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*by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig*
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Monday, October 12, 2009
When in Rome...
As we flew out of Rome, the plane tipped a wing toward the western horizon as if saluting the levitating sun, which was draped in a mantle of vaporous spun silver. The orb glowed in a burnished explosion at its core and was dragging a tail of bronzed light along the Tyrrhenian Sea. The coppery swath of water could have been a luminous carpet leading to a radiant throne. This is the entrance I would have expected God to make were he coming to visit the Pope.
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2 comments:
The image you paint here reminds me of the first time I landed at Rome's Fiumincino Airport.
I flew out of New York the previous evening and by the time the sun came up we were already over France. I find it next to impossible to sleep on an airplane and crossing the Atlantic in steerage brings with it its own very special delirium. As the coast of Italy came into view I forgot all about delirium and my heart started to beat a little faster, my breaths a little shallower.
The land I'd dreamed about since I was a little boy was moments away. As the plane descended my excitement increased. Then we touched the tarmac, but it wasn't any tarmac, it was Italy. The plane turned and the Italian morning sunshine lit up the interior of the plane.
I leaned across my seatmates to look out the window as the plane coasted to a halt. On the far side of the runway stood a grove of umbrella pines. Any doubt I had about how far from home I was disappeared in the morning light. It disappeared in the canopy of those umbrella pines.
The grove of umbrella pines framed a vignette of such casual, unplanned beauty it didn't seem possible. It was my first sight of a land I'd longed for and have since come to love.
My second sight was walking across the tarmac and into the terminal of Fiumincino. The view inside that decrepit building was something I'd expect in Calcutta, but something I'm glad I found in Rome. Hordes of loud people argue, they smoke, they spit. They grab life by the lapels, they stare it in the eye and they laugh in its face.
It took a while for me to see that the scene outside, the serene stand of umbrella pines; is every bit as big a part of Italy as is the scene inside of that airport. I'd go as far as to say that those seeming opposites need one another, they feed off of one another.
Italy's a place of such perfect beauty that it needs great big, glaring flaws to even it out. Absolute, flawless, perfect beauty isn't beauty at all. No, that's a day dream, a fanstasy. It's a siren's song. I for one and done listening to singing sirens.
Paul: this is beautiful. It's the same experience I had in Bologna. Walking along the city's breathlessly spacious arcades was tempered by the cracked and peeling stucco on the buildings. I needed the rough along with the pristine in order to keep the experience from being overly ecstatic. Thanks for sharing this!
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