Art, schmart

OK, enough brilliance already. I saw Michelangelo's David sculpture today. You all know the image. White, naked, perfect. It's beautiful by any definition. But the only thing that really struck me about it was how BIG it is. I'd rather not look it up, but it must be 10 feet tall. That's a big marble dude. What I liked more in the Accademia Gallery was his "unfinished" prisoner sculptures and his 3rd Pieta, which he left in his Florence workshop when he moved to Rome. Not only are they powerful and brimming with emotion, but there relative roughness seemed more revealing to me. How do you see this when you're looking at a piece of rock? The sculpture seems to be emerging from the rock under its own power, but of course that's not at all what actually happened. It's miraculous.

Like Michelangelo, I (I should just stop right there, shouldn't I?) have picked up skills in Florence. My most frequently used new skill is using one of those silly little espresso pots that everyone has in their closet. They have a regular coffee maker in the apartment, but good luck finding the right kind of coffee for it. What I really like to do is on a hot afternoon (95 and humid at the moment) like this, when I need a pick-me-up, is to make a whole pot of that stuff and pour it into a glass of ice and milk and drink it with a cookie. That'll put some fuel in your tank.