Ekphrasis 2

Juno and Jupiter were just about to lay together. He looked at her longingly as she leaned on the bed over him. They were both in a state of half undress, their robes pulled down by gravity. She had a breast band tied just under her bust that she looked to be just about to take off. The blue of Juno’s dress emphasized the paleness of her complexion and the rosiness of her cheeks. In contrast, Jupiter was as tanned as his golden robe that had fallen down to his waist. He looked older than Juno by far; he had a bushy salt and pepper beard paired with rather long wavy hair. Juno looked like she couldn’t be past the age of 25. Jupiter was pulling on her leg, revealing it from under her dress and showing off the slender ankles that Homer used to wax about. In the shadows of both the gods stood their animal counterparts. Nestled under the leg of Jupiter was his eagle and behind Juno hid her peacock. Behind Jupiter, seemingly unknown to either gods, waited a putto figure. Maybe it was Cupid. He was stringing his bow, probably in preparation to shoot the couple, and his quiver full of arrows rested on the bed next to him. One other putto could be seen through the window emerging from the clouds a ways away. He too had a bow in hand, though it seemed he was lacking his arrows. Perhaps this was the infamous scene of Juno seducing Jupiter during the battle at Troy, where she was attempting to give the Achaeans the upper hand in battle, if even for just a moment.

(Giove e Giunone by Antonie Carracci 6/6/19)

Giornale 3

I arrived to the church 15 minutes before it opened, so I decided to sit out in courtyard under the portico. It was a hot day and I had headed straight from the Via Appia to Santa Cecilia in the hopes of getting done with my last giornale early. The bells started to ring at 3:50 and I thought maybe it signified the church opening soon. While sitting there I took off my coat and tried to reorganize my backpack. My site report booklet was in pieces and I was trying to put it back in some semblance of order, but I don’t think I was very successful. A number of people had already gathered under the portico like I had in preparation for the opening of the church. While there I decided to read the Wikipedia page for the church, since after going into Santa Maria in Trastevere I wish I had known more before I went in. 

As I was reading a black Mercedes decorated for a wedding pulled up along the curb next to me; here was a white chiffon strip of fabric tied around the side mirrors and hooked under the hood. A woman in a belted metallic navy blazer and a long pleated skirt got out of car. I realized sitting there that there was a photographer in the entrance of the church taking photos of those getting out of the car and I was definitely within the shot. I debated getting up and out of the photos but if they didn’t care I was there why should I. However people started gathering around the car, therefore also gathering around me, and I really felt that I should move. Shortly after though a nicely dressed man and little girl talked to the driver, and the driver pulled the car around to the other side of the courtyard and parked. Sitting there I began to worry that this was part of a wedding party and that the church wouldn’t be open. 

I was so distracted by the possible wedding party that I didn’t even notice the doors to the church opened five minutes early and people were already filing in. Once I stepped inside though there was no doubt o we whether or not there was a wedding happening here; the inside of the church was fully set up for a wedding. There were a number of chairs set up with bouquets of roses lining the central aisle. The rest of the tourists looked very confused as to what was happening, but almost everyone immediately went to the chapel in the back of the church and I followed for some reason. Next to the chapel there was a nun at the alter fiddling with the placement of the altar cloth. The church had similar mosaic to the one at San Clemente with twelve lambs flanking a central lamb with a halo. Suddenly I got pushed aside with everyone else as people made way for the nun walking off of the apse. 

I made my way across the church and light a candle for grandma as I always do in front of a statue of the Madonna and Child. Looking back at the alter I wondered why the statue of Cecilia was lying with her face down. It was quite unlike any other memorial carving of a saint I had seen. At the front of the church grooms phone started going off and he ran outside. I hoped everything was going okay for him today. After seeing that I decided to leave since I didn’t want to crowd the church and make the wedding preparations even more difficult. While leaving I could see in the corner of the church the nun looking on disapprovingly at the women in their non church appropriate wedding outfits. 

