8: Fast, but not so Furious

820 words.

Begun last Friday morning (6/26), finished Tuesday morning (6/30)

A girlfriend, let’s call her Claudia, a serviceable Romanesque pseudonym, who I met in 1998 has come all the way from Seattle to Rome to see me. It is strange to think of the shifts of time and what endures in our lives. I’d just finished my BA. My mom rented out rooms in our house to make ends meet while I was in college and she was still supporting me.

For nine months, we lived together as Claudia started a career in tech writing, and I worked as a secretary waiting to go to grad school in the fall and we both rolled our eyes at my long suffering mother. I resisted becoming her friend. I didn’t like to get to know those renting from my mom. It was always messy and I preferred not to be involved. And yet, Claudia wore me down. Mostly by insisting I go out in the evening with her to concerts and on double dates with cute boys and by teaching me her lovely little simple meals for one. Some cheese, a can of beans, a tortilla. Voila! Dinner!

She’s become something of a sister to me. Loyal, with a deep knowledge of my past *good, bad, ugly, but most importantly FAMILIAL*, always willing to cheer me on, and be patient when I go silent, when my present life is just too much.

She read me a poem she wrote yesterday inspired by images of the Virgin Mary in the gold mosaics in Santa Maria Trastevere it was on motifs of female embodiment, birth aging death and our own journey in our corporal reality. So moving. So much of this life stage. Later when we were out in the evening, she said she only read it to me because I’m a safe person and will be kind and supportive.

This is true, but I had to tell her that I will never call something good, particularly not writing, unless I really 100% believe it to be true. This feels a sacred trust as a teacher…

Dammit. I have run out of writing time. I must throw myself out of this flat and get to the Colosseum…

… and now Claudia has left for the airport and somehow it is Tuesday morning, where did all the time go?! It felt like forever and also a hot minute...

I don’t even clearly remember why I gave this post the title, I did. So, if I had to speculated, fast was probably about how the time in Rome seems to fly by and even as I’m busy every moment I feel like I’ve not done it all or enough. I want to grab on to time and pause for a hot second. Maybe that’s why I love this genre of writing so much.

The not so furious part of the title, probably relates to the misadventures of last Thursday. Our host curator was in a car accident and we didn’t find out until we were in situ. Messy. Even messier it was move out day for all the fellows who had been in residence for the academic year, AND there was a Vogue photo shoot with a couple of celebrities who meant nothing to me but were readily recognized by most of the students. Last minute transitions and surprises are not my jam. I am a planner. But life happens and my new hero is Sebastian the librarian who much to his inconvenience gave my students a small tour and history lesson and then took us all into the rare books room and showed us 1) an illuminated manuscript, 2) a critical work of Galileo with his woodcuts representing his observations through the telescope esp the rotation of the moon of Jupiter. This was instrumental to his determination that a heliocentric system was to be preferred over a geocentric one; and 3) Andy Warhol’s signature inside one of Gore Vidal’s books. This was all thrilling and perfect. But in some ways the unstructured, unplanned joy of our stop at Paola’s fountain and with incredible views of the city even rivaled anything more formally academic about the day.

Below are some images of my own morning adventures with Claudia.

Prayers on paper at the feet and even in the arms of the saint. Spolia I feel I’ve not seen before. More street art. Not just the cafe but we indulged in the whole flowers exhibit. Bees that sculpt the head of Hadrian! Glorious, luminous portraits by Kehinde Wiley who frankly should have had top billing in this exhibition. And, empanadas. Because I’m so impressed with how cafes and restaurants serving non-Italian food has had an explosion here in Rome, and I’m glad to see S. America is being represented!