5th Time Impressions

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The overall 5th time I come to Italy, yes, but uncountable times I crossed the border, since I camped on the border many years ago with a friend, on the top of a mountain between swizerland and the aforementioned country I currently find myself in.

Tragedy fills the air, or rather, that was Naples, as I'm now in Rome...here it is Disorder, Chaos, rather that is kind. Like a off the charts Star Trek script where Chaos is found to be a rule that is personified by an alien hiding and messing about with the rules, I find, alas, that that alian must be Roman! Oh, this is nevertheless a tragedy. The desent into hell... oh that was Dante... well, the descent nevertheless into Rome, from the sanitized world of airplanes into the city was allready shocking...man...what traffic. And to think that the treaty of Rome was signed here....I guess the current erratic state of European politics does after all start to show it's genetic affinity with it's eternal progenitor city.

At times I feel I am wondering amid 20 destroyed museums... and odd feeling when you really are just trying to go meet a friend of get an ice cream. Too rich a tapestry for this hall of tragedy... I mean only beacuse she is Monalisa, she does not need to witness all our human frailties! And yet they are all scarily hemorraging in Rome. No parking... no not that simple a complaint...more like the Renassaince of Fascism in a nea Berlusconian Operatic manner, produced by the best TV producers in the country of course : )

So much falls down arround one in Rome these days, that it's only the presence of all this millenia worth or grand acheivements and art that keep us from despairing. I guess that might be the problem with my host compatriots. As nice as it might be to have "the long perspective" slapped in your face every 20 minutes, or every 5 meters, depending on how awake and aware one is.

Alas, the food is still stupendous, the prices are equally so. And whereas in Paris I see the point of those prices, somehow, the uniformity here smaks of mafia rather than a genuine reflection of cost.

I guess, as I have learnt most blatantly in Benin, those under such suffering frequently have the best music, food and drama... I guess it's a lesson of life, that one should appreciate humanity with all it's defects as well as it's best. With a lovely soundtrack, a lovely snack and a better glass of wine. Trying as best one can to appreciate the best, as well as the worst anything has to offer.

Loving Rome.

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