Post by lawrence josef grimani on Jun 2, 2011 22:28:04 GMT -5
LAWRENCE JOSEF GRIMANI
“My body is a cage that keeps me from dancing with the one I love.”
| B A S I C S |
Name Lawrence Josef Grimani
Nicknames Rence; Jo
PB Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Age 29
Sex M
Major/Concentration Alumnus of Istituto Internazionale di Studi Classici di Orvieto with a Master’s Degree in Art Education with a Concentration in Ceramics.
Occupation Visual Art Professor
Location Orvieto, Italy| P E R S O N A L I T Y |
As with many professionals, Lawrence is a man divided between the worlds he lives in and the people he interacts with. He draws a very clear line between how he acts toward his students and how he acts toward the rest of the world, sometimes seeming like a different person outside of class and the university at which he is employed. He sincerely believes that in order to teach someone a subject well, you must hold their respect and instill in them just a little bit of fear mixed with reverence.
Though he is still a young man, Lawrence must seem like an old soul to his students. Often forgetful and bashfully scatterbrained, students should always keep a copy of their research papers saved to a hard drive to avoid having to retype them when Rence loses them somewhere between the coffee shop, a leather working store, and the campus courtyard. His lessons often digress into stories about his small hometown and how his birthday corresponds with the city’s patron saint – far from the original subject about crackle glazes and kiln firing a piece of pottery.
He often distances himself from his students, purposefully placing a social wall between himself and whomever he’s speaking with. While some may think that he’s just being a silly Italian snob, there is reason to his madness, though he rarely speaks about that. Lawrence never accepts late work, is insane about deadlines, but always gives students ample amount of time to finish a project. If after two weeks, a student is not able to make one clay vase for presentation, obviously someone isn’t working hard enough. He despises laziness, apathy, and people who simply aren’t trying. If a student needs assistance and is working whole-heartedly on a project, Lawrence will help in an instant.
To young college kids, Lawrence may seem a bit flighty and hippy-zen-like, but he is simply passionate about his own artist endeavors. If one catches him on a day when he’s had a brilliant idea, he is likely to have forgotten his or her name – and, perhaps, even his own name. When it comes to his own work, Rence usually tries to apply too much feeling to his artwork that others might just not “get.” In his own mind, he thinks they should broaden their worldly view. In the eyes of others, perhaps his work just isn’t any good. Then again, he’s in a career field where things are rarely perfectly subjective and while eager to get feedback, he’s too stubborn to change his ways when it comes down to it.
As a person, Lawrence is crushingly shy. When he isn’t wearing his “professor pants” and assuming an authoritative role, he’s often just the dark haired man in the background of staff meetings drinking espresso. The Italian adores women, is fascinated by the smooth texture of their skin and the femininity they seem to exude. He finds himself easily enamored and flibbers around women, blushing like he’s been set on fire and stuttering out things that make little sense. Somehow, that adorable Italian accent and his flashing hazel eyes tend to help him out when it comes to the fairer sex, drawing women to him initially but leaving them a little disappointed that he isn’t as smooth as he looks. The professor doesn’t date often and doesn’t seem to be looking.
His choice in friends is usually a little underwhelming, as well, because he tends to hate other men. Rence has few friends, though those that he keeps will be life-long companions. The morals that modern men set for themselves usually disgust Lawrence, though he doesn’t often say much about the way they treat women. Lawrence, truly, doesn’t say much at all unless he’s speaking about his art. Then, and usually only then, do you see the man light up and become almost like a piece of art himself. Dancing, graceful hands accompany his baritone voice and help to sculpt exactly how he feels.
Lawrence, like all humans, has a bad habit or two. He smokes when he drinks and drinks when he smokes, though both of those occurrences only happen two or three times a month. The man might go months without smoking if he happens to catch a cough the day after a night in a pub, fearing the worst, that he might have actually caught lung cancer finally. But, he always comes back to a cigarette because something in his psyche doesn’t care if he dies. That personality trait makes Lawrence a slightly dangerous person when it comes to his closest friends – he’s more willing to take risks and chances with them and he’s been known to cause an accident or two involving scooters and whiskey. Not many know why Lawrence has a reckless streak - perhaps now only his mother and father have any idea why he does the things he does.
Overall, Lawrence is a quiet, passionate, extremely private man, with a few quirks who separates himself socially from those that he teachers and goes home alone almost every night.
