I am writing from our hotel room in Agrigento: the Grand Hotel Mosè. I stayed in this hotel in December 2001 for a Pirandello conference. Being in Agrigento and in this hotel is déjà vu all over. It was a rainy and cold December. It also marked my first year on the academic job market and, while in Sicily, I was invited for an interview with the University of Georgia (Athens). We agreed to have a phone interview at the hotel, but I did not have a cell phone and the phone in my room did not work properly, so I remember running downstairs to use a public phone near the main entrance. The public phone is gone but, this being Italy, its shadow is still on the wall where it once was. Another reminder of the Italian attitude towards the past: move beyond the past, but never actually erase it, being an insignificant detail such as the phone that I used to frantically call the University of Georgia that cold afternoon in 2001, or something grand and important like a Greek ruin.
PS The University of Georgia offered me a position, but I went to Rice University instead.
Care Ombretta, Paula e studentesse,
ReplyDeletesono molto felice che il vostro viaggio stia andando bene. Jaymie e Michaella, spero che abbiate modo di esercitarvi in italiano.
Buon viaggio, fate tante foto!