The Familiar and Extraordinary

Getting through crowded Stein stations with our large group turns into a game of physical telephone. Where I hope the person I’m following in front of me is following the right person in front of them. The crowd behaves like a loud fog, within feet in front of me I lose sight of anything recognizable. All sounds reduce to a chaotic murmur, highlighted by the squeaks of sneakers against marble. The marble reveals the age of the ground we are walking on. Stairs of the train stations all have distinct groves warn into the stone of every step. Sculpted by years of people walking up and down, two and from the bowels of each ancient town. Nothing seems to ever be replaced. The quality of the material allows it to age and tell a story in ways that our countries own philosophy of economic construction does not.

Quality and beauty are not a luxury in Italy, but a necessary, unquestioned element of what they create and consume. I imagine these beliefs were instilled quite easily, considering the ghosts and ruins of the worlds greatest empire continue to stand proudly among them everywhere. Everyone wants to be remembered, Italians have a blueprint on how to do it. 

Ancient Rome sprouts like weeds, continuing to grow from the ground, sprouting from beneath the plaster of buildings and churches that tried to mask the past. You dig and it’s roots seem to spread everywhere. I’ve thought about graffiti a lot on this trip, and maybe a part of people’s willingness to deface these ancient monuments is the fact that these ancient monuments are literally everywhere. What we foreigners consider other-worldly and sacred, young people of Italy may simply see them as old news, a backdrop in everyday life they grew up with. On our train from Rome, the tracks passed right through an Ancient Roman aqueduct, the skeletons of palaces jut out of the ground in ghetto neighborhoods. In Lucca, the original ancient city walls are now apartment and Air BnBs.

According to one person, they have made a rule when doing underground construction, that when artifacts are found (which is constantly), they can cast them to the side of its an artifact they already have multiple of. In a way these Ancient Roman artifacts really are weeds, a nuisance in the face of daily progress and movement. Ancient Rome is a sacred burden to one living in Italy asked to carry. 

But maybe it isn’t that way. I grew up on the beaches of San Diego, I saw the ocean almost everyday, I take for granted that I have constant access to a place that people pay to come visit from all over the world. It has become a backdrop, but I still get pissed every time I find trash in the sand.

Blog writing and images by Tyler