Strengths: Lawrence is an exceptional potter and looks amazing covered from his cheeks to his toes in dried white clay. As a teacher, sometimes he struggles to get his point across but delivers information in a way that is easily understandable by anyone who listens to him. He is rarely ever boring in class and keeps his students awake, even though his classes are usually stationed early in the morning. He loves brightly and intensely in a relationship, though that type of love might have only happened once for him and might never return.
Weaknesses: Lawrence doesn’t like to hear criticism of his work, though he doesn’t say much about those who do criticize it. He simply won’t take advice when it comes to art and gets stuck in the same rut often – sometimes it’s a beautiful rut, but sometimes the rut gets ugly. Rence often alienates himself socially and doesn’t work well in groups, usually finding himself on the back burner being brilliant in silence. He has a certain fear of commitment and confrontation and usually backs down from both.
| H I S T O R Y |
Lawrence was born and raised to a Scottish-Irish mother and an Italian father in the rather small, but history filled town of Orvieto in the Terni province of Italy. As a major Etruscan art center, the boy was always surrounded with the richness of half of his heritage and the art associated with it. Perhaps that immersion explains the passion for art that the man developed at an early age, or it might be better explained as an escape from the domestic disputes in his home that also developed at an early age. Lawrence was the first and only child of Josef and Aileen Grimani, and with the physical abuse the two rained on each other, it was probably on a rare chance that he was even born. Though they never laid a hand on him, the two would become embroiled in enormous fights about something someone had said ten years before about someone else and then would find themselves fighting in the front yard.
Rence, always the sensitive child anyway, was disturbed by this behavior. He felt that a man and woman should adore one another and should probably never hit each other, but, the two survived in this manor from his childhood onward and are probably still fighting tooth-and-nail today. In order to push some of what he thought was unnecessary violence from his mind, Lawrence began venturing out into the town he lived in from the time he could walk, but barely talk. Chubby toddler legs somehow always found their way home, usually before his parents even realized he was missing. As he grew older, the boy began to develop a fascination for the grand cathedrals and architecture mixed with art that Orvieto had to offer.
It was a natural progression. Lawrence wasn’t particularly interested or good at many other subjects, but he plugged his way through them well enough to be allowed to continue on in his elective classes. His teachers didn’t think of him as a particularly gifted pupil, but he was good enough at concepts to continue working on his artistic style. It wasn’t until he got close to university age that he actually developed a true artistic style and began to be recognized by the society he was so very passionate about. He had several community shows with other young artists at art galleries around his hometown and even once had a sculpture sell in a gallery in Rome. It filled him with a sense of pride and determination that carried him on through his university years and gave him the confidence to pursue a degree in the art field. During his undergraduate education, Lawrence developed an urge to teach others about the techniques that offered him such solace. Halfway through his degree, he changed his major to art education and continued the physical art classes that gave him a strong, well rounded base of information to draw from.
Upon graduating from his four years of university, the man decided it was time to move out from his family home and found a small studio apartment closer to the university he was attending. Lawrence began to branch out, crawling out from the quiet manner he had always adopted and developing relationships with the other graduate students around him. He became more talkative, more animated, and a generally more happy person than he had been before. Lawrence realized that he had simply been complacent with living a quite, solace filled life as the “tortured artist.” His circles grew through the two years it took him to obtain his master’s degree, but his artist talent seemed to diminish in the face of his social success. Lawrence took the comments with a grain of salt, but felt in his own heart of hearts that suspicion that he simply wasn’t good enough.
At the same college he had been attending for years now, he had become a familiar face and quite engrained in the art department. It was made known that after receiving his degree, he hoped to obtain a teaching position and he was quietly invited to become a teaching assistant at his alma mater. That year, he began teaching first year university students the initial set of skills they would need to become artists and art directors and designers. One girl, an American on an exchange program from the States caught his eye, though he dared not to mention it. He was twenty-four years old, almost a lifetime older than the eighteen-year-old girl – so he simply tried to ignore her.
It didn’t work. Anna, as he knew her name was from the roll-book he completed for the full professor he was shadowing, was enchanting. Different, a bit wild, far from European, the girl intrigued him and soon, he was infatuated with her, despite his best intentions. Despite the fact that he was a teaching assistant and she was a student, a relationship between the two developed. They dated for the first year of her overseas program and then were met with a heartbreaking choice of whether they would continue on with their relationship if she returned to American to finish her art degree, though thousands of miles would be between them. After agonizing weeks of bickering between the pair, Lawrence resigned his position and the pair decided to go ahead with a plan that they had been talking about from the time of their first date.
