(16) Rome

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The Spanish ticket checker inner guy looked at my passport & boarding pass sternly. He peered over it at me and then suddenly: "Roma!" he smiled as if going there in his mind and cheerfully handed the documents back. I was in Barcelona airport about to get on another plane. Cheating death again. Haha. My birthday was coming up in a few days and I wanted to be in a Classical City. I suppose Rome would pass.

In the airport as I waited I saw a young pilot with curly afro-hair like mine when it gets long. He was speaking with a beautiful Spanish or Italian woman and had a knowing heir of peacefulness and confidence. I smiled. That could have been me if upbringings were different. I was becoming a part of those spirits around me. Again I felt I had met my doppelganger and the alternate universe thing was kicking in.

When I landed I remember calling my mother. This would be a call I cherish now in my memory, because of later events, but which didn't think much of it at the time.

I felt like I had reached the end of the world. I later discovered it was only the ancient metropolis of Rome (some consider it the beginning of Western Civilization). I got on a train to find Antonio. A born and bred Milano banker who now lived and loved and worked in great Trestavere, Rome. Pronounced Tress-ta-vey-ray (I know its cliche but I love the Italian langusge). Trestavere is the Roman district which literally lies across the river from central Rome.

Antonio had work during the day (we partied well at night) and I was free to enjoy my solitude during the hot days. I wandered the ruinous eternal metropolis. One day I decided I would rent a mountain bike and find some hills and parks and sweat harder. So I got a sweet bike. This was an awesome mode of travel in Italy. All the locals were on motorcycles and since I was too crazy (in fear that I would ride too fast and crash) to ride a motorcycle I opted for bicycle travel. It was an expensive bike too. Only the best from the Italians. I was able to cover vast distances.

The greatest discovery for me of timeless Rome was the Vatican Museum within Vatican City. A country within a city. They have a hall of travels there which I kept walking back and forth through (for obvious reasons). It contained ancient maps and drawings covered the walls of entire hallways. There were intense Roman paintings of battles, gatherings and visions and sculptures of grandeur. At the same time it felt like someones home I was walking through.

Then I found the Sistine Chapel down a little maze of a staircase and it changed my life.

I walked in, looked above me and felt like dieing. To describe this art in a sentence would be worthless. To see it and be there was priceless. If there were one thing to see in Europe above all else choose this. The best thing I can say to attempt to give justice to such a creation is :

I was humbled by the creative power of man.

For two hours I sat walked, stood and watched different scenes at different angles from the painting. The Man and God in the middle broke my heart. As I saw it; it was man after his struggles worship and battles finally reaching a waning finger out at the end of his life and finding in his exhaustion the answer. The key to existence. And God says yes. And had said yes all along to him. But the great tragedy (of man) is that he never knew this because of his own resistance and his own complications to seeing what was right in front of his eyes.

Ya, that's how deep I got.

Oh, Rome, where my forefathers lived. Oh, Rome, where the air as warm. Oh, Rome, where the colors are bright. Oh, Rome, where the women are love at first sight. Oh, Rome, where the pizza is king and the people are bling. And the cars are all fast and the clothes are all cool! Oh, Rome. The inexplicable happiness and tranquility of a city that cockily lives up to it's dubbing as "The Eternal City". Oh... Rome.

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