No Jim, I'm Not Romulan.. I'm Reman...

IN THE SHADOW OF GODS: BEING AN ACCOUNT OF MY TIME EXPLORING THE FOREIGN LAND OF ROME (In several sections)
Roman Ghosts • Landings • De Face of History • Pitched onto the Cobblestones • Land Of Leisure and Idleness • Bar Room Revelations • Gabriel • Vatican Rag. • Live! Dead! Catacombs! • Back to the Bar • Wherever I May Rome

ROMAN GHOSTS
“You stand like a marble statue, trying to act so hard”

Rome has ghosts. I suspected something the first day I was there. I was impressed with each marble monstrosity I encountered and depressed with most Italians.

Like many feelings this made little sense. I should have been a sucker for Rome. I took five years of Latin. My mother is Italian. I know how many parts Gaul was divided into. I canem for caves when not feeding the Capitoline ducks or wondering who guards the guards. My chest is hairy and I like red wine.

With so much overdetermined I should have slid happily into Rome on its bed of brilliant provolone, wine-sharp tomatoes, and brightly paired melons and ham. Instead I felt uneasy and far from home. Eventually I unpacked that feeling – I was in the world’s largest mausoleum. There was no real animation. I do not mean to say that life didn’t go on. Social life in Rome can be frantic and exhausting. But like skeletons dancing in a graveyard it mocks the life it apes.

LANDINGS

“As the plane touches down my watch says ”3:02” / But that’s midnight to you.”

The Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters (POSSLQ) and I set down in Rome. I was still completely unmoored from the traveling I had done in the previous two days. I flew from Seoul, Korea to San Francisco, CA and then less than 24 hours later I returned to the SFO airport and decamped for Rome.

I had one night in the Bay Area, and it was the most confusing night of my life. But I was so unmoored from any particular time-zone that when I got to Rome it was just one night of sleep before I felt right again.

And so I set out to see Rome.

There is little new to be said about Rome. Perhaps it is that I have nothing new to say?

Rome is old and enduring, which is both its charm and its banality. I saw what needed to be seen. On the first day we powered through the sites/sights that folks back home would ask about. In a one-day introduction to the fine bus system and ankle-shattering cobblestone roads of Rome we saw St. Peters square, the Piazza Novona, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps. Once seen under pressure, we later revisited them at leisure. But on this day we made sure the tourist stuff was under our belt as soon as we could have it there. We also had much red wine with lunch. Italians drink as much as Koreans although perhaps for different reasons. And face it, mom and I are Italians.

DEFACING HISTORY
“Match me a slingshot/with every streetlamp in Queens/And I’m gonna show you more broken glass than any girl ever seen.”

One thing I noticed immediately is that most of Rome is covered in spray-paint. Roman graffiti artists seem to have all the will of US crews without their skills. Graffiti was quick, dirty, and artless. And it was all over any piece of art that wasn’t guarded by fences or water. Walk up in the Borghese Gardens and what wasn’t graffitied was defaced or destroyed. It went beyond the tagging urge, it crossed over into mere destruction. I detected a civic sense of self-loathing. Or perhaps it is just excess youthful civic pride. After all, the very word “graffiti” derives from the Latin word graffito, meaning something like a “flat scribble.” Which would work if you believed, for a second, that the kind of person who spray-paints on marble is literate. And if you believed that the low quality of the graffiti in Rome, primarily tagging, would probably dissuade you.

A quick internet search seemed to back up the notion that the graffiti is not based on noble sentiments. RomeBuddy notes that, “much of the spray-painted graffiti seen on the noble marble edifices of old Rome may indeed be rooted in anarchistic reaction to old values.” So despite my warm-hearted conjecture that little Roman lads and lasses are in fact historians with attitude, it seems more likely that they are unhappy idiots with spray paint.

RIDING WILD, FROM COBBLESTONE TO PITCH

The sense of civic self-loathing I detected in Roman graffiti is also played out daily in a form of automotive cultural immolation that makes Seoul Taxi-Drivers seem like Driver’s College Summa Cum Laude’s.

And the soccer team flops. Jerks.

LAND OF LEISURE AND IDLENESS
“I don’t want a holiday in the sun, I want to go to the new Belsen!”

Wandering Rome I sensed it had a lack of desire - a lacuna where will would be. Even the beggars just lay there on the ground with a cup in front, perhaps a kid, and an air of ennui a French Philosopher would envy. Businesses opened and closed randomly. Service was lackadaisical. People wandered the street with lazy randomness. The only time I saw any one move with any impetus was when they drove, which they did with a lazy disregard that was breathtaking to watch. Each driver drove like they were extending a permanent finger to every other driver on the road.

