Hidden Along the Tiber

You may be wondering where they build their sports facilities in a city that constantly builds on top of itself. The answer lies on the banks of the Tiber, color coordinated and all.

C'era una volta...

Once upon a time..

I descended the stairs that lead down to the biking and walking paths that hug the curves of the river. (This can be a dangerous place depending on which neighborhood you're in. Wear suitable walking shoes and watch your step, lest you find yourself with a dirty needle through your foot.)

It was midday and a few bicyclists passed as I photographed a few of Rome's 27 bridges. After a good stretch, I found a ramp leading up to the street level, steep enough that I couldn't see up it. Halfway up I caught a whiff of cigarettes and a few steps later felt the fight or flight of adrenaline and my heart speed up. A man and woman reclined in dirty sleeping bags, opened beers on either side of them, speaking an unintelligible language made husky by tenor voices. Fear has been such a foreign emotion. I let myself be overcome by it and quickened my pace, staring ahead and pretending great purpose. I know better than to ignore that panic inside of me. There's no point rationalizing fear within a person who's generally fearless.

Something was not right.

75 Kilometers to Go

With 75 kilometers to go, I recline in the passenger's side while Settimio manouvres his Mercedes-Benz along streets leading to Rome. The beautifully belted notes of Pavarotti are too loud to fall asleep to so I keep my eyes open and my mouth shut, still trying to ignore the sour smell of sulphur lingering on my skin. I want comfort, but instead find my feet in wet, gritty shoes and my hair in tangles, matted against the back of my head. The opera continues. I count down the markers back into the city, replaying the events of my Halloween and how we got to Tivoli...

Alle dieci...
I knock on my landlady's door to inquire about the time of our departure. She ushers me in for an espresso while we wait for her friends to arrive with cars to leave the city. She is an older lady and so I expect that her friends will be in their late thirties. The weather is unpleasant. When we go outside to meet them the sky spits on our heads and laughs wind against the face, a little sting, just to be cheeky. We have coffee together, now 8 in total, and go on our way.

Alle undici...
Three vehicles make the evacuation from the city. I'm in the car with Settimio, who speaks no English, and Marco, who speaks for both of them. Marco translates enough small talk to fill the ride to my landlady's favorite country restaurant. The season becomes more autumn as we move deeper into the countryside. Trees turn to yellow with a few deep pops of red, splattered almost accidentally across the landscape.

Al mezzogiorno...
We enter a dining hall and sit at a table for ten, wondering if we should have brought two more friends. The courses are all ordered for me. Fresh, local prosciutto to start and warm toast with homemade extra virgin olive oil. For the first course, polenta, fettuccine with a light and creamy mushroom sauce, and pasta bolognese. For my second course, I have rosemary chicken, golden potatoes, and broccoli. We polish uncountable bottles of local wine, and follow up the meal with espresso, limoncello, and some take dessert. By now we are feeling good and comfortable. Conversation shifts to local hot springs, which I'm sure always sounds like a good idea after you've stuffed yourself silly.

Alle tre o quatto....
By three or four we've already stopped by my landlady's country home to pick up towels, which is always a funny word in Italian: l'asciugamano. We head to the Acque Albule, hot sulphur springs in the town of Tivoli, the waters of Virgil and Strado, once home to the extravagant Agrippa Baths. We strip down and join the locals, hiding from the cold wind in the warm sulphurous waters bubbling up from beneath the earth's crust. We scrub our skin clean with the mud and relax. I think, this is what we live for, moments like these. I find myself sharing in a tradition of the ancients, and somehow feel more connected to both the past and present. Bobbing in the various pools is like entering a time warp. A man 600 years old rests against the edge, that gritty mud caked deep in the wrinkles of his face, wrinkles he will take with him when he leaves, not because of his age, but because he has pruned his skin soaking in the water so long. Night falls and the winds grow ever colder. Red wine, not blood, moves through the veins and when we finally step out of the baths the actual temperature cannot be felt.

Falling Behind, Part I

You'd think we were still using water clocks. People like decapitated statues, another way to save face, taking agitated steps. Ancient Roman excuses in Modern Roman setting. There is no sense of being late. You get there when you get there.

