Prompt: Each day in Rome we set out for a new destination, yet even with the immense historic and multicultural vastness of this city, we inevitably cross over our tracks on the way to new places. What do we see that is new? How do we observe places that we have seen before and the ways that we have already seen them? On your visit in Rome, take care to not only get to know parts of the city, and how they connect to one another, but find new routes to the same destination. See what works for the people of the city, what works for the tourists, the new immigrants, younger people, older people, bus riders, versus cinquecento drivers versus walkers. Explore that which you thought you knew.
--- --- ---
I'm not sure of how long of a walk it was. I lost track in the month they gave us to do it.
--- --- ---
It was a tiring night before, because it was awake. Now that I woke to the day, it too was tired. Still, somewhere from the bellows of my stomach I drew a voice, as though a pail from the depths of a dusty old well. The waters of Rome revived me and, in speaking of them, in raising my voice as though it was important and sharing my precious water with the class, I found the day that the rays of sun had brought to the busy intersection of Largo Susana.
After gathering to listen to the words of the waters of Rome, we congregated around the water basins, for a peek, a sip, and we set out together on a pilgrimage into the center: home. However, within two turns down the road and a few handfuls of explanations, the determined mass had scattered into little wandering groups, curving around through the circular cores of the city's trunk.
I was a solitary group, departed from the Via Nazionale and, in my steamy jeans weighed down with soot and sweat, I felt of lighter step. I floated along red and orange walls, side streets stained with the shadows of exhaust and towering walls of coral cracked cement, and I jumped. My white American-made running boots released me and my anchoring jeans from the sidewalk and, for a moment, we drifted to the wall; as feet tapped wall, my tired limbs felt a sudden strength, and a taut spring simultaneously pressed us back toward the horizontal plane. It pressed us back down to the ground and, in our weight and force, we moved toward the earth, as if in mutual agreement with the spring in the air.
I knew then...I had got somewhere. I had been walking a long time, with the group, down the street from the group, floating with toes pressed to the wall next to the group. We had walked out together and now, I would take myself home.
--- --- ---
It was the first day and, we went to the beginning. It may have been a cow pasture once, beneath a river often, a mud quarry for the most part. But in the form we saw it in, it was the beginnings of Rome. This was where lives were judged, where the gods decided the fate of the city, where citizens traded for their daily meals. Here rolled the fresh produce and the spoils of war marched in red and gold.
We set out from the Campo Di Fiori, headed through the Jewish Ghetto past Alexander VII. From there, a short uphill climb took us to the foot of the Campidoglo. Where the shallow, slippery steps once carried horses, we now moved into the presence of Marcus Aurelius, and with his permission passed between the beautifully shell-laden buildings of white columns and pink stucco. As the armored Roma pointed us to the left, and the postcard man tried to slow us up, we continued to descend, out, to the balcony, over, the beginnings of - Rome the City.
The Forum was a ridge of marble peaks and valleys of rubble and dust. I had seen it no more than from far above and from there on the Janiculum hill the Forum was no more than a balancing act of bones and limestone. Now we hovered among it, drawn into the gravity of the grey marbled boulders. We sunk down the steps; the columns towered overhead.
--- --- ---
To see the whole city of Rome all at once: that was surreal.
It happened in the night, fog of flaring red torches pouring smoke northwest overhead, the ranks of heads bobbing and thrusting forward further into the depths of the monumental mass. A motor rumbled by, parting that insomnial sea as a balancing act of drumming dwarves bounced on a seesaw from the truckbed. The golden sparks ceased to fly through the red smoke as the Carnival troop marched off into the blaring haze behind the truck. We wandered along a wide road littered with drunks and drifters, towards a purple glow emanating from the Colosseum.
On our right was a glade of statues on the forum slopes. A path led down through the gloomy blue into the ancient center. We tried to walk in, but the fence kept us to the road. We wandered on into the purple-lit march.
--- --- ---
It all slopes down onto the main causeway: this is the place where the feet of conquering armies must have marched where, pilgrims neared the crest of the scallop shell where, masses of citizens shuffled - each to beg just one small favor. It booms and belches with the new vehicles of Rome. I have nike-made running shoes on, and surely am of lesser purpose. I can feel it in the bagginess of my clothing, my uneven steps, my undirected fatigue. I am a wanderer in excess in this city - not in search of material weight but something, something old that is also thicker than mere cream. The road still shouts from exhaust pipes and car horns.
A spontaneous turn right and, the wide stretch of road is suddenly cut by a twisting alleyway. At the opposite end of the sidestreet, one can see the sunlight as it dips into the greying courtyard, sidling among the cool shade. I go there. Turning around to face the street at the other end, it is quiet. Just a few steps and, this magical garden of gates doors and windows, is suddenly under a peaceful charm.
My eyes relax here and, my feet move on. This is Rome, I am a wanderer and, neighborhoods like this, where old Sicilians and young Trasteverians reside, these are places for me only to look at. The road booms at the sides of my head again as I move back into the causeway.
This is the place where the Tiber turns, where, its brief east-west path becomes unpredictable. I cannot follow the river, so I follow the mob. Their street points to the chariot racer's delight and the savage theatre, the colosseum, and it sweeps me away from the Acqua Felice at my back. We speak of water no more, rather walking along the fenceline, past the yellow fringed vendors of bubbly canned syrup and stale beans. I walk along the fenceline of the Forum, the fenceline that makes a barrier of what was once a city center. And finally, remembering this long journey, I follow the steps in.
This is not the home to emperors, farmers, judges or shepherds any longer. The travelers that arrive here do not seek to reap riches from this center of the world. They are not wanderers. This is the home of the tourists, lost by definition: by the clear sign on their endless receipts of guidebook, map and tour guide purchases. And I, a self-admitting wanderer, lost at my very root and therefore temporarily found, I am free to drift among them.
I do this with a guise of decisiveness. Anyone willing to doubt my certainty by looking at my hairdo and shoes is sure to be dispelled by my dress clothes and assertive pace. I will not be further lost in the labeling of strangers! I know what I am, and so I strive to speak.
Those same stones we covered slowly in the sweat of the sun: today I am baked by the blue heat again. I cross them, pass the great basilica and the ancient senate. The columns loom above, great teeth clenching the forum to the ground, and I gaze up at their soaring vertical grooves. My line of sight bounces smoothly up and down as I head into the arch's noontime shadow.
This is the way that the path curves to the right. This is the way that the glinting black cobblestone squares curve into the foot of the earth-red stairs. This is the way that we climb to the top, two steps at a time, past the Japanese photographer and the English chatting queen. This is the way that I climb, now alone, met at the pinnacle by the familiar twenty-postcards-for-one-euro-man. This is where the two workers in blue shirts dirty the fountain with the laboring dust from their hands. This is where the top is.
With the view from the Campidoglo
I can see so much and know
I can see very little.
All is in the walls
And I descend the steps.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment