Photos

I'm starting a site to post photos at glimpseitaly.blogspot.com . I'll continue occasionally posting entries here, but every week there should be a few photos on the other site.

Eulogy for a Loss

    The ruins of war and violence rarely stand above commonplace lives. The few remaining relics fall down as the progress of the modern day tramples them, and we stand among the shards and shrapnel as observers almost entirely removed from the reality. Familial warfare that lasted generations left its mark on San Gimignano in the form of towers, representing protection and aggression as trophies of sorts, dictating domination to the land below. Houses, peasants, fields, farmers, all formed the living legacy and estate of the few families that rose above, reaching higher towards the intangible god that unified their treason and treachery. San Gimignano carries to this day the dozens of rough towers in varying states of destruction, from conservation to gradual collapse. Only the blows of visitors, footfalls and camera flashes now erode chip-by-chip the half-millennium of stone. The skyline set against the rolling hills of Tuscany now welcomes those it denied open-armed. The streets fill with foreigners walking through painted ceramic and gelato fantasies. Footsteps away, in hidden parks and darkened alleys, the past tramples us and we grow close to a reality much duller and simpler than we looked for, and we gaze up at those fallen, at those ruins, and wonder who won.

San Gimignano formed a part of our school-lead Tuscany trip. I visited in March, and spent several hours walking the streets and observing the city.
Photos @ Picasa Web Albums

Lands of Spice and Stories

              The Arabic spice flows through the Sicilian air and culture as the clouds rise from Aetna's lofty peak. Marzipan and consonant endings fill conversations and store-front windows along a coast defined by the sunny green hills of the triangular isle. Magna Graecia unfolds before us and around us, the serene worn tan of temple columns reflecting the light to give an earthen hew to almond blossoms and cliff-side tombs. The blossoms provide a new, intoxicating scent that obscures the foreign spice yet enhances it, like the amalgamation of culture and time that the island and atmosphere now represent. From the Greeks to Garibaldi, people have come, gone, and founded cities on the shore, Aeneas and Arabs included.

              Inland a view reminiscent of Tuscan hill towns envelops us, albeit with a peaceful volcano rising from the horizon. Stopped on a winding road at a gas station, the provincial governor welcomes us with a Benvenuto ad Agira before we break the city limits. TV cameras and reporters greet us again with salve, leaving us to explore the town with local students, visiting the most important churches and sanctuaries as well as their library of ancient manuscripts and tomes and a Jewish aron preserved in a Catholic church . A hill town by nature, streets becoming stairs over the course of paces, we spend a sun-blessed morning climbing among the panorama of hills and stone. The final ciao presents itself through a banquet of pizza and panini, oranges and olives, all cooked and grown at home. The neighboring Leonforte introduces itself with a Buona sera and once again we roam around through slightly-less-vertical streets, encountering fountains, chapels and a two-hundred-thousand-euro soccer stadium. A parting arrivederci, and we venture to other lands, dusty coasts and ancient harbors.

              Through the boisterous shopkeepers and light-blue doors of the market, a new flavor of spice floats, clustering around piled saffron and silver amulets. Arabic and French define Tunis, the city around us, a nexus of white plastered walls and alternating directions of text. Surrounded by the mix of ancient and modern, colonial and native, we explore through time as we pass by the same government signs and salt ponds for kilometers. The harbor of Carthage marks one chronological landmark. The fields salted by Rome are now covered with trees and water, the outline of a harbor haunting the coastline, baths built by the conquerors themselves. Following history we explore El Djem, monument of desert stone and towering arches, amphitheater exquisitely preserved in the desert south. We hide in the shadows of walls on the sandy floor before penetrating the thousand tunnels, concentric and connecting, that define the shell. Far from out Italic home we find this nostalgic reminder of the empire that once made this mare nostrum, our sea. A unifying force, now faded, shines through at these few points as light through pinholes in a canvas, reminding us of a common past. Days of travel have lead us to exotic lands, filled with hills and sand, and have brought us closer to our common past than stagnancy at home could have allowed. 