(Santa Cecilia, 6/1/19)

Giornale 2

We all got off the 280 bus at the Ponte Sisto and made our way to the Piazza Trilussa. Shelby and I stopped in front of the Trilussa statue and both agreed it would be funny to get a group photo all copying the pose. While we’re walking down a side street to get to the basilica Emma stopped in an English bookstore and Shelby and I waited outside, since the store was rather crowded and the rest of the group went inside. After their bookstore needs were met, we continued down the road and and after turning a corner Santa Maria in Trastevere was in front of us. I don’t think Emma was paying too much attention last time we were in the square because she seemed so stunned by the façade of the church. Earlier in the day I looked up the hours of the church, and we were arriving in the middle of the daily Mass. Worried that we would be interrupting and not allowed in or kicked out, we headed across the piazza to the entrance of the basilica. While we were walking I saw tourists milling about the portico of the church so I took it as a sign people were allowed in. In front of the fountain of the piazza a man was making those spray paint pictures of the Colosseum and the whole area smelled of spray paint.

Before the entrance to the church there was a large sign showing no cell phones allowed and everyone who didn’t bring a journal to write in panicked; I just switched out my phone for my journal. As soon as we opened the doors into the church the smell of incense hit me. The sound of the priest preaching was interrupted when one of the other tourists taking photos of the church dropping their phone. I thought to myself that this basilica was definitely different from last one, Santa Sabina, I was in. It was so much more ornate, with a number more mosaics, statues, marble facing, and gold. There was a lot gold. While still standing in the side aisle I tried to listen in on the Mass to recognize the prayers, though it seemed my Italian wasn’t up to par. I moved on to the nave of the basilica just in time to see a part of the service I recognized, the extending of the sign of peace. In a moment of silence the priest blessed the Eucharist and I watched the people line up to receive the body and blood of Christ. Emma kept walking up to me and asking what was happening during the service, which I thought was funny because I was by no means the expert. It did make me think thought back to the last time I went to Mass. I went with my grandmother and it was a rather similar experience since I didn't understand anything then either; it was a Hispanic church and the whole service was in Spanish. Someone sitting in the pew’s phone then went off just as the service was ending. The bells began to ring and I could hear them coming from this church and nearby churches. Tourists shuffling out tired of watching the mass creaked open the old wooden doors to the church.

I walked to the other aisle now that the Mass was over and light a candle for grandma like I always do when I’m in a church. I noticed a statue covered in in notes next to the candle stand and wondered what it was. The paper slips were for prayers, as the blank slips leftover said “preghiera” on them. The statue was a monk holding a baby Jesus, but there was no additional signage indicating why people left prayers here specifically. As I walked around the church I noticed a number of popes like Pope Innocent II buried there. In the rear chapel there was a worn icon of the Madonna and Child and it made me think of the Achiropita, where the bottom of the painting was worn away and all that was left was the canvas. The rest of the group started to head out so I turned away from the painting and followed them back out into the piazza.

(Santa Maria in Trastevere 5/29/19)

Voyeur 2

She was sitting on the edge of the fountain looking at her phone. It was her one brief moment of respite in a busy morning. It was not only Sunday, but also Republic Day. They went to church earlier in the morning and in two hours they were to head over to her parent’s house for lunch. She had brought her daughter’s stroller, filled with toys, next to her and her husband so they could keep an eye on it while her daughter played. Looking up she saw her daughter standing next to her little pink bike in the middle of the piazza crying with her helmet on the ground. She quickly got up and hurried over to her to see what was the matter. It seemed her helmet had come off and she couldn’t figure out how to get it back on. After her daughter stopped crying and gets back up on her bike she looked around to find where her husband had been this whole time and he was still sitting by the stroller on his phone, not even realizing she had been gone this whole time. Deciding her daughter was done with the bike for a while she picked her up and brought her back over to her husband and the stroller, grabbing out a toy picnic basket and doll, both in the same shade of pink as the bike, and walking back over to a shaded green space across from the fountain. She sat her daughter down with her toys and then took her own seat next to her on the curb, once again pulling out her phone.

