In reading over the full history of Rome, as I did in the weeks leading up to my long awaited excursion there, you are struck by many things, some reminding you it was a world not entirely unlike our own, and others exemplifying how very different it was. It's hard to imagine, for instance, a bustling city of 1m people without any form of refuse collection. It is easier to relate to the heartfelt engravings on tombstones for children, spouses, and parents to which there was no shortage of across the empire. Overall, I think you're hit by the sheer magnitude of time itself, that nearly 2,000 years ago a giant colosseum was built of brick and marble that bred stories even the children of today seem to know by heart. Rome is this collection of stories that have captured the imaginations of human beings of every age since it was first founded on its seven hills before any written account exists.
So I had a reason to go, and I went, and in crossing the Tiber River and surmounting the Capitoline and Palatine, then looking out at the Roman Forum at sunset, I'd be lying if I said I found a complete and lofty bliss. If anything, those peaceful ruins brought a peculiar overwhelming heaviness, as if I could feel the long years of loss and relegation hovering in the air around me. It's not that people died there, Caesar and slaves, emperors and common folk, every dynamic name we've ever heard. It's that such a powerful idea, the zenith of civilization spanning the once known world, rose and fell, was forgotten about and glossed over, plundered, buried, and only recently, reborn. When you find a quiet spot on this (spiritual?) swath of land, putting away the cameras and turning off the audioguides, I think you feel the whole weight of that somewhere in your heart. What does it mean for our own time, our own importance, when something so magnificent can all but disappear, with not even a photo or a painting that depicts what exactly it looked like in its prime?
Up the road a ways, deep into wine country, I found myself in a wedding, that of my closest friend, wrapped up in all the emotions you feel when two people, two of the very best you know, are in love to a degree that touches everyone they meet. That brings emotions you can't quite get your head around and probably never will, a brightness and a similar heaviness in your heart that is difficult to describe. It was there that beautiful mornings on the Piazza led to slow afternoons with beers or spritzers, culminating with a few nights of festivities, my own little bit of blossoming love standing there at my side.
From Rome to Montefalco and back again, it occurs to me that most people in the world will never get that, all these things lumped together: a beautiful wedding in Italy that brings every single human being to tears; driving across the countryside with the windows down and a girl you love grabbing your hand; walking the streets at night and insatiably seeking out details, the plaques on the walls, the buildings built atop buildings built atop buildings, and those four millennia-spanning letters, SPQR, written on manhole covers, simple words in a dead language which have come to define and help usher in the modern world.
Perhaps lastly then, an afterthought, wandering down side streets after a delicious meal late one night once everyone's gone, and accidentally finding the Trevi Fountain, lit up triumphantly, the horses and the gods jumping up out of the water and into the air, the whole scene practically devoid of people, and then tossing a coin in without making a wish because there just aren't any wishes worth making and things need not change one bit from how they are. Calling these people, places, and things my collective reality has been one of the great joys of my life. Living them has been one of the greatest privileges I'll ever know.
So I had a reason to go, and I went, and in crossing the Tiber River and surmounting the Capitoline and Palatine, then looking out at the Roman Forum at sunset, I'd be lying if I said I found a complete and lofty bliss. If anything, those peaceful ruins brought a peculiar overwhelming heaviness, as if I could feel the long years of loss and relegation hovering in the air around me. It's not that people died there, Caesar and slaves, emperors and common folk, every dynamic name we've ever heard. It's that such a powerful idea, the zenith of civilization spanning the once known world, rose and fell, was forgotten about and glossed over, plundered, buried, and only recently, reborn. When you find a quiet spot on this (spiritual?) swath of land, putting away the cameras and turning off the audioguides, I think you feel the whole weight of that somewhere in your heart. What does it mean for our own time, our own importance, when something so magnificent can all but disappear, with not even a photo or a painting that depicts what exactly it looked like in its prime?
“Consider the past; such great changes of
political supremacies. You may foresee also the things that will be. For they
will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate
from the order of things that take place now: accordingly to have contemplated
human life for 40 years is the same as to have contemplated it for 10 thousand
years. For what more will you see?”
From Rome to Montefalco and back again, it occurs to me that most people in the world will never get that, all these things lumped together: a beautiful wedding in Italy that brings every single human being to tears; driving across the countryside with the windows down and a girl you love grabbing your hand; walking the streets at night and insatiably seeking out details, the plaques on the walls, the buildings built atop buildings built atop buildings, and those four millennia-spanning letters, SPQR, written on manhole covers, simple words in a dead language which have come to define and help usher in the modern world.
Perhaps lastly then, an afterthought, wandering down side streets after a delicious meal late one night once everyone's gone, and accidentally finding the Trevi Fountain, lit up triumphantly, the horses and the gods jumping up out of the water and into the air, the whole scene practically devoid of people, and then tossing a coin in without making a wish because there just aren't any wishes worth making and things need not change one bit from how they are. Calling these people, places, and things my collective reality has been one of the great joys of my life. Living them has been one of the greatest privileges I'll ever know.
