Middle ground

My feelings about the city are very divided. In one instant I am filled with wonder, in love with the piazzas, the fountains, the buildings, the colors, the food and wine and music. But in the next, I am unmoved by Rome. It becomes just another city, perhaps a place to one day live, perhaps not. I think the latter is a defense mechanism.

The one thing that has remained constant for me about Rome has been the language – I know, and knew immediately upon landing in Rome, that I want to one day be fluent in Italian – although that has less to do with Rome itself and more to do with Italy, and my passion for learning to speak foreign languages. That, I think, is the main reason behind my desire to spend a good portion of my twenties living abroad. Also the fact that getting a job in New York after graduation is going to be a bitch, and I don't have the stamina to go straight into grad school.

Living in Rome for four weeks was so different from living in Spain, where I spent last summer. Keeping a journal changed my experience greatly. In Spain I just lived from moment to moment, out in the city, not really taking the time to record or reflect. Most of what I remember from Spain is pure sensation. Joy. Being happy in Madrid, not really taking the time to stop and think about why...Just having fun, I guess, going dancing, eating paella, dragging myself to class at 8 each morning after 2 hours of sleep, siesta in the afternoon, and my personal favorite: botellones, just drinking in the park with a bunch of Spanish kids my age, swapping questions about what it's like to live in New York, and other places I should visit in Spain after I finally move to Madrid. Walking the dogs with Jaime, my so-called “house brother,” who was the perfect combination of summer fling and city guide, who showed me Madrid the way madrileños live it.

Rome, though. It wasn't fun on the same level. It was much more intellectual for me than Spain was – which makes sense, since instead of studying grammar and the basics of Spanish culture before being set loose upon the city, we were reading poems and short stories and personal essays on the city itself, and watching movies that often used the same techniques as stories. Heavier things. We were reading and studying art and then walking outside among it. I was forced to reflect. Or not really forced, maybe, but reading as much as I did, and watching as many movies – movies that were different from the ones I usually watch - sort of set my mind in gear for writing. I hope it sticks with me throughout the year, although I've been back in the states for 3 days now, and haven't written since the flight.

I approached Rome as an outsider, too, which makes a huge difference. I didn't have a local to hold hands with and stroll down the street – although, I'm sure, there were plenty of men at La Maison who would have made the offer to every girl in the class, but who knows how much “touring” would actually have gotten done, then.¹

I don't know if I could live in Rome. It's too big. I realize this seems ridiculous, as I'm currently a few miles up in the air heading back to New York. But the size and scope of Rome is different from New York. New York, like Rome, is large and crowded, and doesn't have the benefit of piazzas and open squares and places to sit and read and drink on every corner. There aren't as many outdoor cafes. But it just feels different. Comfortable and mine. The MTA, though frustrating and wildly overpriced, is fantastic in comparison to Rome's metro system, of which I still don't have a thorough grip. And since I'm from New York, I don't feel the pressure to see all the tourist locations in the city – I can walk past the Empire State Building without blinking an eye, and Times Square just serves to irritate me. I avoid it at all costs.

In Rome all the landmarks, all the must-sees are separated by miles of heat and winding streets. And there is such a pressure to see things, to visit and revisit ancient ruins again and again, to feel that history and culture and myth as often as you can, otherwise you're just wasting your time. The history in Rome is rich, and I appreciate it and want to learn more of it, don't get me wrong. But it's also overwhelming. The past is so ceaselessly present, it makes it difficult to contemplate living in Rome. How can you live in a place and not feel overshadowed by all those years and all those extraordinary lives lived? There is so much to Rome that it must take an incredible effort to live there. Perhaps the Romans themselves are just born into this atmosphere, they drink it from the fountains, they walk sure-footedly across cobblestone, maybe they don't even feel it. But I can't relax in Rome without feeling guilty – like every moment I spent at a bar or at the beach, or just sitting inside and watching TV for an hour or so, is a moment I'm wasting. A moment I should be using to learn, to read, to study things that anywhere else I don't feel particularly drawn to: philosophy, religion, architecture, art, the minute particulars of history. I like all these things, although I usually don't have discipline to read philosophy, and art has never really moved me. Until, of course, I came to Rome.

