1. Rome is a city that stirs the blood, maddens and inspires. There are a few lasting achievements of art and architecture that seemingly happen but once a century (or two) in the course of human history, and Rome hosts an alarming concentration of them (for one, Pantheon).

Among the ephemera, that a bang-on shot of espresso is available at every level of food service from slouchy snack bar to white-tablecloth restaurant is as much a factor of training and equipment as cultural reinforcement; that even for those who can only spare 80 cents the quality of their coffee is not spared. Restaurant menus indicate when a dish includes an ingredient that has been frozen, implying that the remainder of the spread is fresh.

There are perhaps more marble statues, frescoed ceilings, and gelato shops per capita in Rome than anywhere else in the world, and while there’s more to the place than art and food, they’re a fine way through which to experience the city.

2. A worthwhile thing to do in Rome that no guidebook or blog told us was taking in the sunset from Giardino degli Aranci (Garden of Oranges). It is, true to its name, an orange grove on Aventine Hill (about a kilometer uphill from Piramide station) with a stone (marble?) balcony tacked on at the end. That balcony faces west.

When in Florence, order a steak.

3. Travelling in the 21st century continues to amaze me. Though supersonic air travel has been relegated to 20th-century antiquity, the Schengen Agreement, Euro currency, and global networks of cash machines, credit cards, and mobile telephony have all but eliminated logistical hassles for Americans touring much of Europe. I am not taking this stuff for granted.

4. My undergraduate Italian held up surprisingly well, and I still consider it a minor miracle that I was able to correct my error when booking our return trip to Rome from Florence at the S.M.N. ticket office without the use of English or incurring an additional charge. While at the post office, a clerk seemingly eager to speak some English bridged the language gap to scrounge up 25 stamps for international postcards. Occasionally, a combination of ambient English guided tours and Wikipedia on my BlackBerry enhanced our experience of a place.

5. As a meta note, this trip was my first vacation in a new place in over two years. The degree to which my creative output has fallen in that time has surprised and saddens me. I think it’s mostly a byproduct of being enrolled in school and in a relationship where someone else’s time is to be considered in equal measure as my own, but part of me also thinks that it’s because I haven’t been anywhere new to me in too long.

6. There is no number 6.

7. My failure to sell or even give away my tickets to The National concert on Sunday prompted me to attend the show on limited sleep immediately upon arrival in Washington. It turned out to be a wise play, as the show was spectacular and my sleep schedule was tuned perfectly the morning after. The first time I saw them, I was standing for the whole show and aside from the band and their instruments and equipment I remember the stage was bare. This time I was seated and there were lights and horns.

If there is a band for whom the placement of a grand oak tree on stage is aesthetically consistent with their music, it would be The National.

8. The use of clean as an aesthetic judgment bothers me. Cleanliness is distinct from organization, and that mere organization often presents itself as cleanliness is a given and the judgment provides little in the way of compliment or critique. Some alternatives are minimal, which reflects a position within art history, and simple, which indicates a composition with few moving parts or even one that has been inadequately considered.

9. I’m also growing increasingly wary of interesting as an adjective, mostly because it is subjective and also because it tends to describe things that really ought not be beyond the threshold of known vocabulary. I want to know how that interesting thing actually held interest, whether it engaged, stupefied, inspired, saddened. If all you can muster is interesting, either learn some new words or experience some new things.

10. Christina and I are planning our trip to Cuernavaca for Carlos and Ana’s wedding in July, so I can safely say that two years will not pass before my next vacation in a new place. However, my high-school Spanish is dustier than my college Italian, so negotiating the language gap could get, well, frustrating, with a high chance of gesticulation.

In the meantime, we will watch The New Pornographers, Passion Pit, and Tokyo Police Club in concert. And I will be starting at NavigationArts on 21 June, which is also the date of my 5th anniversary in Washington. And given I’m sentimental and wish to commemorate that event, I hope to publish another piece of writing – perhaps a list – on that date.

