So I’m sitting on the train stopping all stations and it’s going to take FOREVER to get home; the tough boys have spread themselves across the walkway, daring people to walk past, pumping out their trashy pop ring tones as loud as possible so that someone, ANYone will look at them (…please???); an old guy is flicking through yesterday’s paper for the form guide; a mullet is slurring his words around the slab of vitamins V & B under his arm and I’m floating by in a dream.

And I’m stretched out across my seat, books spread, head spinning.

All the study over the last 3 years, the tedium of grammar drills, the sheer in-comprehensibility of verb conjugation, the futility of trying to memorise vocabulary…it’s all come to this. Finalmente…it fits! It makes sense!…it’s like a damn epiphany.

It’s all been about reading Beppe Severgnini “Un italiano in America”.

http://www.beppesevergnini.com/

Basta! I never need to look at the italian language again! I’ve seen the best, the most insightful, damn it…the TRUEST writing I could imagine.

GOD, it’s intoxicating…a swirling concoction of caffe’ latte, macchiato, espresso and cappuccino, all thrown together in this euphoric mix of smells, tastes and oh the sweet irony.
To read of Italians being too proud to admit that maybe…just maybe someone else can make coffee like them is…eye-poppingly hilarious!

And the chaotic subtext…that Italians ‘invented’ coffee (and by extension, everything else…) just nails every dang-nabbed stereotype that you can imagine.

I can walk away from the language forever because I’ve been blessed to read and appreciate this piece. It all fits, each word, each inflection is crystal clear and makes perfect sense.

But I wont!
I’m in love with the language, more now than ever; I want to drown in Severgnini’s writing and I’ll keep going until I find another moment as joyous, as breathtaking, as side-splittingly hilarious, as fantasmagorically BRILLIANT as this!