Rome, Day 13

Certainly there are myriad truths and insights that can be had about the various piles, periods, places of Rome. But is there one single “Truth” that can be found or concluded? That would also clearly depend on the “concluder”, intent and/or necessity, whether the conclusion was intellectual or experiential, academic or existential.

Many came to Rome for M/meaning, pilgrimage, education… And for examples, Goethe, Emerson, Margaret Fuller were changed by “Rome”, by Italy. Many for centuries came from Britain, France, Germany, Russia,…

In my case… I did not come from N/northern Europe, or from New England. I moved in despair from the, as I like to describe it, “unbearable lightness of being in California” to Russia… And being there as it was changed me in needed, appreciated ways. (A mysterious reality noticed, and even mentioned, by even otherwise imperceptive family and friends.) Though it was closer to psychic therapy than artistic or intellectual enlightenment. Nonetheless…

I myself needed Russia not California. And I came now to Rome in a mature age – ignoring the immature Southern boy who wandered ignorantly and haphazardly through five decades ago – and not in my 30s or so….

But the fact is most people I know are asleep – adream – and don’t know it. And many of the many taking The Canned Tour, and eating and partying at night, are in the sleep state. (In a way, as if their tour guides and itineraries were directing them through a world of dreams which are the sites of Rome.)

It is asleep, adream, unrealistic – surely since the accessibility of Rome to flying tourists in – to speak of “Ancient Rome”, “Renaissance Rome”, “Baroque, Rome”,”Romantic Rome”,… without adding Tourist Era Rome/Italy..,. Tourist Occupied…