creation is eternal in rome
musings on my time in the eternal city
It’s strange, seeing an ancient gladiator arena and then turning another direction to see cars speeding by on a paved road. The city of Rome is full of this juxtaposition with its being a bustling metropolitan — and the most populated city in Italy — built around ancient sites rich in history. The Roman Empire and Caeser are long gone, but here we are looking at some of the same creations that they did.
To outsiders like us, structures such as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Forum are all landmarks we make the pilgrimage to visit; crowding in front of them, waving our phones in the air to get the best Instagram picture of the places where people used to worship, or gather, or fight to the death. But to think that these sites are just the backdrop the every day lives of city residents is still unbelievable to me.
One of the girls I was traveling with has an older sister called Zara that lives in Rome for college with whom we met up with during our stay. As she used her local wisdom to shepherd us through the bus system, Zara told us about life in the eternal city. “It all just becomes normal, but sometimes I still can’t believe it. Like the other day my friends and I bought a bottle of prosecco and had a picnic in front of the fucking Colosseum.”
I found myself living vicariously through the little bits of her life that she showed us. We went to her apartment with plug-in fans in each room to supplement having no air conditioning, the low hum becoming one of the most romantic sounds to my ears. I would trade my air conditioning in a heartbeat to live in Zara’s little apartment with the tiled kitchen nook facing the street and her closet full of sundresses and her Italian boyfriend who had the most perfect accent and waited for us outside the grocery store so he could smoke a cigarette. Zara told us she’d met him at a club and they’d been together for almost three months.
Zara also introduced us to to pocket coffees, these magic little pods that they sell at every corner that are basically shots of espresso. You stab your little straw into the package, and then drink. There were also chocolate variations, but those were harder to come by since it’s summertime and retailers pull them until autumn because of the heat. These little pocket coffees became my lifeline through all our long days and endless miles of walking.
One of these days involved a journey to Trastevere which earned the title of my favorite neighborhood in Rome. It had true cobblestone streets and was filled with wonderful shops and restaurants. Walking by each display window filled with colorful pizzas and calzones made me wish I had a bottomless stomach just so I could experience it all. The human body can be so limiting in that way.
For shopping, Zara took us to one of her favorite spots called Merkat Roma an indoor vintage clothing market filled with some really cool pieces, vendors, and vibes. Speaking of thrifting, why did no one tell me about the pop up tents clustered on every street corner with clothing? Vendors had their pieces piled up on tables with a set price of one to three euros per item depending on the table. The most expensive table I saw was five euro, and that was for exclusively linen pieces. What a steal. I sifted through these piles of clothes just like the Goodwill bins back home, and ended up finding a lace cami and a plaid button up blouse for one euro each, and a retro patterned scarf for two euros. I would’ve kept looking if only I had more room in my luggage.
After shopping, we wandered to a staircase facing the river to sit and rest our legs after a long day of thirty-thousand steps (around fifteen miles of walking). A man with wild curly hair, a beaming smile, and a guitar slung around his back arrived in the square and began performing. According to Zara, the man regularly came to this spot and sang American songs, though sometimes he didn’t fully know the lyrics, and would mumble everything except for the chorus.
She ended up being right. He strummed an acoustic rendition of “Baby” by Justin Bieber to which we helped fill in the gaps in the lyrics, followed by some Ed Sheeran and then “Country Roads, Take Me Home.” Our little group of Americans sang along loud and proud, carrying the energy of the crowd on our gun-slinging, red white and blue backs.
“I’m never going back to America,” Zara said.
It was the early evening, around 6 oclock so the square was filled with people coming and going. Men dressed in suits, artists packing up their stands, a group of teenage girls dressed for the club in miniskirts and tall boots. Everyone had somehow found themselves here in Rome, either by birth or migration like Zara and now they were going about their daily lives, walking the cobblestone streets, stopping for a smoke in an alleyway trellised with vines and flowers, loving, hating, working, all against the backdrop of ancient history. A reminder of how far we’ve come and that no matter how long we last, our creations will last for eternity.