In general it seemed that everyone was too bored to care. I was in a land of idleness and leisure. Nowhere did I see anyone who seemed to be planning for the future, no one working hard, no one with a plan beyond the immediate scam. Admittedly, I speak no Italian and saw a small cross-section of Rome. But that was also true of Seoul and there at least I sensed some urgency.

Here any sense of urgency worked at geologic speed and with a casual disregard for property and others.

When I came to Rome I had been warned of “thieving Gypsies.” Beyond a mere force of nature, the Gypsies would come in hordes, led either by children or a Gypsy Woman (who was almost always described to me as suckling an infant). They would arrive so quickly, they would strike in so many waves, they would be so quick and efficient that I would be rendered of my wallet, some of my clothes, perhaps even my pride.

By my fifth day in Rome I was praying to every Roman God I could name to bring this cataclysm down. To bring me something that seemed to have belief, desire, desperation, even criminality behind it.

But this never came.

I was in Rome and I didn’t understand it at all.

BAR ROOM WISDOM
“It’s, it’s a ballroom blitz!”

So I spent some time in a local bar. The bartender was young with very good English. Like most Italians who wore t-shirts, his shirts were in English. No matter what else can be said about the imperial projects of the United States, we have won the t-shirt war. The bartender was about to head to Belgium to study electronic music at a conservatory. He wanted to be the next John Cage. I never did get his name. I’m sure he offered it to me, but the bar was very loud and I am partially deaf. The bar, even when I was to the sole patron, played 40-minute tapes with vague themes. When the bartender asked me what kind of music I liked (He liked Sigur Ross, who I had heard of, but never heard) he translated my Husker Du response into a 40-minute tape of the Clash playing live.

I liked that.

In conversation the bartender offhandedly expressed the view current Romans had about old Rome in a one sentence declaration that, “I’d give anything to live in it one day as it was.” I thought this odd from kid who clearly had a plan for the future.

I asked him, in a tipsy way, how Rome dealt with it’s illustrious history and he broke it down as a contest between those living in the past and those thinking about the present.

He said, ‘It’s a war between the architects and archeologists.’

He added that the archeologists always won.

I had already seen many a ruin but after a while their tatty glory faded into the background. You had to keep reminding yourself of their context – the lost glory they represented. I ordered another beer and made it of the .41 Liter variety. I had to be sure that he understood that I was a writer, or at least a wannabe, and alcohol is international shorthand for that. I asked why no one had ever thought to take just one of the grand ruins of Rome and restore it to pre-collapse glory? I had seen a book that did this with clever semi-transparent overlays, and as a marketing guy at realized I would pay a lot of money to visit a pristinely re-modeled ruin (ex-ruin?) and I would not be the only one.

He couldn’t hear that question. It made no sense to him. He rambled about how some places could be redesigned and told a story, intended to be cautionary I think, about how poorly this sort of thing had ended in the past. His response contained two related thoughts. First, that Rome today couldn’t compare to Rome of times past. Second, that attempts to recreate such glory (even simulacra) would be pointless.

As I wandered drunkenly home a phrase entered my mind unbidden, as unbidden phrases do. That phrase was “haunted by marble ghosts,” and to me it explained what I had observed.

Romans lived in the shadow of something so vast that they could never escape it. Romans were haunted by the stone ghosts of ancient Rome.

Why would modern Romans try? How could they compete with the ruined history that surrounded them? Worse, they can’t destroy it – it is their meal ticket. So every day, wherever they went, there it was, their history, mocking their dreams.

Every day is a series of casual insults from the long-dead. You ride the bus to work in the shadow of the aqueduct. What did you do yesterday? You pass by the enormous Monument to Vittorio Emananuelle II (and his substantial ego). What will you do today? St. Peters, or any number of other basilicae loom beside you wherever you go. What could you do today? You take your cappuccino in the piazza, any piazza, and you are staring at a fountains built by Bernini or Michelangelo. What could your children, or your children’s children do?

It’s hopeless.

You can’t compete. So you don’t.

Marble ghosts haunt Rome.

VATICAN RAG
“When in Rome do as a Roman / Clutch the cross to your abdomen”

The Vatican is an elephant in the corner. It is the ultimate representation (and art collection) of the superiority of the past, continually reminding modern Rome of how pathetic it is.

