Dryer Sheets As Epistemological ICBM

First: The title. I'm proud and a little embarrassed of it. Then again, if you've read Eleven Names, then you should know, I'm no stranger to stretched military-industrial complex metaphors and conflicting feelings.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and while philosophy is wide-ranging (and applicable almost everywhere) I never expected that I would be playing Newton and dryer sheets would be my apple.

I'll explain.

I was washing my clothes in a washer and that was going okay. Well, bad. It costs 1.5 Euros to do a load, which comes out to roughly $2, so that's suboptimal and a lot more expensive than I'm used to. I had put both loads in the washers and around the 20 minute mark on the first washer, I realized: I didn't bring dryer sheets with me. The vending machine outside the washing room, which sells detergent (thank God!) does not sell dryer sheets.

I went downstairs (since the washing facilities are on the fourth floor) to ask anyone I could find if they had dryer sheets. They didn't. So, I went further downstairs to ask the helpful security guard who was okay with English if he had any dryer sheets. He pointed me, sincerely to the flyer for the sheet exchange on Tuesday. "No, no," I said, "dryer sheets. The things you put in the dryer with your clothes." He looked at me with a look that said I was describing something alien to him.

I sighed and tried explaining the concept of dryer sheets: "You know, dryer sheets, the little sheets you put in with your clothes that help...uhhhh...with...cling...and...uhhhhh..." That's when it hit me: I have no idea what dryer sheets do. I don't know what I don't know. In other words, I am unaware of what I still need to learn. For example, I know for goodamn sure I don't know Italian, which is something I need to learn. I am aware of this deficiency.

But it wasn't until I needed dryer sheets that I had no idea what dryer sheets did and could not explain what they were to a person who was not fluent in English. He thought I was talking about the sheet exchange. I could not explain why, for God's sake, one would use dryer sheets. I used words like cling, but cling is a bad introduction to the concept to a non-native speaker.

I know I don't know Marx and he's a relatively important thinker these days. But dryer sheets defeated me. Dryer sheets. It's always the stuff that's mundane and not fantastical that gets people. Like how the Brooklyn Dodgers are in Los Angeles for Steve Rogers.

The next question, of course, how do I find out what else I don't know? Looking around the room I'm in, it's filled with kids (like me) all on their computers Skypeing home to their friends or talking about how they're going to a bar sometime next week. Safe to say I probably won't find it here sitting at the computer. But there's few other places to go where the internet access is reliable, so here are all the lovers and the kids who pretend they want to get work done.

And man, I've been playing Torchlight for most of the time that I've been here, with the occasional dalliances into Facebook or Twitter, both of which are data-mining the shit out of everything I write, as does Google every time I want to search for something. I'm as guilty as all of the kids here. It takes work and willingness to be uncomfortable for an un-mediated "authentic" Italian experience.

To add to that, I think it's incredibly self-aggrandizing to continue down this line of thought, since it leads to self-satisfied "I'm adventurous" bullshit, so I'll just say that I'm not as successful as I'd like to be in putting myself in new or interesting or different situations where I feel out of place. I mean, yeah, I've done a couple things, but by and large, I haven't been eating food I'd consider strange or really Gone Out on my own.

That will be this week. A friend of mine who was in Rome before me gave me a list of places and I'll have the time to capitalize on that this week. I need to get uncomfortable again, because it's in that discomfort and unsure feeling that knowledge is transmitted and unceremoniously dropped. Unless something crazy happens, Wednesday will probably be about Camus, again. If things work out, the embryonic D&D game will be on Friday.



Today's song is Comadre's cover of I Think We're Alone Now. Comadre is a punk band that has a muddy, raucous screamo edge and this cover is so loose and fun that it captures the spirit of Comadre really vividly. The guy's voice, even for hardcore punk, is rough, but after 20 or so listens, it's charming. If you need a RIYL for the song, think the Bronx, and that's close enough.

My First Day Back In Town

Rome. I'm in its limits. Huh.

The two main issues are mainly the heat and the wi-fi. As complaints go: There's worse. The library's nice and there's a fantastic iced cappuccino available for under $2, so it's hard to complain. Also, there' s a ground based power outlet, which means I can type this. I should talk to the guy who does wifi.

Under 24 hours later, I've got wireless internet, the iced cappuccino is still fantastic.

I ought to explore Rome, which often means making decisions that involve basically ignoring my ingrained desire to have outs of situations. In other words: Say yes to ideas like finding a bar at midnight in a shady part of town, or getting off of a bus before the right stop because everyone else is doing it. (And yes, I did just call Rome a town. It's so Midwest of me. I know.) The ingrained desire is to always have a way home on my own. My safety and autonomy are paramount, back home. Here, I have to learn very carefully to ignore that in favor of something more enjoyable and restrictive.

I know I'm using the prescriptive in that last paragraph. For example, the getting off the bus with a gaggle of other kids I only loosely know, but united in the fact that we're all American did not end well, if the destination was the bar. We never found it, and getting off the bus with the other drunk Americans was the first bad decision that led to other ones. The group split again, between the people who were sure where they were going and the couple (handsy boy and handsy girl) with the map.

They split, with hesitant promises to meet up at the Spanish Steps. I headed with the couple, with whom we braved the roman streets. The cars didn't stop for anything, which meant we dodged cars and ran across hazy cobblestone lanes a lot. It hit me when we got to the river in the middle of the city, (which I'm not looking up because as soon as I get on the internet, I'll never leave) that I was very much not at home.

We skirted the bright, noisy tents of the circus/festival on the banks of the sky and I knew instantly, there is an analogue for this in the City, but nothing really like this feeling of being among friends and being very, very far from home. There was a language spoken I didn't recognize, bright lights and lots of people who did not look like they wanted to rob me. In other words: an air of intoxicating possibility. Shit, there was even a bridge that didn't have some obvious mechanism to raise it. There were lots of these bridges! As far as my eye could see (say, about two either way), bridges carved by hand.

We traipsed up the Spanish Steps, finally. I hummed the chorus to Spanish Bombs,by the Clash for the rest of the night. We split up from the handsy couple (likely to their delight) somehow, and after finding them only after becoming certain we were taking a cab to our next destination, which ended up being the wrong place, and sent us on another adventure.

That another adventure will be on Wednesday. This is a natural stopping point, anyway.

But for now, I'll end with the Clash's Spanish Bombs, since it's

a) a great song
b) germane to both
b i) my state of mind
b ii) the place