Writing Assignment #6: Trevi

Trevi. The word most likely produces mental images of Oceanus astride his ornate, shell-shaped chariot commanding  the beautiful fountain that bears the name in question. But it is important to remember that Trevi Fountain derives its name from the rione it is located in not the other way around.  Trevi is nearly as ancient as Rome itself, dating back to the original rione's demarcated by the Roman republic. The name is most likely a corruption of the latin word trivium, translating roughly to three ways or three roads.  Historians theorize that this name was due to the three roads that converged upon what is now Piazza dei Crociferi. The symbol of the rione, three horizontal swords in parallel upon a red field, is in keeping with this hypothesis. This is all very dry though, and I am certain that I will have a chance to cover the facts, either in my Rione Project or my Art History Presentation.  Let this be an expression of how I feel about Trevi, the sights and smells, atmosphere and ambience.  I spent today criss-crossing my rione, from Via del Corso to the Palazzo Quirinal and on to Piazza Barberini passing by Trevi Fountain with every swath.   Well let's deal with the elephant in the room first.  Trevi Fountain is any number of adjectives, breath-taking, inspiring, beautiful, and tranquil come to mind.  The fountian seems almost an apparition with the suddeness that it presents itself to the viewer, invisible until one is nearly on top of it.  The frozen marble is juxtaposed by the veritable ant-hill of tourists constantly crawling all around it, throwing money into it, and vying for the primo photography spots. The manner in which I traversed my rione made it so that I approached the fountain from all possible angles, each street providing a unique experience. It was only after numbing myself to the awing effect of the fountain through long bouts of staring that I was able to begin to absorb the rest of Trevi. I cannot help but see Trevi as the heart of Rome, the metaphor is simply too apt.  It is here that the Aqua Virgo, the lifeblood of Rome thunders forth, clean and pure, under Oceanus' watchful eye. The water spreads from this central point flowing out to nourish the people of Rome, much as a human heart pumps blood to the extremities.  Here too is a political heart of sorts, the Quirinal Palace, home to Popes, Kings and Presidents respectively, is within the boundaries of the rione as are a plethora of government buildings.  Trevi also contains the heart of the church in an eerily literal manner.  Located within the church of Saints Vincenzo and Anastasio, which is mere steps from the Fountain, are the hearts of nearly thirty popes from across more than 300 years.  While these are obviously not on display, to the dismay of my morbid curiosity, large plaques flank the high altar listing the pope's whose organs are interred there. This rather strange honor is due to the church being the official parish of Quirinal Palace for the centuries that it was a papal residence. The similarities do not end there, one need only look at a map to see that Trevi is located in a central locale, the "heart" of Rome. It is built upon Quirinal Hill the tallest of the seven hills upon which the city rests. There is a reason that it is to the Trevi that visitors in Rome offer up their wishes to return to the eternal city.

Writing Assignment #5: Coming and Going (Mach II)

