Dialogo Roma

ROME SPEAKS.

Circuitous veins of the city filter the wanderer through cobble stone labyrinths steeped in stories centuries old. Incongruous buildings grafted together by minds of brilliant creatives epochs apart—their dreams carved into the travertine, marble, plaster, and stone that is joined in the stretching out of time. The word ROMANCE comes from being ‘of the Roman style’. I give into the ROMANCE by tossing a coin into the Trevi Fountain having embraced the Capuchin monks’ doctrine: TEMPORA TEMPORE TEMPERA.

EVERYTHING IS INTENTIONAL.

I find myself brought back to the lip of the Tiber River, perched on the edge of a wall that contains the churning swell. Espresso in hand, I soak in the live music and Italian chatter while light rushes down the water. The sun is setting brilliantly behind Castel Sant’ Angelo and the fortress itself seems to be sucking the color out of the world. Michael the Arcangel, forever sheathing his sword from atop the castle watches the lilting breath and movement of the city. People move beneath the silhouettes of Ercole Ferrata’s angels on the old Roman Aelian Bridge. Where those angels stand now, there once were mounted the severed heads of dissenters, murders and criminals on pikes. The space in front of the castle is where their executions took place, their last moments still lingering. My, how the world has changed and yet people are the same.

LIFE & DEATH HAVE THEIR OWN MONOLOGUES.

I think of the people I’ve met, the stories I’ve listened to, and I can only focus on one thing: the relationship between the creator and the created. That deep connection of patience and suffering to craft something new into this world. The intent and ad libitum of improvisation. Compelled to produce intellectually through the visceral process of birth and the maddening need till it comes out. The elasticity of patience till that final moment the creator stops, knows to abandon the process of that creation because if they do not the creation can never be finished—will remain incomplete.

TO EXPERIENCE A THING IS NOT TO UNDERSTAND A THING.

The receiver of the creation can never understand the bond the creator has with that dream come to reality; however, it can be reveled and marveled at with immense wonder. That feeling of on purpose, care and passion. There is a dialogue with the food I have eaten in its cadence of flavor; it tells my senses where and how it was grown, the very Mediterranean air and sea it imbibed, the explosive history of volcanic soil, the hands that cradled and harvested it, then the hands that fashioned prepared it, brought its sophisticated secrets to illumination.

RICH, DENSE, FULL, SUBTLE, ENCOMPASSING.

That same dialogue I’ve experienced in the art I’ve seen at Al Temps, Borghese and the streets, the music I hear, the fine detail of mechanisms and machines, the architecture I stand in, the language I absorb. I stare at Caravaggio’s, Bernini’s, Da Vinci’s, Raffaello’s, Reni’s, De La Roche’s…in awe. Different mediums they masterfully form change as if their hands had the ability to alter the state of matter—marble becomes soft flesh, dried paint is in motion. Walking Roman streets flanked by the architectural grandeur of the 11th century and its permeation of decadence, the show of power eroded in time. The fall of a colossal civilization strewn across the city like massive tombstones—’we are still here’.

UNSPOKEN BUT NOT SILENT.

There are those who pushed the masses forward with their fiercely beautiful minds: Machiavelli, Dante Alighieri, Giordano Bruno…Bruno’s statue with defiant eyes piercing the Vatican from Campo de’ Fiori where he was burned alive, stands witness to the modern shifts of free thought and scientific revolution. He lived his life not hiding or compromising his beliefs or his creative liberty. Living ‘MEMENTO MORI’ a trope that reminds humanity of the inevitability of death, to remember you must die means to live more fully in the present, the now. Death holds an hourglass with wings.

ROMANCE IN EXISTENCE.

That saturation of history has shaped Roman way of life today for those modern native thinkers, artists and craftsman who pour their passions out to share their love to create experiences with others. Walking behind Furio through the wooded foothills of Monti Simbruini in the Apennines Mountain range, I see that love in action. His two dogs, Luna and Cicci, flank him on either side up the steep climb. He sends them off on the hunt and they disappear into the woods while Furio explains how they were trained to seek out a coveted culinary treasure. Within minutes, Luna comes rushing through the leaves towards him, tail wagging. He lowers his hand, and she drops a truffle into it.

“Brava! Luna Brava!” He praises her and gives her a piece of sausage.

Poor Cicci comes back empty, but still asks for a sausage. He receives none and is sent back out to look again. We stroll through an olive grove lined with fruit trees overlooking the vineyards and villas extended through the countryside. Furio relates with great sadness the changes and struggles of truffle hunting now that the fungi can bring in substantial profit due to high demand in restaurants. Hunters have become territorial, will sabotage vehicles of other hunters, or put out poison for truffle hunting dogs. The mountains are overharvested leaving very little time for the fruiting bodies to grow and mature. He laments the generational transitions, what greed does to the heart.

THE WORLD IS CHANGING, YET PEOPLE ARE THE SAME.

I sit on the lip of the Tiber watching the last vestiges of color be swallowed up by the castle. There are swarms of tourists on the bridge taking pictures, buying cheap knickknacks of the Vatican and Colosseum. A part of me is disgusted by the selfish recklessness and destructiveness of human nature, the other admiring its ability to share creation generously. I revel in the impermanence of the paradox in that moment, drawing it out to live in it a little longer with all my senses engaged. I’ve decided to adopt ‘of the Roman style’ of living.