An Unfinished Adventure.

I cannot say why I chose to leave the cool interior of the Rome Center, to vanish among the camera-decked pilgrim hordes that are the only humans disparate enough to travel the streets in 109 degrees. Perhaps I craved another sip of the total alienation that one can only feel among the tourist throng of the international city. Or it may be that I had hoped to breakthrough the crowd just to see that there was an Italy on the other side which might not be so very different from the town where I grew up.

For one who grew and matured among the shaded cedar roots in the forest, the ponds swarming with tadpoles and dragonflies, the labyrinth of blind streets and graffiti strewn walls of Rome can feel inhospitable. Leaving the Campo de' Fiori I watched pack upon pack of khakied and handkerchief-bedecked tourists racing after the floating red flag in the crowd. Where are the stinging bees and the maggots that feed off of the tourist's sweat I wondered, remembering the poet's description of Limbo. If I had not known that Dante loved his city of Florence, I would be sure that he had modeled "Inferno" after the summer crowds of the large cities of Italy, the sea of flesh, undulating to allow horses to pass through, the steaming cobblestones after a short shower.

But there was no steam for it had not rained in many days. Drinking from one of Rome's many fountains I reflected on the ingenuity that synced flow of water to the flow of humans, and much later the flow of electricity. Rome is a city of flow, a million tubes linking reservoirs. I flowed through the smaller streets, moving quickly, just as a moving liquid's velocity increases when the diameter of its pipe decreases. In this way I flew through the Jewish Ghetto. There was much to see, but on this day I wished for speed above all else. Even as I walked, the lush fountains of inner courtyards passed silently, their gates open and beckoning.

In Rome humans flow, water flows, and for me as I traveled, ideas flowed. In this city images and objects are so bedecked in meaning as to be near collapse. Take the Pantheon which I could not see but I knew existed somewhere to the North, overgrown in a forest of buildings. It is a pagan temple and much of its structure has meaning in that. It is also a Christian church, and now a tourist destination, the weight of so many associations is overbearing.

As I walked down past the Forum, I drew near the Colosseum. Here the unnaturally red tourist foodcarts vended their four euro water bottles. Here gladiators with bright white t-shirts and cell phones, muscled like centaurs, harassed the oily bodies in damp Tommy Bahama shirts as they waded through the pools of asphalt that surround the Colosseum. One misses the quiet streets. In the center I saw rising above me the Colossus himself, that structure that has been the father and patron of so much pain and pleasure. At this navel, the dislocation of travel reaches its apex. I walked on to sling shot off its circumference climbing up a gentle slope. If it was the alienation of endless tourism that I wanted, this certainly filled me completely. The sun was now in the West and I begin to climb.

I entered the square of the Quirnale. Here there was a teasing breeze and for the first time since the journey's beginning, I found myself alone in an open space with only the melancholy and lost obelisk to see me and my shadow. Of its many wonders, the Piazza highlights and enhances shadows, spreading them out on the stones, black butcher-paper cut-outs. The air is lighter up here.