What the Hell is This?

An eventful couple of weeks nationally, between celebrity deaths and surprising revelations from various Republican governors…but personally, dull as dirt. I did spend the Fourth with a couple of beloved old friends, which was enjoyable, but things at work haven’t been nearly as delightfully distracting in the absence of certain (male) people. Where have you gone, my chickadees?

Which left me susceptible to a blast from the not-so-distant past. I check into my social network infrequently these days, to deal with invitations and requests and to share my published articles…but this week I saw him in the news feed. A brand new picture: Sonny lounging barefoot in a patch of clover, propped on his elbows, heels kicking up like a kid. My heart was wrapped up in clover/the night that I looked at you. He’s growing his hair out, the way I always liked it best, and I think now that I lied when I called Rick the most gorgeous man on the planet. I wonder who’s kissing him now…

And I remember keenly some of the urgency I felt about leaving this town. Two weeks ago, one of my worst-case scenarios occurred without incident — I ran into my old studio boss, she of the batshit-insane emails — but she carefully avoided me, and I felt freer for that careful avoidance. Sonny, however, in his mere two-dimensional glory, has me running for Trebbe Johnson’s book again, seeking conceptual aspirin for these sudden chest pangs.

**

My lovely, groovy, gypsy-skirted friend Diana wrote this week on her blog about “god-love,” about hanging out with her free-lovin’ Dances of Univeral Peace/Course In Miracles hippie peers who make out on couches at parties like unchaperoned adolescents, and for only the four hundredth time I feel left out of the divine acid trip — without, in all honesty, feeling that bad about it. I’m definitely not a raging atheist like Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens — I believe the best things in life are a mystery — but I also appear to be made out of spiritual Teflon. Considering how thoroughly my childhood insecurities were exploited in order to force-feed me the so-called Bread of Life, it’s a wonder I’m open at all to what those two gentlemen consider utter balderdash. I’m not going to argue with Trebbe or anyone else about my desires and cravings being misdirected longings toward The Divine…but based on my own experience (or lack thereof) they may as well be telling me that they’re misdirected longings toward The Heavenly Unicorn. I cannot tell a lie: God has never slipped me the tongue. Not with my knowledge, anyway.

Although Sonny is something of a “little-g” god. (I doubt there are two 21-year-olds alive who could in tandem outshine this luminous 42-year-old.) But this is why I have always adored Dostoevsky: his characters are passionate, lusty, complex people possessing tremendous depth of thought and feeling who struggle with a burning doubt in anything “divine.” He fully grasps the intoxicating allure of beauty (see Dmitri Karamazov’s unforgettable monologue) and the transcendental elements of desire. He shows extraordinary (one might even say Christlike) compassion for human vulnerability and our misguided, shame-driven actions. When he presents God as Love, you can almost believe. But you also get the feeling the author never fully settled the question for himself.

**

This week I’ve gone back to listening to Nick Cave, who (I would point out to my music-loving German friend, were he here) makes my darling Damien look about as sunny as The Partridge Family. Well versed in Biblical lore, Mr. Cave is a die-hard old-school goth romantic forever lamenting the loss of some dark-haired temptress with long fingernails. He knows fruitless yearning and restless seeking like the back of one of his bony hands. Little wonder Wim Wenders chose Cave’s dark, dissonant “Carny” and “From Her to Eternity” to bring together angel and trapeze artist in his marvelously subversive landmark film “Wings of Desire.” Bruno Ganz’s soulful angel gives up direct spiritual communion with God for fleshly communion with a human being! Talk about your wacky reversals! The two piano-driven songs to which I keep returning are “Nobody’s Baby Now” –

There are some things love won’t allow
Yeah I held her hand but I don’t hold it now
I don’t know why and I don’t know how
But she’s nobody’s baby now

and “Do You Love Me” –

I found God and all his devils inside her…
So completely filled with light she was…
All things move toward their end
I knew before I met her that I would lose her

What a line. I knew before I met her that I would lose her. That’s pretty much where I’m coming from these days. It sure wasn’t wrong about my good buddy Rick. Then again, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not wrong about anybody, is it? Maybe that’s the lesson to be gained from my various beautiful and disappearing teachers. The Buddha had it right, after all: impermanence is the only permanence. As Damien wrote, Life taught me to die.

But I’ve rambled on quite enough already. Here, without further ado, is my post-Centro diary from Rome.