For me the philosophical question of nature versus nurture is not one that can be answered by one or the other, but rather they are complementary to one another. Using a metaphor in keeping with the components of this program I would describe nature as a block of marble uncut and unshaped but nonetheless containing inherent characteristics.  Nurture, on the other hand, is the sculptor; it will shape the marble but it cannot change white marble into say green nor can it dictate how the veins running through the marble will appear. This week's writing assignment deals with the concept of leaving a place and returning to find that it feels different.  It is not uncommon to explain this phenomenon by saying that the place itself has changed, however in most instances it is you that has changed. Travel is often an incredibly defining moment in one's life, it is only when we take our identity and place it in a position where it contrasts with something, that the opportunity for change presents itself. When we travel we take our identity and place it in a position where it contrasts with everything. I say the opportunity for change very deliberately for change is not required in fact some contrasts may cause one to become even more resolute in their existing beliefs. Samuel Johnson once commented on travel, "All travel has its advantages.  If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it." While the quote is quite simple it expresses a profound outlook on travel, suggesting that regardless of connotations we attach to experiences as "good" or "bad" they are valuable  in their role as metaphorical chisel strokes. To be frank a large part of why I choose to travel as much as I do is directly linked to this.  I have yet to even remotely figure out a plan for my life to say nothing of my indecision regarding an area of study.  I am searching and in some ways that search is in a very literal sense. I have this concept that at some point everything will just click and I'll know exactly what I want to do with my life; as time passes though I have come to realize just how naive of an idea that truly is.  In fact perhaps life works in a completely antithetical way, I remember when I was say 11 or 12 and there was not a doubt in my mind what I wanted to do when I grew up.  I was going to be an entrepreneur in case you were wondering, not that I had any idea what that entailed.  Nowadays being an entrepreneur is still a possibility for me but it has become clouded by all the logistics that never occurred to me, nor would they have mattered, when I was a child.  Before we are lost in tangential thoughts, allow me to ground these abstracts in recent, personal experience.  Obviously if you have navigated your way to this blog, or even if you are here by mistake and took the time to read the title of this blog, then you are aware that I am currently studying in Rome. What it will say on my transcript is that I studied Art History, Italian and Immigration and Emmigration while i was here in Rome.  While this is all true, were you to catch me in a particularly divulgent mood, as I apparently am right now, I would say that they are not the primary things I am studying. I am learning about myself.  For example, this trip has recently eclipsed my previous personal record for longest stay outside of the United States (not counting one particular outlier that I don't remember too well) and at this point I have a fairly good idea of what it is I miss most: Seattle coffee culture and the paragraph long orders that go along with  it, the English language and the deep bass my speakers produce, 24 hour grocery stores and Mexican food.  At the same time there are things here in Italy that I have enjoyed becoming accustomed to, scarves, gelato, train rides, cobblestone, tomatoes. This is of course on the most macro of scales, an intercontinental one even, yet the same concept holds true in instances of less dramatic juxtaposition.  We can apply this same model to my most recent excursion, a weekend in Venice during Carnevale, and in all likelihood it will provide a more insightful example as I have yet to return to the States from Italy and therefore cannot extrapolate upon the homecoming.  My experience in Venice can only be described as surreal, a weekend in a magical fantasy land where princesses and Casanovas were commonplace, and long odds seemed quite short. Allow me to relate a parable that might help you understand the atmosphere of the weekend. I arrived at Santa Lucia Station about seven minutes late and got off the train expecting to be greeted by my friend who should have arrived a few minutes prior to myself. Of course he wasn't there or this would be a rather poor story.  So I waited at the station for about 45 minutes at which point he had still not arrived.  At this point I was a rather interesting combination of stressed and bemused considering we hadn't really formulated a plan B, I didn't have a cell phone with minutes on it nor did I know my number so as to put minutes on it nor did I even know Alex's number, and to top it off I didn't know anything about where we were staying that night since he had made the reservations.  To put it eloquently, I was kind of fucked.  At this point I decided for whatever reason (impatience) that waiting at the train station was not my best option so I ventured vicariously into Venice in an effort to find somewhere with wi-fi.  A short jaunt got me to an internet cafe type establishment where using some exceptional powers of deduction, I was able to determine where my guest house was.  A quick email to my friend later, and I was off.  I arrived at the boat station, yeah they have boats not buses, only to discover that the 48 hour ticket I intended to buy wouldn't quite cover till I left on Sunday.  Just to be safe I decided to wait an hour or so and wander around Venice for a bit in an erratic fashion. Several blocks from the station I rounded a corner onto a narrow nearly abandoned alleyway, the only people sharing it with me were three men about my age.  One in particular was wearing a garish orange sweatshirt, which upon closer inspection read "Pepperdine", my gaze drifted up and I found myself looking at the face of my friend Alex, for some reason I wasn't particularly surprised, as if I had almost expected it to happen.  That seemed to set the tone for the weekend, the unusual became the norm.  The following two days were a flurry of masks, madonnas and new friends.  The return trip to Rome was an almost depressing experience in that I wished the weekend would never end and it finally had.  Reflecting upon this now I realize the absurdity of being sad about returning to Rome, but that doesn't make the emotion at the time any less authentic. As I walked back into Termini it was interesting to note how relieved I was to be back, until that point I don't think I had really considered how accustomed I had grown to Rome, how easily my conception of home had shifted in accordance with where I sleep. You see Johnson's quote is deceptively simplified, he makes it seem as if a country you visit will be either a good or a bad experience, the reality is much greyer, in every country, even every city one visits, both sides of this coin will be there.  There will be some things you will be enraptured by and others that you would happily never undergo again, it is in finding out what falls in each category that identity is defined.

