Rome day 27

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?: 27

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): just the one. It's still morning here in fantasy land.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: Nothing. It's very rare that I eat before noon.

Map or picture?: a lemoncello display

Any other notes/Status: My back hurts and I'm missing another day of work. It is strange to miss so many days sick on the cusp of taking 5 weeks of vacation. 

Oh, you didn't know I was going on a vacation? 

Yes, I hardly mention it.

Today's Entry:

Yesterday we roamed the city broadly, almost at a distance. Today we are in everywhere. The more galleries and shops and cafes we go into the more natural it becomes, and so we wander into every little store nearly as a matter of course, or just to say "Buon giorno!" once again.

And now I am very good at saying "Buon giorno!" And there is the story of me and the Italian language. The hundred words I learned (again) before coming here are, with a few necessary additions, the same hundred I know now. The difference is in how well I speak them. They are readily available to me. I do not think "six" and translate to "seis". No, I need that number and speak it directly in Italiano. Before I knew 100 words. Now I speak 105 words.

Of course, the down side to this is it tricks the local people into thinking I will know more Italian than I do. Which is to say they conclude I might know anything else, which I don't. "Mi dispiace, non capisco." "I'm sorry. I don't understand." And I can say it beautifully, almost like a native speaker. After all, I have had much practice.

Rome day 26

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?: 26

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): 1.5

What am I eating (in real life again)?: I had an apple half an hour ago and it would feel churlish to keep that from you.

Map or picture?: The river in a city falling apart forever.

Any other notes/Status: How ya doin' so far?

Today's Entry:

Today was different again. All of the sudden each one of our days here is more different than the last. I think we're flooding out into this city. Washed out by the collection of days and the rain. The night was full of rain. Today it drizzled. We paid it no mind and we walked. I don't know what possessed us. Usually we come home after lunch for a rest. But we had a good meal of lamb chops and pasta and wine and a little pile of broccoli with pecorino. We had been walking in the morning, and now we just kept going. We didn't go in very many places, almost none really. We went through the Borghese park and swept down through Quirinale and the edge of Termini. We floated back behind the Colosseum. We were on the Appian Way for awhile, then cut madly across areas we knew not, pushing towards the river. Then we just walked up the river for a long time. Talking, quiet, peaceful, sad. At six we were home, too tired to do anything else, wondering what took us over.

Here is my guess. We have been taking in the city for weeks. We could not take in any more. We did not know what we had. So we circled it, and we let it be.

Rome day 25

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?: 25

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): I'm at about two maybe, a little more even. I'm drinking some shiraz. It's sort of back medication.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: Wine is also food!

Map or picture?: Just another street we keep walking down. Retrobottega is on the right, maybe slightly behind us.

Any other notes/Status: I suggested that it might be time to jump the shark on these posts, but was urged to keep to the naturalism. Okay, I'm close enough to the end. Plus this particular upcoming post theme was suggested by my wife, and I liked it.

Today's Entry:


Now that my back is barely manageable (I think it is very seriously trying to teach me something) I am able to approach Rome in a more normal manner. So we have gone back to our regular tourist rounds and methods, but have suddenly been surprised to find everything has changed. We've been here for three weeks. Disregarding that we leave in a week as irrelevant, somehow the city itself has crossed over for us. Somehow we have ceased to entirely be visitors.  For whatever this tiny space of time is, we live here!

Yes, it's delicate, and the bubble will imminently pop, but as my back is urgently trying to instruct me: now is now, and it is whole and complete. So here we are now, living here.

An example:

There is so much I have not managed to mention in this journal of our trip. Each day I have written about has been a mere highlight of one or two events from that day. But each day we have been here there have been a dozen things I could have discussed instead, but didn't. 

For instance, there is Retrobottega.

