Gianicolo
1994
Stand
against the burnt red cat's-tongue stucco. Press your knees into the
rough wall that encircles the crest of green rise called Gianicolo.
Let the breeze bite your face. Fill the linings of your nose with the
bad cologne from the self-absorbed couple pressed against each other
nearby, and the cloy of sleeping flowers in the park below. Listen to
the Fiats behind you creak as they sway with erotic love. Smile at the
winking yellow man-stars from the low suburban slope across the valley,
and the fluid car headlights that flow alongside the Tevere.
All of Rome belongs to you.
You can look out over the skyline and mark every place that you own. Every
dome of every church that belongs unreservedly to you. Each famous point
of reference with which you share the perfect affinity of witness, contemplation,
and creation. Places you have created for yourself--not the landmark,
but rather just the right opinion on it. A few descriptive phrases, wrestled
by your brain to perfection, jealously guarded inside your mind.
You own every single spot you have visited, every marvel of Rome to which
you have paid awed or indifferent homage. From the twin domes at the triumvirate
end of Piazza del Popolo to the twin spires of Trinita` dei Monti crowning
the Spanish Steps. Even the white, puffy scar of the Vittorio Emanuele
monument. The beautiful and the ugly, beloved and detested. Dirty, sunken
ruins and shiny, belching traffic.
But you also own the Via Appia Antica that shoots, arrow-straight, a ROMAN
road, south out of the city, past generations of pious Christians whose
greatest sin in the eyes of their world was to exist. They have had their
revenge, made your city their capital, and spent centuries sprinkling
your Rome with temples where people can worship their frescoes and confetti-marbled
floors. Deep green, burgundy, old white, with gray mortar.
You possess the pale curve of the Colosseum that peeks out, thin, delicate
and proud, you catch it with your eye, the owner's eye. You know how to
pick its broken marble shell out of the complex sprawl and introverted
jumble of your city.
You reign over the wide, noble hemisphere of the Pantheon, worshipped
by its many gods, perfect in their architecture, symmetry, and devotion
to the human race.
You also own the diminutive dome of Santa Maria Del Popolo, distinguishable
only to your trained gaze, a treasure of art and dignity. Caravaggio and
Rafaello, Pinturicchio and Bramante all find peace inside, their artistic
legacies resting together in this mildly touristed spot at the edge of
your city's walls.
Yours alone are the myriad medieval buildings of the Jewish Ghetto, of
Trastevere. You own every convoluted alleyway that carves its worn worm
path through the exquisitely special mundanity of a settling, dusty Metropolis.
You lay claim to each and every unidentifiable dome that punctuates the
panoramic spill, simply because it exists and rises above the five story
skyscrapers of your Rome. These churches thrust their perfect and perfunctory
hemispheres above the sprawl, all for you. They do it for you.
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