Warring Cities: Rome vs. Des Moines

This morning I woke up to the sound of birds chirping loudly, instead of the clatter of a train rushing past my window. I woke up in a new bed in a new apartment, in the Roman neighborhood of Garbatella. The weeks before this move have been filled with unexpected changes and explorations throughout Rome and other parts of Italy, which is why I totally forgot I had started a blog. Rather than try to recapitulate all the events that have occurred since I last wrote, I’ll begin with what occupies my mind most; that is, the end of one experience of Rome, and the welcome beginning of a new phase in yet another of the city’s many faces.

This weekend my three roommates and I packed up all our things, stuffed them into a smart car, and drove through a maze of narrow cobble-stone streets to a new apartment.

It’s just a few blocks away from our old place on Via Statzione Ostiense, but there are worlds of difference between the two places. On the busier street of Ostiense the traffic was loud, and unkempt men seemed to be more numerous and sometimes predatory. I walked the street pensively and tried extra hard to see beauty in the littered sidewalks and the graffiti-covered bridges. Via delle Sette Chiese, the main street I walk in this new neighborhood, sees a car every five minutes, and carries quiet residents of the old and charming apartments from home to work, and maybe to the café or park where kids play soccer after the school day is finished.

I find it amazing that within Rome, even within one or two kilometers, there are communities that have such a distinctly different feel. Another example of this is the historic Jewish neighborhood, which I visited with my class a couple weeks ago. About one kilometer down the Tiber from the abandoned slaughterhouse where Kurdish squatters sip tea and play chess, the Jewish synagogue towers over the oldest Jewish community in Europe. In the 16^th century, the Pope stripped the Roman Jews of almost all their rights and confined them to a tiny ghetto of 200 meters length. In the 1870’s the Jews were finally granted full citizenship again and the ghetto was demolished. A new synagogue was built and the neighborhood that exists now reflects the style and resilience of their place of worship. Currently undergoing the common process of gentrification, the “Jewish Ghetto” boasts some of the priciest real estate due to the thriving Jewish culture and the many historical sights within the area. There is a sense that the owners of the now famous restaurants, with their unique Roman-Jewish cuisine, have a certain pride, because their religion and culture have survived some of the most dumb-founding and formidable challenges in the history of any religion.  

             Just one or two kilometers further down the Lungotevere is another community that stands in contrast to all the others, but also thrives in its own unique culture: Vatican City. A few weeks ago I went exploring and wandered down random streets and was suddenly looking up at St. Peter’s. I felt so different walking up towards the massive church than I had felt walking through the cramped but cozy streets of the Jewish ghetto. Everything was enormous; the fountain in the massive courtyard, the towering dome, the pillars enshrining it all, seemed to express power, wealth, and austerity. The people were different as well. Nuns and priests walked by hurriedly, mixed in with tourists who, for some reason, appeared to be predominantly Asian. Security cars seemed to pop out of every corner, with their Vatican City insignia pointing out their loyalty to a holy government separate from Rome.

My favorite place remains the abandoned slaughterhouse in the outskirts of the City, in the strange neighborhood of Testaccio. The huge building is now undergoing its own form of gentrification, and seems to wait in anticipation as its makeover slowly takes place. A bourgeois-esque café moved in to where the cows used to drink from their troughs, and an organic market stands where the animals used to be slaughtered. The courtyard outside the café is covered with bright green grass, and picnic tables have been set up next to a little stage where a musician sometimes plays guitar for meager crowds of three or four young smokers with a newspaper or a good conversation partner. A couple Sundays ago I went there early in the morning, and found a festive farmer’s market going on in one of the old barns. The perfect distance away from this event, outside the café, I found the ideal spot to sit and write in my journal. From my little table, bathed in hot sunlight, I rolled a cigarette and sipped my espresso, and watched parents chatting with each other while their kids chased each other around the dilapidated feeding troughs. The courtyard was so peaceful and calm that day, and I thought about how different it was now from the gory chaos of its former life as Rome’s number one meat factory.

            After a glorious weekend in Venize during Carnivale, which included fights with taxi drivers and almost two missed trains, I was ready to spend this past weekend back in Rome. The best part of the weekend was getting to know my roommates better, which was an inevitable byproduct of moving into a new place with them. For the first time, there is camaraderie in our place that makes it feel like a home. Last night we cooked together in our new kitchen, and bonded over our collective inability to use the brand new stove.

            The second best part of the weekend was trying to read a guidebook of Spain in Italian. I couldn’t understand very much, but that didn’t keep me from getting very excited to begin planning my trip to Spain and Portugal over spring break. This week I’ll venture back over to Piazza di Spagna to the Anglo-American Bookstore, where I can find some books on Spain and Portugal that I can actually read. While I pretend to study for my midterms tomorrow and the next day, I’ll actually be thinking about the wonderful moment when I will see the first denizen of my beloved Des Moines (Benjamin Johnson) in far too long, in an aeropuerto Espana, and look forward to the bliss of finally seeing a familiar face. 

Mangy Dogs, Fishy Roses and Death

I'm not keeping very close track of time, but I think I've been in Rome for almost a month. I'm measuring time loosely by how comfortable I feel here. By now I can breeze in and out of metro stations, fearlessly walk through the labyrinth of Roman neighborhoods, and I know which buses to catch after the metro stops running at night. I feel more a part of the city every time I lose my bearings in a new neighborhood, where ancient, narrow streets seem to connect to the next street, and the next and the next in a completely illogical pattern. Inevitably though, I come across an exuberant young local who is more than happy to explain my way home, or I happen upon a coffee shop where I can sit for awhile, sip an espresso, observe gorgeous black-eyed children with curly hair playing soccer for awhile, and set back out again to eventually find my way home.