A couple blocks from our house is a sort of slow food fast food joint- Retrobottega. Exuberant chefs behind the counter make lovely food for you to ferry off to your own table to enjoy in peace. They are friendly, the food is exceptional and moderate in price, and some of it fits in the short range of what we can eat. It is more about food than it is about Italian food. I'm pretty sure we have been here now ten times. Do they know us? Sure, why not. We know them. But we both observe the forms, the customer patron relationship. We order at the counter like any tourists and we all hold it as a secret that we love it there and keep coming back.

But today that all fell down. They decided to acknowledge that we live there. They offered us our regular orders. "Do you want your usual." They said, in so many accented words. They made suggestions exclusive to us and treated us like old friends. Suddenly we were in. "The eggs?" Yes. To the man who wears the AS Roma shirt I say the secret word: Salah, their speedy wing. He grimaces. I, not knowing but a shred of Italian, understand him, knowing already the pain of being a Roma soccer fan. 

It's not just Retrobottega though. An old lady in our apartment greets us on the stairs.  It's a grunt of a greeting, but she has stopped merely expecting us to be gone. Anywhere in the city we stop even thinking about how to get home when it's time, our feet just take us there. We have relaxed. And perhaps the surface joys and thrills have faded, the thrill of just being in Rome, but only the tineiest bit. And with that, the love for this more normal and true to itself place has grown deeper, and there is a Rome tattoo, written in fanciful largess, into our hearts.

Rome day 24

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?:  24

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): 1, man, the relevance of this one has fallen off the map, although, I could use a drink.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: I'm fasting forever!

Map or picture?: See that little door in the center of the picture? That, that is seriously the entrance. It explains why there were no tall people in the club and why it was so hard to find when we went, which was at night in near total darkness.

Any other notes/Status: There is a great deal to do in the run up to our trip, but between back injuries and this series of 37 "speculative" posts I feel a little like I'm falling behind. As I like to say right now "I'll be okay." Of course the trick with that sort of thing is to believe it. Everybody with me now "We'll be okay." and then... believe.

Today's Entry:


So the big news from today is that we went to a late night club to see jazz! It was... pretty good. We went to a little half hidden place not far from the Spanish Steps, called Gregory's. We had drinks and listened to a perfectly sincere trio for a couple of hours. It was lovely to just sit and listen to music, not something we have done for awhile. The place was a little sadder than I imagined. Tired and half empty. Maybe its the time of week. The people were a bit cold to us, but warmed up as the night went on and as we drank more. Maybe we were the ones who warmed up? Also I think my new, soft, brown leather jacket that I bought used yesterday swayed their hearts. I'm pretty sure the trio's bass player kept glancing over at my jacket. Maybe he coveted it? Maybe he used to own it. If so he must be regretting that parting now!

Oddly the bass player was the best of the trio. I would not normally imagine that I'd ever be sitting in a jazz club thinking "More bass solos!" But there we were.





 

Rome day 23

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?: 23

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): 1

What am I eating (in real life again)?: naught

Map or picture?: Just a random building face (sorry I didn't get more of the door).

Any other notes/Status: no

Today's Entry:

You didn't tune in to my exciting account of a long journey to Rome to hear about my back pain day after day, so I'll try in keep it to 67 percent of the time under the assumption that you did tune in to my exciting account of a long journey to Rome to hear about my back pain, but only two-thirds of the time. Whether that is true or not today we are focusing on other things.

We went to stores today, all afternoon cruising around stores, clothes, junk, art supplies, paper, more clothes, antiques. It was all a perfectly fine way to be in Rome, just milling about the city. It's so full of details here, little carvings in the buildings, glowing stucco, run of the mill ornate doors from 250 years ago that are just, well, doors, but that doesn't mean I can't look at them and feel a small thrill.

I never seriously thought I'd buy anything until I did, a beautiful, faded, very thin, used leather jacket. I am wearing it now. I think it has magical curative properties for my back, not that we're talking about that.





  

Rome day 22

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.

Rome day 21

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?: 21, an especially important day because I have officially switched from spelling out the numbers to using official numerals.