Lawrence and Anna married. In a quiet ceremony in one of the beautiful, empty, and cavernous cathedrals of Orvieto, Lawrence wore slacks and a white button up shirt while Anna simply wore a tea-length white dress and flowers in her short, pixie cut hair. They were happy, young, and absolutely confused about life and what it had in store for them. Regardless of all of the pressures of adult life, the young couple had each other, and were filled with that silly, newborn love that so many couples have for one another.
On the plane tickets her parents provided for their art school daughter and her knew found Italian husband, Lawrence and Anna came home and left home for the first time, together. Lawrence found a quick job at a community college in the small northeastern state he didn’t quite remember the name of yet and began working immediately while Anna went back to school. Her second semester in college proved harder than the first had been and she began having migraines almost nightly, sometimes to the point where she became weak and nauseated just trying to paint at her easel. It continued for months until she began to lose weight, rather than gain baby weight as her mother suggested it might be. Anna made an appointment and insisted and Lawrence be there, suspecting that the doctor might give her happy news, despite the weight lost.
The news was far from happy and far from hopeful. The doctor diagnosed Anna with glioblastoma, an aggressive, fast moving brain cancer. Scans of her brain revealed an inoperable series of tumors laced across the back of her brain, too close to vital areas to risk doing surgery on. While the doctors insisted that chemotherapy and radiation would help with decreasing the masses, the outlook on her condition was considerably more grim than with other, more treatable forms of cancer.
The Grimani’s remained hopeful throughout Anna’s treatment but after months, the doctors concluded that the tumors were resisting radiation. The medicine was ineffective at treating the woman and in less than a year, she was too sick to leave the hospital. Lawrence stayed with her continuously and lost his job in the process. The pair lived as normally as they could in a hospital room, conversed about their dreams as if they wouldn’t be impeded, and laughed together continuously, despite the fact that Anna’s voice was growing considerably weaker all the while.
Then, it seemed as if Anna was feeling better one day. She had a certain glow about her, and even stated that she felt different – almost as if she wasn’t quite as sick! Lawrence prayed for spontaneous remission, a miracle of sorts, and felt his hopes soar. It was a fabulous day for the couple, both were so happy to be together, and so hopeful for what this sudden uplifting moment in her condition meant.
As they settled in for the night, Anna in her bed, still hooked up to machines and tubes and Lawrence in his plastic covered hospital chair, disheveled but still quite handsome, they held hands. Anna turned to her husband and smiled sweetly as he kissed her hand, then stated wistfully, “I’m so glad I’m going home soon. It’s impossible to paint in a hospital, you know?” Lawrence wondered what, exactly, she meant when she said that and smiled back quizzically, kissed his sick wife on the forehead and tucked her in for the night.
In the early hours of the morning, mechanical screaming jolted Lawrence awake. Within seconds, the lights were blazing in the room he was in and a voice over the intercom was calling for assistance with a code blue. Anna’s heart had stopped beating, the machines reacted to the change, and Lawrence was shuffled out of the room into the bright, white hallway. He paced for what felt like hours after calling her mother and father in a state of delirium until they arrived. Her mother engulfed him in a hug while her father looked at him with the same haunted eyes he, himself, must have had. Somehow, they all knew; especially when a doctor stepped out of the ICU and approached the trio.
Anna’s mother fainted. Lawrence heard the words, but didn’t process them. What was the man talking about when he said that his wife was gone and what did he mean by arrangements? It was preposterous, Lawrence Grimani was simply too young to have a wife. His thoughts raced, but his body somehow comprehended what had happened as his eyes filled with tears and they silently spilled over on to his cheeks.
Somehow, Lawrence changed after the death of his wife. In his mind, he felt that his own indiscretions of dating a woman who should have been simply his student had somehow made her a target for death. His sins had been transferred to her and her death was his fault. Even if the rationalization didn’t make sense, he blamed himself for what had happened to Anna and felt that if he had never loved her, had never married her, she would have simply been another happy college student.