Writing Assignment #4: Coming and Going

For me the philosophical question of nature versus nurture is not one that can be answered by one or the other, but rather they are complementary to one another. Using a metaphor in keeping with the components of this program I would describe nature as a block of marble uncut and unshaped but nonetheless containing inherent characteristics.  Nurture on the other is the sculptor; it will shape the marble but it cannot change white marble into say green nor can it dictate how the veins running through the marble will appear. This week's writing assignment deals with the concept of leaving a place and returning to find it feels different.  Given a long enough time frame it is possible that the location in question has in fact changed, however in most instances it is you that has changed. Travel is often an incredibly defining moment in one's life, it is only when we take our identity and place it in a position where it contrasts with something, that the opportunity for change presents itself. When we travel we take our identity and place it in a position where it contrasts with everything. In the previous sentence i say the opportunity for change very deliberately for change is not required in fact some contrasts may cause one to become even more resolute in their existing beliefs, as Samuel Johnson once commented on travel, "All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” To be frank a large part of why I choose to travel so much is directly linked to this phenomenon.  I have yet to even remotely figure out a plan for my life to say nothing of my indecision regarding an area of study.  I am searching and in some ways that search is in a very literal sense. I have this concept that at some point everything will just click and I'll know exactly what I want to do with my life; as time passes though I have come to realize just how naive of an idea that truly is.  In fact perhaps life works in a completely antithetical way, I remember when I was say 11 or 12 and there was not a doubt in my mind what I wanted to do when I grew up.  I was going to be an entrepreneur in case you were wondering, not that I had any idea what that entailed.  Nowadays being an entrepreneur is still a possibility for me but it has become clouded by all the logistics that never occurred to me, nor would they have mattered, when I was a child.  Before we are lost in tangential thoughts, allow me to ground these abstracts in recent, personal experience.  Obviously if you have navigated your way to this blog, or even if you are here by mistake and took the time to read the title of this blog, then you are aware that I am currently studying in Rome. What it will say on my transcript is that I studied Art History, Italian and Immigration and Emmigration while i was here in Rome.  While this is all true, were you to catch me in a particularly divulgent mood, as I apparently am right now, I would say that they are not the primary things I am studying. I am learning about myself.  For example, this trip has recently eclipsed my previous personal record for longest stay outside of the United States (not counting one particular outlier that I don't remember too well) and at this point I have a fairly good idea of what it is I miss most: Seattle coffee culture and the paragraph long orders that go along with  it, the English language and the deep bass my speakers produce, 24 hour grocery stores and Mexican food.  At the same time though there are things here in Italy that I have enjoyed becoming accustomed to, scarves, gelato, train rides, cobblestone, tomatoes.  You see Johnson's quote is deceptively black and white, he makes it seem as if a country you visit will be either a good or a bad experience, the reality is much greyer, in every country one visits, both sides of this coin will be there.  There will be some things you will be enraptured by and others that you would happily never undergo again, it is in finding out what falls in each category that identity is defined. 