Part 6.1 ROMA (ROME)

I begin this final chapter in the Piazza Della Madonna De Monti, on Via Dei Serpenti, just off of Via Cavour. There is a little fountain here, and up the street is some of the most killer gelato in Rome (Gelatone). Rome isn’t as big as you’d expect…you can get everywhere you’d want to go on foot, if you don’t mind a good walk. The blocks are shorter, usually, than in most American cities, so distances on a map look greater than they really are.

The journey was fairly uneventful, although I was glad to have given myself an extra hour in Milan because I had to navigate the subway system in order to get to Stazione Centrale. Here’s proof of how freaking hot it is in Italy: I didn’t have to go to the W.C. once during the four-and-a-half hour train ride. (In general, my usual problem is not a problem, even though I’m drinking litres and litres of aqua naturale, because here you sweat copiously and all the time.)

After a little bit of searching in the neighborhood of the Teatro Dell’ Opera — it took me some time to figure out that the street names are chiseled on the buildings — I found the YWCA tucked away almost invisibly on a side street. This particular area, near the Termini station, reminds me a lot of Boston, but I guess that’s not incomprehensible given than Boston was built by former Europeans. The crazy thing I noticed about Rome right away is that in these busy metropolitan areas, you may see some big chunk of ancient brick sitting in the middle of everything, an unnamed, unknown arch or wall. In the piazza Largo di Torre Argentina, there was a sort of interrupted dig in the middle of it, with a row of crumbling columns. I read somewhere that the third line of their subway system has been stymied by the ongoing accidental excavation of yet more undiscovered ruins. What a place to live — it’s a perennial treasure hunt.

The YWCA is an undiscovered treasure all its own. Girlfriends, take note! It’s a clean, quiet, pleasant environment specifically for women, although a man can stay if he’s with a woman. It feels safe, there’s no tourist stampede or rowdy college students, and the staff is friendly. My first night there, I had the 4-bed room to myself. Which is exactly what I needed — someplace safe, quiet, and cloister-like, to decompress and lick my wounds. Of course, quiet is a relative term when the streets are full of wilding Italian football fans. World Cup fever is in full swing here, and when Italy beat the Ukraine on Friday night, Rome turned into Boston after a Patriots Super Bowl win, with honking and hooting and hollering continuing long into the wee hours.

I followed my Let’s Go book’s advice and found the Hostaria da Bruno, near Termini, for a late (though not for Rome) dinner. The place was lousy with Americans, and for this reason I rather defiantly spoke only Italian with the waiter. I ordered a half litre of red wine, an insalata, and a plate of gnocci.

I never did manage to find a decent salad in Rome. I had a gorgeous salad in Pettenasco, with crispy dark greens like arugula, and a wad of the freshest mozarella you can imagine. And the pasta in Orta was everything you’d expect from Italy. But this salad was iceberg, and the gnocci was nondescript and a little too salty. I was disappointed.

Then the waiter suggested the special dessert, made (from what I understood — he was speaking only Italian to me) fresh that day. I agreed to give it a try.

It was the redemption of the entire meal. Santa Maria, was it good. A sweet, creamy vanilla custard, topped with a compote of small savory-tart berries I didn’t even recognize. They made me pucker. With a cappuccino, it was perfect. Somehow, a little wobbly with all that wine, I made it back to the YWCA and to bed.

The next morning I set out for the most distant sights, intending to get all my most tiring walking done on the first day. After a meager Italian breakfast of a croissant and a cappuccino at a nearby snack bar (Rome is full of these), I headed for the Villa Borghese, which, from what I could tell from my book, was a place I definitely wanted to see. The Galleria Borghese sounded wonderful, less of a tourist madhouse than some of the other museums, and it contained masterpieces by Caravaggio, Titian, and Raphael. From there I planned to head across the Tiber river to Vatican City.

I started at the basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, close by the YWCA. An impressive twin-domed structure, the interior of which dates back to the 5th century, it crowns the Piazza Dell’Esquilino where I had my cappuccino. It was built as a shrine to the Virgin Mary on the site where an apparition supposedly appeared, and the presiding Cardinal is none other than the scandal-plagued former Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Law. (I went inside it the following day during a mass, but the part that was open to the public wasn’t all that amazing, unfortunately.) Directly across the main street Via Cavour began Via de Pretis, and I started up this street, soon cutting due north to walk through virtually deserted cobblestone streets in the government district (which reminded me of Beacon Hill and Cambridge back home). It was relaxing to be off the beaten path. Before I knew it I had reached the huge, green public park that is the Villa Borghese, and was at the manor-like Galleria.

A traveling Raphael exhibit had packed the place, and I found out that tickets were sold out through July 5th. Resigned, I decided to explore the park, which was a shady oasis in the oppressive Roman heat. Scipione Borghese had commissioned this immense garden upon becoming Cardinal in the early 17th century, and the Galleria was built as his villa suburbana.

