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)