Writing Assignment #3: Mercato Esquilino

Market. Defined in terms of economics a market or marketplace is any location, be it physical, metaphorical, virtual, etc. in which persons trade, and services and goods are exchanged.  The scale and types of exchanges that occur in markets varies to an astonishing degree, however when looking at markets as a whole the essential component appears to be transactions.  Now a transaction is a very ambiguous thing, I'm sure what comes to mind for most people somehow involves money exchanging hands, but a transaction is not limited to currency  , literally anything changing hands can be considered a transaction. Transactions can even be one-sided, where one person gains nothing and the other something, although this is rarely the case when one considers all potential aspects of the transaction.  The point of all this abstract thought is to set the stage for relating my experience at Mercato Esquilino last week.  Let me begin by saying that I did not purchase anything at the market, no money exchanged hands, yet as you may guess from the introductory section I felt that I participated in several transactions while there.  These transactions are difficult to define due to their largely metaphysical nature nonetheless a certain sense of clarity may be gained in the attempt.  The first transaction I will address involved no verbal communication yet had a pronounced effect on the rest of my experience at the market.  It goes without saying that I was an outsider at Mercato Esquilino, hell I'm an outsider anywhere in Rome, yet here the effect was more apparent.  As our group wandered throughout this mall of sorts we drew eyes like flies. I have experienced this sort of unabashed attention in only one other place in the world, certain parts of China, there the simple, at least to me, aspect of being white is enough to draw attention.  At Mercato Esquilino I am unsure if it was simply the phenotypic differences we exhibited or if the dramatic reaction only occurred due to a combination of visual and lingual borders. So what constitutes a non-currency based tansaction how do you give, how do you receive. I would theorize that such a transaction would have  use one of the five senses as a medium simply due to the human element involved. Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, and Taste, these are how we interpret the world and each other Following this line of inquiry I will attempt to break Mercato Esquilino into these five categories of transactions.  

Sight: the market is filled with vibrant colors on both sides of the divide, scarves, coats, dresses, shoes, fabrics in a plethora of hues and styles, glimmering silks and matte wools the dull shine of leather and the bright shine of jewelry. The food market is the yin to this yang containing a corresponding abundance of colorful produce silver scaled fish to match the sequinned dresses oranges and tomatoes capture the same color as bright ties and tees.  

Smell: introduced in a progression in keeping with the boutiques on your left and right, the earthy smell of leather as one passes the shoes fading briefly into the faint smell of fabrics before that too is replaced.  As you cross over into the farmer's market the smells seem to blend harmoniously as brief snatches of fennel or paprika are carried to you through the tempest of fruit smells that give a positively tropical impression.  Venturing deeper in one experiences a jarring transition as you stumble upon the fish market the pungent odor of the catch of the day overpowering all else.

Sound: The market on the day I was there was an unequal distribution of caucophany and silence corresponding to the unequal distribution of business. The textile side is subdued as few people wander between many shops competing for their business.  Here and there a customer 

negotiates with an owner.  However in the food side there is a dull roar of business as steaks are sliced and vegetables and spices are exchanged for euros.  Vendors call out to passers-by as well as to each other in a plethora of languages ranging from Hindi to Romanian the clash of which provides an auditory representation of the clash of cultures.

Touch: The feel of fine silk running through your fingers like water. The perfect contradiction of firmness and softness as you find a wonderfully ripe tomato. The pleasant touch of soft cotton on the skin. The grainy feel of salt or spice as you grind it between your thumb and forefinger.  The textured weave of tapestry, the picture broken down into so many threads through the medium of touch.  The slick, cold and clammy exterior of a fish who gazes blindly upwards. The brief impact as a single entity out of the flow of people brushes past your shoulder.

Taste: Exclusively the domain of one side of the market. I personally only tasted a few things while there, but do not be offended if I let my imagination fill in a few blanks. I did try one of the oranges looking almost red on the inside it burst upon impact with my teeth flooding my mouth with flavor that I lack the words to truly describe beyond saying that it was wonderfully sweet with just enough tartness to create balance, in short it tasted like an orange, one of the better of its kind.  I can only imagine how delicious other things in the market must have tasted and that may very well prompt a return trip.  The juicy steaks sliced before the eyes of those who will consume them; with the proper care must taste heavenly, tender and moist, seasoned to perfection by the peppers merely meters away.  The vegetables on the other hand could create a vivacious salad with crunchy, delectable, bell peppers cavorting with the aforementioned tomatoes as well as refreshing cucumber all hosted by an assortment of various greens.  It is in the combination of the wonderful products available that an infinite amount of variety is available.