I visited Sicily and Tunisia during February as part of a school-lead trip. We visited Napoli, Taormina, and Palermo in addition to the towns mentioned above. 

Photo link @ Picasa Web Albums

Update

I'm going to be traveling in Sicily for the next 2 weeks. When I get back, I hope to start translating the essays I have written in Italian into English and posting them here. Hope to post at least 2 entries soon!

Reflections on the Pantheon

In two eyes and a lens

Having made your way through winding, lamplit streets, you enter with an egyptian obelisk and the massive facade just appears, weathered gray and engraved. It is a truly magnificent structure, with strong colimns and an elegant pediment. When I first arrived, a vespers was taking place, and all I could see was the candlelit altar. Beautifully lit up at night!

The grand facade features tall columns, a sloping pediment, an oversized door, and perfection. The Pantheon has perfection poured into its cement, carved into its stone, and flowing through the grand hole in the sky towards the ground at a timeless rate. Minutes become minutes, and no time passes. I am sure that no one in the Pantheon ages, that the candles never burn low, that things do not grow sick or die, for people walk and observe, all is seen and nothing made, and time flows around it, not through it. The ceiling has been stared at since its inception, and people watch it the same way today. No steps taken.

As one enters through the door, the occulus and dome slowly come into view until they are over, above, impossibly distant but oh-so-near. The occulus allows you to see clouds and blue, to let the bright circle of light fall across the walls of the dome, leading through shadows angled and geometries perfect. An awesome sight that's beautiful and otherworldly to behold. A true masterpiece, one can watch it, observe its magnificence forever. My favorite that I have yet seen. Bring me to a place, and it will be the Pantheon.

Upon entering, everyone asks “What happens when it rains?” This is apparently the question of the Pantheon. I have never met someone who asks about the technical skills involved in using increasingly lighter cement to create its massive dome before asking where the rain goes. 22 holes in the floor allow water to drain away. They also allow one to quietly, silently realize where the center of the eye is and, stealthily, grow nearer and then slowly crouch down, center a camera, look up, and behold. One is reminded of the “majestic o'erhanging firmament fretted with golden fire”, of gods long worshipped and now silent, for no oracle sits now at Delphi. Heaven stares down. So few move to stare back.

Photo Link: http://picasaweb.google.it/vetus.veneficus/Pantheon#

Chocolate

With Hazelnuts!

After having taken a one-and-a-half-hour train ride to Rome, navigating the Rome A-line metro for fifteen minutes, and changing trains during a three-hour train ride, I arrived at the Perugia train station, surrounded by tourists of all languages, accompanied by 1.5 Americans and 1.5 Italians (three total). We then crammed our selves into the remaining space on the “Choco-line” bus up the hill that forms the city, and from the end of the bus line followed the meandering road up the hillside to the large white pavilion to receive our cards. At the end of the day, this would be undone, returning sans Rome but instead waiting for an hour in a brighter lit train station. This was our pilgrimage for chocolate.

This is the Perugia Chocolate festival, with an estimated attendance of one million people, all there to try free samples from the largest chocolate companies in Italia and to then buy much more. Lines are not long, for there are no lines, only stationary mobs with mothers pushing children through, trying to get their children and themselves that next bit of chocolate. Free samples are provided via the Choco-card, which is stamped at each station. Pudding, grand marnier, a chocolate hammer, a pencil, chocolate vitamins, and a wine tasting are among the offerings of the choco-card this year, although many other samples exist as well. We wander through the mobs for a while. I buy dark chocolate and hazelnut bark for later and a Perugian hot chocolate for then. Perugian hot chocolate, however, is actually superheated pudding with a cookie straw drunk from a plastic cup. As delicious as it is, it also burns the mouth, but is thick and delicious anyway. I also buy a dark chocolate map of central Perugia for Anna, as I will be returning late and need to give her a gift in return. Although it has taken me a month and a half, I have finally realized that by “not eating chocolate”, she means that you have to give it to her for her to eat it. I also buy, along with the student she had two years ago, a model Fiat cinquecento, or 500, the same type as she loves to drive. We then spend the rest of the time continuing to wander, eventually just standing and watching the beautiful sunset. As the city is on a hill, one can see five towns from the sides. One of these is Assisi, home of San Francisco, the (abbey?) of which can be seen from Perugia. One can also see, closer by, the red sunlight hitting churches and rooftops. Although the entire festival teems with people, all there are there for the sake of chocolate, and we have a good time, despite the moments of complete gridlock. The chocolate I buy there, the bark alone, lasts me until I write this, in mid-November. I still have some left.