Lawrence mourned for years after Anna passed and seems to still be mourning today. He punishes himself for losing her by eliminating the chance that he might ever lose someone he loves again, even if it means isolating himself from most of the population. It makes him a more focused professor at MMU – even if he is a social pariah.| A P P E A R A N C E |
Tall and lanky, Lawrence Grimani is a slim man with a wiry frame. Often adorned in close fitting clothing that had once been well tailored and expensive, the artist covers his clothing in clay and pain carelessly. He pays little attention to his hair, often rolling out of bed and letting his chestnut locks develop their own style. With light hazel eyes and chiseled facial features, Grimani is a striking man to say the least, though he doesn’t acknowledge it or believe it when people tell him so. He has a messed up sense of self and doesn’t view himself as a handsome man, but more of the homely type.
Lawrence’s smile is definitely his trademark. His straight white teeth and slight crinkles around his eyes brighten his entire demeanor while making him look absolutely boyish. Though it isn’t seen often, his smile is a reward that shows his warm personality. Lawrence has a habit of forgetting to wear appropriate articles of clothing - whether it be shoes or a shirt. He’s often covered in clay or paint and doesn’t seem to understand how others keep themselves so clean. The artist sometimes has charcoal smudged on his cheek and his long hair smeared with paint on at least some of the tips. He does, in fact, take regular long showers - but he doesn’t stay clean for long. His clothing is usually simple and plain and hides a particularly exquisite body beneath it - not that Rence himself would know or care.
| S K I L L S |
Pottery day in Lawrence’s class always proved to be exciting. Today, in fact, a 10th year student had set one of the electric pottery wheels on its highest speed and had then taken her foot off of the pedal when all of the clay began to sling off in slices of wet mud across the room. Lawrence hadn’t been angry that his shirt had a four-inch wide glob of clay across it, he had simply taken it off and replaced it with a soft black t-shirt he had in his office. Lawrence hadn’t been mad that all of the girls in his classroom had to attend their next class with clay in their hair, actually, in a way he found it amusing even though many of them were less than amused. Lawrence had only gotten angry when he noticed the amount of muddy light brown water smeared across his wooden floors when the students stampeded out of the room to their next block of classes. For some reason, the teacher had a thing about keeping his floors clean even when the activities his students practiced in the room were the ones most likely to make them dirty.
Lawrence grumbled under his breath as he walked up the stairs, carrying a bucket of water in one hand and a load of towels over one shoulder. His classroom was so large that it had to have been placed on the top floor of the building, and unluckily enough for him, there seemed to be no elevators here at Somnium Academy. The water sloshed over both sides of the bucket at his side despite all of his efforts to keep it contained and behind him, it trickled in a long trail against the stone steps a few hallways he had cut through. The small sink in his room hadn’t had enough power in it to quickly fill a mop bucket, giving Lawrence the brilliant idea to walk all the way down the stairs and fill it with a water hose the gardeners used to keep the lawn green. He hadn’t expected the climb back up with a five gallon bucket in hand would be so hard. As he rounded a corner between two flights of stairs, he noticed a scuffle on the stairs above him. Lawrence hadn’t noticed the sound of heels clicking against the stone steps until he heard the snap of a shoe heel. He almost laughed at the comical situation he encountered, but kept himself reserved. No one wanted to be laughed at for stumbling up a flight of stairs. In addition to that, he was in no shape to be laughing at anyone because being a man who was winded after walking up so few flights of stairs with a heavy bucket was no laughing matter.
The teacher was afraid that he would have to catch the young woman teetering and tottering so precariously in the middle of the next flight of stairs. His mind began to race, trying to figure out how he would drop the bucket and hold out his hero-like arms to catch her. Luckily, his subconscious fear was put to ease as she steadied herself, then flipped around to sit on the very stair that had unsteadied her. Some perverse notion in the back of his mind slyly regretted that she had accomplished the feat so ladylike in such a short skirt. Lawrence was almost appalled at himself for a moment, mostly because he considered himself a champion of women, one who respected them infinitely and would never be like his father. He preferred to treat women like princesses and adored all of their various habits, even down to the way they brushed their hair or smelled like perfume even when they wore none. Then again, nice guys always tended to finish last, didn’t they? That would be the reason why he had never found a girl who truly convinced him that he was in love with her, always determining that he and his lovers would be better off as friends.
Lawrence’s high cheekbones held a soft blush, mostly from his sneaky thoughts, but one would imagine it was from the overexertion caused by hefting a bucket up stairs. Setting down the bucket as gently as possible, he felt a moment of dismay as it sloshed over the sides, defying him even further.| P L A Y E R |
Name Bri
Age 23 >.>
Gender F
How you found us Greta!
Who else do you play? No one.
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