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): one, oops, 1.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: Nothing, it's almost bed time.

Map or picture?: I think I've mostly been including pictures here to show how pictures don't really cut it. A word is worth a thousand pictures. Nevertheless, this is very near our home, but a long walk to make right now.

Any other notes/Status: No, it's almost bed time.

Today's Entry:


Sadly I hurt my back today. This was happening a lot just before our trip and it made me very worried. Now here I am, far from home, in Rome, vaguely crippled.

And so here is what I am trying to learn: I can only be here right now. I can't be where my back gets better, if it would be so kind as to do that. And I can't be back a week ago when it almost didn't hurt at all. Just here.

I can't move much. We stumbled down to nearby Giolitti, another legendary Roman cafe. This is a block away from us and where an important scene in Roman Holiday took place. Did Gregory Peck's back hurt? Almost no one ever looks like their back hurts. Mostly even I don't look it. So it's hard to imagine that the odds are that somewhere along the lines Gregory Peck's back hurt plenty. And, I am sad to say, the odds are somewhere along the lines your back hurt too. I hope it doesn't now. That would be enough. Now is all we got.

We got a table and a bottle of red red wine. I love the color of it. I drank the larger share. I can just about sit up. And every once in awhile, through the fear and the pain I can look around and think "This is lovely."



 

 

Rome day twenty

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?: twenty.

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): I typed zero, but, one is actually the lowest here, so one.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: nothing, water.

Map or picture?:

Any other notes/Status: No, no, must keep it moving.

Today's Entry:

I haven't much mentioned the Churches here. And I haven't taken us into quite as many as I anticipated, which is to say we've only been to 30 or 40 of them. I'm probably supposed to give a thought to how these are religious places directly reflecting a current religion. We are there by the sufferance of said Religious group. Okay. But in my heart of heart these are amusement park rides, art, toys, wonders. They are deep and wild paintings, dramatic settings, whirls of fabulous marble, soaring architectural feats and fancy, and visions carved out of stone. I'm there for the art. The owners are free to try and sell me on Jesus, but that ship sailed a long time ago. And so did all the people who made this stuff.

Speaking of amusement parks today we made it out to the Quartiere Coppede, which is a fanciful neighborhood much of which (well, not as much as I hoped) is made in an Italian variant style of Art Nouveau. I think it's called liberty style. At its best it really is all sort of fairytale castles. Even further past this was a round and spectacular, quiet and ancient mausoleum (Mausoleo di Santa Costanza). When I was an early teen and my mother redecorated the house and asked what color walls I wanted, this ceiling is bascially what I meant.







 

Rome day nineteen

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?: nineteen!

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): still none, which might be for the best. I am drinking a lot of water.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: Water. Yum.

Map or picture?: It was more glamorous in real life. We're on the right side.

Any other notes/Status: Gotta keep it moving, so, no, not at the moment. Thanks for asking though.

Today's Entry:


I was full of ambitions today, but somehow we just ended up over at the Piazza dei Popolo, which is sort of nearby to our apartment, well, a short walk north. Sure, we looked at stuff, and then, to the surprise of both of us, we sat in a storied old cafe called Canova. And then we didn't leave there for what turned out to be almost four hours! 

We've been making a lot of food at home and maybe our daily disposable income was starting to pile up on us subconsciously. So we just kept buying stuff at this cafe. It started with coffees (cappuccino, espresso). It drifted to some snacks, cheese, wine, water, more wine. The food looked like a good idea. My wife had some meat, vegetables. I had a very pleasing salad. We had more wine. The day just rolled away and we watched it all, out over the Piazza, the tourists drifting through, the life of a city, the clouds wandering along as patient as us. When we planned our trip there were times we'd fancy just living the sweet life in Rome, wiling away time in cafes. But when it came down to it I never imagined I'd have the patience for it. 

And yet there we were. 