(Piazza Cavour 6/2/19)

Momentary Blindness 2

I could feel my pants growing damp from the accumulated water on the bench I was sitting on, even with a raincoat laid out underneath me. There was a faint earthy smell, the kind of smell you only get after rain, accompanied by an even fainter smell of oranges, which makes sense considering the place is called the Giardino degli Aranci, or the Orange Garden. It made me think of the Charles Baudelaire poem of the smell of green tamarinds perfuming the air. The crunch of the pebble walkways under foot followed people around as they made their way through the garden. I could hear a mom walking past with her kids as they complained about not being able to sit in the stroller. A man to my left is talking in some Slavic language, to no response from the others in the park. The birds had come back out after the rain and a myriad of chirps and squawks were heard from up above. The trees they sat in moved in the slightest breeze and would release droplets of water in spurts upon those below them; they would hit the puddles and the pebbles, and even fall on me. I continuously had to wipe off the pages of my journal from the water falling on it, leaving my hand and sleeve damp. I shifted in my seat and the raincoat I was sitting on slipped off the bench and onto the ground, leaving nothing in between the cold marble and me. The breeze picked up again and the trees dropped water onto my upturned face. The person sitting to my right idly asks if it's still raining, without really expecting an answer.

(Giardino degli Aranci 5/27/19)

Ekphrasis 1

He was triumphantly holding the bunch of grapes he found up for all to see. The porphyry marble perfectly mimicked the color of red grapes at the height of the picking season. The youthful faun assumed the stereotypical pose of heroic nudity, both his arms pushing out against the world with his head looking up at his prize; there was only a small cape draped around his shoulders, showing off his tail at the small of his back, and a curved walking stick in his other hand. It’s fair to say he earned his pridefulness though. He had been searching for the perfect bunch for a while. With the other bunches of grapes draped across his left arm he finally had enough to take back and make a new batch of wine. Maybe that’s why he looked so excited by his find. The basket to put them in was even placed nicely next to his feet, the lid slightly ajar already loaded with grapes, ready to be filled the rest of the way up and to be taken away. Next to him a stump sat where he had hung his pan flute up for safe keeping while he went on his search. He had to make sure not to forget it. The only thing to spoil his moment of triumph was a goat that had been following him around for the last hour hoping for food. As soon as the faun found the last bunch of grapes he needed, the goat started bleating in annoyance at not getting a snack. The faun, however, was determined not to give in to the goat, for wine was much more important.

(Statue of a Faun, Capitoline Museum 5/26/19)

Giornale 1

As I was heading down the Via della Conciliazione from the Vatican I stopped on the sidewalk to listen to two men playing guitars outside the Castel Sant’Angelo; I threw 2 Euros into their guitar case and headed in towards the entrance. As soon as I walked in and turned the corner I saw the long line for ticket office. A woman kept trying to usher people who had reserved tickets into the other line, but no one there had thought to buy tickets ahead of time. I could feel the back of my neck burning as I was standing in the hot sun and felt the sweat run down my back. One man tried to get past the ticket line to bathroom without buying ticket and he was sent outside. I had just come to the museum after climbing St. Peter's dome and my feet were tired, so standing out in the sun on the hard stone was not something I was happy about. I rubbed the back of my neck and pulled my hand away to smell the nickel from my necklace, rapidly degrading while soaked in sunscreen and sweat. Soon enough I got through the ticket line and hurried to the entrance of the museum, constantly keeping an eye on the time to make sure I’d be to the Colosseum metro by 2 PM. As I walked the round of the building to the stairs an American couple in front of me bickered about where their tour started and how the other was at fault for not planning properly. Sometimes I really do get why people get tired of American tourists. I walked up the stairs and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light when I walked into the Bastion of San Marco. As I walked further up the stairs my eye was caught by an old catapult on top of the bastion. I wonder if it had ever been used or if it was just for show. I looked over the edge of the wall into the gardens and I realized I had only really seen the gardens at night, and that it was much more welcoming during the day. As I pass through the museum I tried to read the Latin inscriptions documenting something Pope Clement X did to this building, but I couldn’t really make anything of it. He would have had to have changed much of the old mausoleum to get it to what it looked like now in its present form. Another classic example of something surviving in Rome because it’s been repurposed. I wondered what this place would have looked like when it was built before all the marble was taken, and before it was made into a fortress. My best guess was something like the mausoleum of Augustus, surrounded by cyprus and dominating the skyline.