I love the Villa Borghese. I would spend a good deal of my free time here if I lived in Rome. There are garden sanctuaries within it that were retooled in the 19th century, such as the Corinthian-columned Temple of Aesculapius, which sits amid flowering bushes on a still, idyllic little pond. Old Italian men sit on the park benches, and there is a zoo at the far end near the modern art museum (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna). I walked beyond the Villa for a few blocks, past the museum and off my map, to the end of one of the Metro lines and a statue of Winston Churchill. Here I sat down to rest my weary feet, swig from my bottle of mineral water, and munch on the apple Elke had given me for the road.

From there I made my way across the park to the Piazza del Popolo, the people’s square, with its mirror-image domed churches Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto. I hunted on side streets for a good lunch place before deciding on an elegant but affordable pizzeria with sidewalk tables. The pizza was tasty, but not nearly as tasty as the pizza I had had in Novara, with its wafer-thin crust.

Piazza del Popolo was only a short distance from a bridge over the river, and after crossing I cut south to Piazza Cavour, a place I was determined to see as a self-respecting Morrissey fan. His latest album had been written here, in Rome, featuring his signature sound samples (every time I heard a Roman emergency siren, I expected to hear him launch into “The Youngest Was the Most Loved”) and he mentions this piazza in “You Have Killed Me.”

A brief tangent (indulge me): I feel an even greater kinship with my former comrade-in-despondency these days, because his Roman experience ostensibly involved the breaking of his legendary, lifelong (romantic) losing streak. The new songs recount, in more detail than his coyness usually allows, a reluctant joining of the ranks of the content and fulfilled. Horrors! Someone has killed our morose old Mozzer! “At last I am born,” he croons at the album’s conclusion. I didn’t break my own perennial losing streak in Italy — I revisited it — but I did have something like this happen before I left, which defied all of my negative (and usually accurate) expectations. As for my own Italian journey, Moz’s first track “I Will See You in Far-off Places” has become something of a theme song, apparently written to some long-lost, beloved wiseass:

It’s so easy for us to sit together
But it’s so hard for our hearts to combine…
And I will see you in far-off places…
I believe I will see you somewhere safe
looking to the camera
messing around
and pulling faces…

I found the piazza, bordered by the pretty white Chiesa Valdese (church) and the massive Palazzo di Giustizia (Palace of Justice). There were very few people around. “Piazza Cavour,” I serenaded the Palazzo, “what’s my life for?”

Then I was ready to move on to Vatican City.

I followed Via Crescenzio to the Piazza dei Resorgimento,  where you first see the thick brick walls of the City. On the island in the center by the Metro tracks were clumps of overheated tourists and several African men selling duffel bags and luggage. They must have been doing so illegally, because when a police car drove into their midst they scattered and ran. I stopped to rest and to write in the shade outside of a gelateria before starting around the high brown wall in search of an entrance. I should have just looked in my book, because I wound up going in the wrong direction and hiking around the entire perimeter. My feet were hurting by the time I found the ingress by the Piazza San Pietro. I couldn’t help but think: what the hell is the Pope so afraid of that he has to live within this bloody fortress?

The Piazza was full of pigeons and tourists. St. Peter’s basilica was very large and imposing in the background, but I was too tired to do anything but take a few pictures and sit down. After that, without consulting my map, I headed down Via Della Conciliazione, again in the wrong direction, until I reached the Piazza Pia in front of the truly ancient Castel Sant’ Angelo, built by Hadrian in the first or second century. I was by the river again. Stopping, I wondered if I should just head back downtown. It was nearly six o’clock.

Accidentally, I made eye contact with a short, balding fortysomething man crossing the street, and he asked me for the time. Suddenly he was asking me a barrage of questions. (Here’s a tip for the womenfolk: never make casual eye contact with a strange Italian man unless you mean it.) I answered most of the queries good-naturedly (where was I from? what did I do?) until this man, named Giuseppe, asked me “Do you have a boyfriend who loves you?”

Not only did that make me wince (ouch), it made his intentions crystal clear. With a somewhat forced laugh I said “I think this conversation is over now,” and turned toward the Vittorio Emmanuele bridge. “Wait! Wait! Signora!” I could hear him calling behind me. Bye bye, Giuseppe. Thanks for letting me know it was time to leave.

