Rome Thoughts: Third time's the charm

In exactly 10 days, I will have moved to Rome - Dies decem mota ero Romam - In dieci giorni io avro cambiato casa a Roma - wow that took a lot of work. And it's probably still not right.

My first visit to Rome was with Matt, while he and I were taking language classes in Florence. What sticks with me - the heat, the noise, the dirt. It was July, and there was dust in the air. We stayed too far away from everything, on the wrong side of the tracks, literally, east of the Termini train station. Our "bed and breakfast" was, unpleasantly, a woman who let out rooms in her 3 bedroom apartment by the night and fed us packaged toast-crackers and nescafe in the morning. How awkward. I didn't know to expect that Roman ruins were brick and not marble, or that the marble had been removed a long, long time ago, or that they would look so... ruined. Huge stretches of road carved through the remains, layering exhaust fumes among the dust, unsettling the hush of book history with the constant whine of car honks and the hums of motor scooters. Aside from one recommendation, we ate when hungry, falling on the "convenient" tavola calda and tourist menus, shelling out our precious euros for mediocre red sauce and freezer-burned tiramisu. We were pleased to return to Florence, its graceful churches, slightly cooler temperatures, and, at least, a modicum of familiarity and civilization - Dante, gelato, Giotto.

My second trip to Rome was two summers ago, alone - without Matt - for an intensive Latin program led by Reginald Foster. It promised a slow, deliberate immersion into 2,000 years of living Latin, with economical side trips. I discovered the Gianicolo, the hill west of Rome - which gets breezes in the summertime and offers a sweeping vista of the city skyline. Reggie's monestary was here, as was the small Catholic school whose cafeteria we borrowed for our daily class (Scuola di Divino Amore - which I wanted to call Scuola di Amore di vino). Nights were spent in Trastevere among the tiny medieval streets - which contrast so greatly with the heavy slabs of bernini and moussolini in the city center. Nights were spent with huge groups of unlikely friends - all different, all Latinists - with pizza and wine under the stars. With Reggie we walked slowly - painfully slowly - across the cobblestoned streets. We perched on old gates and parking lots and read Latin which was composed right there! said Reggie - right here, this spot, covered in concrete that doesn't exist in Reggie's world, or that does, peripherally, only in that it provides the only point of physical contact between the present and the past.

My third trip starts in less than two weeks. Not alone, but with Matt, and we'll be living in our own apartment down the other side of the Gianicolo, an area I'm only passing familiar with. We will be living among the Romans, in their residential neighborhood. We will shop at their market and supermarket, away from the intensity of the center, but also away from its history. There will still be grime and graffitti, and dog poo on the sidewalks. Buses will come barrelling down the streets at unpredictable intervals. There will not be the heady heat of wine and summer, the strains of funk bands playing on the bridge at 4am. But there will be winter - rain and empty streets - hush and dark. The first flowers of spring. With the seasons will change the vegetables, the length of days, the air - a new year, a new layer of dust, a new history - our history, Matt and I, together - to settle upon the ruins of old.