Rounding the corner to the other bastion I was blinded by sun. As my eyes adjusted I barely caught a pigeon nearly knocking a guy over, and he had to heavily duck to avoid being hit. The birds in this city really are fearless. I made my way up another small staircase into the courtyard with an angel sculpture. I guess this was the original angel that sat atop the fortress. I continued walking and passed the café of which I was tempted to eat at, but I stopped myself because I wanted to try Grekos for lunch. After encountering another set of stair I slightly regretted going to Castel Sant’Angelo after climbing St. Peter’s Basilica, but what was I going to do at that point? Turn around? Walking through some of the chambers I thought how some of the wall paintings were very reminiscent of the third or fourth style of Roman frescoes and wondered if the Pope and his designers were trying to imitate that.

As I started on the descent from the fortress I saw fragments of marble sculpture from Hadrian’s tomb depicting a bull’s head, and it made me think of the inside relief of the Ara Pacis we saw two days before. I didn’t read anything in the museum about it but maybe the mausoleum was a place of religious ceremonies and sacrifice if it included a bull’s head motif. Before I was able to leave I was stopped by two tourists taking photos in the stairwell and not letting anyone pass until they got the photo they wanted. Again, it was moments like these that made me really sympathize with the native Romans who have to deal with people like this all the time. While leaving the fortress I could hear a different musician playing the flute from the entrance of the museum. Walking out through the garden I checked my phone and saw it was just noon, and at that moment I heard the cannons on the Janiculum Hill go off.

(Castel Sant’Angelo 5/24/19)

Voyeur 1

The clock struck 1 pm and it was time to make the rounds again. Every hour on the hour he had to get into his truck and circle St. Peter’s Square picking up the overflowing trash bags as he goes. His partner got into the passenger seat and  they began at the left side of the square. The Swiss Guard let them through but they were immediately stopped by a group of tourists who were too consumed with taking photos of St. Peter’s that they didn’t notice the large turck trying to get by. He really hated dealing with tourists, but there wasn’t a single day that goes by working here where the square is not packed by noon.They made it to the first trash can and there were two bags of trash piled up next to it. He stopped the truck and his partner quickly got out and threw the bags into the back. The air conditioning was broken and he was sweating profusely sitting there in the cab of the truck while his partner went out and threw the trash into the back. His neon orange nylon works pants were suffocating as he took off his baseball cap and fanned himself with it. They made their way slowly through the crowd stopping at each trash can until they got to the choke point of just before the front of the obelisk where the fences guiding where tourists could go opened. He had to stop the truck and honk at the crowds of people in order to clear a path. Onward they went past the lines of people waiting to enter the basilica until reaching the other side and were let inside by the guard. In another hour, he thought, I get to do this all again.

(St. Peter’s Square 5/23/19)

Momentary Blindness 1

As I sit down on the curb of the street there’s a faint smell of cigarette ashes that comes to me; someone must have smoked here recently and thrown the butt on the ground nearby. Someone else brushes my side as they settle down next to me, and I can hear them flip open a book and the scribble of their pen as they begin to write. An American man walks in front of me talking about a favorite restaurant in the area as the clicking of a woman in heels follows him; they step on the cover of a manhole and it wobbles. The wind picked up for a moment and the pages of my journal tried to flip as I held them down. I can hear the camera of a group of girls behind me click each time they take a photo. I assume they’re taking photos in front of the fountain that I can hear running behind me and feel the spray of it on my back when the wind blows right. A group of young French speaking boys hurry past me and I hear them talking about the large doors of Sant’Agnese in Agone. The boys running past made me think of a phrase in French, “le fond de l’air est frais”, that translates to the back of the air is cold. It’s usually applied to the change of seasons when it’s warm but there’s still a subtle chill in the air. I think that the phrase perfectly captures what it was like to sit there on this mid-May afternoon; the air felt warm enough but there was a slight breeze that kept it cool. The persistent squeaking of the vendors advertising their throwable noisy toys drew me out of my reverie and back into the piazza.

(Piazza Navona, 5/21)