Daylight Saving Time has officially ended in Rome and I gained an hour this morning without notice. An old friend I had been chatting with had said, "I should go to bed. It's 20 to 4 here." I thought how impossible this was, adding six hours to his time and thinking he had read the clock wrong. My landlady informed me of the change a few minutes ago. In the States we don't fall behind for another week. (We're behind in falling behind.) I wondered what this meant for my roommate. She left early this morning to catch a 9 a.m. train to Pompeii. Maybe her phone changed the time automatically the way mine did, but what about the other girls? And why didn't our program inform us that the time would be changing, especially considering we have mock exams the Tuesday we come back to school? I keep saying, "I'm not even surprised."

I suppose it's fitting here, too.

As Heard at Interlingue

"Listen! Guys! As we say in Italian, sometimes you just have your ears covered with prosciutto."

Here are some other funny idioms:

Prendere due piccioni con una fava

(To take two pigeons with one bean)

A. Via Boezio

Skype in the 1960's

I miss your face.

Sweet Bourbon Perfume

Setting: grammar class. The teacher asks for examples of using the past continuous tense to give the atmosphere/setting of a story before describing main events. I read the mess of scribbled nothing on my paper:

From the crown of the Janiculum, light was pouring over edifices born in antiquity. Pigeons were pecking for nothing but dirt at the feet of passersby while the heavy-footed stomped in expensive Italian leather. The sun was losing its orange and we were losing morning, losing time.

A girl in the back row comments, "You should be a writer." I simply smile in reply.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Thud, thud, thud. Tired feet wanting to give up with every step. A teenage boy and girl lean against the hood of a parked car. Her crimson locks catch the sun and shatter the kaleidoscope reds all around her. Some of the glints touch my face and I slow down without thinking. When I get close enough to smell her sweet bourbon perfume, I make contact with big amber eyes, freshly wet with the dew of heartbreak. The boy gestures in annoyance, and in animated voice, says:

E perché scrivi "è morto?" Perché è fatto! È finita!

(Why do you write "is it dead?" Because it's done! It's over!)

I look away, suddenly embarrassed by my violation, but my existence goes unnoticed. She continues staring through the world around her, tearing spatial fabric with her gaze, eyes bobbing in a sea of temporary misfortune. With much swifter steps now, I shuffle home, wondering if that girl penetrating the illusions around her will ever come back. Teenage love is so tragic and fatalistic.

A quick click to the right and I enter my apartment.

A Haunting in the Roman Forum/Palatine

Italian Language Lesson 1

Today, I taught myself how to conjugate the verb "to Google" in Italian. I have translated it to "Googliare," which will follow the rules for -are verb endings. Here we go, in present tense...

io Googlio noi Googliamo

tu Googli voi Googliate

lui/lei Googlia loro Googliano

Pretty impressive, no?

Tomorrow brings my first unknown language lesson. However, we've already been told that the language is Serbian and I have taken it upon myself to look up the basics, which really defeats the whole point. Sorry, but the word 'unprepared' doesn't have a place in my vocabulary.

Unjustified Stoicism

Where does Rome hide its bugs? I muse, then mind an itch on my leg, only to find the swelling pink welt of a Tiger mosquito's last feeding.

Now, this is irony.

Tonight I gave my first lesson to a group of young Italian girls, A1 level on the European Global Scale. Critiques from my senior teacher concerned simplifying my language and not relying on my knowledge of Italian to help the students understand. "As an ESL teacher, you won't always know the native language. Try to practice working without that knowledge," she said. Good advice, for my "only English in the classroom" rule was undermined as soon as the girls realized I understood their Italian. This bridge in communication, although helpful when explaining instructions, actually hindered my ability to teach effectively. Instead of reworking my vocabulary or approach, I cut corners by translating. However, recognizing and confirming utterances in their mother tongue helped build rapport with the students.

And we continue to tip the scales...

There are pains I must let go, crosses and tombstones I can no longer carry just for the sake of remembering. The weight is not a gift. To this moment, it has always been a curse. Italo Calvino tried to rid his literature of weight, championing instead la leggerezza- the lightness. He must have seen a different Rome. Mine is crushing under a very tangible heaviness, shoulders on every person hunched over, knees shaking beneath the daily pressure to exist. If la bella figura is the beautiful side of this city, then I will write the ugly side, no longer under the spell of romanticized Roman notions spun in gypsy globes around Trastevere.

