Giornale Part 2: ~en Roma~

Waking up quite early, a necessity in order to make it back in time for the morning activity, Claire, Emily and myself began out adventure departing on the train from Lepanto. Upon arriving we were guided on a short walk to the entrance of the Church and old Cappuccini monastery. It was situated on a side street, with tall shady trees looming over it, disguising much of the church from view. These trees prevented the full majesty of the church to be appreciated but the staircase up showed it to still be quite the monumental structure. I began to immediately and eagerly climb the stairs to the highest entrance before Claire quickly called me back pointing to a rather inconspicuous side door. Upon entering I was surprised by the highly modern room that presented itself more as a hotel lobby then as a museum entrance. We quickly payed and proceeded inside and were greeted by the museum before the crypt itself. The beginning of the museum was the most interesting with the origins of the monastery on display with early artifacts. These artifacts ranged from the monk’s daily goods such as their shoes, books and dining goods to their beautiful works of art and above all their reliquaries.

               These were seen as either crosses or books, each with tiny glass fronts which contained splinters and fragments of various relics. Pieces of the cross, toenails of saints, bits of hair, in other words, almost anything that had come in contact with those who are seen as most holy by the church. The museum continued onward in the history of the monastery and their history within the more modern age. This became substantially less interesting to me without any real reasoning but more so due to the lack of material goods and the growing number of photographs, letters, and descriptions of the successes of the modern catholic church.

               We began to speed through the last part of the museum equally due to our growing disinterest in the content and excitement about the approaching crypt. As we entered the crypt, I was initially a little disappointed at the size, I could see the end of it from the entrance and took that as a bad sign. However, my initial reaction was quickly put to bed as I turned and examined the first exhibit. It is at first almost hard to notice the bone, with the exception of the skulls, as they are so expertly intertwined and joined into pieces of art and wall. As I gazed around the room becoming more and more amazed, I looked up for the first time and received a heart attack noticing the bone chandelier mere inches from my head. After this room we were then greeted by the first of the mummified monks. For me their size was the most apparent thing, greatly reduced in stature by the decay of death these men were perhaps five feet tall. After that I was enthralled by their state of preservation. They had noses, nails and teeth and all seemed to be smiling at me as I passed. Through this entire process I was in awe at the pure amount of death around me. In one room I made the mistake of counting the skulls and received a number of roughly 500 on one wall. 500 people on one wall of one of the six rooms. This terrified me thinking about the thousands of people I must be walking past through this museum.  

Ekphrasis Part 2: ~en Rome~

The light of the image centers upon the boy’s face, his black hair with playful curls matching the shadows just outside the limits of the beam of light. His curls are tight with only little holes to let the light through and continue down to stretch around the gentle curve of his ear. His face is calm and engrossed with his eyes seeming to stare at a point in the center of my chest. The shadows playing on his face turn one of his eyes slightly morose. The slight tilt of his head still provides a clear path down his strong neck with a jutting Adam's apple. From its base, his breast bones expand out towards a highly muscles shoulder with its skin stretched tight by the labor of the shoulder. His physical beauty is only emphasized by the white linen shirt he wears that has fallen loosely halfway down his arm. This shirt is wrinkly and folded all the way down to his wrist where his skin emerges once again in the form of a strong hand grasping a basket of fruit. The basket is full of glistening ripe fruit that looks simultaneously fake and refreshing. These fruits are piled so high they seem to be precariously balanced against the boy’s chest. They vary in size and shape but to seem to all fit together perfectly comprising a mass in which you can see every fruit but that also seems to be one object. The leaves from these fruits extend outward providing splashes of light and color in the otherwise dark shadows that fill the painting.

Caravaggio: Boy With a Basket of Fruit

Vouyer Part Two: ~en Roma~

               Republic Day, a lovely and welcome respite from the vigor of work. The perfect day for a family outing. The man was tall and dressed as a dad head to toe: clad in a plaid short-sleeve shirt, loose slacks, and a fedora. As he walked across the Piazza his face lit up to the sight of a little girl in a yellow dress scootering towards him. He quickly jumped in her way and lifted her in the air as she giggled and hugged him all while quickly chattering in Italian. Clearly, this man had not seen his daughter in some time, the reason for this became all the more apparent as the girl, on her feet once more, grabbed his hand and pulled him towards a bench. On the bench sat a woman engrossed in her phone, paying little attention to her surroundings until the voice of the man reached her. She quickly sat up and styled her hair much as she styled her smile, in an attempt to hide her nervousness and exhaustion. As he approached the man began to beam at her. They had recently spent some time apart, perhaps a break in their relationship which would explain the tangible awkwardness of the encounter or just an innocent trip. However, whatever the case was it was clear that they wanted to be around one another again. As the daughter continued to scooter around them their awkward small talk gave way to laughter and slowly but surely the few feet of room they had given each other on the bench began to close.

Piazza Cavour: 6/2/19

Momentary Blindness: Part Two ~En Rome~

The battle between the overpowering scent of pine in rain and the subtle strength of blossoming oranges was the first thing to greet me as I settled down on the Aventine. These smells, both amplified by the moisture in the air, remained a constant through my time there making it easy to imagine being in a forest and not a city. The humidity and weight of the air brought me home to the swamp that is Washington in the summer making me feel at ease in this foreign space. However, the other things around me kept me grounded within the walls of Rome. Namely the sound. The distant sound of heavy traffic and blaring taxi horns. While around me the gravel enlarged each sound making the simple footsteps of the families let me know exactly where they were. The raking of the gravel provided an undertone to the wandering groups and families as children ran on the paths and adults strolled with their suitcases creating a hypnotic melody. However, incrementally I was torn from this peace as the strong gusts of cold air on the top of the hill rustled the trees and sent a startling cascade of water down upon me. The drops obscuring my ink, falling on my hand and head, and, most obtrusively, finding their way down my neck to glide down my back leaving a trail of cold that caused me to shiver. Still, each time I left this sensation I was greeted by Rome again in the form of the chattering Italian parents calling to each other and their children as a man I had previously noticed with a brown paper bag droned on and on shouting in an unidentified language.