I have points of reference that make me feel more and more like a true denizen of Rome. One is the Testaccio market, which I've visited the three past Saturday mornings. This week I even woke up at 6:45, at my friend Cleo's apartment where I'd collapsed after too much wine and vodka, and caught the metro back to my part of town, about a 40 minute journey, to arrive in the Testaccio market before it got too crowded. I bought bags and bags of fresh fruit and vegetables, and, although I could barely carry what I already had, I topped off my load with a large bunch of fresh roses, because I couldn't resist. Back at home, I unpacked my treasures and arranged my flowers, and realized I could never buy roses from that vendor again. Over the next hour I kept smelling the strong scent of fish, and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It seemed more and more like the smell was wafting out of my beautiful bouquet of roses, and when I put my face into the arrangement it was confirmed. Then I remembered the rose man had his booth right next to the fish man, who displayed an enormous table of swordfish torsos, complete with esophagus, eyeballs and sword, and many other varieties of freshly slaughtered wildlife, whose stench had traveled back with me and filled up my apartment for the rest of the day.

It is for these types of reasons that I'm falling in love with Rome. My fishy roses epitomize the revelation I've had about this place: that I've so far experienced it as a mixture; a mixture of the most breathtaking beauty and   a kind of eerie complication. The dogs represent it too. I have loved dogs more than ever since I've been here, because the dogs here are so damn mangy! I'm not talking about wild dogs, I'm talking about the ones walking around with their well-dressed Roman owners. Walking down the street I often pass a large, gorgeous dog tied to a tree outside a shop, while their owner is chatting inside. They all look so happy, but so amazingly unkempt. It's one of the things that makes me smile uncontrollably or even start laughing as I walk past, because the chic Italian with his filthy dog it's such an adorable contrast.

Roman culture itself is like that: citizens boast their cleanliness, style and attention to detail, yet cobblestone lined with garbage and lush, historical parks full of litter are commonplace. These types of contradictions are partly noticeable because I have a foreigner's eyes, and I am ignorant of the complexity behind them. But my own experiences have come to me containing both the dark and the light side of life.
Another sight that induces joy in me are the elderly folk of Rome. To me, their beauty parallels that of Rome's monumental and ancient structures, although in a completely different way. Old men, well-dressed of course with a nice scarf, ball cap and jacket, walk arm-in-arm down the streets, engaged in their friendly conversations. Old women also walk arm-in-arm, sometimes wearing matching outfits, but are still somehow completely stylish. They walk at their meandering pace, stopping for coffee or to look into a shop window and bask in the spring sunshine that lights up their features, and shows they've been walking these streets for centuries.

It was about 8:10 am and I stopped into a bar to drink a cappuccino and smoke a cigarette before class. I sat down at a table outside and enjoyed the hot rays of sun shining in my face, when I heard someone speaking to me. I squinted upwards and saw a figure enshrouded in light, speaking to me in Italian. He moved out of the sun and I realized he was a very old man; thin, with a white beard and gray-blue eyes. He sat down next to me and asked me again, "Quanti anni hai?" I was annoyed, because I'm usually getting hit on when I'm asked that question, and this guy was ruining my good opinion of the old people here. But I was also a little confused so I answered the question, and he told me, "Ah, that's nothing, I'm 94!" Then he told me I should stop smoking. "How many do you smoke a day?" he asked. I told him I smoked 1 or 2 about four times a week, and he said "that's too much". Then he told me he grew up outside of Rome, but moved to Rome when he got a teaching job in a local school. He was a teacher for 40 years, he said. He told me his wife had died 10 years prior, and when I said I was sorry, he waved it off, smiled and said, "I'm going to see her soon!" He told me his name was Paul and I introduced myself, and then said goodbye and went to class. I had a smile on my face for at least half of that day, and I took my conversation with my new friend Paul as a sign that I should definitely temper my smoking habit, because obviously this man was some sort of angel.

This is an example of another characteristic of Rome: it's ability to make death seem less daunting, and even beautiful.
I was walking home late one night after visiting a museum and when I crossed the bridge over the Tiber I noticed a man sitting on the ledge leaning backwards with a strange look on his face. I was disconcerted but kept walking. I kept looking back at the man though, and he kept looking back at me, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to go make sure he was OK. I turned around and walked back over the bridge toward him. I said hi and asked what he was doing up on the ledge. He looked at me with an eerie, embarrassed grin and shrugged. "I don't speak English" he said. Using hand gestures and trying to speak the little Italian I know, I told him I was worried and I wanted him to come down off the ledge. He just stared at me and shrugged with the strange look in his eyes. I asked him if he was planning to jump, and he shrugged. I wasn't sure what to do so I just kept talking to him, although he pretended to have no idea what I was saying.
After awhile I decided to let him be. After all, who was I to presume staying alive was better than death for him? He was going to do what he wanted to do, and maybe he, along with Rome's marble tombstones so beautiful they made even death seem romantic, and the Tiber, that has seen millenniums of lives come and go; maybe they understood something about the afterlife that I didn't.

I continue to observe and ponder, in the spirit of Gelassenheit, that attitude of "availability before What-Is, which permits us simply to let things be in whatever may be their uncertainty and mystery" (Carlo Angelino, Il Religioso Religioso nel Pensiero di Martin Heidegger).