11. And therein lies an exotic destination, experiences of live music, and a pair of personal milestones to commemorate – creative inputs and motivation. I think I can keep this up.

Over lunch with JP at Chop’t, my eyes wandered about the wall art — an artichoke dug into the Capitol dome, a corn cob in place of a train in a Metro station, and this, a bunch of asparagus on the back of a Nissan Pathfinder parked in front of my apartment.

As I poked the lens of my camera through the chain-link fence, an anomalous thunderclap persisted. I swung my camera left, focused to infinity.

In case it isn’t obvious, I really like taking pictures of birds in motion.

I

When reflecting on what I wanted to say about the end of last month, I read the first in this series, written in 2003. It started: It’s that time again—when I stay awake for 98, 73, 61, 55, and so on hours on end, barely snatching sleep in car rides provided on someone else’s dime as they’re worried I’m too far beyond needing sleep to safely maneuver a motor vehicle on my own … .

This was the first late November of the last five where I’ve been forced to acknowledge I’m no longer 21 and capable of such feats of sleeplessness. And for what it’s worth, though I’m too familiar with the frayed edge for my preference, at least I’m better now at recognizing it.

II

In case you missed it:

• Only Collect, written by a 23-year-old historian.
• Singing: The Key To A Long Life, written by the venerable Brian Eno (via kottke).
• All Streets, a map of all 26 million road segments in the continental United States.
• A Happy Sky Over Los Angeles, Astronomy Picture of the Day for 3 December 2008.

III

A tour of Fallingwater was the birthday gift I couldn’t give myself for the last three years, and I’m glad I waited to share the experience with friends.

More pictures right this way.

The trip inspired me to spring for the 50mm f/1.4 lens, to take better pictures, to re-learn how to focus.

IV

I spent my first Thanksgiving away from family with classmates under similar circumstances. I baked cookies, drank beer, slept in.

V

The toll for November 2008: two scarves — vestiges of my first DC winter, two USB drives (one recovered), a debit card, the truck I grew up with, five pounds of fat, innumerable hours of sleep. As much as I regret starting graduate school during an election year, I’m glad I’m making the commute, skimming 300-page books every weekend, fiddling with WordPress, and writing papers where I have to cite my references.

I’m also in the market for a new scarf.

VI

There is no number VI.

VII

That said, December 2008 may yet be worse, roiled by more conflict between things that have to be done, things I’d like to do, and total time in which to accomplish them both while maintaining my mental and physical health.

While I know some classmates are living in dread these next couple weeks, I’m sincerely enjoying writing my final paper. I think it’s because — even though I scarcely plan what I learn — I’ve long known why I write, why I force my language into and upon that accrued knowledge. When people ask what I intend to do once I’ve earned my degree, I answer it’s too soon to tell. The career isn’t the point, and though I acknowledge that the lines on my résumé are helpful, the degree isn’t the point either.

VIII

To a degree, I know what I’m after in life, and I know that it just doesn’t happen spontaneously.

And I know I’m almost demonically lucky. Still, I burned — worked tirelessly, desiccated emotionally — to arrive at this point.

I believe that when opportunity knocks, it knocks quietly and leaves quickly, like a shy child selling candy. It is incumbent upon us to listen intently, to recognize that trembling door. And when we greet opportunity on the other side, rarely does it enter. It expects us to follow.

IX

Friday morning now, and my typing for the remainder of the day ought to be spent on CSS rather than introspection.

That first paragraph written five years ago ends: So much has come and gone in four days. I don’t really know where to start or why I’m writing this. Same reasons I’ve always written, I suppose.

For now, back to work.

Please forgive the continuing election post-mortem.

This is required viewing for anybody who confuses sporting a lapel pin for true patriotism (nicked from The Daily Dish). I question and doubt my government because I want it to be better, because its impact on the world is undeniable. All those baseball games where people stood respectfully and listened to a celebrity of dubious talent sing the national anthem were just practice for this moment. Eddie Izzard said about the American national anthem: “70% of what people react to is the look, you know, it’s how you look; and 20% is about how you sound; and only 10% is what you say.” But that crowd on St. Mark’s Place knew and believed 100% of what they were saying. The awkward pause before ‘banner,’ where the crowd collectively catches its breath to belt out the last three words of that phrase, gives me chills.

