{"id":3955,"date":"2012-08-10T00:37:19","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T22:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.astroblastro.com\/?p=3955"},"modified":"2012-08-13T05:37:08","modified_gmt":"2012-08-13T03:37:08","slug":"throwing-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/?p=3955","title":{"rendered":"Throwing a Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Last week I returned to the Italian consulate in San Francisco to get a student visa for my upcoming year at Helikos. I&#8217;ve been through the process before but like most people, I get edgy around that level of bureaucracy. It&#8217;s the feeling of border crossings, TSA screenings, CTBS testing. Anywhere where you are required to be interviewed by someone\u00a0whose job it is to say no to you.<\/p>\n<div class=\"hang-2-column\" style=\"width:620px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Men Throwing Rocks With The Other Hand\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/34678147?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Here are some of the requirements of a successful visa application:<\/p>\n<ol style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>completed application form<\/li>\n<li>one recent passport photograph<\/li>\n<li>original passport<\/li>\n<li>photocopy of passport<\/li>\n<li>original driver\u2019s license<\/li>\n<li>photocopy of driver license<\/li>\n<li>original letter in Italian an accredited Italian Academic Institution<\/li>\n<li>proof of funds: a minimum of $900.00 per each month of stay is required.<\/li>\n<li>proof of adequate lodgings available for the entire stay<\/li>\n<li>round-trip flight reservations<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">It&#8217;s certainly not impossible to get it all together, really it&#8217;s a simple thing. But I still get completely nervous that they will find something missing or fibbed or wrong and bar me from ever entering Europe again. I imagine the big red stamp, written in block letters: DO NOT LET HIM IN.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">All that\u00a0scrutiny\u00a0got me thinking of an improvisation class from the first year at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.helikos.com\/\">the school I&#8217;ll be returning to Florence for.<\/a> The exercise is simple: throw a stone. You turn to the audience and you&#8217;re alone on a pebbly beach in front of a vast ocean. You pick up a stone and toss it in the water, watch it splash and that&#8217;s all, the end. <em>Dead simple right?<\/em> It&#8217;s certainly not impossible to mime such a simple scene. What is difficult is to tell <em>only<\/em> the story of the neutral actor, the pebble and the beach. Much harder.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">Take this video as an example of how seeing someone perform a seemingly a simple task\u2014in this case throwing a stone with your non-dominate arm\u2014reveals something very funny about human beings.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">Submitting my visa application definitely feels like throwing the stone with my non-dominate arm. I performed the simple task but I also did a lot of unnecessary movement, stiff forgetfulness and the gyration of worry, before I lobbed that sheaf of papers over the desk of the consulate and said <em>Grazie mille!<\/em> when they were accepted.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">Even after the application was accepted, the consular website urges me to remember:\u00a0<strong>All visa applications are subject to further review. Applications do NOT guarantee issuance of visas<\/strong>. If an application is rejected, the applicant will be contacted and the passport will be returned along with an explanation for the rejection.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I returned to the Italian consulate in San Francisco to get a student visa for my upcoming year at Helikos. I&#8217;ve been through the process before but like most people, I get edgy around that level of bureaucracy. It&#8217;s the feeling of border crossings, TSA screenings, CTBS testing. Anywhere where you are required&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,15],"tags":[383,423],"class_list":["post-3955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theatre-artists","category-video","tag-helikos","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3955"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3962,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955\/revisions\/3962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}