Photo Link: http://picasaweb.google.it/vetus.veneficus/PerugiaChocolateFestival#

Etruscans

Stones and Paint

Sorry I've been falling down on blog posts again, this is my attempt to catch up.

The cities of stone, quiet now, that they left us never bustled with the movements of workers, leaders, and civilization. Occasional offerings would have been left, quiet reminders that people visited, but never stayed. These have always been cities of the dead, entire systems designed solely for their welfare in the afterlife. From grass covered hills to the city blocks opening into piazzas, the necropoli only served the dead and their possessions among the living.The Etruscan necropolis at Cerveteri features tombs from the Villanovan, or proto-Etruscan, period, all the way to the 5th century BCE. Only one of the tombs has preserved frescoes, that being the famous Tomb of the Reliefs, filled with stucco reliefs of household objects to serve the dead in the afterlife. The other tombs are empty, quiet, some flooded, others dark, hidden. My moment of quiet reflection came when I entered a tomb to discover the floor beneath me was flooded. I jumped onto the stone blocks on either side of the entrance and crouched there, my legs bridging the gap of an entrance. I heard no sound from the outside. I had the silence of the tomb around me, cold gray stone and darkness. The tomb had stone beds, carved into the same circumference blocks that I lay across. I pondered the silence, the solitude, being completely alone. I used a few thoughts in Italian, then returned to an English comprehension of what was around me. Best of all was what I didn't think. After the first few initial thoughts, I thought nothing, letting it all be. I then vaulted off the blocks to the dry entrance way, and ascended to ground level. A wonderful tomb, nameless, only a dot on a map. I have no way to refer to it, only the one where I was. I hope to return.

Tarquinia is much more lively and Etruscan, filled with the painted scenes of frivolity for which they are famous. A smaller range of tombs lie beneath the relatively flat open area used for ceremonial games. Every room features frescoes in one form another, ranging from sparse line drawings of olive trees with simple swirling borders to intricate banquet scenes of reclining couples, attended by slaves and surrounded by scenes of nature. Here the tombs cannot be entered, only viewed through a glass box. At the bottom of each staircase, a switch lies on the wall; pressed, the lights brighten the tomb, revealing as they come to life different aspects, one by one lit until the entire room can be seen. Here I encountered my past, as I slowly found the figures I studied for an eighth grade project. Upon entering the first tomb, I found myself faced immediately by the Etruscan door to the underworld and two guardian demons, one of whom I painted for a cremation box. It struck me so hard I had to examine the room for half an hour, staring through the smudged glass and discovering slowly the various walls, the writing and the forms of letters, faded frescoes, and truly felt the hallowed and Etruscan silence of the tomb. Instead of merely a silent moment of meditation and lack of thought, I had no need to imagine the goods and frescoes that once adorned the walls, for they graced the walls already. Here I found the experience I had been looking for in the tombs before, the true Etruscan that I needed. After the first tomb, I slowly worked through them, savoring each one, taking none of them lightly when I was alone. Such a gravity they held, it was truly remarkable. What I would give to return.

Photo link: http://picasaweb.google.com/vetus.veneficus/Etruscans