Grammatically Correct, Not Politically

I've been trained to think in pronouns. All around the crowd inconspicuously passes (and I let everything pass me) in a blur of he, she, it. I walk around in a world full of things- nothing, something, everything- head all filled with questions concerning the who, what, when, why, how... What if we pretended for a second, some time, that what is ours never was and theirs will never be? Yours and mine are two of many and that just makes them some. Few can live in a world like ours, but many seem to do just fine.

They cogitate vague ramblings.

Traces of people, places, and things. Ghosts of nouns. Verbal hauntings.

A Haunting in the Colosseum

A Confusion of Continents

Right: Seen in Trastevere

Tonight, the photos from Vatican City were underexposed and blurry when they weren't. I'll try again tomorrow or the next day, a little earlier in the evening when the sky is still a shade of violet. This may be my last chance before the canonization of Blessed Mary MacKillop on Sunday. The streets will be overflowing with priests, nuns, and Aussies. I Carabinieri will become ever more present, suddenly emerging like umbrella vendors with the first drop of rain, preparing for crowd control while I prepare my camera.

This is not tonight.

Tonight, a circle of teenagers sit cross-legged in St. Peter's Square. They drink beer beneath 140 Saints, on the same grounds once home to the Circus of Nero. An ancient Catholic woman crawls by, cracked fingernails clawing for fissures in the broken stones. She frowns disapprovingly, then floats away in the smoke of a discarded cigarette.

Lunar Deities

A letter to Diana, Roman Moon Goddess

You sent me home with a fake moon, which I carried in my back pocket down Via Tacito. How clever! (Silent, saying nothing.) And in that same manner, understood without being openly expressed, I threw it back into the warm Roman night. A newly found autumn quivered in the naked white, bright and boasting neither vice nor virtue. How embarrassing it must have been to watch my street lights shine brighter than your false moon.

From now on, Man will be his own god.

Primo Giorno di Scuola

I haven't taken any pictures today. The sky is gray, and when it is, everything else becomes a few shades cooler. I have a sickness growing inside of me, a longing really. For what, I can't be sure.

This morning was my first day of class with TEFL International. The course runs from 11 October 2010 to 9 November 2010, and consists of four intensive weeks. We will cover grammar in the morning and methodology in the afternoon. We have several short breaks throughout the day. In the evening we have observations and opportunities to practice what we have learned in methodology. If today was any indication, the next month should prove to be exhausting.

The class is a happy mix of diverse demographics. Trainees have come from as close as Rome to as far as Canada. This gives me valuable material for my side project while I'm here- namely, people-watching and character development.

For example, on the plane from Charleston to Newark:

Caucasian, mid- to late-fifties, salt and pepper hair, reading a book in French, wearing a pink and white striped button-down, Bose headphones to block the noise, drinking Mott's tomato juice, watching Invictus...

You just can't make this up. You find yourself filling in the gaps, dreaming up the details. Next thing you know, this gentleman is no longer a real person, but rather a character of your own invention.

Isn't that what we all are, to some degree? We have different relationships with people. They know us for certain conversations we have or specific shared experiences. We tell them whatever we choose to tell them. The end result is an incomplete, abstract portrait of an individual.

To others, we are characters, partially grounded in reality, partially invented, but wholly complex and unknowable in a full and sound sense.

The Roman Republic

SPQR. These are four letters you'll find all over Rome, from sewer grates and public billboards to monuments and buildings. They are the Latin initials for "Senatus Populusque Romanus." English, please? That translates to "The Senate and Roman People."

This marking comes from the ancient Roman Republic. Romans believed that authority comes from the people. Benito Mussolini emblazoned the initials on manhole covers during his regime in order to promote his dictatorship with the "New Roman Empire."

SPQR is a reminder that some type of public work has been given by the government in the name of the people. I like thi

s idea because we often find ourselves so caught up in complaining about what the government is NOT doing for us, that we forget what it IS doing or has already done. Of course no government is perfect, and Italy's is no exception.

