Rome Antics

LETTERS TO ROME:

A city that is equal parts blood and water. A light laboratory. Whose ruins and green cracking bronze statues are indistinguishably growing up from the ground or decaying into it. Whose mosaic tiles and very uneven cobblestone streets I have been a topographer. Rome, an urban interior whose streets and inter-building spaces feel more like a society of rooms. Some buildings reliant upon the other, and some built by Michelangelo in self-sufficient isolation. Architecture out of bodies, light, and air. A hole in the Pantheon that lets the rain slowly descend into the center of the temple. The sound of water in constant motion.  Vivid nowness and play with veneration. A makeshift empire and the center of the Christian faith that will one day be replaced by a greater kingdom and fade in the light of a greater ruler.

A city that "has to be got." (Robert Hughes)

To the small commuter towns on the way to Rome:

            I hope you are glad to hear that someone is still asking what lies within you, but I am sorry that very few care to be acquainted with you. Only the meticulous scholars know who your patron saints are or what makes you interesting. Ravaged by war and unable to fully recover, I know you have just as much beautiful vulnerability and past as Rome does, Attigliano.  Maybe I will learn one day. 

To the Garden of Livia:

            I know you were meant to be private and underground, but I am thankful to share in your perpetual bloom. More wild than cultivated, I thank you for being more than a beautiful space to feed an idle mind. I hope to be just like the ideal Roman house with a garden at its core

---according to Virgil vineyards are best planted in rows so that there is space to grow and spread their branches.

To the Sculptures in the National Museum:

           How does a low relief hold so much chaos and anxiety?

           How do I make my ears like theirs as the darkest deepest caverns of the head? How do I make myself like the artist forms the busts so that the light travels down such burrows to settle in for good?

           How is it possible that I can see and feel the sighs of a row of unpronounced and unexcited women’s faces of stone?

           Why did statue have be on loan so that only a video could show me how the eyebrows join together as scars on the exhausted boxer’s face?

            Must I also be cast and gilded in gold in order to become holy? Or is there a holiness that is more like the freshly washed, flapping white shirts drying on the Orvietani’s balconies?

           Why did one of the only festival dates gleaned from a Roman calendar exhibit have to be April 1^st when the women would pray to Fortuna Virile asking to hide the imperfections of their bodies to their own men? Is it to prove that we are in the same place, only pleading to different gods or coping in different ways?

To the beggar prostrate in the puddle mucked cobblestones with palms pressed:

           Do you know that Caravaggio has used your face as the Virgin Mary, the travelling pilgrim, the tax collector witnessing a man’s calling, and the naked villains coming to assassinate Matthew? And does that give you hope? Or do you even know what lies inside the chiesa that only receives the contact of your knees on its outer grounds? The church is not just for the healthy, but especially for the sick.  Caravaggio knew that, and he wants you to see. It is possible that the gospel can be illustrated with unexpected and unpalatable sources.

To the St. Maria del Popolo:

           As much as I wish to be angry with you for keeping me from another Caravaggio, I cannot complain for the reminder that real life will, and sometimes should, get in the way of my plans. I know how much more weight and responsibility of emotion a funeral has than a painting, and attempting to follow and remember Jesus in the stations of the cross can mean much more for some than putting a coin in a machine to cast some light on a scene that is only viewed for a moment.

            

To the tiny nun who took us for the tour of a lifetime through the catacombs:

           Thank you for sharing from the heart and not just spewing information. Thank you for letting us sing the doxology in a cavern where Christians have been lying for centuries.  Thank you for showing us garden flowers and glimpses of paradise, resurrection, and salvation in a dark, dank place of death. Thank you for letting us into places where very few are ever let inside. I will never know your name, but your presence and generosity nearly brought me to tears.

To St. Peter’s Basilica:

          How does a weary pilgrim find Jesus amid the grand chaos of shining Pope tombs and flying celestial babies? We approach welcomed by long stretching arms of architecture and enter lost and feeling completely humbled, or ignored, by the overwhelming glory and weight of gold until we find our Lord in the corner, pale and collapsed into the longing arms of the Pietá.  

The small simple, eye-level images of the dove are just as important as the looming dome.

To Bramante and Borromini:
           Thank you for the peace of a perfect square. For the rest of a white ceiling and a simple yet well-planned and unconventional courtyard. 

To Michelangelo’s Moses:

            You were not always so illuminated with horns, but were transformed and radiant by the presence of the Lord, by the giving of the Law. Your charged strength could not come from your own ill-equipped abilities to lead people and speak with power, only from the Lord. Crafted by humble hands that also were led to do projects they did not want to do, but accomplished so much more in following through in obedience to the asking. Where does the artwork end and the artist begin?

“Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you . . . Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:5,9)