Courtney took this picture of me in the crowd at James Hoban’s. Even if in the future I am happily married with five children, this past Tuesday may still be one of the top 5 best days of my life.

And just as 25 years and 364 days is just a night of sleep away from 26 even, I know that though the president-elect is now preparing for the quantum leap into residence of the Oval Office, the deep, fundamental flaws that bore this cynicism and disbelief have yet to be addressed. The ecstasy that washed over crowds was just rain water; the ground supply still needs to be cleansed of its bitterness. Until then, I still worry. I’m always prepared to be let down, to be told I’m wrong again, to be part of a minority stewing over beer and waiting for vindication.

I’ve been listening to “Changes” by 2pac pretty much constantly since the morning of 5 November. My iTunes library is rarely sorted by artist, but that morning, it was, and this song was at the top of the list. I remember riding around Irvine with Rishi and Ky Vinh, this song blasting and us commenting in between laments about our respective existential crises that it was still relevant in 2005. That two lines of that song — and although it seems heaven sent, we ain’t ready to see a black president — were rendered moot in one night is why St. Mark’s Place burst into song, why I can’t stop grinning, why I stick my tongue out at the sky not to spite the heavens but to catch a drop of rain.

After the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, I became acutely aware of how voter fraud and suppression are perpetrated and how the simple process of tallying a majority can get so damn complicated. I don’t doubt that it happened again yesterday, that there were places where voters were intimidated, places where good citizens were confused for felons, places where the vote just didn’t work. And I don’t doubt that it will happen again. I fear this is just an inherent assumption of the millennial voter.

But those practices don’t scale, not for a margin of victory like this. I undertook my birthday rituals — noodles, haircut, and more liquor than advisable — but I don’t know how to celebrate something like this, how being in a majority is supposed to feel, how to feel when something I’ve wanted for years is uncompromisingly, by law, scheduled to happen. It wasn’t just some random lesser-of-two-evils Democrat who won but the one who when I watched the DNC keynote in 2004 I knew instinctively had to be president in my lifetime.

And that instinct, over time, was confirmed with a political platform and manner reasonably proximal to mine for him to earn my vote yesterday morning. And though I may come to regret this decision in November 2012, I doubt it. I know this feeling well, perhaps too well, and for as improbable to me as that outcome is four years from now, I regret more now the times in my life I was certain of a future but unable or unwilling to defend my vision. Yesterday’s euphoria was borne of that vindication, that private victory that marked the end of my September, writ large for over 63 million people hardly a month later.

When I left the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on East Capitol Street yesterday morning, I put my headphones back on and the Kinks’ “This Time Tomorrow” was playing. And it asks, this time tomorrow, where will we be? This time tomorrow, what will we know?

Over dinner, I raised a glass to victories, big and small, for us to celebrate something everyday. When I left Bourbon, not even last call when Obama had finished his victory speech, I told the cab driver my address and sat silently for the ride home through a light rain. I don’t know how to celebrate something like this. All I got for my birthday was a big, stupid grin and I’m still wearing it.

I woke up at 9 am to my Umbrella Today message, half an hour ahead of my alarm. E Street was strafed with jackhammers. I’ll retire FiveThirtyEight from my daily surfing, frame the cover of my DC Voter’s Guide. And the big, stupid grin: I could get used to it.

While composing a shot of pigeons chilling on an I-beam during lunch at the marina, someone behind me chucked a french fry on the barge. Madness ensued.

I didn’t really mean to take this picture. I was on the plane at O’Hare browsing through shots from my trip to the Pacific Northwest, and I wanted to start again at the most recent shot and didn’t feel like scrolling through more than 300 pictures to get there. The easiest way to get there was to shoot a new picture, put it back into playback mode, and browse from there. So I held my lens against the window and shot this.