I'm high strung. Perhaps its the New Yorker in me. I'm constantly thinking, worrying, wondering, and I sometimes need a moment to unwind, to occupy my brain with simpler things, to look out my window or take a walk and see fountains just as fountains, statues as statues, a city as just a city instead of symbols for thousands of years of people living and dying and fighting and building. In Rome, if I have a simple moment like that it dissolves almost instantly into guilt – how can I just treat this city like any other when the whole Western Civilization was more or less founded here, and the history of Christianity too? How can I spent a single moment not reading or writing, striving to become like those ancient people who knew so much without all the resources that I have, that I squander?

I prefer myth to history, and I couldn't read those huge textbooks about the Roman Empire that were left in the dorms, filled with laws and decrees that I couldn't get my mind to sit still for. But I did read the entire section of The Aeneid in the packet, and read the Homeric poems to all the female goddesses – a Greek work, sure, but the Romans took their gods primarily from the Greeks so I think it was applicable.

I wish I was the type of person who could spend hours and days doing this, but there's a part of me that likes the mystery of not knowing, and I don't want to spend all my life inside, reading other people's words. Part of the reason I felt so drawn to the fountain of Dea Roma is because when I first saw it, I thought she was Minerva, and that the male statues next to here were Romulus and Remus – that was my interpretation. I later found out that it wasn't Minerva, but Dea Roma – which, actually, was more interesting, anyway, but still...I'll always remember my first impression, and how I thought, “I'm sitting with my back to Minerva right now...” and wondering what it means to turn your back on the goddess of wisdom and war.

Rome baffles and dazzles me. The only time I felt like I owned even a small piece of the city was the night I took a short walk by myself, to Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps and Popolo. Also maybe the last night we were there, dinner in the ghetto, wine in Campo de Fiori (our own Italian botellon) and then sitting at the Trevi Foutain at two in the morning. It was almost empty, at least by Trevi standards. We didn't look like Romans by any stretch of the imagination – we spent at least a quarter of an hour throwing coin after coin into the fountain and taking ridiculous pictures, but still, I felt at home there, wishing the polizia would leave so we could jump in the fountain, or that I could incite the thirty or so people who were hanging around to just rush Neptune for an impromptu dance party, Carabinieri be damned...it's just a fucking fountain, dude, it's made for jumping in.

Unlike Trevi, there are some places in Rome where the police have just given up. The fountain by the Spanish Steps, for example. I saw a guy fall headfirst into that fountain the first week in Rome. There is always such a mob of people there that the rules no longer apply – nothing can keep people's feet out of the water, because either they've just picked there way through a crowd down the steps, or are preparing to hike back up. But there are other places where that kind of experience of Rome is just not allowed. Trevi is off-limits, you can't even fill up your water bottle there without risking a 170 euro fine, and the Carabinieri must take their breaks at Piazza del Popolo, because they're always there too, although this doesn't stop tourists from climbing the lions around the obelisk.

The Vatican, though not technically Rome, is the worst perpetrator of them all. The piazza, which should be open, at night is filled with barricades and chairs and the Carabinieri cruise through all the lanes of the newly made maze slowly, lights off, sneaking around until someone sets a toe out of line. Then the lights flash on and the blow horns are out, and young German tourists are being manhandled out of the square. It's all a part of the self-important Catholicism of Rome that just sits awkwardly in my mind – how can this city built on pagan gods and wine rituals be so stuffy now? The Pieta stands out of reach in St. Peter's – you almost have trouble seeing all of the heart-breaking detail in Michaelangelo's work, because the statue is kept behind a plate of most-likely bulletproof glass. Guards yell at the two hundred tourists filling the Sistine Chapel, clapping their hands and intoning “No foto, no foto, no foto” or alternatively hissing and bellowing for quiet in this supposedly holy place. I don't know what bothers me more, the waves of people, or the hypocritical ceremony afforded these places – places that you have to pay 20 euro to get in, 50 if you want a tour – that should be open to everyone, because doesn't everyone have a right to them?

And so the biggest thing that I'm taking away from Rome – although I've learned a great many things, not just about the city, or Italian, but also about traveling, and about people (and dealing with people – because I've never had a roommate before, and that was an experience in and of itself) – I'm taking away this confusion, this dichotomy: Rome as Janus, the god of two faces, wonder on one side and complete normality, banality almost, on the other. Just any other place to live, but an awesome, mythic, wonderful anyplace.

