corporalitas

a. d. ii Non. Ian. ann. dom. MMXII

Cum meum librum nuper corrigerem, etiam meum corpus in memoria habebam...

Cranking out book revisions, as I had occasion to do lately, I was struck by how much body-memory there is in writing.

I was working on an episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses — the Byblis episode of book 9, if you want to know — an episode I'd written about in graduate school at the end of spring quarter, 1993.  It was one of my better papers, as I recall.  (I actually don't have to recall it, since I've fetishistically saved it.)  It was good enough to get my future dissertation director to take me on, anyway.

What I remember most is where I wrote it, the kitchen of my second apartment.  Our second apartment:  I'd been married just over a year.  I loved that place, a corner unit with lots of wood in an old brick building near campus.  I can close my eyes and feel myself there, all of my Ovid texts and commentaries propped open on other books, articles and random paper strewn across the tabletop.  The table, once my grandmother's, is next to a window.  The fridge is directly across from me;  the stove, on my left.  It's the middle of the night.  My wife is asleep, and I'm at work on the manuscript.  I mean that literally, because I'm writing it by hand on scratch paper.  Once I've gotten enough pages, I'm going to head to campus and type it in on the Mac Plus. 

cervisia

a. d. iii Kal. Oct. ann. dom. MMXI

Plures memoriae mihi sunt, quas scribere debeo dum in mentem veniunt.  Ecce haec fabula juvenilis de cervisia.

I can see the party from the second-floor lounge, a gathering in one of the rooms of an adjoining dorm.  The songs of Cinderella, Genesis, and a hundred more, mixed for the occasion and mingled with laughs and shouts, waft upward on the evening breeze.  Springtime in Beloit.

A guy in a polo roosts in the first-floor open window, his backside hanging over the sill two feet above the grass.  He's the Bartender.  When someone wants a beer, it's his job to reach into the 24-pack of Busch on the ground.  It's taken him a good five minutes to hone his craft without looking behind him.  His eyes locked on the party, he leans back slightly and sets his forearm, just so, on the rim of the carton.  The weight of the cans keeps him balanced.  He tucks in his fingers, plucks out a can, and pushes off, his arm tracing a wide arc, like a crane unloading a boxcar.  It's a thing of beauty, and he knows it.

I don't drink, but Dave does.  "You wanna beer?" I ask.

"Hell, yeah!" Dave replies.

"Me, too!" Christine chimes in.

"Yo!" calls Marc.

The news spreads.  Before I know it, I'm compelled to provide for seven floormates.  No backing out now.

I'm crawling under the evergreen bushes outside the dorm, just below the party window.  Their branches extend up and outward toward the brick, forming a narrow tunnel that leads straight to the beer.  I wait for the Bartender to grab one.  He's working a little harder now that half the pack is gone, but he's still in fine form.  As he pushes off, can in hand, I tilt the carton onto its side and start rolling the beers to me, one by one.  It takes longer than I'd like, because I'm lying on my stomach and there's not much room down here.  I hope to hell that no one wants to be served.

Ten cans later, the carton is empty.  I set it upright again and crawl backwards, clutching the beers to my gut in the folds of my t-shirt.  My legs are free of the tunnel, but I stay low, worming my way around the corner.

A master of stealth and subterfuge, I haul ass upstairs.  Cheers ring out as I burst into the lounge and start unloading the cargo.  "Have they figured it out yet?"

"Not yet."

"Kill the lights."  I survey the scene.  The Bartender hasn't moved.  The carton is upright.  Minutes pass, and some of my floormates, satisfied but bored, wander off.  Marc, Dave, and Christine are still with me.  We watch in silence, broken only by smug little sips.

After what seems an hour, the Bartender leans back, reaches, and lowers his forearm.  Without a counterweight, the carton slides out from under itself.  The Bartender flails with both arms and topples backward out of the window, crushing the carton between his ass and the soft earth.  The party erupts with a chorus of what-the-fucks.

"Defenestration!" I cry out.

The Bartender, still on his back, opens his eyes and glances upward:  there's vengeance, even murder, in his gaze.

