“This is my city, and I am as much a Roman as anyone here.”
The prompt is to describe a place—a location “that is meaningful and powerful for you,” and then to write about who you are in that place. I’m thrilled and terrified by this assignment. No one who knows me will be surprised at my choice. It’s the place that I return again and again—Rome.
I’m excited by the task because I’m always happy to think about Rome. I can talk about it for hours and hours. I’m scared because so much has already been said about it that I can’t conceive of adding so much as one original phrase or fresh observation. (Even that statement strikes me as a cliché.)
And it’s hard to imagine expressing a rational basis for the city’s appeal for me. Sure, there’s all the history, the art, the architecture, the fountains, the pines, blah, blah, blah. But the city is filthy, it’s noisy, it’s falling apart, it’s damp, it’s full of tourists. And yet it compels me again and again, so I have to face the possibility that at least some of my love is irrational, and I don’t like thinking of myself that way.
So, down to work. The place? I can’t think of a favorite. When I try, I walk in my mind’s eye from one favorite spot to another. Rome is all about the walking. I could start at the end of the Via dei Fori Imperiali where it runs into Piazza Venezia, near where I took the panoramic photo last January—the one at the top of this page. Broken remnants of the glory of the Imperial Age are scattered at my feet. I try to envision ancient people walking on the decorative tiles on the fragment of floor a few steps from the sidewalk. I find that I can’t picture it. Cars race by behind me, horns blaring. I walk toward the piazza past a South Asian man who sells silk scarves and plastic souvenir Colosseums made in China.
A right turn would take me up the Corso, but I don’t want to go that way. It’s a noisy canyon of buildings that seems to trap the vehicle exhaust. Instead, I make my way around the bottom end of the piazza, even though that entails crossing four or five side streets, mostly without benefit of traffic lights. I dodge the current of taxis and buses like a native Italian.
I don’t know the name of the street, but by habit I find my way to a place where pieces of an ancient structure have been incorporated into the back of an 18th- or 19th-century building. Three columns look as if they’re lifting the modern construction up out of the excavation pit. The hole is separated from the sidewalk by an iron railing in front of which Czech and Polish expatriates sell magazines in Slavic languages. I look for a family resemblance. I wonder what subtle twists in history turned me into an American tourist and left these distant cousins of mine to become citizens of the European Union.
Note: That’s as far as I got before I ran out of time (and steam) tonight. Since I’m still three days behind on 50/50 assignments, I’m going to offer this up to you in its unfinished condition. It seems like a good bet that I’ll write more about Rome at a later date.
© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick
What satisfaction you’ll feel when you find the character that can say this line!
“I don’t know the name of the street, but by habit I find my way to a place where pieces of an ancient structure have been incorporated into the back of an 18th- or 19th-century building.”
Was this in a picture hanging on a wall at UD? And, (perhaps conflating another image here), in my memory there are 55.5 cats in the excavation pit.
That was a different excavation pit, down the street a couple more blocks at Largo di Torre Argentina. (My research just now led me to a story about Magnesia, a devout Catholic homeless cat.)
The street in question, I have now determined, is Via delle Botteghe Oscure (“street of the dark shops,” maybe?). I found a photo of the site, and I was remembering it incorrectly—the old columns aren’t embedded in the newer building, but were sort of buried in its backyard. There’s a newer buttress standing in the excavations and holding the modern building up.
Gayle—I have the character in mind already, and I started to write his story, but it was a million miles from the 50/50 assignment, so I’m going to work on it as a separate project.