A Nearly Perfect Day

Yes, I have achieved the nearly perfect day. For me, anyway. I've always had a flair for the melodramatic, but I can literally feel myself falling in love with this city. I've been here three days, and each of those three days I've been looking over my shoulder checking for the movie cameras. There's just so much life and energy here, and I find myself really wanting to talk to the people, and being ticked at how little Italian I know. I can't wait for school to start just so I can learn to speak better, so I can feel more a part of the scene rather than just a passive observer.

Anyway, the day. I decided that I wanted to wander in a different direction today, down toward the center of town. I walked along the Tev, enjoying the early morning traffic. The Romani use their horns with gusto, even at 8:30 in the morning. It was raining when I left, which cut the humidity nicely, and cooled me off after a stuffy night in our otherwise great apartment. Walking through old Trastevere is starting to feel more familiar, and I have landmarks that make the winding maze of streets less intimidating. I crossed the river at one of the pedestrian bridges, the end of which afforded a great view of the Vatican, and as tempted as I was to turn around and run screaming "MICHELANGELO!" at the top of my lungs (think the hysteria the Jonas Brothers induce in 12 year old girls and you're just about there). It's actually a really good thing I didn't.

I stumbled upon some old ruins that were being excavated and through which a path had been cleared, so I walked it. It's astounding (and many others have said this before me... nothing new here) how the old OLD and the new meld so seamlessly in Rome. Everyone passes by these treasures of human history like they were a hot dog stand or something. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating, but the city treats its history with such nonchalance that you can't help but feel wonder that is only heightened by the sheer normalcy of it all.

I continued walking up toward the Victor Emmanuel "Wedding Cake" (you think the French don't like the Eiffel Tower? Heh. Kid stuff), which is really VERY conspicious due not only to its height but to the fact that it's made out of gleaming white marble, while everything around it for miles is made of more golden or grey stone. But before I got there, I suddenly remembered, with quickening excitement, that the VE is right next to this old medieval church which is right next to... yes! The Campadoglio! The Capitoline Hill! When some hoity toity ambassador from somewhere came to Rome in the late 16th Century, he said that he wanted to see the birthplace of Rome's glorious history: The Capitoline Hill. Only problem: The only stuff up there were a few old crusty medieval buildings and some sheep. Embarassing. So who did il Papa get to design a new and grander piazza worthy of la citta eterna?

You guessed it! MICHELANGELO! Basically, it was like if you were a big time Trekkie, with like surgically enhanced Vulcan ears, etc. and someone showed you the Enterprise. Not a copy, not a set, but the real space ship. What would you do? You'd cry. And that is precisely what I did as I stood in the middle of the oval-in-a-trapezoid-NOT-a-circle-in-a-square courtyard and looked up at the Pallazzo della Conservatore. I looked like a psycho grinning idiot with tears in my eyes. And to make things even better, inside this building and its twin is a museum. And it's got a lot of really incredible, renouned works, including some of the earliest Carravaggios, an entire room of Correggio and the Torso Belvedere as well as the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelieus, a copy of which stands in the courtyard outside as its centerpiece and which was only allowed to survive the Counter-Reformation because the big Catholic muckety-mucks thought it was Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome... are my Vulcan ears showing?

Anywho, I could go on forever about the museum, but I'll continue to after, when I actually did make it all the way around the Wedding Cake and to the Forum, Thaedran's Column, the Arch of Constantine... you could say that I cried again, and you would be right. I couldn't help noticing, while I was in my reverential quandry, so high up on Cloud 9 that I could basically see all the way to 568 BC, that not everyone shares my awe of what the hand of man hath wrought... or whatever. While I was in the museum and then wandering around in the Forum, etc., I actually heard people complaining "Okay, we've been here twenty minutes! Come on! We're already half an hour behind schedule!"

For real. Snap a photo and move on. I don't understand that. You're in a country where everything shuts down from one to three each afternoon. Where do you possibly have to go that's so important that you can't savor this experience? I think that's what I'm learning most about the way the Romani, and maybe all the rest of Italy too, do things. You can have an incredible energy, blare your horn loudly at a Vespa while talking on your cell phone on your way to work, but still take time to really luxuriate in something good. Wine, art, an afternoon at the Forum... listen to me. I sound like an idiot. I've only been here three days, so what the hell do I know? There's just such a vibe here... I don't know. It seems like the Italians take time to really DO things, SEE and TASTE them. It seems to me a richer way to live.

I went to orientation for school in the afternoon... informative, but since nothing starts until Monday, not very pressing. Afterwards I wound my way up to the Gianucuolo again to read and to admire these incredible breathtaking vistas of the city. When an Italian guy (about 30) sat down next to me and asked me if I wanted to go for a ride on his scooter, I decided to adios. I got to watch the sun setting up there before this happened, though. Surreal-ly beautiful. Walking back down the hill in the dusk, I stopped to watch this giant Amazon woman in silver spike heels and her camera crew shoot a car commerical next to a fountain... entertaining to say the least. The director, who was (I am not making this up) wearing a little black beret, yelled STOHP! every take at the same time... I don't think they're done yet!

I found my way back to Trestevere for a late night pizza and gelatto, then back to the apartment. Tras at night is still full of barking dogs and screaming, laughing kids in the playground and the noise from the public fountains on the street corner. The sky right now is this incredible dark dark blue. All I can say is: if you're not just about to explode from joy when you're walking around this city... well... you're just not paying attention.