"Oh, shit!" exclaims Dave, and we back away, retreating to our rooms, where we spend the next two days in hiding.

enigmata

a. d. iv Non. Iul. ann. dom. MMXI

Sunt multa Italiana quae comprehendere non possum....

Unsolved mysteries of Italy, 2011 edition, in no particular order.

• How does Alitalia stay in business?  Mystery-within-a-mystery:  how can an airline deviate from its schedule and act as if all is normale?  My flight from Rome was scheduled for 2:40.  It left around that time in the days before and since.  But on my departure day, 6:00, and not an explanation to be had.  (Nor any viable options for changing the flight.)

• Why is it that, even when you speak very loudly and repeat yourself twice, there's always one Romekid who doesn't hear you?  Corollary:  Why do all the Romekids hear the one thing you never meant to say?

• Why can't you print on the printer that is allegedly working, but you can print on the printer with the fuori servizio ("out of service") sign?

• Also on the IT tip, why do you have to turn over your laptop to be enabled to use the wireless internet?  Why isn't the wifi just password-protected like everywhere else?  What nefarious shit got installed on my computer?

• Who runs the St. John's Rome Center, anyway?  Stefano Whatshisname?  That cute girl who speaks English?  Satan?  The Pope?

• I know that dining out in Italy is a luxuriant, lingering affair, but why can't I ever get any waiter's attention anywhere?

• What do the Bolognese do for a living that their local economy can support portico after portico of shops?  Food shops, coffee shops, clothing shops, electronics shops, more food shops.  Seriously, the city feels like a mall sometimes.

• When your cab driver sees the pullman (tour bus) broken down and blocking the street and waits for other cars stuck behind the bus to back out of the street and to make a detour, why does he then proceed to turn onto the street with the broken-down bus and to act surprised when he gets stuck, too?

• Why, when you want the number 30 bus, does the 280 — which you wanted yesterday but couldn't catch if your life depended on it — blow on past three times?

• Why don't you, who are competent at making change in the U.S., ever seem to have the right change in Italy?  I mean, you get one- and two-euro-cent coins, but where do they go?

• Why does Florence have so many goddamned mosquitoes?

• How can my friend and colleague, Jackie, call Caffe Sant'Eustachio the best coffee in Rome, when only its arch-rival, Tazza d'Oro, uses Blue Mountain Jamaican grind, which she considers the best coffee in the world?

All of this sounds rather whiny, but it's not meant that way.  I had a great time, despite these enigmas here and there.  Tune in again some other year for more unsolved mysteries of Italy!

postea

a. d. ii Non. Iun. ann. dom. MMXI

Nunc viae vacuae sunt....

The streets seem empty now, even though flooded with tourists.  The hard rain that threatened the past two weeks has finally come.  It drives away al fresco diners, but everyone else carries on:  so much to see and do.

My girls have arrived.  The husband and father in me is overjoyed;  the didact, relieved.  No one to corral or correct, to remind or redirect.  My people!  No need to explain or expound.  Tedious ritual of unpacking my mind, of tying up loose ends, of choosing from a thousand points only three — farewell.

And yet....

Our first family meal in almost month.  There on the menu is Gia's pasta.  I advise my girls to order smaller portions, as Jordy and Emily should have done.  As we walk Pompey's cavea I seem to see Sarah racing toward the playbills of the theater that survives.

We pass the stand where I waited with anxious Jordan, who needed a cab to the Spanish steps.  Jackie arrived a moment later, bent on a rendevous with archaeologists in Trastevere.

Entering Piazza Navona, my girls puzzle over Bernini's rivers, but I can hear Allan and Melissa describing them all, while Sandy gushes over the jagged rocks.  There's the restaurant that cost too much, where Nicole waited too long for prosciutto e melone.  There's Amari's bench, though she much preferred the Aventine.

Turning into Piazza della Rotonda, my daughter marvels at the Pantheon just as Shannon and Katie did on that long first night, when the whole tour lay ahead.  I want to remind my wife, as I did Guerry and Jovany in St. Peter's, that the porch's bronze was melted down for the baldacchino — but she taught me that fact two years ago.

