just for that ;) Near the end, I was inspired with some thoughts and I spent the rest of the train doing “exploratory writing”. For example:
First off, exploratory writing is a brain bicycle in the Ribbonfarm sense. It is a feedback loop of thought and response, the very simplest REPL (Read, Eval, Print Loop) where what is printed is exactly what is read in. It somehow modulates the emotional experience of thought, rendering it concrete, immersing it in a field of facility with a tool, the keyboard, paper, whatever. The concreteness and rhythm of interaction with the tool makes the experience more fun and emotionally stable, just like thinking while walking or riding a bicycle. The tool slowly becomes an extension of oneself. The feedback loop of the process is very interesting. It makes the work feel like creation. Thinking while taking a walk can feel like building and creation too, but the lack of interactivity limits the scope of the construction, narrows it to what can be held in memory.
I feel strongly the emotional field of extrinsic forward progress. When I’m going somewhere independently of what I’m doing, I feel good. I feel supported in my war against nihilism. I think this is probably a very common, generalizable, and overlooked effect. I’m on a train right now, and some of my best writing, reading, and thinking happens in these contexts. On a bus, on a train, on a flight, the question of purpose is taken care of. (This is in addition to the effect I already noticed, whereby being stuck on such a conveyance limits your options and therefore focuses you on your reading, writing, or thinking.
I nearly missed my stop, high on extrinsic forward progress. A commotion roused me to the fact and I hustled out. At the station, I desperately needed to pee, but the signs leading to the toilet were really confusing and led me in circles. It was pretty hilarious. Eventually I reached the toilets (not as clean as Swiss ones, but with cool architecture and angled stall doors), and then was off to find WiFi. I downloaded a map of Genoa and set off towards my hostel, only 30 minutes away. The sun was shining, the road was picturesque as any road I’d ever walked, it was great.
Found my hostel, dropped my bag, chatted a lot with the very friendly hostelier (is that a thing?). She marked a ton of locations I should visit on a big paper map and pointed me the way to get a focaccia snack at a locally treasured bakery. I walked into the streets, grabbed said snack (really tasty and I managed to indicate how much I wanted with “duo euro”), and headed on an adventure. I wanted to see the sea and walk along the coast. I passed through a monumental stone gate, through a big parking lot filled with cars and mopeds (waaay more cars than in Switzerland), up some stairs into a park, onto a really picturesque lookout (photos in the gallery), and finally to a road that led to the coast. There was no road along the coast however, as I found to my detriment. I followed this guy for a quarter of an hour along some sketchy little road, behind a marina, that I hoped would lead to some boulevard along the sea. It was bizarre. I felt like I was in some arthouse film chase scene. At the end of it I came to a military base or restricted area or something and couldn’t go through. So I ran back along the road and since the sun was going down, just walked back to the hostel :D There I met some new arrivals. First an Australian dude named Vith, who seemed pretty cool. We talked about his travels in Italy (during his “summer vacation” from November to late Feb). He and this other girl recommended Napoli wholeheartedly–it hadn’t really been on my radar. I went out, went back to grab my book (I’m reading now Catcher in the Rye on Muriel’s recommendation, it is in nature a superposition of absolutely hilarious and terrifically depressing, but since I’m in a good mood I’m going with the hilarious reading), and there was another newcomer there, a (Turkish) gal named Nuriye (pronounced Jure I think). So I introduced myself again and we fell to chatting, this time about school (Nuriye is trying to get into a master’s program in architecture here in Genova and needs to pass some exams). We all agreed to get aperitivo tomorrow night, a common package food/alcohol deal that works a bit like tapas.
Then I finally headed out for dinner. I was starving! (Astute readers may catch the influence of the Catcher in the Rye writing style on my own writing.) This was not any old dinner. This was a terrific Italian dinner recommended by the hostelier. I sat reading Catcher and chowing down on first bread with pasta, then pesto gnocchi with a quarter liter of house white. It was super delicious. I made the decisions 1. to be entirely direct with the waiters about my budget, not to try to dance around their requests to upgrade politely–which was met with respect, since it meant not being secretly suspicious of plans to up my bill and 2. to lose the self-consciousness arising from eating alone with my head in a book, because this is just silly. I ended up really enjoying myself. The wine was delicious and so was the pasta. From time to time I’d just laugh my head off over some little anecdote in Catcher and try not to disturb the other diners. I declined the waiters’ invitation to a second course–it was interesting communicating with them, their English was really bad but we could work things out–and ordered a cheesecake slice for dessert instead. I milked thereby a couple more chapters of Catcher. And the cheesecake was really good. It was not like any I’d ever had. The cake itself was not so sweet, but it was served with a rich syrup that looked like honey and tasted amazing. I couldn’t pin it down and asked the waiter who spoke the most English after I went downstairs to pay. He told me it was a fruit syrup made with some fruit similar to lemon, then asked me where I was from; we chatted a bit about my origins and travel plans. Super friendly!
Walked back to the hostel with a spring in my step, though I was super exhausted. I checked with the hostelier (Anna Luisa) about the walking tour tomorrow. She still wasn’t sure whether it was on, but we talked some more about my plans for the stay. She was super happy to have someone so excited about visiting historical sites and trying to pack it all in, I think. Went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and talked with Anna Luisa and Nuriye and a new guy, Kiran, snappily dressed Londoner, about the proliferation of mopeds and other things. I love getting to know people :D
Settled down finally to write this log. Aaah, nearly 1! I better sleep.