| Sunday
in the City: An Early Morning Run - Page Two |
| Excerpted
From the book "As The Romans Do" |
| By Alan Epstein ~ Photographs
by Diane Epstein |
| I run
up the Via San Vincenzo and before me stands one of the wonders
of the world, the fabled Fontana di Trevi, begun in 1717 by Nicola Salvi
as an attachment to the Palazzo Poli behind it. There are maybe a dozen
people before the sculpted gods and horses, gazing, reflecting, listening
to the forceful sound of the water as it erupts from various openings and
falls Eke so many cascades into the large pools below. I permit myself
a smile, knowing that within hours, the piazza through which I am now running
will be a mob scene, its most striking feature the thousands of people
Jostling each other to get a glimpse of the fountain, or standing with
their backs to it and throwing a coin over their left shoulders, guaranteeing
that they, too, will one day return to the Eternal City. |
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| I cross
the Via del Tritone, a major thoroughfare, and pass the house in Piazza
San Andrea delle Fratte in which my idol, Gianlorenzo Bernini, once lived.
I slow down and touch the building, hoping to be struck by the same genius,
hoping-against the odds-that I might too be feted, even for Andy Warhol's
modernist fifteen minutes, by princes, popes, and politicians. For now
it is enough to know that I can say that I lived in the city that he so
richly adorned and that my pleasure of it is made possible in no small
part by his contributions. I pass a romano. He stops when he sees me, first
to make sure that I will not run him down, then to check if I am crazy,
and finally just to take in the sight of a sweating, heavy-breathing member
of his age cohort. He swivels as I pass and meekly responds to my buoiigiorno,
not having the slightest idea what to make of me. In gorgeous, perfect,
spring weather, I have not passed a single other jogger. Nor do I expect
to. The look on his face says, "Now, I have seen everything."
I sneak
a quick glance right before turning onto Via Condotti. The so-called
Spanish Steps, the other great municipal project of the eighteenth century,
are magnificent, an inspired piece of public architecture, sitting immediately
to the night of the house in which the young English poet John Keats died,
of tuberculosis, in 1821 at the tender age of twenty-five. |
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| Piazza
di Spagna is the English quarter of town, and the few tearooms that
remain in Roma are located here. As I scamper past the Caffè Greco,
which dates from 1760 and at whose bar you can still stand and drink a
caffè for fourteen hundred lire, eighty cents, or for considerably
more than that if you sit down at one of the tables, which only the tourists
do, I know that the Via Condotti will take me across the Via del Corso,
which links Piazza Venezia at its southern end and Piazza del Popolo to
the north, and toward the river.
My jog is
at the halfway point and the endorphins are kicking in. I feel as if
I could run forever, but if I really could, I would choose the direction
of the past, into another time about which I can only speculate. What is
left to me now are only glimpses, pieces, fragments of other cultures,
other civilizations, mentalities, values, habits, everyday sights and sounds.
I love the past. |
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Offshore
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I always have.
I don't live in it, but I love living with it. I can't see how, after four
years in Rome, I could feel comfortable living in a place that did not
have a vibrant yesterday, a history with which I could connect myself.
I am jolted
back into the present as I pass the chic shop windows, displaying precious
few items that nonetheless don't fail to attract--a simple top, skirt,
and pair of sexy, strappy sandals. What is it about them? The color? The
design? The display itself? I turn left onto Via Leoncino, past a fontanella
that predates the nineteenth-century cast-iron models, a stone facing that
spills water into a basin, and begin to turn toward home. I can now feel
the heat. It comes up from under my feet and envelops my body. Thank God
the streets are narrow. Thank God the sun can still not yet penetrate,
making my effort all the more faticoso, rigorous and trying, like Atlas
bent forward from the daunting task of holding up the earth. To my left,
where Via Campo Marzio meets Via Uffici del Vicario, past Giolitti gelateria,
I turn left, leaving behind the guy playing "Mr. Tambourine Man"
on the guitar as his sidekick holds out a twenty-ounce paper McDonald's
cup. |
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| I put out
my hands in the "What can I do?" gesture, and he smiles and wishes
me a buona giornata.
It is then
that the climax of the entire one-hour trip stands before me-the Pantheon.
At first I can't see much of it, just the light that is pouring in from
somewhere, making the two-thousand-year-old columns stand out against the
relative darkness of the street in which I am running, a vicolo that is
host to Da Fortunato, one of our favorite restaurants, an ideal place in
which to eat a leisurely meal outdoors, with the hovering Pantheon a guest
at the table.
From the
brilliance of the light, I can tell it's almost summer, the air heating
up by the second. The Pantheon is so old and so intact that it almost
looks as if it came from outer space, an ancient UFO with the huge hole
at the top of the roof to let in the natural elements, whatever they may
be. |
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Offshore
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seen anything until you see a shaft of heavy rain dropping over a hundred
feet through the opening and onto the marble floor, as if the temple had
been designed by a brilliant madman.
A left turn
past Bernini's elephant under the obelisk in the Piazza della Minerva takes
me through the Piazza Collegio Romano, and within moments I am once again
navigating the straits of Piazza Venezia, by now packed with people, buses,
cars, sun, heat, and noise. I jog in place, waiting for the light to
turn, and then cross the open expanse before heading back up Michelangelo's
long, ramplike stairway and once again into t e Campidoglio on the Capitoline
Hill. Bronze emperor Marcus Aurelius greets me, his right hand extended
outward in the gesture of clemency, piety, blessing; his bearded visage
reminds me somehow of the Latin I studied in high school in the early sixties.
Marcus, of course, is a copy, a wonderful copy, as the original sits inside
the Capitoline Museum to prevent its certain deterioration. Yet the worn
bronze in the waxing light still strikes a chord. It encourages my eyes
to take in the magnitude of his stoic presence.
By now I
am soaked, my T-shirt having gained a pound of water from the exertion.
I see the Colosseum and the Forum once again as I go down around its back
side, acknowledge the two vigili who are in exactly the same spot I left
them, two, maybe three cigarettes earlier, and hit the home stretch. My
legs are still there, so I sprint part of the way, knowing that within
moments the magnificent ordeal will have run its course. I can hear traffic
in the distance, but this stretch is usually quiet. Visitors to Rome emerge
from the little-known hotel to my right, near San Giorgio in Velabro, which
was bombed by the Mafia in 1992 after the government demonstrated its seriousness
in the Mani Pulite, the Clean Hands, campaign. I can now see the finish
line.
A fontanella
awaits me, this one in front of the Church of Santa Anastasia. I lean
in to drink up the cold wetness. Maurizio at the bar has told me that a
woman taking a drink like this used to be a target for a pinch, but that
kind of stuff is now part of folklore. No one is around, so I am safe.
The walk home, which takes another ten minutes and constitutes my cool-down,
brings on a high that is unmatchable--an ecstasy of both body and soul,
a relaxation that is particular to the early morning, to jogging, and to
a passion that can be indulged in every time I encounter the living past
of the city of Rome.
As the Romans
Do - Click Here - On their
website, Alan and his wife Diane Epstein provide resources for those wanting
to visit or relocate to Italy. Alan's book from which Sunday
in the City is excerpted is available via their website. |
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