On to the Trevi by request.  La figlia eyes the trinkets for sale, while I contemplate the maiden revealing the virgin spring, a relief I'd never noticed until Katy and Ryoko pointed it out.  How obvious, now.

The water glitters under and above the light.  I see why Erika felt like a mermaid, a feeling she shared with all of Rome on the morning of Republic Day.  I wet my hands and fail to convince anyone that the Giovanni knock-knocking is not il battista.  Liz bought it, though, when my hands were dry.

Past the shop windows and headed home.  I wonder if Carolyn would have admired those shoes.  Or if Alissa will think of the Largo Argentina as a republican forum for the rest of her life.  My eyes grow heavy, like Maria's, and I stumble like Sarah, dear baby deer.

The palimpsest is full.  My city has been mapped over.  Romekids, I look for you everywhere.

ultima nocte

a. d. iv Non. Iun. ann. dom. MMXI

Est mihi pictura photographica, quae me iuvenem ultima nocte Romae monstrat....

I have a picture, which I've never taken the trouble to scan in, of myself on my last night in Rome in 1994.  My twenty-seven year-old graduate-student self, the one with the cheap glasses and tattered clothes, the one who could eat anything, whose knees didn't hurt, whose throat didn't pop and click when he swallowed, who had an intact left hand and lacked the chronic morning cough.

And the hair.  Oh, the hair.  Starting to thin at the crown, true, but still wiry and full.  In the photo it bushes out in every direction because the kid was too cheap, and too timid, to visit a Roman barbiere.

He smiles, knowing that this is the very last exposure on his last roll of film.  He takes care not to smirk, but to show some teeth.  He remembers how smug he looked in his wedding album, quite by accident, when he thought he was smiling.

His arms are bent behind his back for no good reason.  He wears an off-the-rack white dress shirt and a grey tie, the one he packed just in case.  His pants are forest green, his favorite pair, because they were airy but dark enough to hide the Roman grime, and they were long enough to cover his white tube socks.  His basic brown shoes are out of frame, but they are battered and worn from pounding ancient pavement — all the viae, viali, piazze and scale.  He's lean and a little haggard, but the ten weeks have treated him kindly.

Ego ille sum, sed ille non ego est.

Behind him, guests from the wedding mingle and dance.  Marco, a graduate student from the Italian program, got married in Santa Maria in Cosmedin.  This is the reception, on the Janiculum, above the Piazza San Pietro.  (The Galleria Principe Amedeo Savoia Aoata, my map tells me now.  My forty-four year-old self can never remember the goddamned name.)  Jennifer, the student of voice, has just performed what he knows only as that song from A Room with a View.

It's the golden hour, when the city is steeped in creams and yellows.  To the west, the dome of St. Peter's blazes orange and red in the sinking sun.  Soon he'll make his way down the hill and ring for the portiera to open the gate.  He'll take his last walk along the Tiber, across the Ponte Sisto, and home to the Campo.

If I could speak with this kid — this grinning, cocky young jackass — what would I say?

• That in a little over a year, he'll be a father of a baby girl, and so being he'll discover his best self.
• That, seventeen years later, he'll love his wife more ardently than ever.
• That he should buy stock in the internet.
• That all of his anxieties over graduate school and the dissertation will bear fruit in gainful employment.
• That his fears and phobias (that mole here, that lump there) will be proven baseless.
• That he should avoid table saws.
• That the closest friendships of that decade will devolve into, at best, polite acquaintances.

But what's the use?  He can't hear me.  And if he could hear, he wouldn't listen.  He's immortal and he knows everything already.  And, on the off chance he did listen, he might change our future.  He's going to need all of it — paternity, love, poverty, even that maimed hand.

And a haircut.

lena

a. d. vi Kal. Jun. ann. dom. MMXI

Bene facere videtur...

