| Sunday
in the City: An Early Morning Run |
| Excerpted
From the book "As The Romans Do" |
| By Alan Epstein ~ Photographs
by Diane Epstein |
| Sunday
in the City: An Early Morning Run
How is it
possible that on Sunday -- really the one day that I have no commitments,
no time pressures, that there is no school to get the kids to, no appointments
to keep or make my eyes spring open, almost as if they had been set to
go off the night before, at 7:00 A.M.? What force has taken over my body,
my consciousness, my past life in Rome, that would compel me to resist
the temptation to fall back asleep, or just lie there, or do anything for
that matter other than what I know I am within a few moments about to do,
which is get up and drag my middle-aged body into the bathroom to brush
my teeth and throw cold water on my face so that I can do what every Sunday
morning seems to find me doing--jogging through the heart of the city,
when all is quiet, peaceful, empty, when |
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| I can pass
the monuments and narrow streets without jostling crowds, buzzing motorini,
the distraction of so many people requiring so much getting around them.
My Sunday morning run is something I do alone, something that requires
no interaction, no acknowledgment of anyone else, no arranging. It's just
me and my passion for the city, which manages to look the same and different
at the same time. It's therapy, prayer, inquiry, meditation, and forgetfulness
all rolled into one. It's Rome as one rarely sees it.
The Sunday
morning run is especially bello in late spring and early summer, when
the light is full and the air so mild it kisses your body without imposing
on it as the summer heat does. You feel as if your skin and the air around
you were one and the same, no separation between inner and outer, you and
time in perfect harmony, as it will be hours before the city will wake
from the usual late-night Saturday revelry, when traffic engorges the small
streets and arteries and flocks of Romans enjoy the weekend. I, too, am
enjoying mine, but I know that a Sunday would not be complete without a
run through history.
The first
leg is uphill. I climb the Via di Santa Prisca not quite as far as
the church. |
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| Going left
will take me through the Aventino, but I go night, past the United
States embassy to the Vatican and the intoxicating fragrance of the municipal
rose garden, in full view of the Palatine, just now taking in the first
few rays of its daily intake of sun. The traffic on Via del Circo Massimo,
along the fabled Circus Maximus, usually so intense that one literally
has to step out into the street, even on the pedestrian strip, to stop
the speeding cars and motorini in order to get across, is nonexistent.
There is
not a vehicle in sight; I could crawl across the wide thoroughfare
and reach the other side safely.
I resist
the temptation and jog instead. Soon I will turn right at the Tiber
end of the huge, earthy, open oval and head north along Via San Teodoro,
the west side of the Palatine Hill, into the quintessence of the city. |
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Offshore
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| My heart
rate is up and my body has successfully processed the fact that I am pushing
it once again by turning up the heat, but, attired in T-shirt and shorts,
sweat beginning to pour down my face and back, the still cool air feels
refreshing on my bare limbs, and somehow I know as all runners do at some
point into their workout-that I have managed to overcome my own resistance
to putting one foot in front of the other and will complete my giro, my
trip around town.
At various
spots I can see the remains of the Palatine, still in shadow, as Romulus
would have seen it 2,753 years before me. Soon I am along the side
of the Foro Romano, that treasure trove of stone, marble, and mosaic that
basically lay underground until just over one hundred years ago, and is
now trod every day by those who want to walk the same streets as the antichi
romani once did.
Ahead of
me lies the first real hill, the back side of the Campidoglio, but
by this time my heart is pumping huge quantities of blood to my limbs,
and I am actually looking forward to pushing my body even more. I bound
up the hill, past the two vigili who as usual are chatting away between
puffs of cigarettes. |
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| By this
time they half expect me on Sunday mornings, and I detect the faintest
nod as they momentarily interrupt their recounting of last night's dinner
or their predictions for today's soccer matches to let me know that they
know that I -- who must be a straniero because no Roman in his right mind
would be up at this hour, in this garb, doing what I am doing-am noticed.
Within moments
I have ascended into Michelangelo's incomparable piazza at the top of the
Capitoline Hill, the civic seat of Rome, whose city hall, which is
built on top of the registry office of the ancient capital and which has
stood on that spot since 30 B.C., boasts a facade designed by Buonarotti
himself.
The piazza
also contains the Capitoline Museum, which is the oldest public gallery
in the world, dating from 1730, and which contains the splendid sculpture
of the dying Gaul, an homage to a people Rome's manifest destiny gave them
no choice but to conquer. |
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Offshore
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| To regard
the figure is to know what it must be like to feel life slowly being drained
out of what was moments before a vibrant human being.
To this
point, after fifteen minutes of running, I have encountered two, maybe
three people, but I am about to descend on the other side of the Campidoglio
and enter the hub of Piazza Venezia, where vendors are setting up their
souvenir stands and tour buses are disgorging clusters of Japanese, Germans,
and English from other parts of the world onto the streets of Rome. I dodge
them easily. By now I am in full stride and I elicit hardly a glance from
the visitors as I have not been listed in their guide books of things not
to miss in Rome. I circle in front of the Wedding Cake, the Monument to
Victor Emmanuel 11, and cross on the other side of the square, running
toward the Via Battisti, where I make a sharp right. I have successfully
navigated the most hectic part of the first half of the journey, and suddenly
I find myself watching as the bar employees are sweeping the sidewalk,
setting up tables, and getting ready for another day in which they will
make several thousand cappuccini and caffè. Some patches of the
wide sidewalk are wet, but the sun is busily making short work of the moistened
concrete. I turn left into Piazza SS Apostoli and head for the narrow alleys
that lead farther north, peeking through sun-cracked stone walls and secluded
inner courtyards, where fragments of daily life are sporadically beginning
to reveal themselves.
Here, the
streets are once again empty, as I jog past the national headquarters
on Via Umilità, the street ironically called humility, of Forza
Italia, the national political party headed -- some would say owned --
by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. Two policemen sit in an official wagon
and guard the entrance, but there is not much to do, and they seem either
asleep or bored out of their minds. I find the little alley called Monticello,
which has wrought-iron street lamps and a burnt orange wall and is so small
and curved that you have to convince yourself that you have not left the
twentieth century altogether. Suddenly, I am aware that the only sounds
I can hear are my rhythmic, striding footsteps on the cobblestones, which
echo off the close-in walls and lend an even more eerie dimension to my
reverie. I half expect to see a medieval mendicant emerge from around the
bend or to have to dodge bathwater that might at any moment be flung from
an upper window and onto the street.
Where else
in the Western world can one find such public solitude? In all the
time I dreamed about coming to live in this city, I never thought I would
be treated to something so serene and pure, even if it only lasts for a
moment, as Vicolo Monticello ends and I Join a more well traveled street
and am immediately hit with the sound and sight of sanitation workers loading
garbage into their ultramodern truck. I can bear the intrusion, because
within seconds I am past it.
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