It was a long walk back to the YWCA, down Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, past the aforementioned ruins in the Largo di Torre Argentina, through the Piazza Venezia with its huge white marble monument to king Vittorio Emmanuele II. Here I helped a lost Australian tourist locate his whereabouts on a map. From Venezia, I took less touristed side streets over to Via Cavour, and from there it was a straight shot back to Santa Maria Maggiore and the YWCA.

After cooling down and looking through the food listings in Let’s Go, I decided (rather insanely, after all that walking) to venture southeast of Termini into the San Lorenzo neighborhood for dinner. There was a vegetarian restaurant there called Arancia Blu, Orange Blue, which opened at eight-thirty (Romans eat late). It was probably at least two kilometers away, but I started off anyway, walking the length of the Termini station to Via Bibiana. It was definitely the skids along that route, complete with abandoned buildings and drunks, and I wondered about the walk back after dark. Once I turned onto Via Tiburtina, I found myself in a vital, if run-down, area that reminded me of parts of Somerville, Brookline, or Cambridge (Massachusetts). This was San Lorenzo, south of the city university, and it had that youthful, vibrant, multicultural vibe found in urban student neighborhoods. There were a lot of kebab shops and ethnic restaurants, and I loved it immediately.

I passed by Arancia Blu at least once without seeing it, a concrete building covered with graffiti. It was only eight-fifteen, but the pretty green-eyed waitress told me I could sit down anyway. I opted for the attractive raised wooden patio. A squarely built gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair (who, unbeknownst to me, was the chef) came to ask me if I wanted red or white wine. Apparently they give you a free glass at the outset — how cool is that? — so I asked for white. The man returned with the wine and a small plate on which were the two most delectable samples of focaccia I’ve ever tasted.

I liked this place.

I ordered a pasta dish with saffron and asparagus from another waitress, who reminded me of a slimmer, more unassuming version of Ingrid Bergman with a longer nose. (The pasta came very al dente, and was bright yellow.) While I was waiting for my food, a young woman, looking vaguely retro-punk with black-rimmed eyes and a black Blondie T-shirt, sat down at the next table and spoke American English with the waitress. She looked like my kind of people, so I struck up a conversation. Her name was Julie, and she was a student at the state university in Atlanta. This was her last day in Italy. She had come back to San Lorenzo because it was one of her favorite parts of Rome. We chatted all through dinner, through my decadent dessert of chocolate cake (so dense it was like fudge) with bitter orange sauce, and she told me where to go in Florence for good food. Specifically, Osteria Pepo, next to the very popular ZaZa’s. I wrote this down.

We walked back to the hostel neighborhood together afterward, and I felt completely safe.

The next morning after breakfast I sent out my travel diary from the YWCA computer. I had to retype the whole damn thing, because there was no way to hook up my laptop to the Internet (this was true at Internet points around town as well). Then I made an online reservation at the Ostello Archi Rossi in Florence for the nights of the third and fourth. The Web site confirmed availability for both nights in a 6-bed dorm.

It was eleven-thirty when I finally set out for the Ancient City. It was much closer by, fortunately; I was really feeling the effects of yesterday’s trek. Walking through the Domus Aurea park, where Nero’s house had been, I arrived at the Colosseum.

I had gotten quickly accustomed to Rome’s Renaissance grandeur, but this was something else entirely. There’s old, and then there’s old. The remnants of this colossal structure truly belonged to another, dead age. I didn’t pay to go inside; having only two days for all of Rome, I had determined that I wouldn’t spend much time standing in line. From outside you can get glimpses, through some of the arches, at the stadium inside, and that was enough for me.

I had a forgettable lasagna and another iceberg salad at Luzzi on Via di San Giovanni in Laterano, the street across the Piazza del Colosseo from the Colosseum, before entering the ruins. I took Via Sacra, the oldest street in Rome (a stone-paved pedestrian walkway), past what was left of the famous Roman baths (walls) and the Temple of Venus (ten columns), to the well-preserved Arch of Titus, A.D. 81, which depicts the sack of Jerusalem. Here there was a splitting-off of streets: Sacra, Nova, and Clivus Palatinus, with stairs on the Sacra side leading down into the sunken area of the Forum. Clivus Palatinus led to the Palatine Hill, but I didn’t feel like shelling out for the view when the rest of the Ancient City was mine to see scot-free. I descended into the valley and wandered amid modified temples like the columned Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, which had been (like so many buildings in Italy) remodeled by later architects and turned into a church. Other temples like that of Vesta, up on the hill, were nothing but a crumbling wall, and the adjacent House of the Vestal Virgins could have been any number of things. I read in my book that the Vestal Virgins were among the most respected people in Rome, with the power to pardon prisoners – but that if one of them was found to have partaken of the pleasures of the flesh, she was buried alive with a loaf of bread and a candle.