1Roman men really just don't appeal to me, at all. Mostly I find them to be such incredible disappointments: these supposed romantics and sweet talkers are just overgrown and hairy babies, spoiled and expectant, silly, impressed by expensive looking girls (that's the only way they'll talk to you, otherwise they just grope and buy drinks), bad dancers, using marriage proposals as pick-up lines, and much too free with their hands.

***

I thought this was appropriate.

Janus:

He was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, the growing up of young people, and of one universe to another. He was also known as the figure representing time because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other. Hence, Janus was worshipped at the beginnings of the harvest and planting times, as well as marriages, births and other beginnings. He was representative of the middle ground between barbarity and civilization, rural country and urban cities, and youth and adulthood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus

Not the best source, but it serves its purpose.

Dea Roma

I.

I think the Piazza del Popolo became both instantaneously and very gradually my favorite spot in Rome. The statues here aren’t as ornate as at the Trevi Fountain or Piazza Navona, but I think this works in their favor. There is never the crush of bodies in Piazza del Popolo that these other places are plagued with; never the desperate attempt to photograph everything: a seven year old smiling with gelato dripping from his hand and onto his “I heart Roma” shirt, a newly engaged couple kissing in front of the Neptune’s lion, hidden in the center fountain, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, at Piazza Navona. People snapping pictures before, if ever, actually looking at things.

The lions that surround the Flaminian obelisk in Piazza del Popolo were placed there in the 1800’s, a strange adaptation to the central structure, which is well over 2000 years old. They are supposed to be in Egyptian style to compliment the hieroglyphics on the obelisk itself, Ramses II, brought to Rome by Augustus in 10 B.C. It originally stood near Circus Maximus; now it is positioned behind me as I sit at the foot of Pincio Hill.

It is not the feral and masculine lions that fascinate me about Piazza del Popolo, nor is it the blatantly phallic obelisk, castrated somewhat, in my opinion, by the cross that Catholic Rome placed on top of it.

Instead, whenever I visit this piazza I sit by the fountain of Dea Roma. She is the only figure standing upright in the tableau, holding a torch high, tireless, broad shoulders and hips, strong calves – strong enough to stand poised through centuries, shield at her side. At her feet the she-wolf suckles Romulus and Remus in infant form. On either side of her lounge two male figures, Tevere, the river, and Aniente, about whom I can't seem to find much information. This doesn't bother me: it is the goddess who holds my attention.

“Roma” signifies strength, and because of this she is the patron goddess of the once-mighty Roman empire. She is the she-wolf, and like all women she is sometimes seen as virgin, as mother, as whore, her image and meaning always twisted to fit the needs of men in power. But who is she? There is barely any information about her, although it does seems like she actually was adapted from the Greek Athena, Athens’ patron, and the Etruscan goddess Minevra, from which the Romans stole the name “Minerva.”

I have sat by the Fontana Dea Roma at various times during the day and at night, wondering who she is.

I visited her in the late afternoon, my feet in the fountain, cooling off from a day of walking on hot stones, of tripping and nearly falling because the cobblestones are uneven, but what a waste it would be to walk through Rome with my head down.

I stared up at her as the sun was beginning to set and the heat from the day was finally starting to lift. I sat between the three churches that surround the square, two in the south couching the "trident" that leads into the center, and one in the north by the Porta del Popolo, where Nero's remains had to be buried on holy ground to keep his ghost from wandering. The churches are all Santa Maria’s: Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Santa Maria de Montesanto, Santa Maria del Popolo - more virgin goddesses.

What does it mean that ancient cities -Rome and Athens - so historically patriarchal, have chosen female figures as their patrons and protectors? And why must they be virgin goddesses? Why was it that the only women with power and influence in ancient Rome were the Vestal Virgins? Why is female power so closely related to virginity?

What is it about sex that makes a woman dangerous, so that having sex weakens and domesticates her, while abstaining entirely makes her powerful? Is it our ability to bring life into the world that makes men feel so threatened – and if so, why is it that this thing that is so mysterious it should be sacred and revered then twisted and deformed; sex as sin, an act that makes a woman a whore if she is not married, and confines her to the role of “mother,” and “wife,” ceasing to be plainly and miraculously “woman” anymore if she is.

