Eri solo da incontrare ma tu ci sri sempre stata

It’s been sunny lately and Corrine, Amy and I had a picnic in the park, and when we walked in I saw the trees stretching their branches like fingers or fingers stretching their branches like trees and the sky was separated from the ground and everything was good and evil and I thought about that.

Like, the view took my breath away. Rome is so beautiful I don’t even know what to do when I see it. Can I even accept this—all of this? I look over the deck and see a panoramic view of life: the Campidoglio, Colosseum and mountains, everything growing from the ground, marble glowng. I could never know any of it.

But, it’s beautiful. When you visit one church there’s another underneath it, and columns stand next to each other, each a dusty books written in a foreign language. Today and yesterday fade with the mountains, while I dissolve in the sun. We’ll never know what we created. 

The mountains were here, though, and so was the Tiber. There used to be a hill where the wreckage of the Roman forum stands, but man wore it down. Too much walking, too much wandering, too much “wisdom”? Everything in excess and the ground fell beneath us. I guess.

The Tiber stayed here, though, and runs through Roma. It’s like a green snake that sometimes overflows and creates tension in the streets that, even though it’s still beautiful, means that good cannot exist without evil and life cannot exist without death.

And while I was walking by the Tiber I looked down and had a flash of death. I saw myself climbing over the fence, spreading my arms, fingers like a tree, and jumping in, losing my life.

It reminded me how scared I actually am of death and how much I love living here. Then, the sun shown again and the water flexed its scales. I guessed it was good.

“Eri solo da incontrare ma tu ci sri sempre stata”

Someone wrote that on the wall. It means: “You were only here for me, but you have always been.” If anything, I dissolved in the wall this time, arms back, fingers like a tree, and knew whoever wrote that felt the same way I did—bittersweet, daybreak about to expire. I smiled into the sun, squinted, and kept walking on cracked cobblestone, where moss grew in dark patches, good and evil, and added color to a usually dark place. 

Carnevale

I woke up feeling like the desert and ended feeling like the ocean which, in my mind, are fairly equal entities as I had pieces of myself scattered everywhere, with my face catalogued behind millions of Italian cameras.

Corrine and I ran into Carnevale. We were shopping on the main artery in Central Roma and, by the time we got out of H&M, the parade was going full force. Confetti burst through in the air, kids sprayed silly string, and a soundtrack of animal noises surrounded us: this is what it’s like to be 5 years old in Rome.

It was a family event. Children were on parent’s shoulders wearing ears like Topolino, and throwing glitter like fairy godmothers. Seeing Rome compounded at once, with the streets closed off and the Piazzo del Popolo jammed, was like the Renaissance Faire mixed with the Superbowl; all of Italy together to celebrate one giant event.

Rome is a city full of strangers. People come to watch the sun set on the colosseum, and bring their native language with. Everyone still echoes back first-world communication, but at Carnevale everything spoken was purely Italian. 

The parade looped around. Corrine and I ran to the other side of the street and let stanzas of princesses and ribbon dancers flow through our consciousness, while all around the crowd translated the same experience through a different language. It was an unreal feeling. A breeze waved glitter through the streets and Bravi! Bravi! We yelled extra loud.

After, we walked down Via del Corso and saw change, empty bottles and books scattered all over the ground.

“Centissimi per pensi?"

It was an open-air museum. A cardboard sign repeated “Penny for your thoughts?” in three different languages, a pool of coins stagnant next door. The museum was completed by a random Roman citizen. I saw it and, in a flash, knew how much Romans actually love their city. If you’re born in this town you never want to leave--taking that step away from leaving everything you know and never could know is heartbreaking. Italian life worships ancestory, and stepping out of God's navel is to become a lonely ruin, surrounded by glitter from Carnevale, but only hearing relatives telescoped through a far-away distance.   

Firenze

Friday we left the hostel to head down streets narrow by even Roman standards. This time it was Florence for the weekend, and as we crossed the Pontevechio I took a star out of our constellation and stopped: how did I get to this moment in life? I’m young, I’m in Florence, I’m crossing a bridge older than my oldest family member, and I’m in the place where the Renaissance began: could life be this good? The river was flowing one fold after another, running the stars, saying: one, Florence, two, Florence, three, Florence, four…

I got to the stairs and Hannah is standing in front of me with this red coat, while Elliott urges us on (he’s Ryan’s friend). I walk downstairs into what looks like an exposed brick basement and end up in a restaurant with garlic hanging from the walls-- I knew: “Ok, this is the most Italian place I’ve ever been.”

As an American studying abroad, even though you’re in Italy, a lot of the places you go still aren’t really Italian. So when I stepped down and saw the view I knew I was in the right place, and followed the path of people ahead of me. Dinner was 3 hours, I don’t remember what the tables or chairs were like, but Molly sat across from me, and we all shared wine and appetizers, and had a great time. After that we had to go, and rolled through the night magnified like folds on the river, magnified like the folds on Florence.

So Elliott takes us to this bar and at first it’s disgusting, but then we go to another and it’s actually pretty cool. The walls are orange and red, with a table, and then the bartender looks like Albert Einstein and yells, VAI VAI VAI, everytime you take a drink. The drink took steps and first you put sugar on one side of an orange, coffee grounds on the next, and then drink Rum and Coke as fast as you can. Next we were at this Spanish place, drinking homemade Sangria from silly straws and then we were a this Zoolander blue light style club with raging techno and maybe disco lights on the walls but I don’t really remember.

We walked past the Duomo on our way back, white with fresco on the outside, and now the stars were above and bleeding white into the night, illuminating some kind of path for me. I followed it, and was drunk and young in Florence and stared up and wondered not what Michelangelo thought (because who am I to even wonder that), but how I got there and where I would be next and thanked the universe and moon for lighting a path for me this far.