|
|
 |
|
Our Traveler |
|
written
by leahs2 / 10.24.2005 |
|
|
| |
Assignment |
| |
The Via Veneto has no clear beginning or end, rather it is a long street that in the 1920s was about shopping and strolling and being seen. Any number of detours can be taken. Frankly, the pomp and circumstance is of little interest to our visitor. It is too aimless, too typically modern with its Hard Rock Café to bring forth any emotional reaction or to reveal any layers of Roman history.
Just off the Via Veneto is Santa Maria della Concezione with its deceivingly typical church façade. Upon entering the crypt, a hallway of intense abnormality appears before her, our visitor. “What are those?” “Not bones!” “Yes, those are bits of bone,” rushes her internal banter. She enters mystified as she walks through the six rooms to end in the final room. She must then retrace her steps to exit. She is baffled, awed by the anomalous art of disjointed bones carefully arranged on all sides. She tries to better understand the art as she leaves by reading an inscription on the wall, yet remains off-balance. She exits the space baffled. An ancient artist has defined her pathway and left the unexplained art shrouded in mystery. The space offers an entrance into a bizarre world of anomaly but lays no exit with which to make sense of the path.
Not far from the crypt our visitor stands at the top of the Spanish steps. As she begins down them the splits in the staircase whispers to her stories of detour and romance. The steps are meant to be ambled, enjoyed, and experienced, at her desire. Like Italians on vacation, time holds still as she makes her way across the stairs. The steps are optically layered in jig-saws and angles . . . she can’t quite figure out how her classmates have gotten so far ahead – where are they hurrying to? One of the platforms allows a short respite to reorient herself before the stairs split again. The stair began at a grand monument, twist down in a maze, and end at an exquisite fountain. She has no recollection of her path down, how she navigated the steps. Rather she sighs in the peace of ambulatory detours in a timeless world and prepares to face the tourists’ cameras at the base of the fountain.
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