I wonder if it really matters in the end anyway; if, ultimately, the labels men attach to women really carry any weight.

As the sun sets, the bells from all the Santa Marias start to ring. For the first time in my life, I think, I hear real church bells. At the church in Bayside the bell sounds are all from recordings; the tower in St. Robert’s is empty, or if not, the bells are still and rusty from neglect. But when the bells begin to ring in Piazza del Popolo, they ring loud. I feel it on the air and under my skin and I am perplexed because I’m not really religious anymore - I don’t understand where this feeling comes from.

It reminds me for some reason of being a little girl and going outside to play on cloudy days, shouting at the sun to come out so that I could stay there longer and sometimes it did. And when I was older and too shy to yell for the sun in the courtyard outside our apartment, singing softly under my breath for sunlight, a little pagan girl although I had just made my First Communion, so sure the sun was listening even if I couldn’t see the chariot.

Bells always sound like they’re calling you somewhere, but I don’t know where to go, so I sit still and watch her, occasionally catching the quick silhouette of bell-skirt moving out of the corner of my eye, feeling the sound pulsing across the square.

II.

It is quiet in the piazza in the early morning. It is almost 2AM and I have washed off the day, my hair still damp from the shower, a soft chill settling on my skin now that the sun has been gone for hours. I have my feet again in the fountain, which seems colder than usual in the absence of daylight. The impossible heat of Rome has finally broken. My right leg, practically from my toes to a few inches below my knee, is swollen to maybe two times its usual size, the result of being tackled FIFA style during an amateur soccer game. It’s been almost a week – six days, actually – since I was so thoroughly destroyed playing soccer, the second game I’ve played in maybe twelve years, and it seems that my leg is only getting bigger and more unfortunate looking. Because there is no ice in the St. John’s dorms, I have hauled myself out of the campus and, instead of visiting a bar or a club crawling with Italian men, am finally visiting a more legitimate site in Rome for the ice cold water and the opportunity to write.

There are sanitation workers circling the square, spraying water down and sweeping it up in large trucks. Sometimes they whistle when they pass any female stragglers in the piazza; mostly they leave us alone. A car with two Carabinieri drives by. They ask, in Italian, if I’m going to bathe in the fountain. I say no, and they laugh and drive away. I wonder what would happen if someone were to light the torch that Dea Roma is holding somehow. I think that could perhaps that could be a love story, something short and sweet, but dismiss it as juvenile and cliché, or maybe as a story I am still too shy to write.

I think of where I have been today. In Rome there are lions in the walls. I wonder what they are watching for, they even haunt the Jewish Ghetto with expressions so fierce and human I think they must be gods or spirits invading even this part of the city, where there are no figures on the walls, no Atlases holding up balconies strewn with flowers, hibiscus, nuova guinea. They do not peek or stare but watch, always with the same untiring expression, with warnings, all teeth and eyebrows.

There are gods in every stone. I must have seen hundreds by now; every corner, every fountain, regardless of how many crosses are placed on top, no matter how loudly the bells ring; bells which sound eerie and ancient anyway, older than the churches they ring from, beckoning people to cool, sacred places inside. I never listen in church, not to the priest at least, but instead to the echoes of chanting and song and people breathing and restless babies. There are hundreds of churches in Rome, temple ruins and ancient gods, but I return to Dea Roma.

I feel surrounded by the age of this place, the heat and the color. I exist in some fine line between the oppressive knowledge that there is more here than I will ever understand, and the comfort of knowing that at least subconsciously, I can feel it. I am within it. I am connected to it just by breathing.

Everything in Rome is moving. The air dances like a harem girl, captured and transported along roads that still exist now, the same as they did then, whenever “then” is…centuries ago, millennia maybe. Tomatoes strew on cobblestone in Campo de Fiori when the market is closing for the day. Uneven streets that demand you walk slowly if you don’t want to fall. People are moving, cars and bicycles, dogs trained to sleep on the street and look as thin as they possibly can, babies pre-programmed to beg in the hot sun and stone before they can even speak, tourists from a hundred different countries surrounding the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain, the majestic atmosphere that is emitted somehow by Bernini’s fountain in Piazza Navona. But Dea Roma stands still, silent and proud, familiar to me in a way that I don’t yet understand, and perhaps never will; Dea Roma in this female city, endlessly and always a mystery.