Aventine Hill
5/27/19

Giornale: Part one ~en Roma~

               The journey to lake Bracciano was simpler than predicted, especially as I slept from the second, I sat on the train headed to the Italian countryside. Upon arrival we were greeted with a picture of rural Europe that perfectly matches all the stories I have in my head: a high hill, descending to a lake through a web of tightly packed streets all overlooked by a castle. The path down to this lake proved to be much trickier than expected as we found ourselves cut off by dead ends and distracted by gelato at almost every turn. However, after finally finding the via de lago, we began our decent. The road had nothing that resembled a sidewalk requiring a single file line half in the brush and half in the street for the twenty-minute walk. To avoid getting lost, once again we simply stuck to the main road, avoiding all the steep pathways shooting off the sides and were, finally, rewarded with the soft volcanic beach stretching before us. As we scampered to the beach, we all were forced to break briefly to find hiding places to change into our swimsuits and march into the water. The water that greeted us could be described as more numbing then refreshing. As soon as I dove in, I felt my body begin to go into shock and it was only after about five minutes of wading, or about as along as it took for me to stop feeling my legs, that the water was truly enjoyable. Standing out in the water the entire town sprawled on the hill in front of us with the castle dominating the scene, once again reminiscent of any post card I have ever seen.

               When we finally left the water, my legs were approaching blue and had never experienced a better feeling then pulling my snug pants back on. However, we were still faced with the extensive walk back up the hill to attempt and find a dinner. Starting our adventure moral was quite low until we found a short cut that reduced our journey by half. It was, alas, the steepest hill I had ever encountered. As we began Francis started her speaker and began to play my favorite song, I’m Just Snacking (by Gus Dapperton) this song made the walk all the more enjoyable as it turned into a dance party until we collapsed upon the final end of the hill. As we reentered the town the Piazza filled with restaurants was quickly found and we settled into a carafe of red wine and at least a few pounds of pasta to regain all we had lost in the cold. Following this delicious Italian meal, we wandered the streets of Bracciano and I felt swept into medieval times. The houses were packed in on top of one another with maybe a street out of ten being accessible by car. All the houses were centered around the two staples of a country town in Europe: The Castle and the Church. We raced around these tight and steep streets attempting to get the best vantage of the sunset, eventually all losing each other and experiencing the sun disappearing behind the mountains independently and silently.  

Ekphrasis: Part one ~en Roma~

The base of the bust perfectly captures the smooth rise of the man’s chest only interrupted by the indent of his throat and the ends of his breast trailing off to either side. Filling in the space behind him and rising up to cowl the back of his head is a hood of sorts, almost reminiscent of that of the pontifex maximus. His neck is narrow and straight seeming jut out of his body in perfect posture adding to the austere nature of this statue. His chin is speckled with wrinkles and pot marks showing him to have lived a long life, but also softening his features as his chin curves rather than coming to a point. His mouth is held in an eternal frown that is only accented by the marks on his face indicating this as a usual gesture. His lips pressed tight, indicate that only the most thought of and meaningful words could ever escape their grasp. Sitting upon these lips are his uneven frown marks and a mole on his left side further adding to the seriousness of this man and his concern with who he is, not what he looks like. His age can be further cemented through the hollowed cheeks demonstrating that even in old age he is not one to overeat or drink and is a frugal man.  His proud nose juts like a mountain ridge dominating his face and ending in a crevice of wrinkles between his hard-set eyebrows. Any room for interpretation given by his unmarked eyes is quickly taken away by the hard lines both above and to the side of them defining his expression as a Stern and severe one. The most curious thing that I noticed in the severity and detail of lines in this image is that, even with his stern expression and many wrinkles of seriousness, just below his eyes and above his mouth you see wrinkles caused by many a smile and laugh.

Peter Maeder

As I entered the Basilica of St. Peter, I was followed closely by a man with closely cropped and sunglasses, I could tell his experience would be one of greater significance than mine as he was wearing vestments of a priest. As we entered the Basilica, he quickly took off his glasses and gazed about in awe proceeding directly to the cherubic fountains containing holy water. After blessing himself his journey around the Basilica continued, with the air filled with choral hymns as he gazed up each column basking in the hundreds of years of Christian iconography they represented. As he walked further and further in towards the mass that was underway, he was joined by a small group of people and as they all began to speak it was clear he had led a part of his parish here on a pilgrimage. The way this group interacted with the basilica was truly beautiful, stopping at each relic, gazing lovingly at each work of art, they seemed to be in complete and total awe of this space of Christianity. The further they went in the more apparent to me it became that they, unlike me, were not here to enjoy the history of the place, or the skill of the art, but to see and experience the heart of Catholicism. To see and feel the place where so much of their faith is derived from, to progress beyond their normal level of worship into something more. I was almost jealous of the meaning they derived from St. Peters, the pure faith that drove them, and especially their priest, to gain a life-changing experience from seeing this holy place.

Basilica of St. Peters
5/23/19