Roman Visions

One of my most impressive memories of Italy when I came with a high-school Latin club psycho-tour (trying to “do” four countries in two weeks?) was of walking down a street in the evening, just looking in the shop windows. Glorying in the ridiculousness and perfection of those displays, in particular, at a pair of green thigh-high boots whose three-inch platforms were carved into a twisted snarl of draconian teeth. Quite literally crocodile boots. This trip has not disappointed in the window shopping department. Actual shopping however, leaves me feeling slightly depressed, as I am being reminded once again of my feet fall into fairy-tale evil stepsister dimensions. There was this one shop, decked out like a candy store to humiliate all others, with shoes in a frenzy of colors, crafted from silky soft suede. There were peep-toes in shocking violet and lemon yellow, sky blue pumps trimmed in peacock green and…not a pair fit. Serves me right. I’m currently unemployed and ought to be wearing orthopedic clunkers. What POSSIBLE use could I have for a fantastical pair of Willy-Wonka inspired heels?
A girl can dream though...

Nursing my wounded self image over a lunch of bread, olive oil, cheese and ham, I enjoy the sight of vendors at the Campo de Fiori starting a little food fight, playfully hurling fruit or hunks of bread at each other. The old man at the water fountain tosses a handful of water in through a passing car’s open window and the women at the table just a few feet from me smoke like fiends behind dark aviator sunglasses. Mother and son pass by, his face turned up to hers and their fingers interlaced, while she smiles at him and carries three regal stalks of sunflowers, held head down in a manicured hand. A man walks a small fluffy dog on a yellow leash, and the Italian women walk by, with runway perfect bedhead and impeccable fashion sense. I realize I will never, never pass for Italian. (That's okay. But oh, how these women intimidate me!)

It makes my heart happy to see that all of these gloriously beautiful people are eating ice cream. The wrinkled nonnas and the street sweepers, the business men and the tourists. Everyone is enjoying the technicolor flavors. I decide to be a bit more adventurous than usual and try a Mangueira-themed cone: pistachio and something rasberry-ish, which I ate in the shade of the Column of Marcos Aurelius. It's been around, giving shade and testifying to bloody battles, since 193. Please ponder that with me...

I make it my job to get lost today, to walk under archways and nose around streets of forbidding demeanor that I'd never enter, even in daylight, if I was in Rio de Janeiro. No one even so much as blinks an eye at me. Nuns wander the back alleys, carrying bags of groceries, and in a near cinemagraphic scene, pigeons wing over their heads, scared into flight by the skinny youngster on a bicycle who wags an unlit cigarette between his tight lips. And the sun scatters along the cobblestones like spilled orange juice...

p.s. Such sights made me forgive myself for not taking pictures like I should. I’m admittably not a photographer. I’ve always preferred to paint my pictures with letters and metaphors.

p.p.s. Portuguese is messing with my English spelling. I had to Google "cinemagrafic" to figure out why it kept coming up in the spell check!