A 37 day imaginary travelogue of a
trip to Rome (with a few scattered other places such as New York).
This is written to match the journey I am actually taking, and so
each post is concurrent with the more or less actual day my wife and
I are experiencing in Rome.
What day number are we on?: 22
Level of writer's drunkenness (in
real life, scale of 1-10): 1
What am I eating (in real life
again)?: finished a morning coffee, cold press with just a dab of milk.
Map or picture?: For the record it says something like "Agrippa built it", but he didn't. Salumeria just off screen to the right about 25 feet.
Any other notes/Status: my back still hurts. Normally I'd be at work right now. I could not help but insert my present situation into this fantasy future. Maybe it will ward it off and inoculate me. Or maybe it won't but I will be soothed by its familiarity.
Today's Entry:
My back is a little better today. I slept uneasily on our small bed, getting up in the night a lot to peer out our windows. Most of our views are small streetscapes, or across the way to another building. At night, with my pulsing back, it's all less holiday in Rome and more fifties film noir in postwar Europe. Some disastrous spy meeting is going down there any second now, and it will end in two echoing gunshots.
With the day things improve a little. I can stiffly make it to our local market where we need eggs. We cook up a pan of them on our small stove at home. I realize I feel sad as much for the pain as for a fear that I'm letting my wife down. I breathe, and I talk to her.
In the afternoon I can make it even further, all the way to the Pantheon, which is twice as far as Giolitti was yesterday, which is to say a few hundred meters away. The Pantheon is mysteriously quiet today, and so because we have been by it 20 times and not gone in on this trip, we wander in. It really is a tall, lovely space. One doesn't get buildings very often that are allowed to have gaping holes in the ceiling, and the idea that they would last for a couple thousand years despite that is counter intuitive.
It is drizzling out. We sit in a salumeria for a while, nibbling on a plate of meats and cheeses, but after less than an hour I'm too sore and need to go home to lie down. Just walking improves things a little.
I want you to know that I'm not just showing you the glamorous parts of our trip here to make you jealous of my vacation. It really is as amazing as all this.
My back is a little better today. I slept uneasily on our small bed, getting up in the night a lot to peer out our windows. Most of our views are small streetscapes, or across the way to another building. At night, with my pulsing back, it's all less holiday in Rome and more fifties film noir in postwar Europe. Some disastrous spy meeting is going down there any second now, and it will end in two echoing gunshots.
With the day things improve a little. I can stiffly make it to our local market where we need eggs. We cook up a pan of them on our small stove at home. I realize I feel sad as much for the pain as for a fear that I'm letting my wife down. I breathe, and I talk to her.
In the afternoon I can make it even further, all the way to the Pantheon, which is twice as far as Giolitti was yesterday, which is to say a few hundred meters away. The Pantheon is mysteriously quiet today, and so because we have been by it 20 times and not gone in on this trip, we wander in. It really is a tall, lovely space. One doesn't get buildings very often that are allowed to have gaping holes in the ceiling, and the idea that they would last for a couple thousand years despite that is counter intuitive.
It is drizzling out. We sit in a salumeria for a while, nibbling on a plate of meats and cheeses, but after less than an hour I'm too sore and need to go home to lie down. Just walking improves things a little.
I want you to know that I'm not just showing you the glamorous parts of our trip here to make you jealous of my vacation. It really is as amazing as all this.
Okay! I saw the Pantheon! Finally our paths cross. Someone said the hole in the ceiling could, at times, be an opening for a column of light. I was glad that there was still marble inside that the popes didn't take.
ReplyDeleteAh. Well, the first couple times I was in Rome I liked the Pantheon but was more focused on other things. This time it was more or less on our doorstep and I saw it every day for a month. Every single time I saw it it smeared me across the stones. It might be the best building in the world, or I'm just getting emotional.
DeleteI suppose there's still marble inside because they made it a church. Still, I'm not likely to get all up in arms about the Popes and marble seeing as how much I approved of what they tended to do with it.