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?: 31
Level of writer's drunkenness (in
real life, scale of 1-10): one, it is morning now.
What am I eating (in real life
again)?: had my cold press coffee breakfast
Map or picture?: Early days of the cat sanctuary
Any other notes/Status: In real life (this me writing in italics), we are now exactly one week away from our departure on our 36 day trip. I'm hoping a last push of writing will finish off all my blog preparations today and I will have 47 new blog posts scheduled to go. At that point I will go back to working on my elaborate self designed guide book, which is still not finished.
Today's Entry:
One can time travel anywhere, and most of us do. Not real time travel in the Science Fiction novel sense, but as close as we get. But some places are better for time travel than others. I've always liked wilderness for it, especially wilderness with a lot of stone; the mountains, the Grand Canyon. Something about reflecting on how that rock has just been sitting there. It was sitting there when I was a child, and it was sitting there a thousand years ago, and it was sitting there exactly, almost, as it is beyond a distance of time I am capable of really imagining. It's a reflection that hurtles me towards god, unmoors the present moment, unsticks me in time.
Rome is another brilliant place for traveling in time, maybe even better. It has the advantages of the above, but all of it on a human scale. It is full of its own built in reference points. For instance here, near the cat sanctuary at the Largo Argentina, is the spot where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Right here! Bloody hell. And don't think he didn't have it coming Mr. Dictator for life. So how, faced with this, can one not go skidding across the years? Or this one; they say this restaurant opened 350 years ago. I consider that I have an amazing amount of former co-workers at the library I've worked at for 22 years. Imagine having worked for 350 years at a restaurant: "And there was that Giuseppe guy who was obsessed with how clean the plates were. Strange guy, just worked here for a couple years in the late 1700's, you know, when all that stuff was going on in France. Do you remember him? Oh, right, you didn't start working here until the mid 1800's. Hey, Paolo, do you remember Giuseppe and the plates?"
"Hell yeah, I remember Giuseppe! He had that hopeless crush on Margerita."
"No!"
"You didn't know that. Totally, huge."
"Well I had no idea! Fascinating!"
Maybe time travel isn't the exact right name for it. Maybe it's imagination.
One can time travel anywhere, and most of us do. Not real time travel in the Science Fiction novel sense, but as close as we get. But some places are better for time travel than others. I've always liked wilderness for it, especially wilderness with a lot of stone; the mountains, the Grand Canyon. Something about reflecting on how that rock has just been sitting there. It was sitting there when I was a child, and it was sitting there a thousand years ago, and it was sitting there exactly, almost, as it is beyond a distance of time I am capable of really imagining. It's a reflection that hurtles me towards god, unmoors the present moment, unsticks me in time.
Rome is another brilliant place for traveling in time, maybe even better. It has the advantages of the above, but all of it on a human scale. It is full of its own built in reference points. For instance here, near the cat sanctuary at the Largo Argentina, is the spot where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Right here! Bloody hell. And don't think he didn't have it coming Mr. Dictator for life. So how, faced with this, can one not go skidding across the years? Or this one; they say this restaurant opened 350 years ago. I consider that I have an amazing amount of former co-workers at the library I've worked at for 22 years. Imagine having worked for 350 years at a restaurant: "And there was that Giuseppe guy who was obsessed with how clean the plates were. Strange guy, just worked here for a couple years in the late 1700's, you know, when all that stuff was going on in France. Do you remember him? Oh, right, you didn't start working here until the mid 1800's. Hey, Paolo, do you remember Giuseppe and the plates?"
"Hell yeah, I remember Giuseppe! He had that hopeless crush on Margerita."
"No!"
"You didn't know that. Totally, huge."
"Well I had no idea! Fascinating!"
Maybe time travel isn't the exact right name for it. Maybe it's imagination.
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