May I take a moment here to vent? Jesus H. Christ, I am so over this ancient, culturally pervasive madonna/whore business. We’re still feeling the effects of centuries of this perverse dualism, this sexual sickness. You can be esteemed, like a Vestal Virgin, or dispensed with, like a worthless piece of shit. (Sound familiar??!!!) I want to be a Sacred Prostitute, goddammit. These ladies, Heterae, tended the goddess temples in Greece, and healing powers were attributed to their sexuality. A war-scarred man limping home after the trauma of battle might go to the temple to be “healed” by one of these respected priestesses. (Yeah baby, I’ll heal you up real nice!) Deena Metzger wrote a famous feminist play inspired by this practice, “The Woman Who Slept With Men to Take the War Out of Them.” At the root of it, it’s about engagement, about giving something back to a man that has been sorely lacking: not merely pleasure, but the Feminine itself. Literally, it’s about “plugging a man back in” — to connection, to community, to the ethic of care.

I kicked around in the ruins for a little bit longer, and then exited up to Via dei Fori Imperiali, crossing the street to have a look at the bits and pieces of the Forum of Augustus. I recognized where I was immediately; down the way was the gleaming Vittorio Emmanuele II monument, and here was the beginning of Via Cavour. I took Via Cavour to Via dei Serpenti, where I found the heavenly gelato at Gelatone, and sat in the piazza to begin this massive missive.

I checked my email at an Internet point on the way back, and discovered that Ostello Archi Rossi had confirmed me for only the 4th, so once at the YWCA I used their pay phone to call Florence. The young man on the other end of the line told me that if the email confirmed only the 4th, then they only had availability on the 4th. “That would have been nice to know before I made the reservation,” I said. He repeated himself about availability. “All right,” I said, realizing I was getting nowhere, “whatever. Can I cancel my reservation?”

That made him change his tune. He actually checked availability, and said that they had a space, but that he couldn’t take my reservation over the phone. I was to email them and authorize them to charge my credit card for the night of the 3rd. I paid the YWCA the 2 Euro to use their Internet (their minimum charge, for an hour) and followed his instructions. Then I went back to my room to freshen up before heading down to San Lorenzo. I wanted to have my last dinner in Rome there.

I took a different route and thought I had gotten lost, in a very down-and-out looking area by an ancient ruined bridge, but I do usually have a bloodhound’s sense of direction (despite yesterday’s Vatican fiasco) and eventually found myself on Arancia Blu’s street, Via dei Latini. I explored the neighborhood for a while, looking for an open restaurant, but in this part of town it seems everyone opens late. After eight o’clock I gave up, already ravenous, and went to see my friends at Arancia Blu.

The green-eyed waitress, Silvana, was there, and let me sit outside again and eat bread. We talked for a few minutes, and I mentioned that I had been working up at Lake Orta. She was from the lakes region herself, but had never heard of Centro. The Bergmanesque waitress, Daniela, who had waved at me when I passed on the street, brought me a glass of sparkling wine to go with my bread. When the kitchen opened I ordered the potato and mint ravioli, which was certainly an interesting combination, if not ecstasy-inducing. For dessert they recommended the parfait of eggnog, which had a marsala-caramel glaze that gave a wonderful bitter tang to the creamy sweetness underneath. Daniela brought me a (gratis!) glass of marsala to go with it, and I sat back, content, chatting with the cute college-aged couple from California at the next table. Life was good.

When I left, reluctant to part for good from this new home away from home, Daniela motioned to me, and made her way around the tables to kiss me, Italian-style, on both cheeks. This pleased me to no end. What a terrific place this was, and what marvelous people, like a slightly upscale, Roman version of my local organic community cafe at home — only with free wine.

Walking out into the night, I heard drumming. I followed the infectious tribal beat to the piazza near the clock tower where I had snapped a picture earlier. (I have no name for the place; it’s off my map, and nowhere on the Internet.) A crowd stood there watching a group of student activists in blue and orange costumes dance in front of a banner decrying the Mexican government for human rights violations. It was election week in Mexico, but I wasn’t sure what these kids were advocating in terms of Italian participation. All the fliers had already been handed out, not that I could have read them anyway. Still, it was fun to watch their choreographed dance and catch the contagion of their youthful energy, that spirit of resistance.

They moved on down the street, and I turned back toward Termini. The marsala and the good people of San Lorenzo had calmed my nerves enough that the walk back, along those dark and deserted streets, gave me no pause.