Rome day eighteen

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?: eighteen. This, this is sort of the halfway point!

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): minus one, and it is not pleasant.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: nothing, not hungry, feel a bit grumpy.

Map or picture?:

Any other notes/Status: I think regular readers will find this illuminating: helicoidal means "Arranged in or having the approximate shape of a flattened coil or spiral curve"

Today's Entry:


We went for a rather long ramble to a distant park. My foot sort of hurt. I don't know why I'm telling you that, realism? I like Roman parks, maybe even love them, but I would definitely describe them as ramshackle. They can kind of get big, too. We walked around spotting an occasional old tree or untended monument that was somewhere between 50 and 2,500 years old. It's not bad to get a little outside of famous Rome. It's not bad to just take things exactly as they are, without context or history.

Another challenging thing about Roman parks is it's hard to figure out what's up with the buildings. Is that a palace? Is it the end of the park? Is it a fake building? Is it a community center? Is it someone's house? Is it a museum? This confusion is only increased by Rome's changeable nature. At 11 in the morning it may be a closed up building with no indication it will ever open again for anyone, and with no information as to what it is or was. By one in the afternoon though it may be a lunch cafe, thronging with people all dining on its veranda, or maybe a meeting will be there, or maybe it'll just open up and let you wander around it. At night perhaps there will be a party there that we weren't invited to, or maybe even the owners will have come back from their summer trip to the alps, and upon their return they will turn on the porch lights, all 3,000 of them.

Rome day seventeen

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?: seventeen

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): Back injury continues in second phase. I try to remain calm, but have not had wine yet today, which puts my drunk level at minus one.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: Nothing

Map or picture?: This is it. Hang in there and you can read about it!

Any other notes/Status: No, let's move it right along.

Today's Entry:

We have said a few things about art here in my account of this trip to Rome. Mainly they have featured Caravaggio and painting. And while today's cultural excursion to the Barberini Palace includes a gory and horribly beautiful painting of his involving a decapitation, we're instead going to calm ourselves with the consideration of a helicoidal staircase.

What is helicoidal, you wonder. Me too. Every time anyone would talk about this elegant, snug, and lovely Borromini staircase in the guidebooks or on the web they'd toss in helicoidal as soon as they could. And let's face it, helicoidal is a very nice sounding word. I find it to be extremely well suited to this staircase.

So naturally we tried to track down someone at the museum who could tell us how to say "helicoidal" in Italian. We finally found a friendly, sort of bilingual security man. He had no idea what we were talking about, but finally he took out his smart phone and looked up a translation. The Italian word is apparently "elicoidale". When I asked the guard what elicoidale meant, he said he did not know. No one does.

Rome day sixteen

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?: sixteen, so, flying by, or, from the perspective of me writing ahead of time: so incredibly many days required to write fake posts for!

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): oddly, three. A frightening back relapse sent me back home from work. I have medicated with wine and am now slightly toasted and slightly uncomfortable.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: Well, before I came downstairs I had some tempeh I fried earlier with some of that ratatouille I talked about a lot earlier in this series. I can't begin to tell you just how good it all was!

Map or picture?: Actually, it all looked way better than this, and it had some prosciutto on it.

Any other notes/Status: I've been trying to focus on this project, which has an alarmingly long way to go, but before I wrote this I felt compelled to write a post for October 28! For you that's still 26 days away! But for me it's like, 51 or something days from now! It was about pine nuts. When I finished it I did one of those "Oooh! This one is good!" things. Partly I'm a little drunk, plus my over estimation will fade. Nevertheless, you may want to mark your calendar for that post. You know, something to look forward to.

Oh. How's today's post? 

I don't know. What say I write it?