The Arrival

At the airport, an Italian man stands waving a sign that reads "TEFL Rome." His name is Franco and his job is to drive me to my apartment. Not long into the drive, I begin to recognize the area.

"Abbiamo a Monteverde, si?"

"Sei mai stata qui prima?"

"C'era una volta..."

Monteverde is a residential area just outside the city center, most famous for being home to Villa Doria Pamphili, the largest public park in Rome. It's also home to my study abroad alma mater, the American University of Rome.

The giveaway is the flower shop. I wonder for a moment if Nassir from India still works there at night, or if he's moved on to bigger and better things.

"Io abitavo qua," I tell Franco, pointing to Via Giuseppe Dezza. I am happy to tell him this, but he seems disinterested. I suppose I can't blame him.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

This morning I awake early to the sound of an angry traffic. I try to be quiet so as not to wake my roommate, Suz, but noise can't be contained in these concrete structures. We have "breaky" (yes, that's Australian I'm speaking) and hit the streets. We have a lot of sight-seeing to do, and I want to shake the nostalgia so that I can move on from this sickness.

We take the 23 to Trastevere, my old stomping grounds. From there, I move fluidly, as if my legs still hold some drunken muscle memory of stumbling up to Via Dandolo and to the "Ti Amo" steps. I tell Suz about the steps and what they meant to me, to us, only to find that the message has been covered up in red and orange paint. Roma colors...

I remember sitting here for hours, iPod buds in my ears, listening to Tiziano Ferro's "Ti Scatterò una Foto" at full volume. The lyrics flood my head again:

E ti scorderai di me

Quando piove i profili e le case ricordano te

E sarà bellissimo

Perché gioia e dolore han lo stesso sapore con te

What a strange feeling, more empty than I've ever been, stripped of everything, left with nothing. Some events have to soak in before you realize the enormity. This was not one of them. When my mother passed away it was instant. I thought: "This is it. This is the first day of the rest of my life. This event has defined me in ways that I can't comprehend. I am the same person, but I am forever changed."

Vorrei soltanto che la notte ora velocemente andasse

E tutto ciò che hai di me di colpo non tornasse

E voglio amore e tutte le attenzioni che sai dare

E voglio indifferenza semmai mi vorrai ferire

My breath shortens as I complete the last flight of steps, and I look behind me and vow to leave that view there. I've conquered that steep concrete accordion for the last time.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The kebab may not be native to Italy, but it has become very popular and earned its place in many a pizzeria. It came second on a list of things I needed to consume upon arrival. It's gone something like this so far:

1. Pizza e Nastro Azzurro

2. Kebab e Coca Cola Zero

3. Pistacchio Gelato

4. Un Caffè Latte

Beyond that, my first serious meal at our apartment consisted of penne con pesto, chicken, mushrooms, and fresh pecorino romano. Overall, I think it was a huge success, especially considering the fact that our kitchen is actually built into a wardrobe closet, and is consequently quite small.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The city of Rome provides its citizens and visitors with fresh water in almost every major piazza. Quenching your thirst is the easy part. Relieving yourself of those excess fluids gets a bit tricky. Public restrooms, marked WC, are almost impossible to come by. In the rare event that a restaurant/shop/bar has a restroom, only customers may access them. It sounds like city planners have neglected to see the connection between free drinking water and the need for free public restrooms.

Tap water is perfectly safe to drink, but many locals and tourists alike prefer to drink bottled mineral water. That's too fancy for me.

Taking Temperatures

Blank calendar tattoos & memories you told me not to hold on to...

Amanda Torroni, v2.0

Welcome!

After a brief hiatus from online journaling, I am officially back in action. My first journaling experience began in 2002 with LiveJournal. Over the course of the last eight years, I have made over 800 posts available to whomever cared to read them.

I was born to write, in every sense of the statement. To pick up where I left off in the blogging world, there are a few projects I'd like to share. Let's start with this one:

Stars Among Stars, A Constellation Remix

What follows will be a project of turning horoscope into prose. It will be an attempt to materialize it, actualize it, bring it to the forefront- to rescue astrology from myth and make a cozy place for it in reality. We will pull the pages from the calendar one by one. We will deconstruct the months and accelerate the seasons.

We will stare Father Time in the face and reclaim eternity.

Join me.

/Transmission