She seems kind enough, offering to take our picture in front of the Colosseum — which wasn't my idea, given all the photo-whoring I'd already put up with.  She is tan and blonde, and casually dressed like so many American tourists.  She looks through the viewfinder but can't fit us all in, so she steps backward over the railing and onto the grass of the former Meta Sudans.

     She counts off and clicks.  Our togetherness documented, we break apart.  I stroll off to study the south face of Constantine's arch, since we're supposed to be moving in that direction anyway, toward the foot of the Palatine.  Surely the rest will follow.

     They don't.  I make my way back to the north face, quickly but not too quickly.  I don't know, walk casual.  The students have gathered in a semi-circle around our photographer friend, who sits on the railing, looking down at her lap but talking enthusiastically.  She's writing with a chisel-tip maker.  My colleague is standing with the group, nodding agreement.  I move closer.

     "Yeah, yeah," says my colleague to the group, "That's the one I told you about."  I can't see her eyes for her sunglasses, but I know the tone.  Her authority is being tested.

     "And, ladies," says our friend, "there's a ton of places in Testasho you can party your asses off at."

     Testaccio?  Ah.

     Our good samaritan is a pimp, of a kind.  It's her job to scope out tourists of a certain age and to lure them to a local club with promises — of booze, of women, and of men.  Subtler than the hawks dressed like gladiators, but no less sharp, she saw the twenty young women in our group coming a mile away.  She saw us before we landed in Rome.  The photo was the thin edge of the wedge.

     She's dispensing general advice, still couched in helpfulness.  The hook is coming, and she'll need the flyers she's been marking up.  Right about...now.

     "So there's Testasho, and every Monday and Wednesday we do a pub crawl.  First hour, all the drinks you can slam, and we take you around...."

     I start to zone out.  It's been a long day — all our days are long, here.  Bits and pieces of patter, made grating by her husky, sorority-girl twang, get through.

     "...international and local crowd..."  "...keep drinking all night ..."  "...party your asses off..."  (Apparently the centerpiece of her repertoire.)  "...you want the Spanish men, honey, I'll bring 'em to you..."  "...help you get home on the bus..." "...and, again, my name is Trish...."

     The students are eyeing me.  I'm not sighing deeply.  I don't have my head in my hands.  I'm not covering my ears and shouting, "La-la-la!"  I'm not jumping up and spiriting them away.  I'm simply waiting for them to get their fill, so we can move on.  Maybe that's a mistake, since I don't want my silence to be taken as consent.  After all, we've made a culture of joking about this sort of thing.  It's the female students' role to yell, "Paolo!  Paolo!"  And it's my part to dramatize discomfort when they do.  I know that Trish doesn't really have their welfare in mind, but an intervention would make me look even more stodgy than I already feel.

     What bother me, though, are the assumptions in Trish's pitch:  that the avowed "EuroBash" of her brochure is the real reason our students — our American students, and especially the women — have come to Rome.  And, I suppose, that my colleague and I have been working them too hard, and that we don't understand their wants and needs — at least, not the way Trish does.  What, I wasn't young once?

     Then I hear, soft but plain, a snort of derision from one of our sophomores, and I know it's going to be okay, whatever happens.  We thank Trish and slough off to the Palatine.  She is much discussed:  the constructedness of her rhetoric, her eye for tourists, how she must have to sit there all day....  One thing our students understand is façades.  Perhaps not architectural ones — Yes, that was the Arch of Constantine.  No, you're thinking of Septimius Severus. — but they have the social ones down pat.

ekphrasis

a. d. vi Kal. Jun. ann. dom. MMXI

Equiti stapes desunt...

He has no stirrups.  Perhaps the Romans never used them, but he doesn't need them.  His horse, like his empire, is his to commad.  He wears no armor, only a cloak with folds that resemble a toga's.  He is the first citizen of Rome, immortalized in patinaed bronze.  He stretches forth his right hand, calming the people.  The horse reciprocates with the right foreleg.  His left hand, cupped and held above the thigh, curls inward as if holding invisible reigns -- but he doesn't need them, either.  His face is stern and benificent.  He wears a beard.  He is a philosopher and a king.

(Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, Capitoline Museums)