Today's Entry:


Today we mostly shopped. For reasons I can't explain we ended up apportioning an astonishing amount of money to our personal gift monies on this trip. To put it bluntly, I have 600 Euros to buy myself a keepsake. In this context it's a weirdly huge amount of money, too large to squander, too small to buy just anything. As my wife peruses the cashmere I peruse everything like I am some sort of prince: little is out of my reach, but I may be too bored by it to buy anything. Yes, Rome is exquisite enough for me, but are the shops? Why don't you people sell any Caravaggios here?

We had a cheese plate tonight, and a lot of wine. Generally speaking I am at all times here one of three things: On a caffeine high. Drunk(ish). Or faintly ill but soldiering on. I'm not sure cheese isn't a drug too. It lasts while it's in your mouth, and for something that good, it's long enough.

Rome day fifteen

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?: fifteen, not yet halfway even. Having fun? Why wouldn't you be?

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): Seriously sore back. I keep drinking more wine. It turns out I'm very good at drinking wine. Should I worry? Er, so, three and a half?

What am I eating (in real life again)?: Wine, didn't I mention that?

Map or picture?:

Any other notes/Status: Not right now. Do you understand how many of these I have to do? Although, secret note to Marcus: did I guess right about the Celta Vigo game (see below)? Secret note to GA: did you watch the Celta Vigo game?

Today's Entry:


We did it! We went to a soccer game. I finally saw a real live European soccer game. Pretty soon in St Paul we will have a big league soccer team playing right over on Snelling Avenue. Unfortunately they will only be roughly good enough to lose to a pretty good European team like Roma something like 11 to nothing.

I only say that because Roma won! It was two zip! My second favorite Roma player, Salah, scored. Salah is a speedster. There he goes, racing down the field at a blinding speed in his glorious maroon shirt. How can any human being be so fast? He is not Messi. He does not end up doing the exact right thing with the ball when he gets there, but to all of our great pleasures, one time he did, slotting the ball impossibly to the right of a defender, and a sadly confused goalie, putting the game out of reach. Totti, the legend, on his late final season, is sadly still injured.

I wore a Roma scarf. I sang the Roma song that I'm afraid I had sung a little too much in excitement beforehand. We bought wine in the stands! It was great. We took a long walk home with loads of exultant fans. It was a thrill. Soccer in Europe! The greatest sport in the world.

But all the while my heart was with Barcelona, playing Celta Vigo. 3-1. That was the score by which they won. That's all I really cared about. A brace for Neymar! All so lovely.

Rome day fourteen

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?:fourteen, yeah, fourteen...

Level of writer's drunkenness (in real life, scale of 1-10): zero. I mean, I am at work! I'm pretty sure no one is allowed to be drunk at work.

What am I eating (in real life again)?: I had a cookie and a tomato a while ago.

Map or picture?: Only if I manage to put it in later. 


Here, I took this off the site of the Prosciutteria we ate at. If you see the second lowest ham, on the right, that's about what we ate.

Any other notes/Status: I don't think it's going to work well to write these at work. Even on my free time it's all too stressful. I don't have the right frame of mind. This is odd because I write probably half my regular blog posts just like this.

Today's Entry:

My wife took us to the Capitoline Museums today. It's like a sixties cartoon, or an old TV Show version of going to Rome, just lots and lots of statues. We walked around looking at statues until we could look no more. And when I say statue I mean they took a massive chunk of stone and made it into the exact shape of a human being. Once one accepts just how clever this is it's all pretty hard not to take seriously. Weirdly a lot of these are copies, albeit 2000 year old copies of older Greek statues, so really we were just in a sort of cover album museum. Ancient Rome, in it's waning years, performs all the old standards! Wounded Amazon, Dying Gaul, and a surprisingly tender rendition of the beloved Boy Removing a Thorn from his Foot. Note how the Romans subtly changed the variety of thorn in the boy's foot.

We also went to a Prosciutteria. We got the big prosciutto taster platter. It was an enormous board of food. Do different prosciuttos taste different? Why yes they do! Does it matter? Well no, but it's a good excuse to eat more prosciutto than one can normally handle.