Italy must be the only country that has a sovereign religious state smack dab in the middle of its capital. And the Vatican has swing. One reason Rome is such a great tourist destination is that it is an “old style” city. One reason it is an “old style” city is that, by law, no building in Rome can be built to height greater than the dome of St. Peters. At the “request” of the Vatican.

This may be a sensible thing to legislate, it gives tourists clear views, but it is also an ancient tail wagging a ratty dog. The past trumps the present.

I toured the Vatican over three days, and it is mind-numbing. Paintings of famous artists elbow each other for space on the roof of hallways! But, in many ways, its power and influence dwarf and diminish Rome.

The Swiss Guards at the Vatican wear outfits that would look comfortable on the average oompa-loompa. The outfits are two-colored Swiss monstrosities that billow in weird places. A Swiss Guard can resemble an ambulatory multi-level mushroom. But, they have guarded the Vatican for over 500 years, so it occurred to me that they might have insight. After a bit of digging around I met a Swiss Guard and invited him for a drink. We talked.

“As we wandered from window to window in the Vatican,” I began, “I noticed a tennis court on the corner right above where the line for museum turns. Does anyone play tennis out there?”

The guard nodded. “Certainly. Many who work at the Vatican are old, but many are fit. More keep arriving.”

I thought this must be true. New blood may be scarcer in these secular times, there will always be a stream of repressed gays, obsessives and the honestly religious to refresh the Vatican. It's the big time. Just as there may not be many good actors in local repetory theatre? There are great ones on Broadway. Same with the Vatican. On the pines, big audiences, the biggest great-white-way ever.

I asked the guard if the Pope played? He claimed the new Pope (the "Rat" to Vatican insiders) plays fiercely. He doesn't like to lose and isn't above tricks that come with age. He has a mean dropshot, and woe (and perhaps eternal damnation) to the young collar who tries to play the game straight. The Vatican hasn't played the game straight since... well, they've never played the game straight...

A successful Papal opponent plays just well enough to lose and thus doesn't jeopardize chances at advancement. A well-timed hamstring injury has been key, more than once, to the career well being of a young member of the staff and if there are any service aces on this court, they are served by ‘Rat.’

As I left, I had a sudden vision of Papal dropshots bouncing over the restraining fence and showering down on tourists and Romans, waiting patiently in line for entrance to the Vatican. It seemed like an appropriate image.

GABRIEL
“blow your horn”

I talked to Gabriel Moyer about this. Gabriel is a good-looking 17 year-old multi-racial American who speaks three languages. Gabriel immediately attached himself to my idea. Gabriel was dressed in a DKNY shirt and Polo shorts so it’s not surprising where he took the idea.

In a tone that suggested he had just witnessed the murder of 27 cute little puppies, Gabriel said, “I have never seen so many 500 dollar suits ruined.”

I’m not a very fashionable guy (I have one suit for interviews and it is from Sears and cost under 200 dollars) so I asked him what he meant.

“Expensive suits,” Gabriel replied, “ruined by aging, no cleaning and no care.”

Something like the Coliseum, I thought.

So you’re Italian. And you buy an Italian suit. It is a classy suit, but that is the best it will ever be. So I suppose you don’t wash your suit. It can never be as clean and creased as when it came off the rack.

Why try?

Accept your shabby gentility and keep the vino rosso coming. It’s not just for lunch anymore.

LIVE! DEAD! CATACOMBS!
“Some people might say my life is in a rut / But I’m quite happy with what I’ve got”

My holiday was practically ruined by this “brilliant” insight. I’m glad it came late into my trip. We visited the Catacombs. Our tour guide was an unshaven man in a once-expensive suit (I thought of Gabriel) now hanging like a dishrag. He was tall, and perhaps handsome. He certainly had piercing eyes. The tour was interesting in its way. The catacombs are claustrophobic in a way that brings back the general tenor of Rome. History presses in around you like the walls of a cemetery hacked out of underground tufa.

Part of this, of course, is only that people were smaller 2,000 years ago. That reality is starkly expressed in the size of the looted tombs, which I pondered with something between wonder and boredom. I really wanted to see some bones but all of the bones in this catacomb have been long since looted. And as I thought this, and as I bumped my head against a bit of protruding rock it occurred to me that this was the same problem. In the Catacomb, as in Rome, the humans are gone and only the structures built for them remain. I couldn’t help but think that this was some kind of metaphor for modern Romans – forced to wander up and down, around and around, in paths that had been laid for them hundreds of years ago. It’s a fossil site where some poor creatures have the poor fortune to still be alive.

WHEREVER I MAY ROME
“Home isn’t where it used to be / Home is anywhere you hang your head”

I loved the ruins, I hated the ruined.